Create a Wonderful Life with Telemedicine

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: You're listening to Physician Non Clinical Careers with John Jericho. Episode number 458 Create a Wonderful Life with Telemedicine, a PNC classic from 2022. Welcome back non Clinical Nation. Today I'm replaying another popular episode from 2022. In this interview, Dr. Cherisha Sandro explains how to create a wonderful life with telemedicine and telehealth services. She is a Go to expert on this topic because she was using these services to replace her traditional practice income before the COVID pandemic hit, and since then she has continued to master all aspects of practicing medicine remotely, including how to optimize her workflow to generate a net income that that exceeds her previous traditional practice in just 20 to 30 hours of work per week. But first, here is an important message did you know that you can sponsor the Physician Non Clinical Careers podcast? As a sponsor, you'll reach thousands of physicians to sell your products and services or to build your following. Your message will be heard on the podcast and seen on our website, in our newsletter and social media posts. It's amazing how a direct invitation to thousands of physicians on this podcast can identify listeners eager to try out your products or services. To learn more, go to nonclinicalphysicians.com sponsorships or just set up a short call to learn more about sponsorships@nonclinicalphysicians.com Zoomcall and to help you decide. If this is for you, I can offer a complimentary two week pilot for select partners for no cost at all and we can see how well the podcast will help promote your services or products. So again, set up a call@nonclinicalphysicians.com zoomcall and we can talk through the process. Hey listeners, I also want to let you know that I'm in the process of reimagining this podcast. I don't have all the details worked out, but you will notice soon that I am changing how I'm sharing the podcast with a much greater emphasis on video. What I want to do is elevate the content to that of a weekly series of masterclasses for those interested in accelerating their career advancement. But I still plan to post weekly audio content as well for those that prefer that method. So stay tuned over the coming weeks. I'm really excited about it and I think you will be too. So now let's get right into today's replay so that you can optimize your transition to telemedicine and telehealth services.

Speaker C: I'm Always looking for new programs, courses, books, other resources that will help physicians find more freedom and satisfaction in their lives and maybe also transition to a, uh, newer career that builds on their background in medicine. But anyway, that's why I'm bringing back today's guest who's been here before, and she's going to tell us something more about what we spoke about last time and some new things going on. So with that, I'd like to welcome Dr. Sharisa Sandro. Hello and welcome back.

Speaker D: Hi. It's great to be back. It's great to see you again.

Speaker C: What you taught us last time and talked to us about last time was so practical. And now it's been almost a year and you've got a new program coming up. And so I just wanted to catch up with you and kind of figure out what's going on and how it might benefit you, my listeners out there. Tell me a little bit about what's happened since we last spoke, almost a year ago.

Speaker D: Yeah, great. The world has opened back up, which has been awesome. Covid was such a time of isolation for so many. And so we, my family and I, moved from the Portland, Oregon area to Bend, Oregon, which has been like our vacation, uh, place. It's been one of our favorite places to visit over the past 10 years. And so the move is awesome, but also has been a little challenging in regards to community. So between working from home and moving to a new town and Covid, it's challenging to create community. And um, I know I'm not alone. I actually just saw a post, I'm um, a Facebook page about a similar situation. And I feel like so many physicians, and I can speak more, more directly to female physicians, so many female physicians just feel isolated and are seeking connection. And I'm sure that's true of everybody. But uh, so when I, in the fall had decided I wanted to put my curriculum onto video, I had been listening to Sunny Smith, coach on a, uh, semi retired MD course that I was taking. And as I was listening to her coach, I decided that I wanted to enroll in her summer ewp, the Empowering Women Physicians Coaching Course. And so that just wrapped up and it was such a powerful summer of connection and community. And so during that course, actually very early on in the course, I was inspired to create this entirely new direction for my consulting business. And so we'll be, I'll be launching a course called From Here to There Leveraging Virtual Medicine. And, and so I am um, just in such a different space going into it. I Actually was saying I'm feeling like I am lacking joy and connection in my life. And now I feel like I have this entire community and. And I feel so much more inspiration in my life. That's really where I'm at. And my girls are just starting school. Good.

