September 16, 2025 • 54 mins
Betsy Wurzel welcomes back Neal K. Shah to Chatting with Betsy for an eye-opening conversation on health insurance denials and his new #1 Amazon Best Seller, Insured To Death: How Health Insurance Screws Over Americans And How We Take It Back (Foreword by David Casarett, M.D.). Neal shares his personal journey battling insurance denials during his wife’s cancer treatment, along with stories from CareYaya clients who faced the same devastating obstacles. Together, Betsy and Neal explore:
💡 Don’t miss this powerful interview exposing the broken healthcare system and offering practical ways to protect yourself and your loved ones
https://insuredtodeath.org/
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/chatting-with-betsy--4211847/support.
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- How insurers are using AI to increase claim denials (one jumped from 1% to 15%)
- The emotional and financial toll on patients and caregivers
- Why physician burnout and shortages worsen the crisis
- Steps families can take to fight back and file appeals—especially vital for elderly patients who lack advocates
💡 Don’t miss this powerful interview exposing the broken healthcare system and offering practical ways to protect yourself and your loved ones
https://insuredtodeath.org/
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/chatting-with-betsy--4211847/support.
🎙 Passionate World Talk Radio Network LLC — Where real conversations matter.
📧 Contact us: pwrtalknetwork@gmail.com
🌐 Visit: www.passionateworldtalkradio.com
📲 Follow & share with #PWTRN
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, everyone, This is Betsy Wurzel. You're a host of
Chatting with Betsy. I'm pastor Roltalk Radio Network, a subsidiary
of Global Media Network LLC Aramantos to educate, enlighten, and entertain.
The views of the guest may not represent those of
the hosts of stations, Folks, They'll have to bear with me.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I don't know why my froke.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
I kind of a sore last night, so I'm kind
of rasping, but I am blessed and grateful to be
here talking to you all. And I have my special
guests on with me today. And before I introduce my guest,
I have to share something, you know.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I've then interviewed a lot of.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Caregivers of story of their businesses, and in my opinion,
I've said this on my show.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Before I was looking for a.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Business, I want to go to a person who has
walked the walk, who knows what I'm going through and
who has a special type of empathy because they were
a caregiver. And that's just my personal opinion. And with
me today is Neil ka Shaw, who was a caregiver.
(01:16):
That's why he started his company. He is CEO and
co founder of care Yaya, a tech startup and applied
research lab focused on enhancing care delivery. Neil is a
former hedge fund manager turned social entrepreneur. He co founded
(01:37):
the company after a profoundly personal experience with caregiving. Care
Yaya is also launching new applications at ai to help
people better manage caregiving, and their mission is to empower
family caregivers and create a better future for care What
(01:57):
a such a necessary search this? I want to welcome you,
Neil Okay Shara to Channing with Betsy.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Thanks Betsy really appreciate having me on and excited to
tell people about our mission and you know, hope we
can help.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Yes, I say this, Neil all the time.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
I find personally the people who went through caregiving saw
a need for something that they didn't have available to
them and started their company, started a business to help
caregivers because they know what it's like, and.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
You know what it's like, and that, yes, is a
plus to me. That is a huge plus.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
And I just want to tell the audience folks, if
you haven't already been a caregiver, you will be. Are
You're going to need one, and you need to listen
to Neil saw today. So I want to ask you
about your background, y'all. Why was your caregiving experience?
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Thank you?
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Yeah, yeah, you know, think yeah, thanks thanks for asking.
You know, I I have a traditional background. Actually, I
up until my mid thirties, I was actually a hedge
fund manager in New York City. You know, so I'll
kind of like give you a quick overview, but you know,
to overlind.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
You know, I have a new Jersey, Calina.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
I have a new Jersey. Okay, great, Yeah, you live
in Manhattan since my early twenties. You know, up until
I was like mid thirties, and you know, I kind
of before I became a caregiver, I was running a
two hundred fifty million dollar Hatch fund investing across healthcare,
technology and other industries. And you know, I I you know,
so it's like a personal experience and mission for me.
But prior to that, I had a complete different career,
(03:50):
which was you know, I grew up in North China,
went to school at Penn, and then found myself in
New York doing investment banking right after college. Was good
at it, very quickly got hired by head funds to
invest across a variety of industries by my late twenties.
By the time I was twenty seven, I became a
partner at a multi billion ar fund where I was
running a portfolio of like turnaround and kind of restructuring investments,
(04:13):
and then throughout the financial crisis, I was like the
only person on the team with that skill set, so I,
you know, kind of ended up managing a lot of
capital and had very successful investments, to the point where
one of the investors in the fund backed me just
tore my own fund I was. I was thirty one,
and I grew that fund from one investor and ten
million in capital to multiple investors and was running two
(04:33):
hundred and fifty million I was the time I was
thirty five, So I was kind of a track of
like in finance. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Yeah, it was like really, yeah, that's something.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
You know.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
I enjoyed the work, you know, I thought it was
like very interesting intellectually, but you know, personal circumstances, you know,
led me to leave my career behind. And it was
really two care experiences, you know. In my early thirties,
I helped my family navigate care for my grandfather through demansia,
kidney failure, cancer, and then of life care and really,
you know, I was like the research person in the family,
(05:04):
you know, finding resources and you know, figuring out how
we could handle it. And then you know, most of
the direct care burden telling my mom and she left
her career to become a caregiver and what was supposed
to be a short term stint turned into a multi
year process, and you know, after that, she was not
able to kind of get back into the workforce. And
it was just like the toll it took on us,
you know, emotionally, physically, you know, just kind of time
(05:26):
and and and really the interaction with the care industry,
you know, like the lack of ability to get good
help really made me interested in you know, kind of
caregiving as like a societal challenge and also a kind
of like innovation opportunity, you know. So that's my first foray,
and at the time, I'm still writing my fund, so
I was kind of like thinking researching what are the
care companies and wise in this being done well. And
then it hit me very personally when at thirty five,
(05:48):
my wife became sire really ill and went through years
of cancer hospitalizations, multiple different therapies. You know, that didn't
work states in the ICU. At one point was in
a medical coma, and I kept taking sabbaticals from running
my fund to be her caregiver, and you know, I
just found it was very hard to get good care help.
