Hospital Medicine Group Utilizing AI to Enhance Value-Based Care with Dr. John Birkmeyer Sound Physicians
Release Date: 04/08/2026
Virtual Physical Therapy Matches In-Clinic Outcomes While Expanding Access and Convenience with Dr. Ashok Gupta Theranow TRANSCRIPT
Empowered Patient Podcast
Dr. Ashok Gupta, CEO and Founder of Theranow, highlights the growing demand for physical therapy and the challenges patients face in accessing care. The Theranow telehealth solution uses technologies such as computer vision and AI to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of virtual care and to measure and document progress to support the clinician's work with the patient. Virtual physical therapy is demonstrating outcomes equal to in-person care and showing higher patient engagement and compliance, driven by the convenience of scheduling and remote monitoring tools. Ashok explains,...
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Virtual Physical Therapy Matches In-Clinic Outcomes While Expanding Access and Convenience with Dr. Ashok Gupta Theranow
Empowered Patient Podcast
Dr. Ashok Gupta, CEO and Founder of Theranow, highlights the growing demand for physical therapy and the challenges patients face in accessing care. The Theranow telehealth solution uses technologies such as computer vision and AI to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of virtual care and to measure and document progress to support the clinician's work with the patient. Virtual physical therapy is demonstrating outcomes equal to in-person care and showing higher patient engagement and compliance, driven by the convenience of scheduling and remote monitoring tools. Ashok explains,...
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Enzyme Replacement Therapy for Sanfilippo Syndrome Type B with Dr. Javier Szwarcberg Spruce Biosciences TRANSCRIPT
Empowered Patient Podcast
Dr. Javier Szwarcberg, CEO of Spruce Biosciences, is developing drugs for rare diseases with a primary focus on Sanfilippo Syndrome Type B, a devastating genetic neurodegenerative disease affecting children. The source of this condition is a lack of an enzyme, which results in a buildup of a toxic substance in the brain. The company's drug is an enzyme replacement therapy administered directly to the brain to bypass the blood-brain barrier, and clinical trial data is showing a strong effect on the toxic substrate in the brain and a meaningful benefit on cognition. Javier...
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Enzyme Replacement Therapy for Sanfilippo Syndrome Type B with Dr. Javier Szwarcberg Spruce Biosciences
Empowered Patient Podcast
Dr. Javier Szwarcberg, CEO of Spruce Biosciences, is developing drugs for rare diseases with a primary focus on Sanfilippo Syndrome Type B, a devastating genetic neurodegenerative disease affecting children. The source of this condition is a lack of an enzyme, which results in a buildup of a toxic substance in the brain. The company's drug is an enzyme replacement therapy administered directly to the brain to bypass the blood-brain barrier, and clinical trial data is showing a strong effect on the toxic substrate in the brain and a meaningful benefit on cognition. Javier...
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AI in Complex Healthcare Revenue Cycle Management with Zach Shultz EnableComp TRANSCRIPT
Empowered Patient Podcast
Zach Shultz, Senior Director of Product Policy and Solutions at EnableComp, describes the challenges of revenue cycle management in healthcare with a focus on the strategic importance of full-time equivalent (FTE) allocation. Hospitals could improve their bottom line by outsourcing complex, low-reimbursement claims, such as those from the VA so that in-house staff can focus on higher-value commercial claims. Despite the emergence of AI as a significant factor in automating the review process, human intervention is irreplaceable for quality assurance, managing escalations, and resolving...
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AI in Complex Healthcare Revenue Cycle Management with Zach Shultz EnableComp
Empowered Patient Podcast
Zach Shultz, Senior Director of Product Policy and Solutions at EnableComp, describes the challenges of revenue cycle management in healthcare with a focus on the strategic importance of full-time equivalent (FTE) allocation. Hospitals could improve their bottom line by outsourcing complex, low-reimbursement claims, such as those from the VA so that in-house staff can focus on higher-value commercial claims. Despite the emergence of AI as a significant factor in automating the review process, human intervention is irreplaceable for quality assurance, managing escalations, and resolving...
