DPC Doctor
Dr. Jalan Burton, or Dr. J, as she loves to be called, is a Pediatrician, wife, and mother of three with over fifteen years of experience in well and sick child care, complex care, children with special needs, public health, youth development and managed care. Her DPC is Healthy Home Pediatrics.
Dr. J is a proud University of Virginia graduate and she attended Columbia University for her Master of Public Health degree and for her medical degree, she attended The George Washington University School of Medicine. She completed her internship and residency at the University of North Carolina’s Pediatric Primary Care Program.
Through her practice, Healthy Home Pediatrics, Dr. J collaborates with families to provide comprehensive primary care that integrates traditional evidence-based interventions with customized plans that prioritize healthy foods, quality sleep, integrative medicine, and healthy family routines.
When Dr. J is not providing excellent patient care she is spending time with her husband and their three children (2 boys and a baby girl). She is actively involved in her community as a volunteer Clinical Instructor at The George Washington University School of Medicine, local Parent-Teacher Association (PTA), and Community Association.
Dr. J enjoys listening to podcasts, cooking, urban gardening, and exercising.
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Dr. J's Favorite First Foods for Infants video:
Resources Recommended or Mentioned by Dr. J
- Mothers In Medicine Blog. Dr. J writes under the name "Mommabee"
- Spruce Health communications platform including a phone tree
- Cerbo electrnic medical record
- FB Groups: DPC Women, DPC Docs
- Calendly
- Emla Cream
- Buzzy Bee
BOOKS
- Stop Physician Burnout - by Dike Drummond
- Reset Your Mindset - by Natalie Eckdahl
PODCASTS
WEBSITES
- Scarleteen - Sex Education For The Real World
CONTACT:
website: Healthy Home Pediatrics
Socials: @healthyhomepeds
TRANSCRIPT*
Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Burton.
You are all the way on the east coast and I'm all the way on the west coast. So I'm so excited to have you on the pod. And I wanted to start off with the name of your practice, healthy home pediatrics.
And I feel that, reading your bio where you talk about a holistic. Approach to pediatric care and the care for families. I think that the name says it all, but I would love if you could tell us more about your practice and how you are running your practice out of patients home.
Yeah, thank you.
So much for having me on the podcast, I just think it is so amazing that you are doing this podcast in addition to being a mom and starting your DPC practice. I think it's amazing. And I'm so proud of all of us for doing this and changing the game. Not only for our patients, but for our families, you know, our kids get to see us do these things, and then they get to know how big they can be as well.
And I think it's, this is what the world needs, for all of us to like, be as big as we can be. So I always say that when patients are truly supported that they thrive. I have a background in public health and in medicine and. For me house calls and DPC are like where it's at, because when you really center care on patients, most of what they do happens at home, and as a pediatrician, I need to see what's happening at home.
I need to see what's going on. I need to see what you're eating, where you're drinking, where you're having lunch, all those things. And the reason why I started this practice was because I had so many mentors who were finding really innovative ways to re-establish care with patients to recenter care.
And it's really about relationships, the best doctors, the doctors who inspired me the most when I was a medical student, the doctors who inspired me the most as an attending were those doctors that found the ways to have relationships like true, meaningful lasting relationships with patients, which is really rare in medicine these days.
But I knew I wanted to practice in medicine in a different way. And I knew it had to be unrushed I knew it had to be sustainable. I knew it had to be joy-filled. I know, I keep going back to those things. And for me, that's like sitting on people's couches, and sitting on the floor with kids and playing that's my four year old patient bringing me peppers that he cut out of the refrigerator to show me he's eating fresh food and literally shoved them in my mouth.
And I'm like sitting there being fed by four year olds in their houses. That to me is the epitome in my practice. Healthy home pediatrics, like the name, it just came to me, after just like, thinking about what I wanted to be thinking about, like what I wanted it to feel like it came in my husband who was a writer, was like, Ooh, that's wonderful.
Those are great. Like it's just sounds great. It looks great. And that's.
That's wonderful. And, kudos to you because also I love your logo in that, that the classic, this is where the location is the pin on the map. It's all incorporated with the heart. It's absolutely wonderful.
So if you haven't seen Dr. Burton's excuse me, Dr. J's logo. Yeah. Check it out. It's awesome. Now I want to go back to what you mentioned in terms of the experience you'd come from prior to opening healthy home. So you have over 15 years of experience, and I want to ask you, in terms of along your journey, how did you come to learn about direct primary care?
Yeah.
Oh, wow. So that's a long so I was always that kid that knew she wanted to be a doctor. I was like three and four years old. Like nurse's costume that I was like, y'all need to switch this up and make it a doctor. Cause I'm going to be the doctor and I'm gonna be in charge. And so my parents were just like, yeah, you always said that.
So my parents were amazing and my grandparents were amazing in just every single science engineering program that there was, that was free or low cost. I was in it. They enrolled me in it before I even reached the age cutoff in some of the programs. I was like the youngest kid in there. And so it was really my parents.
So I I knew I wanted to be a doctor. I went to the university of Virginia, did a lot of stuff like health and a peer mentor. Like I've always loved communicating with people we've learned loved to have innovative ways of wellness. And so I was a pure health educator and undergrad, and then I did some international.
And I just started working with public health professionals and I was like, wait, whoa, wait, the doctor patient one-on-one is great. But if I don't understand these determinants of health, if I don't understand these kinds of like systems and organizations and processes, I'm never going to make the impact that I want.
And I decided to get my MPH and went to Columbia university and got my MPH. And so after that I started. At UNC for my residency. And I think going to a Southern program was great because I got such a wide range, what I've seen is, especially students that come from like Southern schools or Midwestern schools, we got a lot more hands-on training and a big variety of things.
Like I was running a code my first week of intern year. If I. My students in DC and my residents in DC, there's so many specialists, they don't get all that hands-on training. So I got so much hands on training at UNC chapel hill, shout out to my crew there at the UNC program. And it was wonderful.
So I actually started doing house calls as a resident and the UNC primary care. We had a pediatric primary care track that became a pediatric primary care residency. And so I did house calls with one of my mentors, Alison Kavanaugh for medically complex kids. I did house calls with the newborn nurses and the whole time I was there, I was like, oh, I should, doctor should be doing these house calls so that, they can prescribe, they can diagnose, they could do everything right there in the home.
So right out of residency, I got my, what I thought was gonna be my dream job, like so many of us, and then it was toxic and terrible, right? That's just the story. And I can say that now without crying a few years ago, I wouldn't have been able to say that, but it was terrible. It was toxic. And all of these, especially women of color, that had trained me as a medical student were in the same positions, making the same amount of money. Nobody had been elevated and I just looked around and they were all burnt out and I was like, Nope, no, my husband was like, absolutely. They're all taking their computers on their vacations. Nobody's getting vacations, nobody's being respected.
Nobody really has a voice. These big, huge institutions. I was at a leading academic institution and I said, no, like that, I feel like that's the DPC story, right? That everybody like we try so many of us try to fit in these systems. And so I left academics and did private practice. And also did some Medicaid work.