(06:09):
You know, I thought that, you know, this is something
where quality really makes a difference in the outcome. So
I ended up taking a bunch of sabbaticals and then
ultimately wound up my fund and became a full time
caregiver for a couple of years. And I was like, yeah,
it was very difficult, you know, emotionally, I think it
was very difficult, kind of like financially after having had
that career to just kind of she wasn't working, I
wasn't working, but bankfully, knock on wood, she finally had
(06:32):
a successful outcome and you know it's not been in
remission for a few years. And that was really what
was the inspiration to say, Okay, now I've experienced the
problem intellectually, I've experienced a problem secondhand, and then I
have also now directly experienced the problem firsthand. And I
realized just like how broken ourcare economy is, and I
have the skills that I can use to fix that.
(06:53):
Instead of just like being a passive investor in other businesses.
So that really led, you know, kind of almost a
shift of my life work to focus on caregiving. And
you know, it's kind of like made a very conscious
decision of Okay, now I'm gonna just like focus my
energy and my skills on building a better solution and
like solving the problem at scale.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Wow, that's some story.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
I'm glad your wife is doing okay now, and sorry
about your grandfather. Yes, when when you've become a caregiver,
especially when you were caregiving, when I was caregiving there,
you see how broken the healthcare system is, how unreliable,
(07:38):
how difficult it is to have reliable services. I wish
there was care yeah yeah in my area for my husband,
my son, and I did a tag team of taking
care of my husband.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Matt, excuse me. And it's very difficult. You probably know this, Neil.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
That mortality rate among caregivers is like sixty three percent.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
It's even higher the older you are.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yeah, as you know, let's face it, I'm a baby boomer.
I'm sixty seven, and I've already been a caregiver. Uh
A couple of times, still a caregiver. For my son
who had to come to disability. But he's great, and
you know, the services just aren't there, and how do
(08:36):
you get reliable help and what you know.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
It's a six billion yeah problem, it's crazy, crazy because
their economy and the care eaders and you know, I
can't believe that in twenty twenty five we don't have
your services.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Set up exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
And as people are aging and I'm one of them,
which is I have to laugh when I hear when
I hear, you know, people talk about seniors and aging
in places like wow, that's me now, put the.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Wrap my head around that. It's it's difficult.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
And the more you know, I mean baby boomers, we're
a large group of people and we don't want to
be in the facility. And I believe we're going to
change the way here is being focused. We want to
stay at home, but we need reliable help and sure, yeah, yeah,
sounds fantastic.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
How did you come up with that name?
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Gosh?
Speaker 2 (09:36):
I like the name.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
I wanted something. I wanted something positive, positive, fun, playful.
You know, I feel like a lot of the care
industry sometimes the names are like a little more sad
or you know, focused on kind of like the care
need as opposed to like a positivity. So one, it's
just the wordy as twice. You know, it's fun and
playful and seems more new age and kind of pack oriented.
But also the word ya means grandmother in Greek. The
(09:59):
word i also means caregiver in Hindi and Swahili and Thai,
so it has kind of multiple meanings in different languages.
And then also ya ya is an acronym for you
are your advocate, which I thought was like the future
of self directed care. So yeah, the name just had
like a bunch of like positive connotations. So it was
a lot of like a lot of fun having that.
(10:20):
And it's just like saying the word ys twice, which
is fun. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Oh, I love that you were your advocate. That's true.
We need to be advocates. We used to say that
all the time because what I heard your name Kiri Yaya.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
I used to work at a preschool and one of
the students called her grandma ya.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Ya that's right, and that yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
That's what made me think of that.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
What I really like when I've read about your company
is that you hire college students, and I think that
is great because they used to say a long time
ago that anyone going into social work to be a doctor,
anyone in the medical community, I felt, should have experience
(11:15):
being with a caregiving family, especially I have a sense
of humor.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Although it's twisted, Neil, especially during a.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Full mood, so that you cannot so they can now
what it is like and what caregivers experience daily. And
the only way to know that is to be with
the family. So what a great education these college students
(11:45):
are getting. They're getting an education you can't get in
a classroom, that's for sure.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Yeah. I totally agree. I totally agree. You know, I
totally agree. And if you think about it, you know,
these are these students or you know, we have all
health career your focused students. So these are going to
be our future doctors, our nurses, our physician assistants, social workers,
physical therapists. Yeah, these are going to be the future
clinical professionals of America. And you know, I think that
it's one thing to work at a hospital, you know,
(12:12):
while you're in school and be a nurse ade and
you know, do your shifts where you're kind of like five, ten,
fifteen minutes in and out of a patient's room, you know.
