Zeyad Baker, CEO and Founder of Baker Health | CEOs You Should Know

Zeyad Baker, CEO and Founder of Baker Health | CEOs You Should Know

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everyone, This is Steve Dallison and welcome to this
week's edition of CEOs. You should know. I'm excited to
be joined by doctor Baker, CEO, founder and MD of
Baker Health. Doctor Baker, thanks for.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Being here today, Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:11):
We're excited to jump into your journey, learn a little
bit about you, and most importantly, talk a little bit
about Baker Health. So why don't we kick off today
sharing a little bit about your background and really what
inspired you to start off Baker Health.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Sure.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Yeah, I'm originally from New Jersey. I'm a pediatrician by background,
born and raised in New Jersey, left for school, came back,
and then spent over a decade of my career doing
you know what I didn't know then, but now I
look at as traditional old school healthcare. So we were
in a regular practice doing great clinical work. Most doctors,

(00:47):
wherever they're practicing, they're doing great clinical work. The problem
is that's all we're doing, and we're a little oblivious
to everything that's happening around us. And then, after spending
over ten years doing that, when it took corporate medicine,
I worked for about five years at the largest healthcare
company in the country United Health Group, and so I

(01:08):
got kind of the full end of the spectrum.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
I did, you know, old school doc work.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
And then I was all the way on the business
side of it, and what I saw was, you know,
patients aren't satisfied with healthcare. I think anybody who's listening
doesn't look forward to calling the doctor's office, going to
the doctor's office, waiting for an answer, waiting to be seen.
There's a lot of frustration. I think what folks don't realize,

(01:32):
and this is the unlock that led to Baker Health,
is that actually doctors are even more frustrated than patients.
I think patients don't realize. Simple example, you know doctors,
when you're waiting in the waiting groom, usually the doctors
in their office on the other side, waiting for the
time to be called to see you, and there's all
the middleman. You're checking your insurance or the phone ringing.

(01:52):
And so my brother and I he's the co founder
co CEO. He's an adult primary care doctor, I'm a patrician.
We said we could probably do something here, and so
we spent some time. Actually I took a year and
a half off. I never thought i'd be retired at
forty and at forty I stopped working for a year
and a half, which I never thought would happen. Did

(02:13):
a lot of research when around the country, when actually
spoke to people around the world who were doing innovative
things in healthcare. So pure tech plays like apps for
like health care, wellness all the way to hospitality.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
And so we settled on three.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
Pillars and we said, can we do practical technology in healthcare?
We said practical because it's not that there isn't enough
technology in healthcare, but most of it actually creates distance
between the patient and the doctor, doesn't bring you closer.
And what I mean by that is we thought EMRs
were going to be a great thing. Now it kind
of stinks. You go in and the doctor staring at
the computer typing, not looking at you. You kind of

(02:47):
wish when old school penant paper the patient portal sounds great.
You send a message, the guy doesn't get back to
you for three weeks, right, You're like, can I just
text him? Like I get an uber. So we call
it practical technology. So we have a proprietary app literally
text your doctors, text your nurses, and in a second
you get a response or you book your reservation. We
were close to taking phones out of our offices. You
could just do everything through that app. So technology is

(03:09):
one pillar. The other is holistic care. And so in
the time we spent, I spent not working when I
was examining other places. And now this is becoming a
little more mainstream what I'm about to say. But when
you look at the healthcare statistics, the clinical outcomes of
the United States, we have the most doctors, the most medicines,
and the worst outcomes. And you look at countries that

(03:30):
have a much simpler and basic approach to healthcare. You
look at countries in the Far East where they prescribe
yoga for back pain instead of surgery, where they focus
on healthy diet instead of pharmaceuticals, And at some point
it's undeniable that they're getting it right and we're getting
it wrong. So we are primary care locations have yoga

(03:52):
studios in the middle of the office.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
That's awesome.