I was the medical director and the interim chief medical officer for the DC Medicaid for children with special needs. And it was such a wonderful experience, such a dynamic experience. I was supervising care managers and nurses who were doing house calls and I kept being like DC government pay me, let me go and do these house calls.
I will keep these kids out of the emergency room. I'll keep them out of urgent care. I'll make sure all their medicines are good. And I kept getting no, like that's not the way we get paid. Nope. That's not the way the system is set up. Nope. That's not the way we do things. And I was like no. Just pay me my salary and pay my loans off and I will get this together for you.
Nope. That's not what Miami do. So I kept running into nodes and there was a note. And thankfully I did a leadership program with the American academy of pediatrics, and I was able to spend two years researching practice management, interviewing doctors. I interviewed every DPC concierge. Like you name it.
I was like, hi, I'm working with the AAP on a project. Tell me about your practice. Like you're doing with your podcast, just asking people, their stories. And I kept being led back to DPC. Went back to DPC, led the back to BBC. And then one of my mentors from GW when I was a medical student, Dr.
Matthew Mintz had a DPC practice here on, but that's. I went up to his office, we ate and had Pokay. He became one of my best mentors. And then, I was like, let's do it. Let's open up the practice. So I opened up in 2019 and did locums and moonlighting for a few years to cover the cost of everything.
And now it's just all in with the DPC. So I just wanted a model where it was me and the patient, and I couldn't deal with the insurance companies anymore. There's a, I know that there's, they're very important, but I think you may care that it's not set up for primary care, right? Like it's not set up for relationship based primary care like insurance should be for, acute things that happen that are out of control out of your control, not the regular maintenance and wellness.
Okay.
So just for the listeners, I feel that my cup is so filled talking with you, Dave, also, I'm sure you can picture how happy and glowing she is talking about her practice because she has chosen her path. And when you talk about women in color doctors and of color, as well as your children, seeing you, you had this amazing encouragement by your family and your showing your children, what you can do as a person of color and as a female of color in medicine, I literally have these tingles inside of me because I am so happy for you.
And the fact that you have already passed your two year mark, your two and a half years well into your practice and you are making a difference in each and every family's lives that you. Take under your care. So kudos to you, you did it, you are doing it. And I just, I hope that everybody, If you haven't visited Dr.
Jay's website, also check it out because right on the front and her smiling. So it's amazing. So there you
go. You must point out the very cute patient on there, whose mama is a wonderful photographer. But if the patients, like they're just amazing. They're so wonderful. And when they get access to you and they know they have somebody that they can call, literally anytime they need, first of all, they don't abuse you and call you whenever they want to.
I know people are usually worried about that. They're like, oh, they have your cell phone. I'm like, yeah, they have my business cell phone. And I'm a personal stuff on that, my business cell phone. And they can reach me all day. I don't get calls overnight because they call me as soon as things are going on, they call me during the day I check on them.
We check in again, after lunchtime in nap time, we check in again at bedtime, we check in again in the morning, it's a different model of care. It's not the same. So that's what I tell a lot of. Other women of color who are interested in opening up their own practices. I'm like gotta think of this as being completely different.
What would you want and make that for your patients? And then you will see, they will be well taken care of you will be taken care of. It will be okay.
And I just think about even this week, there were two families that needed care. And, I just handed in my 60 day notice for my fee for service job, but at the same time, like I think about I'm in this gray space of, I haven't yet opened, but I mentally am already there.
And I have been able to, call them but I don't care that I'm not getting paid to, to, to talk with these people because I know that very shortly, I don't have to worry about that.
I don't have a code to code for the fact that I'm calling you for the hour I spent. Talking with you before you actually were scheduled in my clinic, because I knew that I didn't have enough time to spend with that family or that patient in the clinic. So I did extra work just to make it a thorough visit.
So when you go back to that joyful relationship-based care. That's exactly it. You are able to give the care when your patients
yup. Yup. And they understand what you got to put a baby down or get to change the stinky diaper.
I'm like, let me call you back after this diaper girl. And they're like, okay, just call me back. And they do, and it's just, it's just
Now I want to ask, because you had this amazing quote on your Facebook page by angel Kyoto Williams, and the quote was without interchange. There is no outer change without collective change.
No change matters. So I want to ask about, as you were learning from Dr. Mintz, your other mentors, as you were interviewing these pediatricians and other primary care doctors, when you were exploring this possibility of opening up your own clinic and realizing in your job that this was not going to work for me doing it the insurance-based way, what was your journey like between when you decided like I'm going to do it and when you actually opened your doors?
Yeah. I guess it was like three years. I tend to really take my time with things. I'm very intentional about things. I I wouldn't say I'm risk averse, but I was a very reluctant entrepreneur, like I spoke with. So I graduated from UVA and I spoke to UVA pre-medical students last week, actually.
And when we were talking about my journey, I'm like I embraced the fact that I was a reluctant entrepreneur. First of all, I think our education, there's just such a paucity of information, about starting your own practice. So I would say. I really listened to my inner wisdom, right?
Like angel Kyodo Williams is like master black Zen, Yogi. Like she is. She's amazing. I don't think I ever be as VIN as she is, but I'm gonna try. And so I just had to be like, what did my heart tell me? My heart tells me I can not do these 10 minute visits. My heart tells me and my public health training tells me, right?
Like I'm also a student of science and a student of history. And when we look at outcomes, our outcomes are terrible here in America. Our infant and maternal mortality, which is one of my passions is just, it's a Bismal and we cannot continue to do the same things and think we're going to get different outcomes.
That's. That's insanity. Like it doesn't work that way. Like you can't do the same things. You just see your burned out mentors. You can't do the same things that they're doing in the same way. And think you're going to get somewhere different because you're not, you're going to end up in the same place or maybe even a worse place.
And so for me, that journey was about being you and honest about what was going to work and what wasn't going to work. Right? Physician burnout that all time, high physician suicide is a terrible rate right now. Patient outcomes are not grading getting worse. And so I said, we need to do something different.
Like we full stop, do something different. I think I read what was that book? There's a book called getting off the treadmill. What is it called? It's oh, is it stop burnout, stop physician burnout. Yeah. And he talks a lot about how you're on this track as a doctor through training. But at the end you need to decide, are you going off road?
Are you staying on the road? The road is leading you down a path that you don't want to figure out where you want it to be. And I knew I wanted to spend more time with my patients. I knew I wanted to work with them in innovative ways. All my bosses, when I was like, oh, we should be doing video visits.
I said this 10 years ago, I said, we should text with the patients 10 years ago. And my boss said, no. I said, we should get screened. You're not allowed to do that. Where does it say that I'm not allowed to get a scribe? And actually the research shows that if I get a scribe, actually I'm focusing more on the patient and patient outcomes are improved.