But I feel like, really, you know that what's lacking
in today's clinical system is like the bedside manner and
the empathy. And I think that really happens from spending
a lot of time with someone. You know, you got
to spend time with someone in their home, you got
to spend time with someone around their family. You got
(12:35):
to spend time with someone consistently hours and hours at
a time, you know, days and weeks and months, and
really building a relationship. And I feel like that's when
you start seeing beyond the disease and you know, being
seeing beyond the disability and start seeing the person as
a person and seeing start seeing the family and both
the joys and the sorrows and the stresses and everything
in between. And I think that you know, today, like
(12:57):
healthcare has become so kind of clinical, you know, in
a good sense or bad sense. But you know, when
you see somebody for five ten minutes to resume, as
this is a cancer patient, that's very different than when
you take care of someone living with terminal cancer and
you see them for six months, three days a week
at five hour shifts and see all the life experiences
they're going through and I think that that builds a
lot of empathy and hopefully that builds better doctors of
(13:20):
the future, in better nurses and people who carry that
empathy with them into the rest of their life and
their work. So yeah, I think it's it's awesome. Yeah,
I love the fun aspect of running the program.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yes, I absolutely agree. How do you ve the college
students and match them with the for like a better word,
match them with the family that would be best for their.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Experience?
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Yeah, so we so we started it very locally. List
So I'm in the robing Durham North Kin area, Spen.
The first year we were just running it here at
the university and UNC Chapel Hill. Now, thankfully, after three
years of hard work, we are nationwide. We have over
thirty thousand students on the carria ap platform and we're
available kind of in your area in New Jersey. We're
in New York City, We're now in Florida, We're in Texas,
(14:14):
We're all over California, and then we're extending to other
states like Michigan, Ohio, kind of wherever there's like a
top fifty university in the country. You know, we are
at now over thirty at the top fifty schools and
spreading you know, kind of outward. What we do is,
you know, we usually the students will learn about us
from the pre health career advisors at the university, so
(14:34):
we do a lot of close collaborations with the universities
biology professors, chemistry professors, career advising as well as like
a lot of the student clubs, like the pre medical
societies will be at different universities, Nursing Club, pre Physician
Assistant Club, physical Therapy. So you know, people kind of
like hear about it through trusted sources and we build
relationships with those trusted sources so they send referrals. Then
(14:57):
we do a multi sub betting process where we background
check everyone that applies, We verify enrollment at the university
that we're partnering with, so we don't just kind of
let anyone on. And then we also do extensive video
based interviews and kind of like use a lot of
technology that we've built over time to kind of like
give a score and a rating based on how we
(15:17):
observe people are performing out in the field. So that's
kind of the cool thing about building all this technologies
that the technology can do a lot of analytics for
you and predict based on how somebody responded to certain questions.
Are they likely to be reliable, are they likely to
be on time? Are they likely to be rated well
by families, et cetera. And then we use a lot
of like personality prediction based on the family that's being onboarded,
(15:40):
the personality of the person that's being cared for, and
then the personage student and then kind of like doing
educated guessing using technology analytics on are they likely to
be a good fit. The cool thing about this is
that because it's like a very technology forward system, there's
a tremendous amount of data being generated. So the data
can kind of like keep refining the matching and kind
of like the prediction algorithms, which then makes for a better,
(16:02):
better experience. And like I would say, you know, it's
kind of cool to do this with technology because our
ratings and like reliability are through the roof, because like
the tech is actually fairly accurate, and you know, like
we have like tons of like very very you know,
four point nine out of five star Google reviews. We
have you know, now over you know, tens of thousands
of care sessions on the platform. Each session is rated
(16:23):
by a family and averaging like you know, four point
eight something internally. So it's like really cool to see
how you can use technology to like improve care quality
and significantly reduce the administrative overhead.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
You know.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
That's like my favorite part about the whole thing is
that the cost of care through carrya in most cities,
like what's in New York City, for example, the prevailing
costs through a local care agency might be like forty
to forty five dollars an hour, where that agency is
paying less than half, you know, and by the way,
that's not the money's not going to the caregiver, right,
They're paying less than half to the caregiver. All that
money is being een by administrative overhead, profit margins of
(16:55):
agency sales, marketing, advertising, all that stuff. Right, So you
as a person paying forty three dollars an hour, are
underlying just paying the care worker maybe seventeen. And then
you know the rest of your money is being wasted
twenty six bucks an hours going somewhere to the ether,
so it's not going to your care carry ads the opposite,
you know, you book in New York City, you get
a Columbia Social work student and it's twenty bucks an
(17:19):
hour and you pay them directly like we charge that fees.
So it's kind of like cool in the sense of
we have like streamlined the administrative overhead costs down so
much to the point where our families and then of
course we are just taking the hit on that, which
is like a different interesting challenge. But we've kind of
gotten social impact funding and grants and everything to scale
(17:39):
our platform. But we're delivering way way better care at
thirty to fifty percent lower rates in most markets, so
that way more families can get the help. And critically,
the caregivers get to earn every dollar. That's the family pace,
so the caregivers love it. So it kind of creates
like a very virtuous cycle, if you will, where caregivers
are happy, they're better, are paid, families are paying less
(18:02):
so they're happy they can afford it. There's full price transparency,
there's tons of like data ratings, reviews, optimized matching. So it's, yeah,
it's really cool to build something. And it's because it's technology,
you know, it can run with like a very very
low overhead, so it can serve a lot of people
in scale. So yeah, our goal is like over that
a couple of years of scale's all over the country
(18:22):
and get half a million suicide.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
That sounds awesome. I know what you're saying, Neal is
one hundred percent true because I worked as a licensed
practical nurse. I checked into private duty a one time
back then. I'm talking many many years ago. They would
pay the agency, say forty sixty dollars for me, and
(18:51):
I would only get maybe twenty twenty five. So yeah, yeah, absolutely,
they're not getting the person who's works and it's not
getting that fifty sixty bucks and now exactly funny or
whatever their their rate is. And how do you train
(19:12):
the students, says I'm sure it's probably more like companion.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Yeah. Service.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Yes, it's only a commination right now, so we don't
offer we don't offer clinical or higher acuity. Usually, if
we get somebody who has higher needs, we like would
refer them out to like a local care agency or
other care options to help them find caregivers on their own.