Speaker 3 (03:55):
We have therapists in our offices and nutritionists that you
can text. And so we look at the primary care
doctor as an important but not the whole picture in
your relationship. So I'm the primary care guy, but I'm
not the main relationship you have at Baker Health, it's
with the whole team, and the team includes nutritionists, the therapist.
We actually have fitness assessments that take place once you're

(04:17):
for free with personal trainers and so on. So the
holistic approach. And the third is hospitality. And this was
the one, you know that I had to really study.
I was spending time. We do field trips with the
team to like the Four Seasons or the Mandarin Oriental,
and we studied kind of their hospitality. And somebody might say, well,
what the heck does that have to do with healthcare?

(04:38):
It turns out that the inability to be seen in
a timely fashion not only stinks from an experience standpoint,
but actually causes bad clinical outcomes because then you didn't
get the recommendation that you're fifty you need to col anoscopy.
You come back a year later. Now that cancer that
could have been caught preemptively is at stage two, and
you could take that for a million other things. Unnecessary
er visits, you couldn't get in because your kid's sick tonight.

(05:00):
Doctor won't see you for three days. You wait two days.
Now the kid has pneumonia. This happens a million times
a day, and so delayed in not access care or
even feeling unwelcomed, even if you can get an a
sterile environment with cold people. You know, most folks who
experience the healthcare system experience it in a way where
they come in somebody's not smiling at them. Yep, here's

(05:21):
a clipboard, go sit down, wait till I call it
that out Yep, exactly. And so we believe that it's
not only cool to be trained in a hospitality, but
it actually has a direct impact on the clinical outcome.
So those are the three pillars that inspired Bigger Health.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
Yeah, it's a really innovative way to look at healthcare
for sure. And I agree with you on that hospitality standpoint. Right,
Like a lot of times people don't love going to
the doctor, so when you walk in and you get
that cold feeling, it just kind of furthers that negativity.
So being able to be warm, warm, welcome, and greeted
that way, I'm sure it makes a big impact on
your patients.

Speaker 3 (05:51):
Yeah, one hundred percent. If you and I are chatting
and I'm smiling and nodding, you actually have biochemical reactions
to that you have endorphins doping, your levels change, and
we know those hormones affect your health. So I'm not
saying that because I'm smiling at you, you're not going
to get cancer. But I am saying you're gonna feel
a lot better about coming to the doctor, engaging in
your healthcare.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
And so Holks, we do some of that stress and
anxiety under doctor's office for sure.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
I know you mentioned your brother earlier, your co founder,
and I know you come from a family of physicians.
How has been being around medicine your entire life impacted
obviously your career but also Baker Health.

Speaker 3 (06:27):
It's been great. You know, I don't know. You can
never know the counter factory. You can never know what
would have happened if that wasn't the case. My dad
was a pediatrician, and so I think there's a lot
of lessons we learned that inform even what we're doing today.
But basically being in healthcare since the day I was
born as a result of this, and always in primary care. Really,

(06:50):
I think the biggest thing is as we're trying to
fix all the problems in healthcare, and by we, I
mean me and my brother, but also a lot of
other folks trying to do innovative, disruptive things. What I
find is a lot of the folks taking aim at healthcare,
coming out of Silicon Valley or coming out of business backgrounds,
see a problem and then try to apply a sterile

(07:12):
analysis to it, and they're like, well, cost is high,
outcomes are crappy, let's do move these and what is
often missed as the human element. And so I think
being from a family of doctors and always being in healthcare,
despite me talking about technology, we're very proud we're actually
building the first healthcare super app that we know of.
So we have a full software development team, so we

(07:33):
do take that seriously. We do formal hospitality training, we
take that seriously. But to be honest, what's still the
most important thing for us is the doctor patient connection.
And we've had opportunities to use AI to erase some
of the doctor interactivity, and we're not going to do that.
So there's guys that are a lot smarter than me
right now having a conversation that believe doctors are going

(07:54):
to be no.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
One void in ten years. Like they're like, you don't
need a doctor to do this.