So what are you really telling me? Some of the things that people were telling you, if it was a lie, like it was just straight up a lie because that is the way that they were trained. That is the box that they put themselves in and they didn't want to see outside of it. And so I had to like take those blinders off and bust out of that box so that I could be happy in the way that I needed to.
So. It was really just like research. You know, I went back to being a medical student, what are we doing? We don't know a diagnosis. We know what the problem is. We know we've got some resources. So I went every website, I could find every book I could find. Every person who would talk to me on the phone, I've went back to like undergrad.
I went back to that to figure out how to make something else happen. So that was my journey. And starting the practice was just doing research, being real and honest with myself and finding mentors and, mentors could just be for like a day, like right now we're being each other's mentors.
It doesn't have to necessarily be ongoing, but I'm learning from you. You know, we had a wonderful talk before we even started recording. You're learning from me, that's mentorship right there. And so we take a few lessons, like I'm taking notes. Like I took notes in our, in our pre call and then we move on, so yeah so I think that, that's the main way that I went about it.
And you are very focused on making sure that your cup is filled, that you are not following that path of burnout again. I want to highlight here that you have frequently written for the blog mothers in medicine and on that blog. There's so much talk about how to reflect on your own life and continue to reevaluate so that a person is not going down that pathway of burnout.
And so I want to ask for you as a mom of three kids and as a DPC physician and as a wife and as an individual , all you're wearing all of these hats. How do you go about re-evaluating your life periodically to say? Yep. I'm okay. Or, Nope, I'm not. Okay. I got to do something.
Yeah we are both on several really active Facebook groups and there has been a wonderful online community even before COVID and the DPC groups that we are in have just been, I think, just integral, especially the DPC women groups that really support us.
Because as women in medicine, we, our voices are often not elevated. Like every book I found in the Bible and it was like written by a white dude whose politics,
I don't think so. I'm just cross this part out, but I'm gonna take what I need. That's the number one thing that so many of us are challenged with right now. I think COVID made things even more of a strain. So four months into opening my DPC practice, I found out I was pregnant with my third, so she was not planned.
Like she was a surprise and I am very much about intentions and I was telling like, my, my intention for that year was to grow. So the universe heard that and was like, I got you I'm going to take this up. The universe listened to me. I said, I'm going to grow and I'm going to thrive and Excel.
And the university was like, okay, you want those baby practices as baby girl to, you know? Um, and it just there, my two boys. So for me, my growth and trajectory was a little bit different, right? Slow down because physically I couldn't manage, like into my first summer of my DPC practice. I was like, I can't take any more patients.
Like I literally stopped at month. Number six of taking new patients until I delivered her and then COVID happened. So COVID happened. And of course I was like taking a baby here when like a midwife or a doula or an OB GYN would call me and I'd be like, okay, I'll take your baby. I'll take that baby for you.
I'll take that baby for you. It wasn't like this exponential growth, you know, I'm hearing on some of these DPC listservs, like people are at 150 people or 200 and I'm like, Ooh, I'm struggling at 35. What am I supposed to do? And my husband and my family was just like, listen, you gotta cook this baby.
Don't worry about it and focus on the practice. And so I just focused really on providing an excellent experience and excellent access to the patients that I had. And they just kept telling more and more people about me. And so, when I was ready to grow, I knew I couldn't be a one woman show. I'm not one of those people. That's good at accounting. I'm not good at bookkeeping. I'm not good at social marketing. I will spend five hours working on one little canvas post and it will look like my nine-year-old did it and I will be happy at posting it, but then I'll be mad the next day. Cause I'm like, it looks like my nine-year-old did it.
And I just spent five hours when I could give it to my assistant Gabriela. And she could turn that thing out and make it look way better than me in twenty-five minutes. So for me, it was really about outsourcing. And another thing that doesn't get discussed is that a lot of the men DPC docs, their wives or their administrators, like their wives or their office managers, you know, and we're sitting here breastfeeding right, breastfeeding this one while doing a podcast while doing texts and doing all this.
And my husband's got his full-time job. He's a professor like where do you get the support? Right now what I'm trying to do is a lot of us in DPC, a lot of us at the two and a half year mark at the two to three-year mark are like. Full stop. I'm not paying myself enough. I don't have the systems in place to continue at the level that I am.
I set my prices based upon what I thought people could afford. But what you realize is people can actually afford a whole lot. If what you're doing is excellent. Like I had several patients be like, Dr. J you are not charging me enough. Like when your patients tell you that you're like, oh, or one of your patients who, the marketing executives, like Dr.
J do more for me, but I charge my patients more she charges her clients more. It's like a, it's like a rude awakening. And I'm sitting over here, struggling to figure out like, how do I pay for this childcare and how do I do this? And how do I do that? Pay yourself more. Pay yourself more pay yourself what you're worth.
And that's really hard. It's so hard. How do you set your prices so that you can provide the access and the services, but also get the support that you need? Like, how do you pay for that administrative assistant 10 hours, you know, a week and that's 10 hours a month because a lot of us are like, oh, I'm going to take this person 10 hours a week, a month, no, 10 hours a week.
And then how do you scale them so that you let them know for every 10 patients we get, I'm going to add 10 more hours to you. So then you've got a full-time person. You know, Right now I'm looking at a practice administrator, like a practice manager person, because I need somebody who understands the business and the systems better than me.
Like I figured it out on my own to this point, but I, you know, 60 something, patients, there's some automation that has to happen that I don't have any experience in. So I, I go back to well, you know, no, I go back, I get some training. I remember holding courses, I'm in a business development course this summer, I'm getting some coaching and this summer.
So I'm investing in these systems. I'm reading, I'm listening. I've listened to a ton of podcasts from all different genres about how to scale your business, how to stack your team, how to build these businesses in a way that's sustainable and that your family thrive. So your family cannot struggle, right?
Like your family can't struggle. That's the way for you to be unhappy.
It's so true. And it goes darkly back to what you were saying about how if you are a physician who is in a fee for service job and hating your life, that is not good for your family to be around because I can totally, think of the days when I was extra stress, because I had stayed up till three o'clock in the morning doing notes, and then I got to take care of the kids the next day.
Cause that's not my day at work and I have no patience whatsoever. And it's I hate those days when I know that I could be a better mom, but I can't because I have to go right back to the job that I hate. And so when you talk about this investment, I'm such a big believer in, if you feel it's going to help you.
And it, it costs nothing, it costs $10, it cost $10,000, whatever it is, if you think it's going to help make you thrive, then it's
But it's hard. It's so hard. It's hard because you're just like I'm struggling to get every little bit of money. Right. And put it back in this practice. And then I've got to do X, Y, and Z.
Like how can I spend $4,000 on a coach? You're like, cause if you need a coach, you need a coach. Like you gotta do it, girl. And I've got friends who are executives who are not running their own practices. We're paying quadruple that for their coaches. So it's all about the level that you're at.
It's gonna hurt a little bit, right? Like it's gonna be a stretch is not going to be easy. You're not going to pay $25 for a coaching. That coach is gonna change your life. You're going to stretch and sacrifice and get the coach that you need to get to. The next level. Growth is uncomfortable. Everybody says that like growth is uncomfortable.
