The Remedy Podcast: NYC+ Health Uses Podcasting As Outreach

 On December 4, 2024, Luigi Mangione shot and killed UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson in Midtown Manhattan in the early morning hours. Public reaction to the shooting was a clear sign of how fractured, dysfunctional, and inequitable health care is in the U.S. For many, Mangione was a hero for challenging a health care system with more problems than solutions.

 After all, medical debt is now the number one cause of bankruptcy, with credit card debt a distant second. State medical boards are often lax on disciplining incompetent or negligent doctors, with one percent of doctors accounting for one-third of paid medical claims. Private Equity firms buy their way into health care, with the resulting focus on profits and a massive decrease in patient outcomes.

 Health care needs heroes, and the warriors in white coats and scrubs include doctors, PAs, nurses, and those people we don't see who keep the U.S. health care system from collapsing by dint of their efforts.

Health care systems, have started communicating with patients directly, through content creation, social media, podcasts, and more. The objective is to enable patients to better understand health care services that are available.

One such example, NYC Health + Hospitals, the nation’s largest safety net health system, aims to bridge aspects of the health system knowledge gap in its local community with the launch of the second season of its new health-related podcast titled The Remedy.

The Remedy podcast features renowned leaders and healthcare providers as special guests to discuss health topics ranging from community health and wellness, to nutrition, women’s health, and more.

The focus of the NYC Health + Hospitals system is on delivering care to communities regardless of their ability to pay, their immigration status, or challenges they may face to receiving care. The hospital’s mission as a safety net healthcare organization is to provide New Yorkers with the primary care and specialty services they need, emphasizing that they administer care to everyone, regardless of where in life they are coming from.

The Remedy podcast features host Dr. Michael Shen, Clinical Director of the Primary Care Safety Net Clinic at NYC Health + Hospitals/Woodhull. Dr. Shen plans and outlines the storylines and conducts the interviews featured in the podcast. Podcast guests are employees of the health system, who share their unique perspectives on the care that they provide to patients. The podcast aims to connect patients, staff, and other healthcare providers.

The podcast was started to “help New Yorkers get a sense of the huge hospital system that serves them,” said Dr. Shen. “A podcast is a good way of letting people hear the voices of public hospital leaders while helping New Yorkers understand how we can serve them.”

Ear Worthy asked Dr. Shen if he always wanted to be a doctor. He responded enthusiastically: "Yes; my parents immigrated from Shanghai and worked really hard to become doctors (they're pathologists in California). They planted the seed in my mind early, so I blame them! Ultimately, I was lucky because when I finally experienced (after many years of medical school) what it was like to actually work as a primary care doctor, I ended up loving it even more."

“It’s a big deal that a public health system is entering into the media world, it makes health systems more personable. Media forms such as podcasts are an important thing for medical field professionals to make healthcare more accessible for people,” said Dr. Shen.

The podcast's first season released episodes every two weeks, with a total of seven episodes, which ran from January to April 2024.

The first episode, titled “The Power of Primary Care,” featured host Dr. Michael Shen interviewing, among others, Dr. Mitchell Katz, the President and Chief Executive Officer of NYC Health + Hospitals and a primary care physician at NYC Health + Hospitals/Gouverneur.

In the episode, Dr. Katz touched on patients seeing a specialist when they could instead visit a primary care provider. Each guest emphasized that primary care is a fundamental form of care, and that the role of the primary care doctor is coordination and continuation of care. Primary care providers can be thought of as the “glue” that holds a patient’s healthcare experience together.

With that first episode in mind, we asked Dr. Shen why did he choose primary care? 

Dr. Shen says: "I chose primary care because I think it's fulfilling to have long-term relationships with people, even though sometimes it's hard to go through the ups and downs of people's lives with them. I also liked the idea of being a generalist, being able to start investigating any issue that comes through the door. I also thought it would be useful in my personal life to be able to help my friends and family with practical health-related things."

An ongoing focus of the podcast is eliminating that barrier to primary care, which is lack of insurance.

Dr. Shen is proud to explain that "NYC Health+ Hospitals has a program for those that don’t qualify for health insurance. NYC Care allows underinsured, or uninsured, patients to get access to top quality care within the system. Patients can enroll and have access to primary and specialty care for free or at a reduced cost, and all New Yorkers can participate despite their situation. It is important to be able to treat all the communities across New York for public health."

The second episode, “Food is Medicine,” emphasized plant-based eating as medicine, considered how hospitals can help patients eat healthier and lower high blood pressure and bring type 2 diabetes into remission. 

