TDP 112: Sutter West Bay Region's CMIO, Dr. Matt Sakumoto: Being a Virtual-First Primary Care Doc, Tips to improve Digital Empathy, and Working as a Team to Reduce Clinician Burnout

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On this episode of "The Digital Patient" podcast, hosts Alan Sardana & Dr. Joshua Liu speak with Dr. Matthew Sakumoto, Virtual-First Primary Care Physician and Chief Medical Information Officer at Sutter West Bay Region, about "Being a Virtual-First Primary Care Doc, Tips to improve Digital Empathy, Working as a Team to Reduce Clinician Burnout, and more..." Click the play button to listen or read the show notes below.
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Audio:

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Video:

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Guest(s):

• Dr. Matthew Sakumoto, Virtualist & CMIO at Sutter West Bay Region
• Dr. Joshua Liu (@joshuapliu), Co-founder & CEO at SeamlessMD

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‍Episode 112 - Show Notes:

[00:01:23] Dr. Sakumoto’s journey from biomedical engineering to medicine and how a desire to impact patients at scale led him to informatics and virtual care;

[00:03:00] How complaining as a medical student drove Dr. Sakumoto to informatics;

[00:18:00] How Dr. Sakumoto defines “Digital Empathy” and his advice for improving empathy over chat-based telehealth;

[00:20:23] Why clarity of language and personalization goes a long way in digital empathy;

[00:21:07] How telehealth and chat-based communication requires different skills than traditional bedside manner, and why taking the time to craft a well-thought-out message is necessary;

[00:24:30] Thoughts on emojis in chat-based telehealth;

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[00:26:25] Why Dr. Sakumoto supports the use of generative AI to help clinicians communicate empathy, even if it may not be authentic in the moment;

[00:28:38] How Epic is leveraging generative AI for draft responses to patient messages in private doctor communication and how institutions have the ability to tweak prompts;

[00:31:00] Why Dr. Sakumoto suggests using sentiment analysis on inbound patient messages to tailor the generative AI prompts and responses would be beneficial;

[00:32:44] How chatbot-izing the patient intake process could save time and money for the system, such as with triage;

[00:33:34] Why Dr. Sakumoto would be comfortable with the concept of a conversational AI physician agent that resembles him;

[00:34:00] How virtual-first primary care is setup for team-based care, and how AI can offer supports;

[00:34:17] Why Dr. Sakumoto believes primary care cannot be fully autonomous because of patient safety concerns as there is still 10% of patient care that requires deeper thought and human intervention;

[00:37:00] Why there is a growing need for telehealth literacy in training clinicians on how to effectively communicate digitally, and how over communication is paramount via text;

[00:38:30] How patient and clinician expectations are constantly changing as telehealth becomes more widely used

[00:39:00] Why virtual-first care is not yet popular among new graduates as virtual care skills have not been integrated into medical training curriculum;

[00:40:00] Why the ubiquity of telehealth is not on the same level as electronic health records (EHR) as it is currently more focused and specialized;

[00:41:00] Why potential market forces and future scenarios could make virtual-first care more common and attractive to clinicians;

[00:41:31] How telehealth can provide work-life balance and flexibility for clinicians, making it a viable solution for the workforce shortage in healthcare;

[00:43:00] Josh rambles about robots;