But right now we only do CampaignOn and level care
because we feel like that's just something that we wanted
to be inclusive off like all the students, and I
think that there is like an interesting thing where if
(19:40):
you make the students have only CNAs or whatever, then
you exclude a lot of students who are well intentioned
and it could be great companions, but they don't have
the funds to kind of go pursue the certification during
this college, right, So campaigning level only, which, by the way,
we do a lot of research with ARP, and we're
backed by AARP. We've actually received some funding from them
through the h Tech collaborat and their statistics suggests sixty
(20:03):
one percent of the cumulative hours that are being cared
for for older adults our companion care. So it's actually
like huge market. You know, if you think about a
six hundred billion dollar market of care for older adults,
sixty one percent being companion, that's a market we can
serve very well. So you know, to your point, we
do companion level only. How do we train them? We
give them a lot of video based instructure and curriculum.
(20:26):
So we have worked closely with UCLA Alzheimer's and Dementia
Center and there's a great training curriculum available for free
for anyone on YouTube, so we give them those modules.
We also received a grant from the National and Student
on Aging and the Johns Hopkins University to build the
first ever AI powered at dementia caregiver training tool, which
(20:46):
we called the Gaia Guide. So under that grant, we've
developed a lot of personalized curriculum which takes a student
from the beginning, quickly figures out what their skill level is,
what they know about dementia care, what they don't know,
then serves up personalized content to them. You know, many
people and you know, kind of in that whole process
called it like what our proposal is like similar like
(21:06):
the dual lingo of dementia care. You know, I don't
know if you're familiar with that app, but it's like
a language learning app that has become very popular among
gen Z students for how do you learn Spanish and
how do you learn other languages? And it's like, you know,
kind of what they call bite sized micro learning modules
that you can, you know, do one minute here, two
minutes here, five minutes here to learn something and then
build up your skills, take little quizzes, gamified experience. So
(21:28):
we built that to train the students. So those are
kind of like the most you know a Perton training methods.
Then yeah, they're going like really well, Like a lot
of students like feel like highly confident and well equipped
after that. And of course they also learned from doing
the care of themselves. You know, like a lot of
times the families, because they know these are students, they'll
be going out of the way to explain, you know,
(21:49):
how things work. And also because we're running this, a
lot of times the medical schools to reach out to
us and host webinars. So we oftentimes have webinars with
like doctors at Duke University of Medical School again John Tompkins,
sometimes at Stanford Medicine, and you know, the like Geriatrics
will put on a webinar of like okay, x y
Z things you need to look portn Geriatrics, you know,
palliative cab webinars. So yeah, it's really awesome. Like when
(22:11):
we build something this, like there's so much interest from
the existing kind of like universities as well as like
medical schools to instruct and kind of like educate the
students on how they can do a better job on care.
And then there's also like a lot of like grant
funding rooms re received to build out better training programs,
which is like really awesome.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
That's really exciting.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
You must be so proud of yourself me from a
tragic situation. You have this wonderful company helping thousands of people.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
And this is what I that's really You're welcome.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
This is what I talk about all the time, neal
that I just love to interview people who had well,
not that I like to they had an unfortunate event,
but they had an unfortunate event and turned it into
a life changing experience and going out and serving others
(23:13):
and helping others. I mean, how important is this? I
mean I could tell you personally, as a former caregiver,
I could have used carry ayap And I think when
you have a young, you know, vibrant college student, we're
not to knock down.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
All the workers because you know my age.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
You know how much yeah, you know how much energy
they bring into your house.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
They would bring such.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Energy to someone, especially if someone has any kind of dementia,
and I think they have more patience and because they
are getting well paid, I think you won't have that
turn around, you know, like you have.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
With other agencies. And I just think that, yeah, that's
just great. Now, where the students allowed to drive.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
The clients to stay to a movie or a restaurant.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
A great question. Great question. So, because we're running it
kind of for free in terms of we don't have
any fees or markups and the students are getting all
the competition, we decided have to kind of like take
the liability of that on the student's side because the
insurance costs is very high. So we've done a partnership
with lyft where the students are able to call the
lifts and get like a better rate to take the person.
(24:44):
So that way it's almost like, you know, let the
driving companies get at the driving and we'll let the
students be get at kind of like the caregiving side.
So the students on their own we can go do
errands in terms of like somebody needs something at the
grocery store and things like that. But you know, it's
like two high risk populations to directly ensure even all
or adult gets into a car with somebody who's just
started driving a few years ago, you know, it's like
(25:05):
the enturance cost ourselves right then. For now, we're just
kind of like partnering with right share companies to handle that.
But at some point we may introduced the feature, but
for now it's just kind of like partnership, which works
pretty well.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah, well, just to you know, be in the home
and get the caregiver a break is just so important
because you know, like I said, and I'm going to
keep saying it, folks.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
The mortality rate for a caregiver is high. That is
the fact. That is a harsh reality. And I'll tell
you what.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
I cared for my mother in law for five years.
I cared for my husband for ten Neil. I thank
god I'm sitting here talking to you. I thank god
that I'm that. I'm pretty, you know, in good shape.