Speaker 3 (07:58):
I think that's where we have a competitive advantage and
where the background coming from a family physicians, because you know,
nobody ever sent me a Christmas card thanking me for
the app. What they send you the Christmas card is hey,
you know, it was nine pm. The office was closing.
You guys stuck around. You saw him and you found
out how appendicitis. And when we went to the hospital

(08:19):
they said if you didn't find it whatever, Or when
you diagnose somebody with cancer and you're there. The technology
that helped you to do it, the lab work that
helped you to do it is useful, but in the end,
it's the human connection that makes a difference. And I
think that's kind of where we're able to marry all
the new stuff we're doing and all the disruption with
some of the good aspects of the old school healthcare.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
For sure, it's the best of both worlds. You're able
to utilize that knowledge and that foundation that you grew
up on and obviously went to school for, but also
have that forward thinking leading into the technology and being
able to bring them together.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
So I'm sure that along the way they're out the
new approach and the new technology that you guys are utilizing.
There may have been some challenges, especially approaching the healthcare
industry with this way. What were some of those challenges
and how did you guys overcome them.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
I think the biggest challenge in the beginning was trying
to explain to the market. When we first started it's
been three years or so, trying to explain to them, hey,
this is a different practice model and people when you
walk in, like if you walk into our Williamsburg location,
if you walk in, you're walking into a yoga studio
on the ground floor. You have to go through the

(09:29):
yoga studio effectively and passed it to get to the
doctor's office. And that's different. It turns out once you've
explained it to folks, they love it. But when they
go to your website and they're like, is this a
spa or like yeah, And so there was we I
guess we created a little friction for ourselves in that

(09:49):
regard with the consumers. With our members, we don't call
them patients, we call them members because they're part of
a holistic community. You know, we don't treat patients. We
serve our members. There's a whole linguistics that goes with it,
and it's part of our ethos. But then on the
other side is the people that we have to deal with,
like insurance companies. So we don't get paid by the

(10:11):
insurance company for the free yoga classes that our members
get and it's included in the membership, but we don't
get paid by the insurance companies. That's a lost leader
for us, right, But we think it's necessary if we're
going to kind of, you know, put our money where
our mouth, yeah, so to speak, and so kind of
explaining it to the stakeholders on the financial side is difficult,
and so that's why we have a membership based model.

(10:32):
So that's like the way we're able to solve for that.
I think now in terms of the market, now we
have a fair number of members, we have to do
less explaining. Kind of it's a community. They kind of
talk to each other about it and they have they
all have. There's a lot of stories of success, Like
I mean, we got we've we just had our holiday
party like a month ago, and my brother and I

(10:54):
usually say a few words, and all I did was
read an email I got from a member where her
and her.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
Mother who's like seven and was depressed.

Speaker 3 (11:02):
Never exercise was obese, and because she found us and
our therapists and our yoga, she would have never done
yoga otherwise because it was scary. But we had beginners yoga,
so on and so forth lost like forty pounds is
no longer depressed all for antidepressants and so to do
all that, it's not necessarily. The healthcare system today is
not built where it welcomes that. You kind of have
to work around it and zigzag, and it takes a

(11:24):
lot of creativity and really the team, to be honest
with you, the team that we have is second to none,
and so I think our members are the beneficiaries of that.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
Yeah, one hundred percent. It's a completely different mindset. I
think you said it earlier, right, It's not just a
lot of places just treat the illness. They don't try
to prevent it. And I think obviously the yoga is
one example of it. Can you dive a little bit
deeper into that outside of just the.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yoga, Yeah? Sure.