Speaker C: Sweet.

Speaker B: Oh, really?

Speaker C: Okay.

Speaker D: Amazing.

Speaker C: Nice. A little trivia here for the listeners. I'm going to quiz you on this maybe six months from now, but I actually have been in Bend, Oregon once, and I was rock climbing with a, uh, coach or a, uh, guide. That's the only outdoor climbing I've ever done in my life. So I'm not a rock climber per se. But Bend, Oregon is an awesome place. It's just you just living in constant vacation, aren't you, when you're in that part of the country?

Speaker D: That is why people move here. People that move here are avid outdoor adventurous and love to be active and. And yeah, basically it's a town of people that just are wanting to live in that environment and. And it's grown so much, especially during COVID So many people from California have moved here, which I think California over

Speaker C: there, well, it's really. It's a rock climbing mecca, from what I understand.

Speaker B: So you all had.

Speaker C: Your whole family has to learn how to rock climb, if you're not already doing it. So.

Speaker D: So my oldest daughter. It's actually, when we moved here, it was like almost one of the things. Not the highest thing on our list of reasons to move here, but it was on that list. So my oldest daughter is the little rock climbing prodigy, and when we put her on a rock wall a couple years ago, she just went right to the top.

Speaker C: Yeah. And I bet he loved it.

Speaker D: Oh, and so she rock climbs regularly. She's on the rock climbing team.

Speaker C: Oh, boy. Yeah.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker C: Okay. You're gonna have to send some photos out on LinkedIn or something.

Speaker D: Okay, awesome. Uh, to be said.

Speaker C: All right, let's get back to the matter at hand here. So now you have been going through a lot of different things, but one of which is this. Creating this program and, uh, revamping. Not really. It's like expanding it from what I understand or what you mentioned, I guess. And from what I understand, it involves telemedicine, since that's really a, uh, major set of skills that you have. So anyway, tell us about the program, what it looks like, a little bit more detail.

Speaker D: Yeah. I'll start with why me? Why would I be the person to teach this? So I've started. So many physicians are wanting to transition to Telehealth in the last couple of years, Covid just brought it to the forefront, but it's challenging to know how to even get started and um, how to make it lucrative, how to actually replace your income with it. And so I'm a family practice doctor. For the first 10 years of practice I practice full spectrum family medicine with OB and I started working in telemedicine in 2015. I say before it was cool and um, and I was doing a little bit of telehealth on the side and. And so I worked with, I did that for a year and a half where I was just working with one company, like moonlighting with them essentially. And in 2017 I transitioned to telemedicine full time and I was able to not only replace my income, but essentially double my income and cut my hours that I was working in half. And that's what physicians want to do. And in 2020 I had a lot of physicians that were reaching out, asking me how I did this. And so I decided to create a curriculum to teach others. I have been coaching one on one over the past two years with using this curriculum and I've created this freedom of flexibility in my life. And I'm super passionate about teaching other physicians who are burnout and wanting a uh, change how to reclaim and transform their life. And Sandra Consulting is my, is the name of my company. We help physicians acquire the skills, the tools and the mindset so they can leave their practice and use telehealth as a vehicle to replace their income and give them more time and freedom to figure out what else they want to do in their life. And so I will take people through all of the steps in the process to get up and running and actually replacing your income will provide the in group support through that transition. My husband's actually going to be partnering with me on this next phase of our journey. So he's been the silent partner as of now. He's been foundational for me though in creating the success that I have. He also is a recovered, burnt out sports med, chiropractic physician. He owned a UH practice and he has been in the coaching space for the last eight years and his focus has been really functional medicine and wellness. And his expertise that he's bringing is business ownership, mindset, productivity and system creation and creating a sense of wellness. And um, and we, our goal is to help physicians rediscover our purpose and reignite our passion. Like why we went into medicine. We went into medicine because we're super passionate about serving and helping other people. And there's a deep sense of purpose that got us there, because in order to get into medical school, we are the top. We're. We go above and beyond. So then you get there and you just spend more than a decade in training and you sacrificed your life and you. You put everything else on hold, and you go into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, thinking that after you're done with your training, life will be awesome. And then we get there, and life doesn't feel awesome for a lot of physicians. And we feel trapped because what else are we going to do m all this money to pay back, and how else are we going to make a quarter million dollars a year? And we don't realize how much we actually are capable of doing and how many opportunities are out there in the world. Which is why I love everything that you do, because you start planting seeds and opening people's eyes. Telemedicine is not necessarily the end goal. It's freedom and flexibility in our lives and reigniting our own passion and purpose. And telemedicine is a vehicle that, that I can. That I've used and so I can teach other people. But then once you get that time back in your life and you heal a little bit from the burnout, then, then you have the capacity to explore what else you might want to do. Um, and truly, telehealth, the future of telehealth is way more than what most people realize that the. The American Medical association adopted a policy back in 2016 that was aimed to ensure that med students and residents learn how to use telemedicine in their clinical practice. And so this has been like, even before COVID a, uh, plan for the future of our healthcare system. And in that they had said, as innovation in care delivery and technology continue to transform healthcare, we must ensure that our current future physicians have the tools and resources they need to provide the best possible care for their patients. And for sure, I think once people get into the telehealth world and they start to realize how many opportunities are available, it starts to become more clear how much telehealth is actually. And the virtual medicine world is really going to be able to transform our healthcare system. And so that's definitely exciting.