One of my favorite and eye-opening episodes was the sixth show about treating homeless patients. Listeners learn that NYC Health+ has a fleet of mobile vans providing street outreach and medical care for those with a permanent residence.

The podcast is professionally done with superb sound quality, nicely chosen intro and outro music, and  Dr. Shen as the host and interviewer. Dr. Shen is an excellent host with a voice that exudes compassion and caring, and an interviewing style that establishes rapport with the guests and the listeners.

We asked Dr. Shen about podcasting and he responded: "I love audio in general; hearing people's voices telling stories is empathy-generating. I like the art of producing a good podcast that can create intrigue and tell a story well. The idea of a podcast for the NYC H+H system predated me. During the pandemic I contacted our Comms department to see if there was interest in the idea and was told that it was on pause due to the pandemic. When it got going again, I was lucky that they remembered me and I was one of the candidates to host the show. I think hospital leaders understand the power of narrative. The mission statement wasn't crafted specifically by me - but I think it's in line with my feeling that the stories from across our huge health system are worth sharing."

 We asked Dr. Shen how he got started with The Remedy.

Dr. Shen said: "I've had many experiences producing various podcasts. I've done all aspects like the writing, hosting, recording, and editing. I also have some hobbyist experience mixing music, so the technical stuff is fun for me, though very time consuming. In this case, my job is pretty easy - our system has a contractor that does all the recording, editing, and post-production. I work with Margaret, our director in Comms, to create the questions and prepare the guests. Ultimately, I get to just be the host and my goal is to help people feel comfortable and tell their story."

Season two began in March with two superb episodes -- one about community health workers and how NYC Care from NYC+ delivers care to those low-income or underinsured patients. 

Dr. Shen shares: "Season two features a lot of staff members who are doing the work on the ground. And it features some of the hospitals in our system - we even record many of them on site (as opposed to just at our central office). We get to share some of the exciting work that our community health workers and social workers do. And we also have a special episode about AI."

We asked Dr. Shen what impact does he feel the podcast is having.

Dr. Shen responds: "The people I talk to who have listened tell me they have learned things about the health system that they didn't know before. And I hope that New Yorkers who listen have a better sense of what our public hospital system does."

Then, we ask Dr. Shen a more personal question. What's the best part of being a physician? What's the least favorite part?

Dr. Shen contemplates his answer. "The best part is hearing how people have succeeded in their goals, especially after long periods of tremendous difficulty. The least favorite part is dealing with insurance companies and the complexity of our system - it's really frustrating when we're working at the top of our license to decide the best treatment, but then someone reads a script on the other end of the phone to tell you that the patient can't get it.

We followed up with a question about Dr. Shen's impressive and well-known talents in the art world. We ask how did he become an artist. and did he always have an interest in art? 

Dr. Shen answers: "I've been drawing since I was a baby. Growing up my grandpa made me collages using autumn leaves he picked up on our way home from school. My mom used to draw me dinosaurs. My all-time favorite artist is John Singer Sargent, not for the usual oil portraits of aristocracy that he's usually known for (those are great too), but for his virtuosic watercolor paintings. I'm mainly a watercolorist, and my life goal has always been to paint like Sargent."

Our next logical question was to ask Dr. Shen how does he find the time to paint.

"I always paint when I travel," Dr. Shen answers. "I also have a sketch book on me at all times."

Finally, we ask Dr. Shen the toughest question in health care. Can we as a nation fix health care? 

To his credit, Dr. Shen is not intimidated at all by this question and responds with thoughtfulness and insight. "It's going to be challenging to fix. I think the biggest problem is that it is so complex and involves too many middlemen. The complexity makes it so that Americans have a hard time understanding what the solutions might be. The middlemen (we have hundreds of insurance companies with thousands of insurance plans, we have third party administrators, pharmacy benefit managers, etc) - other countries don't have all of this bloating! All of these middlemen make healthcare more expensive for Americans. That's why I think clear messaging about healthcare (like our podcast does) is key in helping people understand how to change it for the better.

Three final observations about The Remedy. First, kudos to NYC Health+ for dedicating the resources to communicate with their patients and the community. Second, since heroes are difficult to find these days, we must highlight Dr. Michael Shen as a true hero for his dedication to his craft, his expert use of podcasting as a therapeutic tool, and his outreach to all patients, regardless of income, race, life circumstances, and lifestyle. 

Third, The Remedy should be a "must-have" for listeners' podcast playlists.