I have some minor issues, but you know what, I'm
a lot better off.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Than a lot of caregivers.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
I have could tell, you know, stories of so many
caregivers whose health deteriorated right after they lost the loved.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
One and they weren't around.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
And I think these are these are like yeah, oh
go ahead, go ahead, and Neil, oh oh sorry, okay, yeah,
I'm gonna think their stats like, we did a lot
of research with the Arapy on this, and the interesting
stat was, uh, thirty three percent of caregivers within one
year of taking care of a loved one developed significant
(26:29):
mental health challenges and twenty five percent of them developed
physical health challenges. So think about that. I mean, I
see this every day. It's like, you know, just like
literally last week, I was talking to a gentleman in
his early sixties taking care of his wife early onset dementia,
and you know, he's been doing it for like now
two years. You know, we help him out a bunch,
you know, which is awesome, but he's just so stressed
(26:50):
all the time. Meanwhile, she's like very calm, you know,
like very calm. Like of course she's like losing some
of her cognitive abilities, but in terms of like overall
stress and happiness level, he's bearing the brunt of it.
And you know, he had to check himself in the
r and then they kept him in the hospital for
monitoring for four days because of heart issue. And during
that time he's reach out to us so worry about
(27:10):
his wife and are there going to be caregivers and
what are they doing in this ad? So you know,
it's just kind of like it really like hits home
that the caregiver is bearing so much strain, you know,
when yeah, worrying constantly about the person that they're carring
for in I mean, that has to have second order
impacts on heart, on stress level, on sleep quality. You know,
I've heard another person we helped for with care. You know,
(27:32):
we do a lot of overnight care, by the way,
which is really interesting that I would have never guessed that.
But college students, as you can imagine, you know, sometimes
have classes during the day, different schedules and all that,
so you know, of course they'll do the care. But
like whenever a Thursday afternoon care session goes on our site,
you know, it might have to go out to ten
different students before somebody can accept. But overnight, everybody's available
(27:53):
and they want to do it. You know, they can
sometimes do homework and other stuff during that time. So
that's a very popular thing people are using cared for.
And I found one thing is I talked to some
of the people who get overnight care for like a
spouse with dementia, and literally we'll hear from their friends
in the dementia support group that, oh wow, Mark feels
like a totally different person now since he started getting
(28:14):
Carriaya because you can actually sleep, you know that, you know,
spouse is a caregiver around and you know, same with
like the sons and daughters so it's been really interesting
to see that. You know, by getting good care, I
think you can get a break as the family caregiver.
And I think that's really like, of course the person
needs the care too, but I think that sometimes the
indirect effect of the solution is that it relieves a
(28:37):
significant amount of stress on the family caregiver, which I
feel like is underfocused on by our current healthcare system. Yeah,
that person, yeah, has the illness, but no one thinks
I'm a caregiver. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Actually, Neil, I could hug you, absolutely right, absolutely right.
I remember my neurologist and this is when Matt was
still alive, and he started asking me a, well, how
are you doing, Betsy, Like now they're starting his wife
as a psychiatrist at Rutgers Behavioral Health, and he said
(29:12):
that they're starting to focus on the caregiver and their
needs and how they can help the caregiver.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Which support it is, and it's about time that.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
You know, the tide is very slowly changing. But I'm
a Jersey girl, Neil, so I tell it straight up
and like it is. And I've said this in my
show many times and I'm going to say it again.
Self care folks, is not selfish. It is a matter
of your life and death. That's how serious self care is.
(29:49):
And if you want to enjoy life after caregiving, and
you have every right to do so and life during caregiving,
you need to take care of yourself and that means
having a.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
College student help you. Then do it. I think, I really.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
I mean, you know, people might tell, well, I can't
afford twenty dollars to pay, well, can you afford to
be sick? Can you afford that to be in a hospital?
I mean I might sound harsh, but this is the reality.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
And you know what, and you know what, if you're
not around, who's going to take care of your loved one?
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Like absolutely logical, like even unselfishly, you need to be
healthy so that you can kind of continue, you know,
caring for the one you have. And I think that
you're right. Like I think there's a lot of timescarecivers
don't think about the software because they're just so busy
dealing with crisis to crisis. And I think that it
is important both for like your own sustainability of the
(30:50):
care situation, both for your sustainability of your health after
the care situation is over. I think that Yeah, it's
something that's like very underdiscussed. So yeah, it's like people
are so frame and silence, you know, and people don't
I think the other challenging about carrying me. I found
even when I was getting through caregiving life, it's like
people want to talk about it because there's like a
social shame or a stigma, Like you don't tell your
coworkers what you're going through because you feel like you'll
(31:11):
be judged. You know, you tell your boss what you're
going through because you feel like people think, oh, you're
going to be distracted doing other stuff. So you know,
a lot of people keep it themselves. Oftentimes, I find
a lot of people like lose friendships and relationships because
you're like the sad person at the group gathering that's
talking about the challenges where everybody else. And I found
this especially from like a middle aged caregiving perspective, where
(31:34):
you know, in our mid thirties, most of my friends
were having kids and talking about vacations that were going on,
and I went through years where you know, I was
talking about my life illness and that's just not fun. Yeah,
So like you find like a social stigma there where
people kind of gradually even even not out of bad
intention to anything, but people just kind of distance themselves
(31:54):
because you're going through a tough time and sometimes people
don't want to hear that. So I think, yeah, you
find yourself in treating isolated, And I guess there has
to be like society when I way more recognition of
this and support of this, because millions of people are
in this situation. So like, if this isn't a one
in five Americans, I think are like dealing with some
form of long term care for a loved one, and
(32:15):
I think that's like a yeah, there needs to be
better recognition of that.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Yeah, oh why you Grimmage were said, absolutely, you do
become isolated, And I twiked about that like eight years ago,
you know, way before the pandemic. Caregivers have felt isolated, abandoned,
and you know, when COVID.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Happened, people got a taste of that.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Then they didn't like it. And I'm me, being who
I am, I said, well, now, how do you think
a caregiver feels all the time?