It is hella uncomfortable.
And I'm, I hope that, people take your words to heart because I love though that you even brought up the idea that like, it might not work out today, but if that's your goal in that future of not, finding yourself on that path to burnout.
If it saves you from that path and it's worth saving up for, then it's something to look forward to. Yeah. So
you got to do it, you gotta do it. Cause we don't want to be those practices that close. Right? Like every single weekend, our women's group, doesn't somebody say they're closing There's like two new people I'm open, I'm joining I'm opening. And then one or two where the old heads are like, yep. Tapping out can't balance it. I think a lot of this is because of COVID but a lot of this is because. Somehow, like we're not learning what we need to learn from one another to not make the same mistakes.
We're all saying, you got to raise your prices. We're all saying you got to get the systems down. You're all saying those things. And then we're all so hesitant of doing this.
And that idea of our value, our value as physicians. In terms of the value that you bring to your patients. One of the things I loved is you had a, an old blog post where you were talking about that. You're totally the mom.
Who's going to send clementines oranges for Valentine's day and send allergy free alternatives to school for your son's birthday. And you're also a fan of urban gardening. So I wanted to ask about when you bring your value as a physician who has time into the homes of your families, how do you approach your pediatric patients and their needs and their family's needs?
When you start working with a nuisance.
Oh, I love so new families are great. There are a lot of work though. Like you also don't understand like what the onboarding process, you know, you don't realize all the different steps. Getting the old records ends up taking two and three people like to get old records from the old practice.
And if this kid has seen three different practices, you're like, wait, they did what shot at which place and what happened and they lost it. And now this place, people are outsourcing all their records now, like they're not keeping their records. So you have to send the records, request to the main clinic and then you go to set.
So it's all these things. So I start new patients. From the first time that they submit their information online. Right? Like I'm very much into like, I need to kind of already know some of their story when we were first talking. Cause I need to know if they had a terrible experience with their last doctor.
I need to know if they are worried about something with their pregnancy. I see so many I'm expecting families. I need to know if they're worried about something. I need to know if they're seeing a therapist, right? Because I may need to talk to their therapist before our first visit or something like that.
So you really have to listen and in this kind of practice, like it's wonderful. So I'm an extrovert. I've always been an extrovert. I know so many other podcasts I've listened to. They're like, I'm an introvert. And I'm like, I am the opposite. I have to reign myself in. Like, I've literally have to have a timer.
You know, when we were even
Talking before, both of us are just talking and I'm like, okay, Dr. Ray like, I got to go after that girl, like these babies. Freaking out at that time. So I have to be very intentional about reigning myself in with the patients. And I won't say I'm an overshare because I never share anything with inappropriate, but just these are members of my community, you know, like it's like medicine is very much about my community.
Like the DMV, DC, Maryland, and Virginia. Like I see these people at trader Joe's. I see them at whole foods. I see them at cookouts and stuff like that. So all of my patients, I see them out in the community. I'm at Costco. Like I see patients at gospel all the time. So for me, it is very much about being in community with people and knowing what's going on.
I know some are pant programs that I can refer specific patients to because my kid has been to that one. And you, I know your kid really well, and your kid is going to love this. And my patients are always like, oh my God, that can't be sent me to Dr. J that was the one for him, or some of these mommy groups that I've been at and, you know, I've got a 10 year old, he's almost 10.
I know mommy groups in Virginia, DC and Maryland, because I've been a part of all of them. So I can literally be like, Hey, you should contact such and such because she runs this group and tell her I sent you. And then do you mind if I text her and tell her you're coming? Yup. Do it. And I'll text and say some of my parents were so overwhelmed that I would refer them to a therapist, but they wouldn't call it.
And I'd be like, do you want me to text her and ask her to call you? And then I guess please. Yep. And so I have wonderful relationships with wonderful referral community that like so much of the work is just about getting to know the families from the first call that we have, everybody gets an interview.
And then during the first visit, I literally just sit there and we talk and I listen I want to know what your priorities are. Like, I really try to center their priorities. Of course, I've got the things in my head. Like I want to make sure your baby doesn't have cystic fibrosis. I'm gonna do your newborn screen.
But I also want to know when you're worried about and the wonderful thing about practices like ours is that. We can be very intentional and my background in public. Cause I can be very intentional about setting up things in my patients need. So when they're asking me questions, I'm like let me flip through the Rolodex of people that I know, like all my newborns we're having like terrible guests, the parents weren't listening to me, that gas was normal.
So I was like, let me call the head of Georgetown. PGI, cause I've reached out to her and I was like, Hey, Dr. Mary is Stella. All my patients have questions about glass. Can we hop on a group visit? And she can tell we did a group visit. So I literally do group visits based upon what are the questions that patients are asking me.
Cause they want to just hear it from somebody else. So we literally talked about farts and poop. For an hour with the head of GI at Georgetown. And I got several referrals for them through that patients that I had been telling, Hey, I want you to go see such and such. Nah, I don't want to go yet. Okay. Well, She's going to come here.
You see, She's not gonna bite you. She's very sweet. And now they're going to see her. That is that's my job. Just listening to people, sitting down with people have lunch with my patients. Sometimes if they've got like feeding issues, I literally will be like, can I come at breakfast? What time is breakfast?
And they'll tell me, and I'll be there and we'll sit there and eat, you know, they'll eat and they'll feed me some stuff and I'll watch them and I'll coach them on oh, you see that apple? They're like, you don't want to eat that apple to apple, just take a bite, I'll take a bite, you'll take a bite. And then we take a bite and the mom's like they took a bite.
It's just wonderful sitting at people's tables, sitting on the floor. I sit on the floor. Most of the time I crawl around, I play outside.
In none of that, do I hear a fee for service? It's just it's so opposite of what you live every day. When you have somebody check your patient in K, this is the next patient and you have someone else in 15 minutes.
So that's amazing. Now I want to ask about the logistics of your practice when you have somebody going to your page. Especially for somebody who's like a new family and there's an inquiry. On the bottom. It says that you have your patron by active campaigns.
So I'm wondering on your end, when a family fills out an inquiry to be a new patient in your practice, what happens once that information is submitted on your end?
Yeah. So one of the wonderful things too, with my background in public health, I have a family advisory board. So I do have people who like check things out from me and tell me, patients are wonderful, but they often don't want to hurt your feelings or tell you that something's not working.
And so I nominated and reached out to like my most vocal patients, the ones who always have something to say, I'm like, I want you to tell me. And you officially are in family advisory board. I've got a newborn family of that. Families or children with special needs on this family advisory board.
And so literally if I have a question and once mighty check something out, I can send between two and five. Emails and they'll check it and respond to me and maybe I'll get like a few responses, cause everybody's busy. So I was very intentional about the website and things.
I will say. I started with Wix for my webpage. And Wix has a built in customer management software that was very intuitive and very easy to use. But my wonderful web designer who I've been working with for gosh, Valerie, I don't know, 15 years, like I've been working with her for a long time on multiple different campaigns.