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In-Home High-Acuity Care is Transforming Emergency Medicine with Lon Hecht Care2U TRANSCRIPT
Empowered Patient Podcast
Lon Hecht, CEO of Care2U, has designed an innovative model of providing in-home high-acuity care as an alternative to emergency room visits or hospitalizations. The process includes sending a clinician to the home within 2-4 hours, with extensive mobile medical equipment, and physician support via telehealth. Benefits include better patient recovery outcomes, significant cost savings for patients and payers, and prevention of costly hospital readmissions. Lon explains, "My company, Care2U, and I are bringing high acuity care into the home. So think of it as kind of a...
info_outline
In-Home High-Acuity Care is Transforming Emergency Medicine with Lon Hecht Care2U
Empowered Patient Podcast
Lon Hecht, CEO of Care2U, has designed an innovative model of providing in-home high-acuity care as an alternative to emergency room visits or hospitalizations. The process includes sending a clinician to the home within 2-4 hours, with extensive mobile medical equipment, and physician support via telehealth. Benefits include better patient recovery outcomes, significant cost savings for patients and payers, and prevention of costly hospital readmissions. Lon explains, "My company, Care2U, and I are bringing high acuity care into the home. So think of it as kind of a...
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How Healthcare Organizations Use AI to Transform Patient Access and Revenue Cycle Management with Patty Hayward Talkdesk TRANSCRIPT
Empowered Patient Podcast
Patty Hayward, General Manager of healthcare and life sciences at Talkdesk, describes how a hybrid model of humans and AI is reshaping healthcare contact centers. Patient access and revenue cycle management are the primary, interconnected challenges for these centers, and modern large-language AI is being used to handle complex scheduling logic. Data analytics helps identify patterns in patient inquiries, predict demand peaks, and move care from reactive to proactive. The expectation is that AI agents will guide patients, becoming a normal and accepted part of healthcare. Patty explains, "I...
info_outline
How Healthcare Organizations Use AI to Transform Patient Access and Revenue Cycle Management with Patty Hayward Talkdesk
Empowered Patient Podcast
Patty Hayward, General Manager of healthcare and life sciences at Talkdesk, describes how a hybrid model of humans and AI is reshaping healthcare contact centers. Patient access and revenue cycle management are the primary, interconnected challenges for these centers, and modern large-language AI is being used to handle complex scheduling logic. Data analytics helps identify patterns in patient inquiries, predict demand peaks, and move care from reactive to proactive. The expectation is that AI agents will guide patients, becoming a normal and accepted part of healthcare. Patty explains, "I...
info_outlineDr. John Birkmeyer, President of the medical group at Sound Physicians, defines value-based care as an evolution from older managed care models, with closer alignment of incentives for quality of care and cost-effectiveness. Working within the hospital environment, this approach emphasizes standardizing patient-centered care and communication across multiple hospital departments, reducing redundant tests and improving patient outcomes. The use of AI is one way to reduce the administrative burden on physicians, freeing up more time for patient care, a departure from earlier technologies that added to clinicians' workload.
John explains, "Sound Physicians is a multi-specialty medical group. It's distinguished in a couple of ways from a lot of the physician groups that your listeners and patients are used to. Number one, it focuses exclusively on specialties that are practiced inside the hospital. So in that context, we work in anesthesia, in the ICU, in hospital medicine, and in the emergency department. And we're different to the extent that we're a very large group. So we're in our 25th year of operations, but we currently run over 400 practices in about the same number of hospitals across most of the states of the US. So in that context, we've learned a lot about what care looks like in different parts of the United States, what things are similar, what things are different, and most importantly, what things work."
"Some of the most important strategies for succeeding with value-based care are things that are very aligned with ensuring not just high quality, but high empathy care to patients. And most importantly, making sure that clinical decisions physicians make in partnership with their patients account for not just scientific evidence but also the values and preferences of patients and their families. More often than not, there's no single right answer for what that patient needs in terms of tests or procedures or other types of care that occur in the hospital. And many of them involve trade-offs between quality of life and length of life, how patients feel about being in the hospital and for how long, how they feel about risk, and what they want to do when they're ultimately discharged from the hospital."
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