Speaker C: Now we're talking about, you could be burned out, you could just be unhappy, what have you. But I'm assuming there's in your mind, you have a clear picture of who is this, ideally the program you've already been doing with your coaching and so forth, who is the ideal person that would Take advantage. I'm sure it's not someone just had a thought like oh, I'm just a little unhappy. They probably someone who's really. They don't necessarily have to be burnt out. Tell us about that. Who would be the ideal person?

Speaker D: I feel that it's important for people to be in practice a few years before transitioning to enso. I don't know that I will turn somebody away straight out of residency, but I'm absolutely going to encourage them to do some in person practice in addition to telehealth if they want to start doing telehealth early on. And so really work is geared towards helping physicians that have been in practice and are struggling to balance work, family and their own life, their own wellness. I think that's most of us though. But not everybody wants to leave practice. Actually there's a lot of people that are not even considering the options. And my uh, my client is the person who's tired, stressed and burnt out or needing flexibility and freedom for some other reasons. Maybe they're caring. When I first put the course together it was during COVID and so I my mindset that was maybe they're caring for an elderly and they don't want to be exposing them to Covid or maybe they need to be available for their kids that are homeschooling. But there's always life situations that happen and our typical practice doesn't give us the freedom and flexibility. Maybe it's a single mom who. A newly single mom or newly single parent who just has to have more flexibility than our typical disallows for. So. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: It seems like obviously when you think about telehealth or telemedicine as opposed to traditional practice, one of the big differences besides being on call and having to go to the or in the middle of the night or something is it's usually an 8 to 6. I wouldn't say 9 to 5. But it's. There's set hours. Whereas I from. I think most forms of telemedicine you have, you can choose to have more flexibility. You can be taking calls on the weekends or at night or different time zones. So it's. That part of it is as for sounds like it's very flexible but you have to be disciplined, I would assume.

Speaker D: Yeah, that's actually very true. You know, we are so used to being so busy with somebody else controlling our schedule that uh, when we transition to probably a lot of remote work, but when we transition to business ownership, we have to create our own schedule or we will either end up just doing the same thing, working like never leaving your office and, or you won't ever get work done because you'll do laundry, uh, this appointment and that appointment and you want to work out. And so it's, it is important to learn how to create a schedule, which is actually something that I teach. I think it's important enough to focus on and learn. We don't learn that. So. Yeah.

Speaker C: The other question I come across, this fear of the unknown is that people, physicians that are looking to make a change, they don't, they can't really envision what the steps are. They don't know what they should do. Should I do a uh, cv, should I start looking? What do I do? And I think when they have someone like you that can walk them through the steps, there's certain milestones or things that you'll be looking along the way. So maybe I'm assuming that your program kind of addresses those. So are there some big major milestones that people have to get through in this process?

Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. And we do all of that. And getting licensed in multiple states is the thing that kind of takes the longest. And we start that process, we help people start that process really in the very beginning because that is really the piece that we're going to be waiting for at the end is for those licenses to come through. And then, and then we help people, you know, first figure out what your vision is for your life, what do you want your life to look like, what do you want your practice to look like. And that helps guide us as to where we're going to go with what companies and what direction we're going to go. And, and so we focused in the beginning on rediscovering what our strengths are, what our purpose is, what we're passionate about and, and how we want to show up in the world. Um, and then we start identifying what the telehealth business vision is and what our goals are. And then setting up business foundation is huge. And I'm going to have a telemedicine lawyer come in and speak. I have a small business accountant who will come in and speak and a bookkeeper who will come in and speak. We, I will help people get, uh, I will help people with the things that need to get done. And so setting up an LLC and talking about business ownership, tax write offs, that kind of stuff. And then we're exploring the companies and which ones to apply for, which is very overwhelming. There's so many how to review the contracts with the different companies. To make sure that you're aware of what you're committing to. Non competes are an issue with a lot of the companies and it's a reason why I never took a job with any of the telehealth companies because most of them have these non competes that make it difficult to, to. If you sign a non compete in the telehealth world, you can't do anything anywhere in the country. And I know that a lot of physicians are struggling with their local non competes and so I think it's really important that if somebody wants to transition to telehealth and they are looking at taking a job with one of the telehealth companies that they're aware of the implications of, um, the non competes that they may be signing. And then as far as the application process, I help with updating your resume and updating your LinkedIn profile and creating a bio and then setting up the telehealth work and all of the, just all of the medicine part of telehealth, what's expected from the physical exams and then how to document and so all of those pieces along the way I'm walk some walking somebody through. And so yeah, there's actually a lot of, a lot of patients that in the transition that can become very overwhelming if you're not supported through that transition.

Speaker C: I was chuckling a little bit because I had this vision. I have a friend and I think, you know this friend I'm talking about and that I thought this, the place where you do this is in a chair on the beach or something. Isn't that.

Speaker D: And it could be, it could be if you're not doing video calls, if you're taking phone calls or when with asynchronous telemedicine you can be anywhere and if you're doing video or phone visits, you still want to have a HIPAA compliance sort of space and um, privacy.

Speaker C: Uh, yes.

Speaker D: And it still applies. Yeah. I think the important thing though to know is that medicine is still the same and so the practice of medicine is still the practice of medicine. And we know that been doing that. The delivery changes and, and so we need to learn there's a lot of mindset shift and there's a lot of belief that has to happen, but the core skill set we have that. And so it's not like we're becoming electricians or it's not, um, we're still doing the same the work, it's just shifting. There's some mild shifts that need to take place and for me the Business ownership piece of it is important because we are not trained to be business owners and you can take a job with a telehealth company but you're not going to have as much freedom and flexibility and ownership of your life and you're not going to be as profitable if you take a job with a uh company because then you are only able to work in that job. And so teaching business ownership I think is a huge piece.

Speaker C: No, uh, that's absolutely critical I think to have that freedom. Otherwise you're just back in a rat race and to some extent and you're controlled. And when you were talking about the issue of non competes, does that, that applies probably to both whether you're employed or even if you're, if you do have your own business, if you don't sign the right contract. Right. Because you can get stuck with a non uh compete even if you're an independent contractor.

Speaker D: Yeah, we have to read the contracts and be careful with them. But it can. I think the intention of the telehealth companies with the non competes is that you're not working with another telehealth company. There's only one company that I have that I have been that only required that non compete of uh, physicians and leadership position and it was around proprietary information which makes sense to me. But when a company says you can't work with any other telehealth companies then if that company is slow and if there's, if you're not busy then you can't do something else and then a lot of them, um, they're it that non compete limits you if you decide to leave that company. So then you can't continue doing telehealth. So it's just important to be aware of that.

Speaker C: Any other words of advice or wisdom or encouragement you'd like to give us today?