She wanted to learn how to use squares. So she was like, I will transition your website to Squarespace. It's going to look so much cleaner. And I'll do that for free. And so you hear free and you're like, Ooh. Yeah, let's do it. No, don't change your website in the first four years. Like multiple people, tell you, I read after the fact, they're like, don't change your website.
Nobody really cares about your website. Leave it the same for four to five years, I should have left it. Huge task. But I am happy. I love the way the website looks. I think it fits more with my aesthetic. I am a pretty simple urban gardener gal little bit fancy. So it is like my
perfect aesthetic. It does not have any built-in software for that management. We had to choose between active campaign and something else, and I'm very much into does it look the way I want it to look or does it like make me mad when I look at it? And so active campaign, like there were just so many different things that you're getting is not a very intuitive system is a little bit difficult to use, but the way you're able to drill down what you want works better.
And we have several different lead pages. I think you were asking about this as well. Like why do I have the different forms? I don't like back and forth email. That's one of my pet peeves, like scheduling emails. I'm like, if you don't send me a Calendly link, I'm not going to talk to you. Like I just can't do it.
I got too many kids. There's too many things I'm going to check overnight at one o'clock when I don't want you to know that I'm up still working. I'm going to do the calendar stuff then. So I can't talk to you during the day about the calendar. I wanted everything to be automated, where I get like the information that I need, because I do house calls.
Number one, I need to check the address, right? Like I need to make sure that people are not outside of the range that I feel comfortable driving. I don't want to drive an hour and a half to go and see people. It's if your kid gets safe in the middle of the night, or your kid gets sick on the weekend and I need to come and see you or your kid gets sick during rush hour, it's gonna take me four hours to get to your house.
And I'm not doing that. So I wanted that information. I wanted to know how many kids there are. I wanted to know what the kids' names are, so that we can already set up in the system. We can send out automated birthday emails. You know what I mean, with your kid's name in there, do that work upfront so that on the back end, my team is not spending 15 hours.
Now those are mistakes that I made in the beginning. I didn't know, that would happen, but now I do. And so we set it up. So I had the page where patients are interested. They submit their information. As soon as they submit their information, they get an automated email that nobody has to touch.
That gives them my availability. During usual times I have a wait list. So it takes you, if you get an automatic email that says you're on our wait list we, our team gets a notification that somebody has been added to the wait list. And then we work through the wait list. As we have the time previously, what would happen is they submit their information.
They autumn, and as long as they're within the range and we tag them, they automatically would get my availability, which is really nice because then they'd be able to schedule a time to chat with me immediately. And that cuts down on the back and forth. For awhile it was, my assistant would have to go in there and check people like, no.
So we automated it. And I also have that for people who are interested in like business conversations and other DPC doctors or people who are interested in DPC, we set it up so that it's all automated as well.
And one of the questions that you had asked about, even on the DPC doctors in the house group was about the cell phone.
So I want to ask you, because you alluded to, sometimes you are guilty of the 1:00 AM check the Calendly links, but how do you. Take care of your family and the cell phone for your
business. My assistant actually told me that she was telling all of her DPC docs to get another cell phone. I didn't want to get another cell phone, but she's like Dr.
J I see she has several other DPC women that she serviced serves as their administrative assistant, a virtual assistant. And she was like, y'all have to get a separate phone so you can shut that thing off so you can put that thing away. And so I just got with the last month I got it. And I've reached out to some docs on the DPC women group to say Hey, how does your phone fee work?
So we use an app called spruce, a lot of us as our number. And you can set up a phone tree and I had a very basic phone tree that was like, press one, to get in touch with me and then press, press one. If you're a patient, press two, if you're not. And so everybody would bring in my phone all day and it'd just be, bring it off the hook and you get so distracted that you can't focus.
So I actually last night since Bruce an email with a very detailed. Press one, if you are a patient and has an urgent issue, and then they get routed to an urgent phone number. So I have two phone numbers for the practice. Now, one is an urgent number that only the patients and providers have. And then two is the general number.
And so I set it up the phone tree, so that we'll take people through a very detailed poultry, just like when you call a hospital, it's going to be the same thing and I'm setting it up. So that like general, like business phone calls.
I don't want them interrupting me during the day with a ring. Like even though in the past I did. And it will not ring anymore when the general people are calling because, you know, yeah. As soon as you open up your practice, you're going to get all these phone calls with people. Hey, I want to meet with you to talk about the software.
Hey, I want to meet with you to talk about this billing software. Hey, I want to meet with you. You don't want them bringing you. You want to be able to talk to them when you want to. And the nice thing about spruce too, is that it transcribes all your voicemails. So I don't even have to listen to their voicemail.
I can just look at the transcription and click the button and call them back. And I take notes on every conversation, right in active campaign. EV any notes that I have with people who are not patients going active campaign, any notes that have to do with patients go right in my electronic medical record.
And there's nothing else. I stopped putting things in email. I stopped putting things in Google drive. I stopped doing all of that. If you are, a potential patient or a business, you go in active campaign and you have a contact. And if you are a patient, everything goes for you in the electronic medical record.
That was one big one, one lesson learned as well. So two cell phones. Big old phone tree auto responders when people send text messages I have also cut down on, when people call and say, Hey, I'm interested in becoming a patient. I'm like, do you accept Texas as phone number? If they say yes, I immediately have a text message saved when it says, Hey, this is Dr.
Jay of healthy home pediatrics. I like to personally meet with every single patient. Please go to my website. Here's the link. Submit your information so that you can get my info so that you can schedule a time to meet with me. And I tell them that's because I'm busy with patients that I will lose your information.
And it will be two months from now. You're gonna be calling me and being like that, Hey, you said we were going to talk. You never sent me. Nope. Go right to the website. And that is the place where all of your information will stick. And I just tell them I'm so busy taking care of patients and my family. I don't want to lose your information.
So I always now send people back. I was really nervous about doing that, but my assistant, again, Gabriela really had to push me. She's like Dr. J. You forgot to email somebody back again. They wrote back and they said, they'd been trying to be a patient for two months and you didn't send them something. You have to send everybody to the website.
Cause sometimes I was sending people to my Calendly and she was like, Dr. Jane, how you don't have a record of who they are. They just, this person scheduled time with you and you don't have them in the system. She's send them back to send them back to active campaign. So that was a really good lesson.
Learned
huge tips there. That's amazing. Thank you so much for just dropping all of that knowledge on everybody. That's
perfect. Don't make those mistakes. Yeah,
This is where that mentorship though. It's so important because you've been there. You've done it. You've learned how to improve and make your practice what works for you. So that's awesome. Now as a mom of three, how did you handle maternity leave?
So first of all, your patients will be fine. That was one of the questions that came up on one of the DPC women groups.
And we all need to take maternity leave. We should have paid maternity leave in America. And if we don't do it, our daughters are not going to do it. And like we have to do it. So I remember being a resident and people would come back and like the four week mark hobbling into the hospital, right?