Speaker 3 (11:48):
So Sharon's like our wellness director. So when our doctors
get together and we meet, our meetings open with Sharon
spending a few minutes helping our doctors distress and our
manager's de stress, and so it's not only for our members,
it's for our doctors and our team. If you go
to our yoga study, you might see doctor Tungu, who's
one of our pedatricians, sitting next to you in a

(12:09):
yoga class. Doctor Sarah Baker joined the Run Club with
some of our members in fitness, and so our team
manifests it. They're very into it. We're doing a retreat
soon or a team at where is Grace Farms, which
is like a very holistic vibe, and so our team
kind of embodies that. And I think what happens then,

(12:32):
is it's not a script being read in the room.
When the doctors are being educated, they're getting in services
on alternative ways to treat back pain or headaches or migraines,
and you're not quickly reaching for a prescription pad. I
think that's the only way to do it. It's not easy.
I'm making it sound easier.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
Than it is. It's a process. We're learning every day.
I'm learning.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
We learn from a lot of our members. They'll come
in and they'll be like, Hey, here's a vitamin supplement,
and then I'll go do research and I'm like that's awesome.
The studies show that it helps, and so I'm going
to give you vitamin C and zinc at these doses
to overcome your illness instead of you know, another z pak.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
It just helps that you practice what you preach, right,
It's authentic to the mission, and having your entire team
embrace them and participate in it probably makes it a
lot more trustworthy when they're telling the members about those services.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
Correct. Yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 1 (13:19):
So obviously you guys have accomplished a lot, but I'm
sure that there's still a lot that you want to accomplish.
So let's talk about your vision for the future and
where you really see Baker Health going.

Speaker 3 (13:30):
You know, when we discuss our plan, like it's the
new year just came, and so the executive team gets
together and discusses what we're going to do. I think
this is and again I've worked my brother and I
have worked in what I call corporate medicine. So this
is the opposite of how we did things back then.
We do not have a business plan, We do not

(13:50):
have quantitative metrics where we're like we want to hit
this many members or offices. That's the life that we
left behind yep. And we're anti scale for the sake
of scale. All our meetings, our executive meetings, in terms
of the future and what we're doing are all. What
we do is we imagine one member, sure, and then

(14:11):
here's what we were able to do for this member's
health two years ago. And two years ago we offered
them great access texting through the app, generic medicines and
to avoid that you're an urgent care because we're open
seven days a week, yep. Six months later we were
able to add therapy because we installed mental health specialists
in our offices. Six months after that, we added nutritionists.
And so our roadmap is not numbers, it's this one individual,

(14:35):
this imaginary member, and what can we add to them.
So we added yoga and so we have a lot
of cool stuff that we're trying to add. Now it
does happen to be and I could talk about what
we're trying to add, but it does happen to be
the case that when you do that, you get a
lot more inbound requests. And so when we open a
new location, which we do very slowly, like we're very

(14:56):
tedious about where we open, and we're even more selective.
We hire less than ten percent of doctors that want
to join us. When we do that, it's the result
of folks wanting to get healthier. It's not the result
of a business strategy that we have.

Speaker 2 (15:09):
And so.

Speaker 3 (15:11):
One or two examples of what we have that we're
focusing spending day and night focusing on. We're actually infusing
back to practical technology. We're infusing AI in a cool way.
So you come in and you do you want to
check your hormones and your lipid panel, and you hear
about all these cool labs and longevity, so we order them.
But what happens today is you have to wait and
then the doctor and you have to schedule time and

(15:33):
then he or she's going to go over it. But
then you forgot you have thirty questions because after that conversation,
it opens you. That's how it happens, right if you're
lucky enough.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
But at least we can.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
Or you get the lab results in exact exactly, can't
get in touch with the doctor.

Speaker 3 (15:45):
So our doctors are working with our team and AI
where it will tell you that based on your lipid panel,
and then it looks back at all the closterols you
got for the past ten years. And then it looks
at the American car side of cardiologies metrics and says,
here's if you continue down this trend, this is your
cardiovascular risk. You have a thirty percent chance of a

(16:05):
stroke in four years. And here's the three things that
you could change immediately. Instead of like thirty pages, here's
three things you could change. You could reduce the risks
from thirty percent to eight percent if you just walk
this many steps and eat avocados twice a week or whatever.
And so it's again back to practical technology. So we're
infusing AI in a way that can directly affect folks's health.

