The primary care shortage is one of the most urgent crises in U.S. healthcare. I’ve spent my entire career in clinical operations, and I’ve met far too many doctors who worked tirelessly to enter the profession, only for them to be burned out, overworked, buried in documentation, and left with too little time to focus on their patients.
Virtual care, when done well, can ease some of those burdens. For example, my former brick-and-mortar mental health practice’s pre-pandemic no-show rate of 23% dropped to just 2% after we introduced telehealth as an option in 2020. But even as we expanded access, we ran into the limits of the model: video and audio-based virtual care still required a 1:1 clinician-to-patient ratio.
That’s what drew me to Curai Health.
When it came time for me to make my next move after serving as Senior Vice President of Clinical Operations at Teladoc, Curai stood out to me. I saw how they were reimagining the entire care model from the ground up. From the leadership to the clinicians, there’s a genuine belief that the technology we build can push the boundaries of care access while maintaining quality.
Since joining Curai last fall as the company’s first Chief Operating Officer, I’ve had a front-row seat to watch how advancements in AI can both transform patient access and improve the clinician experience in a whole new way. By embedding machine learning throughout the patient and provider experience, we’re able to scale operations in a way that simply wasn’t possible before. Our AI handles time-consuming tasks like intake and pulls chart review, surfacing relevant patient history so clinicians can focus entirely on care. This approach helps us move beyond the traditional healthcare model, enabling a more efficient, higher quality approach to care delivery.
But operationalizing this model requires a fundamentally different kind of infrastructure. We provide patients access to comprehensive care 24/7, 365 days a year. That means our clinical operations don’t follow a traditional schedule– and neither can our workflows, our workforce management strategies, or our quality controls. Every part of the system has to be intentionally designed to support this new way of delivering care.
As COO, I’m focused on building the operational backbone that enables clinicians to thrive in this model. That includes everything from real-time monitoring of our EHR system and workforce management analytics to designing workflows that keep patients engaged and ensure timely, high-quality clinical interventions. If we get it right, we’re not just helping more people get care–we’re creating a more humane, scalable, and sustainable way for clinicians to practice medicine.
At a time when clinician burnout is reaching crisis levels, I am inspired by Curai’s energy and sense of purpose. It fuels my own commitment to building the systems and support that allow care teams to do what they do best: deliver high-quality care at scale. If we can make medicine more sustainable for clinicians while expanding access for patients, we’re not just addressing the primary care shortage. We’re creating a healthcare system that actually works for everyone.