Speaker D: Yeah, I just want to encourage physicians to, to recognize how well trained we are as physicians. But our preparation is to be an employee and we have this really extensive training but then we end up being put into a job where we're, we're doing. We're the clinician, we're the practitioner, we're. And that's amazing but it makes us feel like that's all we can do. And I want people to understand that there is so much, there are so many opportunities that are available and there are so many experts that are in these different areas that are available to help guide them. Um, and we are, our whole model, our whole training model is in this mentorship model throughout med school and residency, we're mentored. And then if we decide. And even going into practice, you. We run things by our colleagues all the time. That's just how, that's how we work. You get another set of eyes to go look at your rash or review an X ray with a, uh, colleague, or you call the specialist to run something by them. We live in this world of mentorship and colleagues, but then if we decide to transition out on our own, we think we need to figure it out on our own. So there's like a plethora of information on the Internet if we start trying to figure it out on our own. But there are people that have done what you want to do that can guide you. And in. In whether you're wanting to go in for coaching or whatever there. Or real estate, there's all, uh, there's these mentors. And I think that's something that I valued always. And so when I first started out, I reached out to people and I, I hired Tom Davis to help me when I first started creating my curriculum. Cause I knew I didn't have that. Some of that business skills. And I wanted. And that. That's always been my mindset, is to hire other people to help me because that's how we're trained. But not everybody realizes the value and importance in that. And so I think that's really important. And then the other thing is that we all have this incredible resilience just from going through our training, let alone like the rest of life that we've. That we've experienced. But as physicians, we are resilient beyond belief. And so what has. What we have proven in our life that has. That we've already overcome and that we've already has. Have achieved can get us to whatever that next phase is of our life that we want. And so I think that, uh, it's important for us to recognize that we can do it, whatever it is that we want to do.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. We've got the brain power for sure. We just need a little help in some of these steps and to learn things that we're not really aware of or have been exposed to. Physicians are somewhat resistant to coaching in general. They feel that's like asking for help. And, um, I'm not supposed to. It doesn't make any sense, really. And companies, big hospitals and insurance companies, they've been using business coaches for years and years, and they love it. And it's what helps them, um, progress even quicker in their career transition. So that's what physicians need to learn, is that by getting some coaching or training or online courses or what have you in a particular field, uh, you could just accelerate your progress so much more. That's why I love bringing on guests like you and can answer a problem

Speaker B: or solve a problem for physicians.

Speaker C: So I really appreciate you coming on today, Theresa, uh, and explaining this and dropping a few pearls along the way. That's always useful. You take care of this.

Speaker D: Thanks so much. It was great to see you.

Speaker C: All right, bye. Bye.

Speaker B: That's it for today's presentation. Telemedicine is still an awesome way to practice without leaving home and generate a very competitive income. You can find the show notes, links to related content, and a transcript of today's presentation by going to nonclinicalphysicians.com wonderfullifewithtelemedicine that's all hyphenated. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me at John Jerica mdmail uh.com um, and join me next week for another episode of the Physician Nonclinical Careers podcast. Remember that you can learn about being a sponsor of the podcast and share your message with thousands of physicians online@nonclinicalphysicians.com sponsorships. Or just set up that Zoom call@nonclinicalphysicians.com Zoomcall one word. I also want to remind you that I'm in the process of reimagining this podcast and with a much greater emphasis on video. What I want to do is elevate the content to that of a weekly series of master classes for those interested in accelerating their career advancement. So stay tuned over the coming weeks. I'm really excited about it, and I think you will be, too. And you can see exactly what has changed very soon by simply going to the same web address as always@nonclinicalphysicians.com and if you're not already on my email newsletter list, sign up so you don't miss any of the exciting new things going on. And do that, sign up@nonclinicalphysicians.com newsletter. All right. Finally, don't forget that the opinions expressed here are mine. And while the information provided on the podcast is true and accurate, to the best of my knowledge, there's no guarantee that using the methods discussed will lead to success in your career and life or business. Always consult an attorney, accountant, or career strategist before making any major decision about your career. Okay, bye for now.

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