Speaker 2 (32:48):
You know, yep, yeah, this is how we felt.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
I'm nosy, and Neil, do you know offhand what colleges
in New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Get into so.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
Yes, we're at We're at Wreutgers, We're at Fair States,
and then we are also just in New York City
where we started. We're at Columbia and Fordham and Hunter College,
and then we're expanding kind of gradually. It extends kind
of like mostly word of mouth. Like consider wherever a
bunch of families sign up to get the care, then
we'll like be building relationship with the nearby university, or
(33:27):
sometimes the university will reach out because they have, you know,
the professors and pre alb advisors have relations with other universities,
so we kind of build both ways. But yeah, I
think that you know, between New York and New Jersey
that might be like ultimately like a huge opportunity for
us because there's just so many students in a geographically
dense area and such a unaffordable care market, you know. Otherwise,
(33:50):
you know, in terms of like the prevailing kind of
like agency based rates are often worth of forty dollars
an hour, so you know, we can run our model
and like several a lot of people who you know
kind of fall through the gaps there in the care
economy and may not be able to afford agency based
care I say, most of the people use care are
either looking for solutions on their own, so this just
makes it a lot easier, safer, and more vetted to
(34:12):
do it. Instead of just posting up flyers at your
local school, are going to care dot com and just
trying to find the random people. And then some people
are just like, hey, you know, with agencies, they can
only afford so much or I can't afford it, and
you know, with this I can. So I think that
we also have that. So yeah, but we are we
are like spreading, We're we're rugvenues in the York, New
Jersey area as if only like three or four months ago.
(34:35):
But yeah, like there was like a big segment that
CNBC did about our work and that really launched the
New York, New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Market for us.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
So that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Wow, well congratulations.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
I know, like I think a year or two ago,
like local paper you welcome, there was a big argle
about aging in New Jersey and I forgot the amount,
but it's in the millions. Of how many senior there are,
I'm one.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Of them now. But yeah, and we'll be needing you know, care.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
This is really I'm excited. Neil I'm so glad I'm
talking to you because I know there's a need for
this in my area. There's definitely a need. There was
a man this is last year in Woolgreens. His wife
was with him. She had Alzheimer's and he said, I
have no help.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
I'm alone.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
And he's not the only one. There's people who are
in need of services and they don't know where to go.
They don't know where to turn to. And kier Yah
Yah is an excellent resource. Now, what happens during the
summertime when the students go home?
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Great question. Actually, so this was a challenge in the
first year or so of building it because in the
first year we were only at two universities, Duke University
and UNC Chapel Hills. And when the students went home,
the availability of a number of students dropped quite a bit.
But to a pleasant surprise, about fifteen to twenty percent
of them stayed on campus, you know, for a variety
(36:14):
of reasons, just like socially, or take a summer class
here or there, or work part ten jobs. So and
then whoever stayed because they didn't have class, they had
a lot more time. So on balance in the first
year or two while we were running it locally, it
meted out where the number of students dropped, but the
ones that are available increased their hours per week four
or five times, you know, so then the same amount
(36:36):
of care was being delivered. Then as we started spreading
into other geographies. Now there's an even cooler thing where
there's a migration within the Carrie AIS system where if
there's a student at Emory University in Atlanta, but you know,
mom and Dad's from New York and then they come
back to New York. Or there's a student from New
Jersey who's going to school at Duke, but they're back
(36:59):
home for the summer, or you know, the same thing
with like, okay, we're in San Francisco and there might
be a student who has the University of Michigan, but
they're back in San Francisco for the summer. So now,
because we have thirty thousand students all over the country,
as they go back home for the summer, most of
them are actually in places where Carrie is available, and
because they've done it during the school year, many of
(37:20):
them will do a lot of it during the summer.
So generally near like larger city areas. We have found
there to be like an increase in the availability of
care over the summer because the students kind of move around.
And then that's one of the benefit of running around
like this nationally is that if they're on it at
University of Michigan and then they came back home to
(37:41):
you know, kind of Summit, New Jersey, Okay, well if
there's carry going on there, they're going to do a
lot of it, you know, because they're like, I already
know this program, and I'm already in the program, so
I don't have there like go back home to Summit
and apply to like local jobs. I can just keep
doing this. So I'd say, yeah, pleasant sur brides that
this like past summer was the first test and that
went really well where care actually went up summer, so
(38:02):
that was really cool.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
That is cool.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
Now is there a supervisor that comes around and checks
up on the student and how the family is doing,
how they're connecting and getting along.
Speaker 3 (38:18):
It's all through technology, you know. So that's kind of
the one pro and con of doing it this way
is that in order to extremeline the cost and keep
just like the cost super super low, all of it
is ratings that the family leaves for the students and
the students leave for the families. We will manually insert
ourselves and go check if like there are lower ratings,
(38:38):
so you know, like if on the family side, if
they rate a student less than four stars out of
five more than once, we'll reach out and see what's
going on, you know, and if we don't have a
good explanation, we'll deactivate you know, the student's profile and
they're not kind of allowed to be on a care
platform again. So please to say, you know, that's like
extremely infrequent. You know, we don't have to do that much,
(39:00):
and the quality of the care from the students is
really good. But yeah, based on having empowering the families
to do it and to leave reviews, you know, we
feel like, okay, that's a great way to get data
from the market of like, okay, how are people liking
the care?
