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“Passionate Pioneers” Shaping the Future of Telehealth With Dr. Laura Purdy

In this episode of Passionate Pioneers, Dr. Laura Purdy speaks with Podcast host Mike Biselli about how she and her team have established a telemedicine technology company that serves as an all-in-one solution for every constituent they serve. Dr. Laura Purdy discusses how her platform’s best-in-class telemedicine portal, connected with a physician-only Clinical Network, helps companies and clinics in the virtual care field. Dr. Purdy highlights how she and her team are working to define the future of telehealth and strive for greater quality and more accessible health care across the country.

In this episode, you will learn:

• What is MD Integrations?
• Where Dr. Purdy developed a passion for telehealth and the belief that virtual care is the future of medicine.
• How Dr. Purdy and the MD integrations team have built a telemedicine technology company connecting virtual healthcare providers with patients.
• How Dr. Purdy came up with the idea of establishing a company after serving in the United States Army for 14 years across a spectrum of clinical settings.

Good Question & Answer 1: 

Mike Biselli: Every day, we have an opportunity to rise; we have a choice. It’s pretty binary, you can get after, or you don’t have to. It’s up to you. I love it. So, did you have that mindset while you were serving in the military force? Where did that mindset take shape and take form for you now, especially as an entrepreneur building MD integrations?

Dr. Laura Purdy: In the military, you do not have a choice. So, I truly have lived a life where I had no choice. A decade and a half is a long time to be in the military. And one of the things that I would dream about is what would I do if I had a choice. Even when I got into telehealth while I was still in the military, I did all of the paperwork. I had all of the signatures and full permission to do that. So, let me just say that right there, I have permission; I still didn’t have much of a choice. So, on that side of the fence, I was scheming and plotting and planning and dreaming about what I would do when I had a choice. When I talk to founders, potential founders or doctors, or folks who want to get into the innovation in the healthcare industry, one of the biggest things that I hear that they’re getting in their way is that they feel like they don’t have a choice and I say, Oh, yes you do. Who’s stopping you? Not the federal government, I don’t think. You have a choice!”

Good Question and Answer 2: 

Mike Biselli: Give us a little bit about that founder’s journey, where you guys are at today, of course, where you see things heading. Is a lot changing? Can’t wait to see and hear where you see things heading for the industry. And, of course, for MD integrations, how we can help. And then we’ll get you out of here so you can get back to continue to build a company. But first, Laura, take us back, give us a little bit of that journey, how this all came to be in the first place.

Dr. Laura Purdy: Great, let’s do it. So, I started working in the telehealth industry several years ago. Like I said before, I was in the army, and I had full permission to do what I was doing. And it all started truly because I wanted to send my kids to a Montessori school. And in the military, I don’t know if you’ve heard this or not, but it’s not the highest paying industry out there. The idea was given to me by a peer that I should try telehealth. So, I dove in, I tried telehealth, and instantly I was shocked that this was where health care was because I was shielded from so much of that working in the dinosaur that was and probably still military healthcare. I was shocked. I told my husband, probably within a month or two, that I could do this forever. And this is going to get better and better and better. 

Utilizing tactics such as just being nice to people and saying yes, offering to take on more responsibilities, and helping out people with their problems when they’re founding companies. I went from working with one little company having one state license to fast forward three or four years; I’ve worked with several dozen companies. And now I have almost all 50 licenses waiting in Alaska and Washington DC. And so, you know, the leap that was from there to here was just a matter of working hard, saying yes, building bridges, increasing networks, and helping people with their complex problems. And as a telemedicine physician, if you want to make it a full-time job. And if you want to make that leap away from brick and mortar healthcare into full-time virtual care, you really do have to work for several companies, which means logging into several systems, it means using several different electronic medical records, simultaneously meeting several workloads because a lot of the companies that are out there, especially startups, they’ll be kind of slow, coming up the gate volumes are unpredictable. And so, to have a sustainable workflow as a physician, you would work for, you know, several dozen companies at once. And so, after doing that, living that life where I would log in to 10 different web portals a day and handle patients from all across the country. I thought with him, with my co-founder, who I met in several different jobs, we kept bumping into each other, saying this is crazy. And there are some companies out there that cannot retain physicians. And if you’re listening, you know who you are. And I guarantee you it’s because your systems are terrible. And you haven’t figured out how to value the physician as an internal stakeholder. 

So being on the inside of so many different companies looking outward going, “Why is it so hard for companies to figure out how to have a good EMR?” “How to do these things efficiently?” “Why do I have to take 27 clicks to submit one prescription?” That’s absurd. That’s where MD integrations came from. It is really identifying points of friction and all these different telehealth companies all across the industry and saying, “What if we put the doctors in charge of that, and let companies do what companies do marketing, branding, acquisition, getting investments, building their internal teams working on operations, and all the things that companies can work on.” Let’s let doctors, let’s let telemedicine physicians let’s let actual experts in this area, take over that, that piece of it, and do it for them. And that’s where MD integrations came from.

Additional Topics Discussed:

• How it is being a telemedicine doctor before Covid-19.
• How to start your own telehealth company.

Host / Podcast bio:

Mike Biselli is a community builder, health-tech entrepreneur, podcast host, TEDx speaker, and online healthcare expert. He is the host of Passionate Pioneers, a nationally ranked healthcare and innovation podcast part of the Health Podcast Network.

Guest bio:

Dr. Laura Purdy is a Telehealth Physician Executive, Serial Entrepreneur, Digital Health Evangelist, and a Veteran of the United States of America. Dr. Purdy is the co-founder of MD Integrations, an asynchronous telemedicine technology business developed by doctors who connect virtual healthcare professionals with patients through a best-in-class white-label telemedicine portal integrated with a physician-only clinical network.

Resources and links mentioned in the show:

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-purdy-md
• https://mdintegrations.com/
• https://www.passionatepioneers.com/
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