(16:26):
And we just finished now and we're taking it kind
of to prime time in pediatrics. I'm going to be
selfish and to talk about pediatric Second, the biggest epidemic
in pediatrics is all the developmental delays that kids are experiencing,
like autism and really the lack of resources. So as
a pediatrician in any of the doctors listening will relate

(16:47):
to this. If we have a two year old that
we think has serious delays, we can't get them in
front of the right developmental specialist for over a year.
So if you go google Cornell and Yu. If you
google major academic center and say developmental right now literally literally,
you'll say taking appointments in twenty twenty six.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
That's what a lot of them will say, sane.

Speaker 3 (17:05):
And we know that the child's prognosis is directly impacted
by how early you could get in with therapies. So
we took the onus. We established our own in house
child development program doctor Lee who used to be a
student of mine. She's a pediatrician, and we were building
that out now and we're able to get kids in
with anxiety, add symptoms, developmental delays, not in a year,

(17:30):
but literally within the next week within Baker Health and
plug them into all the services they need to speech
therapy and so on and so again, that's just a
focus on family. That's obviously not something that's a scalable model.
That's not what we're afterwards. We took a family. Now,
we added the yoga, we added the therapy, the vitamin
and fusions and nutritional accounseling, and now we know that
one out of four kids have an issue, So for

(17:51):
every one or two families, we're helping them solve something
that's pretty unsolvable.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
Hundred percent. You looked at the member and you found
a potential issue that now your guys are a game
changer for them. You're getting them that immediate help that
their their child needs. That's that's awesome to say. I'm
sure sometimes not everyone is able to embrace the holistic approach.
How have you guys approached that as members? As you said,
they might walk into a building and they see a
yoga city and that's not what they're familiar with when

(18:16):
they visit a doctor. How have you shifted that mindset
about some non believers?

Speaker 3 (18:21):
Maybe the same way it happened to me, or the
same way it happened to yeah, my brother with education,
like with compassionate education. It would be crazy to be
upset with someone who comes in and says, give me antibiotics,
my throat hurts, when the reason he or she's saying

(18:42):
that is because guys like me have done that to
them for thirty years. So of course they're going to
say that instilled in their head. Yeah they didn't, So
that's sick and that's hard doing. Yeah, that's we did
that to them. And so what you do is you
start to talk to them and you say, well, do
you have a fever. No, but my throat, Doc, trust me,
the last four toss has happened. I got a Z
pack and I got better, And you say them, no, no,

(19:03):
you got better, and you happen to be on a
Z pack, and then you tell them it's not uncommon
for this. The following one, I'll get family comes in
with two kids. Doc, we're going to Disney in four days.
They got fevers. I know you tested them for everything,
but and it's negative. But just I need the antibotic.
And I'll say I don't send the antibiotic through the
electronic coul records. I'll write it on a piece on
an old school script, like here's three Z packs, okay,

(19:24):
And on the back of it, I'll write Sunday. Let's
say it's Friday, they're leaving for Disney. I say, I
wrote Sunday on it. If I bet you they're not
gonna have fever, They're gonna be perfect. If you give
them some honey and ginger and hot tea, some vitamin
se and zinc. You have the prescription. You could walk
out now and fill it. But if it was my kid,
this is what I would do. And if Sunday they're
there with a fever, you have the antibiotic, and almost
one hundred percent of the time they're texting me Sunday like, Doc,

(19:47):
the kids are bouncing out. They send me a picture
of them on a roller coaster ride, and they spare
them antibiotics, which the average Americans getting it three four
times a year, and then when they're seventy they need
in the ICU. It doesn't work anymore. So now when
the kid does need it and twenty thirty years, it's
going to work.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
Yeah, that's so true. That's what people immediately jump to
as soon as they think that they're sex. That's a
completely different approach. So if you were talking to an
aspiring health care innovator, what advice would you give them,
looking back obviously from your family experience, from your time
in med school, from your time previously in the in
the corporate space to now, like, what advice would you

(20:23):
give someone just starting in healthcare.