That's not healthy. That's not safe. You don't want to model that to your patients. And especially in a DPC practice, they're going to know. It didn't deliver last week. Why aren't you here at my house? They don't want you there unless you need to see them. So I was very intentional about I had already breastfed two other babies.
I knew what it was going to be. I knew the support that I had and so I did complete radio silence for two weeks. I was like, I won't touch my phone for two weeks. Literally. I'm going to turn it off if you guys need it. Dr. Matthew Hayden and Dr. Marguerite, Duane of modern mobile medicine have been great friends, great colleagues.
Since before I started, they cover for me along with nurse, Heidi Johnson of house calls on the Hills. I have three local providers who do house calls, who cover for me whenever I need them to. And they've been amazing. I sent them Panera gift card last night, just to be like, thank you. Y'all. Cover for me.
And I did complete radio silence for two weeks. My DC patients knew who to call my Maryland patients knew who to call my Virginia patients knew who to call, because all of us, I am licensed in all three of those places, but not everybody is licensed in all three of those places. And so I put that in my newsletter.
I told them at the two week mark, I would let them know in an email and a group text, like what it was going to be. And so I'm at the two week mark baby was doing fine. I said, I will come back to phone triage. Because sometimes they just want to tell me an update about the rash that I've been managing for five months.
The on-call person does not need to know about this rash. That is chronic, mom has a question for me. So I did that. It was the beginning of COVID. So I actually didn't go back into anyone's home until the baby was like two and a half months. Like I was doing all telemedicine and I had been doing telemedicine since I started the practice because I was like, it just makes sense, like for rashes and different things to just do telemedicine.
So it wasn't a, it wasn't a pivot for us. Like our PR everybody in the practice already knew pretty much everybody had already had a telemedicine visit. It was really good. I was literally sitting right here or sitting upstairs with the baby nursing, the baby. And she would be on the phone calls with me and half the time people that didn't even know.
Nine months and started moving around a lot. People didn't even know that she was like in the call her she's here. Like she's here right now, she's asleep and this is what she does. So it's very important that we take real maternity leave because. Intimate maternal mortality are terrible.
I know so many physicians with preeclampsia, high blood pressure, really traumatic pregnancies and traumatic birth. And part of that is, are you going to be supported afterwards? Do you know that you have a system set up afterwards, 10? You just let go of the practice, have people who have your back and know that you can take off that time.
Now, what would it have been? If I didn't have anybody to cover for me, I'd have been really nervous and, heaven forbid I've had a bad pregnancy outcome cause I was stressed. I didn't have to worry about that. Cause I knew Matthew Marguerite and Heidi had things under control and nurse Kimmy, who is my nurse.
Who's been with me since the beginning. I knew she had things under control as well, and Gabrielle and my assistant. I knew she would be there as well. So I had a team in place. And I was very intentional about taking that time off with the baby. Um, And it was the best postpartum experience.
Second postpartum experience as an employed physician was terrible. My boss actually I went back at like the six week mark and she actually docked my pay one time, like $300 because she said I was doing excessive pumping time. Like when I reached out to her and said, Hey my paycheck is $300 short.
Like this money is really important to my family. She said, oh, I doctor pay because of excessive pumping time, you were away from the patients for too long. And I was like, but I have been asking for a dedicated break for me and the nursing medical assistant. There were two nursing staff members at the time.
And she said, no, she said, the way that our contracts are set up with the Medicaid programs, we can't close the clinic down for more than like 30 minutes. That's not true. Like multiple people have told me that is not true. But that's what she told me. But when you need your job, we like we are, I was a worker, I was a worker.
And when you need your job, you can put it. Because you could get fired. And if I have lost my job, it would have been detrimental to my family. And so I didn't push, but it hurt really bad. And so what I started doing is I would let her know in my invoices, like during my 35 minutes time out of the workroom, I spoke to this pharmacist, I did this refill and I spoke to these patients.
I never took a break. Even before that my pay got docked. I told her, I was like, I didn't, I wasn't taking a break. I was working the whole time. I was pumping with my hands free pump thing. Yeah. That's part of the reason why I left.
Yeah. And know on many levels, I'm glad that you left, but it just, you talk about, oh, you can't have a scribe.
You can't talk to people on texts, but when it hits home and it's your children, oh man. You know the day that I created this podcast, I've said this before on air. But the, when my company said you either sign our RVU contract or be fired when I was 28 weeks pregnant and not going to have health insurance for my baby.
that was my day. I,
my manipulative.
It is. And that, that when you talk about that, every physician. Typically has this experience of they just, they could not stay in the, in the system one minute more. Everybody has their why, but when it hits your family, that's where a lot of us, especially as moms draw the line.
Yup. Yup. So now when you, you talk about having this practice, where your patients are understanding of who you are, they want you to be a mom. They want you to be successful at all of the hats that you're wearing.
One of the things that you had to choose along your journey is an EMR. So I want to ask what EMR are you using if you're okay. Sharing that. And what words of advice would you give to others when they're choosing an EMR in terms of how they will use
that in the future? So my EMR I, when I was right before I was opening, I guess, like six months before I knew I needed an EMR, I knew I needed like a practice management software.
I knew I needed some kind of telecommunication. And so I did like three or four demos with each of those things and talk to other docs about what they were using. I loved it. And was an epic, super user as an resonant. Like we were able to be epic super users if we wanted to like, do additional training.
And I was like, oh yeah, I'll do additional training. Just so I can be a physician champion of the EMR. So I've used like eClinical works, amazing charts, Cerner. Like I was going through all the different EMR I've used there. I don't like any of them. Like none of them are optimal. I would guess I say epic was my favorite one, but it's really expensive.
And I knew I couldn't afford epic and you need it to be on like a regional system. And I was like, yeah, this doesn't make sense for me. So I interviewed I think I did looked at Atlas MD. I looked at Serbo MD HQ. I looked at. There was another one term wasn't out yet. When I first started elation, I think was out and there was one other one I looked at and it, th the functionality and most of them is pretty much the same, atlas is a good kind of middle of the road can do everything. I think Serbo has some functionality that is a little, I guess it's more flexible with some of the the chart parts and stuff and things like that. And I love that those things. And for me, it just went down to the way that things looked at the end, like 10.
I look at the screen all the time. And does it make sense? Is it intuitive for me? And so that's how I ended up choosing Serbo MD HQ. Um, There's, I mean, there's so much I do wish there were like physician champions almost that could walk you through every now and then maybe I'll pitch that to them someday, but I'll be like a physician champion and I can walk people through how to use it.
Cause I think it's different when they, when we, as doctors and providers use things versus like administrators, you think like, I want somebody to like, walk me through your notes. Like, how do you, from the time you prep for your patient to the time you see the patient to the time you sign your note and give them an invoice, if you do, if you want to like, I want it to see all of that.