Speaker 2 (39:13):
So yeah, I like that.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
I like that both the family and the student have inputs, yes,
because sometimes you know, you could have a personality clash
that happens sometimes and sometimes you know, it might take
you know a couple of times to get you know,
the right fit, just like what the therapist maybe the
first therapist to go to.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Isn't you know the ones for you? This is so
a mindful of for fate.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Because just like that's what I love about doing my show,
Neil is I love to tell people about resources that
I wish we're available when I was caregiving, and now
they are available, and now you will be listed as
a resource. I'm Pastoral Talk Radio Network. They look up
(40:07):
here getting you're gonna be uh, you're welcome. Your name
will come up and you.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
Know, it's just.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
I wish I could hide you because this is so
needed and not just that it's you know, intergenerational. How
much can a college student what benefit to.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Learn from another generation?
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Because I've interviewed somebody about that, you know, intergenerational relationships
and friendships.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
What they could learn?
Speaker 1 (40:39):
I know he's to love to hear my grandmother's stories,
to hear stories, to gain wisdom from another generation. This
is just an what an incredible learning experience. This is great,
great for college students, Neil. How does a college student
(41:01):
or family contact you to see if kr yayahs just
fit for them?
Speaker 2 (41:09):
And to no more?
Speaker 4 (41:10):
If both sides would we go to our website It's
www dot kaya dot org s c A r E y
A y A dot r G.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
And you know, they can sign up on the site.
You know, both the family can sign up to get
care the student can sign up and apply to be
the caregiver. Our process will then kind of check, okay,
are we at that student's university. If not, they'll go
on a wait list. And then when we get enough
you know, interest from a university on a weight list,
we might reach out and build relationships. And then same
with the family. The family can check through zip code
(41:46):
are they are we available there? And then if not,
they'll get on a waitlist, and then if they kind
of make it through, then we'll have onboarding processes with
people on our team that'll reach out to them and
on board them to see if it's a good fit.
And then they can also follo us onto media. We're
like pretty active if they want to learn more about
our work. You know, I'm reasonably active on LinkedIn, So
you know, you just follow like Neil n E A
(42:08):
L middle initial K, and then the last name shaw
as h ah, so people can look up Neil ksha
on LinkedIn with Carrie I A. I post a lot
about different topics and and kind of I do a
lot of care giving advocacy, you know, because I'm like
very impassionate about the topic and I feel like it's
under discussed in society. I mean, I also talk about
other initiatives, you know, we're always launching new initiatives. Like
(42:29):
recently we've been realizing obviously in light of all this
stuff happening in the news regarding health insurance and denied claims.
You know, we've been doing a lot of research around that,
and that's something that we learned a lot of our
population is dealing with where healthcare claims are being denied
at scale, you know, under medical advantage plans, even for
the caregivers themselves. A lot of middle aged people are
dealing with denials for their own health issues. And you know,
(42:52):
so as we kind of like learn and understand the
needs of people, you know, here's a cool thing, kind
of just complete unerrated where we went down a rabbit
al on this over the last two months and we
were as like, so many of our people using care
I are dealing with this, even though some of the
students are doing this by the way, believe it or not,
Like there I've got tons of students come out of
the word work and saying I just had twenty thousand
dollars of claims denied for a major surgery, and the
students are panicking up, like I don't have that kind
(43:12):
of money. So we then very rapidly built a technology solution.
They're using AI and training AI models based on strategies
to write really good appeals letters. Because we realize that,
you know, believe it or not, forty nine million people
that had to denied health insurance claim last year, less
than one percent of people appealed. So can you can
(43:34):
you believe that like people don't know their rights that
they don't know when yeah, you know Umana or unted
Healthcare or somebody just says okay, I deny this coverage,
you can actually appeal and then off the people who
bother to appeal, half of them win. So we were like, okay,
this this sucks. Like people are scared to appeal, they
don't know how to do it, they don't have a
doctor in the family, they think it's going to take
(43:54):
twenty hours to write a letter and a lot. So
we trained AI models to do this for you, and
we just kind of rolled out this product, which we
call Counterforce health and you know, just kind of posts
it on a site and you know it's free to use,
like it costs us some money, but we're like, okay, whatever,
we'll just go get a grant and give it away.
And so now we you know, anyone can come to
the site and in two minutes they can upload their
(44:17):
denial letter from a health insure, whatever the issue is,
upload any backup, you know, background documentation like the coverage
of the policy and any other notes from doctors, and
then it'll knock out in two minutes, a very detailed,
seeks to ten page appeal letter citing a tremendous amount
of medical necessity, kind of like references from journals, going
(44:38):
through policy and pointing out parts of the policy where
this says it should be covered. And then you know
you can kind of print that out and you know,
fax it or mail it in and you know, the
win rates are pretty good. So we do a lot
of stuff like that's like very care advocacy focused because
you realize, like a lot of these caregivers aures are
so stressed, and I've dealt with this myself when I
was caring for my wife, Like sometimes I'll get these
(45:00):
claim the Niles letters and I just like spend hours
on the phone fighting over like medication that was absolutely
essential that like Insurns was refusing to cover at one
point after a surgery, they were refusing to cover and
you know, so we're like, Okay, how con you like
use our technology skills to like reduce the burden for caregivers.
So that's been like a cool initiative. So yeah, I
think people can follow us on social media and where
(45:21):
they can learn about like initiatives like that, because we're
always like looking to get information from problems people are
dealing with and then use that to inspire, like where
can we dedicate our energy to building a solution?