Speaker 3 (20:26):
I think it would be to have like a very
open and inquisitive mind. And I wouldn't say I wouldn't
go so far to say it has to be a
completely heterodox approach. Again, I think some of the people
that are coming into healthcare looking to completely disrupt it.
Sure are losing the best parts of healthcare that have

(20:48):
to stay with us, like the human connection and medicine.
Traditional medicine does a lot of great things.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
Right.

Speaker 3 (20:54):
The fact of the matter is, I'll give you one
statistic that we've flexus. You might have heard this that
out of all the fold countries, we ranked dead last
and like maternal fetal outcomes, and we're very poor in
life expectancy.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
Right.

Speaker 3 (21:07):
The interesting thing, sad interesting thing is if you go
to some of the best hospitals in the country, we're
number one in maternal feel outcome.

Speaker 2 (21:15):
Right.

Speaker 3 (21:16):
Also in terms of life expectancy, if you take out
opioid over dooses, if you take out depression and suicide,
if you take those things out, we become number one
in life expectancy. Because if you get to sixty five,
if you get to sixty five and now you're in
the ICU at Columbia Presbyterian, there's no exactly and so

(21:37):
you have to kind of go one layer under. And
so what I would tell someone who comes in saying,
all right, I'm not the sheep. I'm not just going
to get lined up and go work at a You know,
be the eightieth guy at a hospital where patients satisfaction
sting stuff. I want to do something different. I would
say that's great. That's the first step. But the second
step is you should look at what you learned in
med school or what you learned in your healthcare courses

(21:58):
if you're an administrator, and take the good with that,
and then go marry it to the best parts of
Eastern medicine. Go marry it to the best parts of technology.
And that's straddling, I think, is where we're gonna be
able to thread the needle.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
That's awesome looking forward to hopefully more people have in
that mindset within healthcare. And definitely eye opening statistics that
you just shared. So we talked a lot about your mission,
a lot about the amazing work you guys are doing
and really that innovative approach that you have. But if
there's one thing that you want everyone that's tuning in
to take away from your mission, what would that be.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
I'd say that.

Speaker 3 (22:33):
We think what we're doing is really cool, and we're
very proud of what we're doing, but the stark truth
is what we do matters very very little compared to
what you do for your health, and I have yet
to see a healthy individual who's healthy because of their doctor.
And I think I could say this as a doctor
who works seven days a week twenty four to seven.

(22:54):
I'm very proud of what we do. I think we
make a big difference in our folks' lives. But that's
necessary yet grossly insufficient. You're you're the main healthcare provider
in your journey. You have to be informed. You have
to be the co pilot with the doctor and the
healthcare team. If you are going to the doctor when

(23:14):
you're sick for them to get you better, you will
not get better. You have to on a daily basis
be the main doctor and every now and again you
need a guy like me to be a part of it.

Speaker 1 (23:22):
Yep, it's great advice. If someone that is tuning in
wants to become a member and they want to find
more about Baker Health, what is their first step?

Speaker 3 (23:30):
They just go to our website bakerhealth dot com right,
and they could download our app right. So, as I mentioned,
we have a great app and you can download it
and explore it for some time before becoming a member.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
And that's great. We have we have like over one
hundred hours of free content like virtual yoga.

Speaker 3 (23:46):
Oh if we have cool content like hey I'm a
pretty tree. Hey I think my six year old has
add but I'm not sure what do I do? And
there's like a video on does my kid I have
ADD or he's still ping the bet and he's eight.
So we have a lot of cool content on the app.
Can also book your first reservation, come in for a
vitamin fusion without calling the office, just book it there.

Speaker 1 (24:04):
That's awesome infusing that technology.

Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
Well, doctor Baker, thank you so much for coming in today.
Really appreciate you sharing your background and all the exciting
stuff you guys are doing at Baker Health. I myself,
I'm definitely going to look into it. But thank you
for doing all that you're doing and all the advancements
that you've been making within the important field.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
Thank you for having me. This was a lot of fun.
I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
Thanks for coming in, Thanks and thanks everybody for tuning
in for this week's edition of CEOs. You should know