And so thankfully Andrea Wadley of 1, 2, 3 pediatrics, and then Matthew Hayden of modern mobile medicine, they both use Serbo. And so I was able to spend some additional time with them and I just, would email them and be like, Hey, can you take 30 minutes, take an hour with me and walk me through what you do.
So I wish in the beginning I had used. More of the system optimization aspects. I wish I had done all of my forms right in the EMR. I remember in the beginning, I was like, I want custom forms. No, you don't want custom forms. You want the form that is embedded in your electronic medical record.
So the patients can click, and it goes into their chart. You don't want to have to download. Once you get past 15 patients, you are going to have a staff person who is spending an hour or two a week downloading all those forms. Another lesson learned use what's in the system to the max.
I may not be perfect, but it'll at least get you what you need. You don't spend more than five seconds reviewing those forms anyway, it doesn't really need to have your logo on it and let him put it on there.
When you talk about optimization, is there a particular workflow that you've designed.
Is just amazing that you're so happy that you have now. No,
No, I'm still working on that, right? Like I, yeah. Part of what I'm doing this summer with a coaching program that I told you them to participate with is I need to figure out how to make things flow from the time that, you know, the patients sign up, I get all of their forms.
Like how do I make sure I'm checking the boxes so that things are where they need to be. And I think, again, that's part of the learning pain. The learning pains that I went through using all these different systems, that's a different system. You gotta log in and make sure to do X, Y, and Z, like I need to make it so that everything is in Serbo and everything is in active campaign and I'll have to go anywhere else.
But then I've got spruce too, right? So there's three different systems that I constantly have to think about. What do I need to do in Serbo? What do I need to do in spruce? What do I need to do in active campaign to make sure that these patient records are, all vibing? So I don't know, I don't have an answer a workflow that I'm happy.
That I get to listen to the patients that I get to be with them. But every time I go out of order, oh, I guess I will say active campaign, keeping things on active campaign completely before they become patients has been very helpful because before I was like doing a pre-charge in the system for them.
And then it wouldn't translate with what was back in active campaign. And then I'd have all these open notes, but they weren't patient notes and it would get fuzzy in my brain. Like, Do I have 15 notes or do I have 20 notes to do? I will say that I'm proud that I've separated, that I'm proud of the new phone tree that I told you about.
Now. I haven't put it into practice, so what's going to happen, next week when people start using it, I'm sure there'll be a mistake, I'm sure I'll have to go back and fix something. I guess that's also something that has been a good optimization is just embracing the mistakes and embracing it as part of like your versions.
Um, I've heard in a lot of podcasts. The iPhone is on like iPhone number 14, you know, or 12 or something like that. Like your business is going to go through all these iterations and you just had to embrace it because it's the only way you can get better, but you got to fix the bugs, right? Remember we used to get all these updates.
Oh, the iPhone has a bug. Here's your patch for that? Your practice is going to have that. And you literally have to embrace that. Your practice is going to have a grid. You need to go back and fix it and keep moving.
And it just goes back to angel Kyodo Williams quote, with this idea that without collective change, no change matters.
You're literally taking a look at your practice as a whole to make changes for the future. So it's beautiful. One of the things that you are very big on, and I don't know if this was impacted by COVID or how you pivoted there, but you are a mom who has a ton of community involvement. So I want to ask in terms of when you collaborate with like you collaborated with the breastfeeding group, you've collaborated recently attended your zoom, where you talked about summer camp and swim safety, how do you build out these intentional collaborations in your committee?
Yeah. So when you come to visit our house, you will see that one of the first things that we have on our mantle is a poster by an activist. That says, if you've come to help me, you're wasting your time. But if you've come because your humanity, your existence is bound up with mine. Come let us work together.
This practice is literally because this is my community. This is where I live. Like when children are healthy, my children are healthier and then vice versa. So our humanity is literally tied up in one another, tied up so many indigenous cultures around the world tell us that as well.
The waterkeepers and South Dakota, like all these people are telling us that our existence, our humanity, our wellness is bound up in one another. So it's just a part of it. So the, the picture that you saw on social media, where I was highlighted as like a community leader and went and read books to the kids, I read my favorite books to them, literally, that's my son summer program that he participated in and did afterschool.
And so of course, when, Ms. Vanessa of polite piggy says, Dr. Jay, you've been in the community doing the work for all these years. We want to highlight you. Of course, I'm going to go, I'm going to go. And I'm going to talk to these kids that see me every day at pickup the breastfeeding center class that I volunteered with when I was pregnant with the nine-year-old day.
Picking around here when I was a pregnant medical student, I signed up for their free breastfeeding course. And that was the first place that I learned about breastfeeding. There's somebody showed me how to hold a baby and breastfeed him and get him latch. And it was a free course. I waddled in during a break from class, went to the breastfeeding class and then went back home.
And of course I'm going to give back, like that class probably should have cost like $300. So I'm going to give back so that, people like me, all these moms in the area, all these moms had daddy's birthing folks. Cause we're inclusive on purpose that all these birthing folks have that information as well.
It's just it's my hood. It's my community. It's where I live. If I'm not there using all this information in my head, all these resources in my head was going to do it. These big companies aren't coming to save us as literally as mamas, figuring it out, making it happen for our communities.
Wonderful. And I definitely would encourage people, If they are wanting to do more in community involvement, take Dr. Jay's words and just live with them for a few moments and just think about, if you want to do community involvement, there's so many ways and reach out to other DPC docs.
If on the women's group or on the regular DPC docs group, if you're not sure how to get that community involvement going totally reach out. So many people are doing walk with a doc. So many people doing cooking classes. So many people are doing things where they aren't necessarily in person doing them.
So there's lots of opportunities out there now. Fun questions with regards to being a pediatrician. I want to ask your best tools. So what is your best tool for ear cleaning?
So I love the alligator clamp don't oh my God. I love that thing so much. My kids are like, if you don't get that thing away from me, I'm like, oh, I think I see something, let me use it.
And they're like, get it away. And I love my alligator clamp. I love just, a good old butterfly syringe kit that you can just cut off that needle and flush that year out with hydrogen peroxide. I love a nasty ear. That was like one of my favorite things. School was so fun. My kids are like my kids and my husband are like, most of us are using it yet.
She's brushing her skin. Yep. I am. I love it. Fantastic. Oh
my goodness. It's the best part about being a mom? We have our family to, to be our patients first and foremost, foreign bodies up the nose.
At that mother's kiss. I know it's nasty, but I'm just like, mom, you just mom or dad can handle that first.
like literally just hello, old and old below through hop that thing out. And then I'll go to my handy-dandy alligator clamp paying
distractor for things like shots.
Oh, my buzzy up DPC women group. We've got docs in Canada. We've got docs internationally who would have known that was not a part of our training, like pain relief, other than breastfeeding during, vaccines for infants.
Nobody ever talked to me about like, you know, well, I guess we did a little bit Emma cream if kids know had ports and things, but like I use Emma cream on everybody. Now I use the buzzy bee on everybody now as a distractor, I've got teams that are like, did you take the blood? And I'm like, oh, I'm done.
And they're like, oh, I love this bloody thing. And I'm like, yup. So buzzy bee and of course breastfeeding number one from an infant. And look Crean and buzzy bee. They're my
favorites. How about your favorite? Band-aid
What's coming free from the lab by and band-aids for what? I felt like hundreds of band-aids in there for free.
They're not cute. And they're definitely like that pale base that doesn't even look like anybody's skin, but guess what? That's what we're using. They're really strong that adhesive. So I do tell parents to put the babies in the bathtub the next night it to just soak them off once they look wet, pull them off.
But yeah, no, I'm not paying for. Band-aids
How about home visit tool?
My favorite or the one that I actually want to fix?
How about both?
So my GPS, because I have a terrible sense of direction. My GPS gets me everywhere. Like I said, I had two phones and all the patient information is in the work phone so that like my GPS is set and ready to go. And I like check two different Google maps and I check ways to see which way it gives me the best traffic.
And then I love my bag organization, which, I talk about a lot on our DPC docs in the house group. I talk a lot about my bag organization because I tend to be a clutter if I don't have things like I, I have a labeled exactly where everything is going in my bag because otherwise I just throw stuff and then I get overwhelmed and I'm like, am I doing it in a New York thing at all?
So I have a label maker and I labeled things completely in my little crap. We're going to others. I will be designing a bag pretty soon for exactly how I want it to be. So maybe we can work on that together or anybody who wants to, we can work on that together.
So we need like a good DPC docs in the house bag. Like the, all of us, like maybe designed together. Perfect
and keep us posted on that because yeah that's super exciting. And I think that especially those who are doing home visits, listening to you are just like, oh my gosh,
they have call me, tell him, call me.
Cause I actually have just started thinking about that. Because none of the bags are perfect. Like the makeup organizers people use, I'm like, I don't want to make a book a nicer. And like I use a craft, I use a sewing machine bag. Like it's just not the bag that I need. And then other people like Dr.
Rosanna, use this big industrial bag. And for me in the city, I can't do that going up and down on third floor walk-ups so I need something that's in between that, but nothing exists. Cause I, like I said, I am a student of history and research and I have researched the heck out of these bags.
So nothing existed, what I really want. So call me if anybody has any ideas, but how to make that happen. I got some ideas.
Before we get to your contact information. I want to ask you, you are a fan of gardening, of podcasting, of cooking, exercising. What are resources that you love to share for anybody and everybody that you talk about?
Yeah. Ooh, this is a fun one. So I think podcast, we talked about I absolutely love podcasts. I listen to them when I'm getting the kids dressed. I've listened to them on my way to go to all my house calls of the, all my business podcasts. So I think in seasons, like when I was first starting out, I was listening to all these like startup business podcasts and it wasn't just DPC.
It was like how I built this. NPRs how I built this as a really good one side hustle pro with Mikayla. Matthew's that is such a good one because you get to listen to all these people, especially women and mostly women of color who started all these different businesses and learn from them.
And I've gotten so much from them. Let's see other podcasts. Are like more about like marketing and things. When I just had no idea how to do anything about marketing, I just like dove into marketing podcasts and marketing books. And now I'm in like the systems optimization books, I'm doing a lot of building teams and stacking your team is the podcast that I love with the business chicks.
They are like, service things. Everybody knows them, Natalie, Xcel I think finding a tribe is important. So I started like a business mastermind, other folks in the area who run businesses and all of us are women. All of us are women of color and we all run businesses that have to do with healthcare.
And so me and a pediatric dentist started this group and there's 10 of us and we meet every single month. We've got a psychiatrist, we've got a psychologist, we've got a doula. We've got A midwife who's been impacted for 30 years. You know what I mean? Like we've got people at all different stages.
We got pediatricians, we have, several pediatricians as a family medicine doctor. And we get together and learn together. We, a few of us read Natalie Xcel's book reset your mindset. And so we're going to get together and discuss that book. It probably will be virtual just cause the COVID.
I think applying for grants, like I think I've mentioned that on like the DPC docs in the house group, like I've applied to some grants, it's a lot of work upfront, but it also helps you envision what you could do with your practice. So writing these grants lets me think of the most amazing program that I want to start with my practice.
And like maybe I can get some funding for it. And the grant might not be exactly perfect for you, but it gets you writing. It gets you thinking because you're talking to people. So I'd say podcasts, I'd say books. Other resources that I always send people to. I mean, I love as a pediatrician. I love kids health.
As my favorite website. I like oh, I see it. Is it Scarlet team for my team? My adolescents Arlet teen is a really good body friendly inclusive website about reproductive rights and bodies. I love the zero to three.org and it's all words. Zero Z E R O to three.org for like development really good videos on there for parents.
Um, So those are the resources that I use most of the time. And I love biographies and just like motivational books, too.
Wonderful. And Dr. Jay, for those who have been super inspired by your talk today and want to reach out what is the best way to reach out to you after this.
Yeah, go through the website. You know, we were talking about systems like I, I get overwhelmed when I don't like the back and forth emails. I get very overwhelmed, very easily. Cause I, I will forget that your email is there and then I'll feel so bad. So I don't want to feel bad that I missed your email.
So the website is a perfect place, my assistant and I check those check the the information when people, are at any stage of their DPC, they can submit their information. And again, like it is because we are a part of this community. This is our community when I was starting out. So many people took it an hour.
So two hours took multiple Saturdays to talk to me while driving their kids around. So of course I'm going to give back and do the same thing for people, but I needed to do it in a way that works for me. I, they were fine with me, just like emailing them and setting up the time. But I knew if you email me more than twice to schedule something.
Girl. I want to delete your email and I want to forget you exist because I'm stressed because I can't keep up with emails. So I knew I had to automate it. And so that's why I just put it on the website. DBC docs want to talk to me? Just go to the website, there's a business collaboration tab. You scroll down for business collaboration, some people don't want to do telephone visits.
They want to do video. Some people are done with video. They want to do telephone. People can choose from there. Like you choose how you want to talk to me and I will make it happen. I only have the times on there that I look presentable for a video. So you're not going to get the times when I shouldn't be talking to you, on video.
And then the DPC calls, I had to restrict those. Because I was getting like four and five people a month that wanted to talk and it just, it gets overwhelming. And so like, I limit it to like, I think it might be three now three a month because there were some months I. In the fall, people were all opening up DPC practices and I was just getting all these requests to talk.
And I remember one week in particular, I think I talked to like four different people. And I was like, I didn't have enough time to talk to my patients. Cause I was talking to people who wanted to open up DPC practices and I'm like, that is not sustainable. So don't worry. Submit your information on there only a bit.
The availability that I want you to have is on there. And I think that only talk to people who are interested in DPC, like I've got a few hours, twice a week just so that I could like not be overwhelmed. Yeah.
Awesome. Thank you so much, Dr. J for joining us today.
Thank you so nice talking to you
* Transcript generated by AI so please excuse errors.
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