Speaker 2 (45:33):
Well that is uh that that is awesome.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
I listen to this doctor on Instagram. I had interviewed
him a couple of years ago, and he said that
it's funny, but it's not funny that companies are using
AI to deny claims.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
So someone's not even looking at that, and I is
doing that.
Speaker 3 (45:59):
Healthcare big investigation more managed. There's a huge investigation ninety percent.
Can you believe that like in one of these one
of these investigations, And I think the government is waking
up to this by the way, because I think the
Department of Justice investigating, but like there was an investigation
of older adults living in nursing homes that were on
Medicare advantage plans ninety percent denial rate on certain medications
(46:24):
and treatments and it was because of AI. No one
is even looking at it, and and you know why
because they can get away with it because when they
do that, somebody on the other end has to spend
six hours writing a letter. And you know, can you
imagine like how short staff the nursing homes are, Like
the staff doesn't have the time, the older person can
advocate for themselves. The family member is probably strapped for time,
(46:46):
so it's like it just won't happen, right, Like no
one will appeal. So that's why I'm you know, I
think that the thing is like this is like a
new technology that has been weaponized by large organizations that
have the money and have the resources. But it's now
about to be up and nice the other way, as in,
we are building the thing so that people can counter
back because it doesn't cost that much. You know, it
(47:06):
just has to have like you know, a technology team
build the tool. But the each instance of the tool
is not very expensive. It's costs like a few pennies.
So we're like, okay, fine, we'll just give it away
for free, Like we ate all day upront costs to
build it. Now anyone can come, you know, to our site,
which we run it as counterforcehealth dot org. That's where
we like hosted the tool here to kind of push
back against the insurance stiles, and people can just upload
(47:29):
letters and at the click of button get a detailed
appeal letter. So I think that you're right, Like, I
think this is now happening at scale because it's like
an unfair fight where if the insurer just like puts
an algorithm through, but meanwhile millions of people have to
waste six hours writing stuff. You know that of people
are going to do it. But if now the people
can just go one click it and you know, put
(47:50):
the thing back, then now the insurance kind of has
to pay it out. And in our case, we not
only send the appeal letter to the insure, we also
send it to the state insurance regulator that didn't want
to keep a check on these people. You know that
that okay, if then and then the insurance regulators calls
us because they're like, oh wow, I got no idea
like this. Many people are dealing with this because then
the regulators see, hey, these are frivolous. Like the denials,
(48:13):
a lot of them are just very frivolous. We're like
the insurance is like denying it, you know, even though
they know it's necessary, just thinking, Wow, if you don't
push back, you know, I just collect the profit. So yeah,
I think that there is like until regulation catches up,
I feel like you have to have innovators just building
tools to give to people so that they can fight
back fairly.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
Wow, of folks, I've definitely take that out.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
Counter Force help dot com. That's that's the correct that.
Speaker 3 (48:42):
Yeah, dot org. It's a free service. Yeah so sorry
about yeah dot com because like all our products are free.
Speaker 4 (48:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (48:50):
So yeah, it's like, wow, your commercial interests. But yeah,
it's Counterforce Health. We were initially it's gonna put it
on carry, but I realized that this wasn't just older
Americans you know this, There were so many college students
in this, there were so many millions people doing with this.
It was just like a systemic problem across the range
of the population. So yeah, yeah, we put it on
as like yeah, counterforce health dot org. Anyone can just
(49:13):
go and sign up to use the tools and within
then just get a really good appeal letter and that
can make a huge social intact.
Speaker 2 (49:21):
It was important. I mean, Neil, I believe you and
I could do a home show on that.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
At the home show, Yeah, on appeal. And now I
had experienced a few years ago and my husband being
on he was on the Generica the Excellent patch, and
I had a change insurance prescription coverage. They said they
(49:47):
would cover it, then they said that they wouldn't cover it.
Then I had appeal it, and I had appeal it again.
Oh no, try it pill. He did, try it pill.
He can't swallow it. He made a big difference. And
the cost because it was quite expensive, and you know,
they don't count on people appealing. My cardiologists told me
(50:10):
he had a fight with the company. His patient needed
a procedure. They had chest pains, they had blockage, and
they're denying it. How can you tonight a procedure to
clear out someone's arteries or veins when they show blockage.
I mean, this is just insane.
Speaker 3 (50:32):
I agreed, I think it's I think it's totally insane,
and I think, you know, to your point, like even
in your husband's they are like people going through alz
Emerson demensia now like compared to eve in a few
years ago. There's like actual therapies on the market, right,
but they're like kind of expensive, and even though Medicare
covers them, a lot of the private for profit insurance
plans are frivolously denying them. And you know, this is
(50:53):
kind of like tough because no one can out of
pocket afford you know. So I think that, yeah, these
like denials of I rocketed in the last few years,
and I think it's partly because a lot of these
places like using technology publicity denying. Partly it's because government's
been kind of asleep at the wheel, so no one's
really paying attention, and the entrance companies like, well, if
I can get away with it, let me do more.
(51:14):
So I think that you know, that is something you
can change from the ground up, where you can empower
people through tech tools to okay, now anyone can kind
of like appeal and write that quickly, and also everyone
can be one click sending the appeal and the initial
denial to their regulator. Like that, I think that kind
of movement can quickly create more conversation around the problem
(51:38):
the state level and at the federal level. And I
think I think this is going to be big. You know,
my personal opinion is in twenty twenty five years earlier
part of the year, but I think there's going to
be a hot fun this HUE this year and next
year because the crisis like getting out of control.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
Yeah, yes, well, thank you for sharing that resource.
Speaker 2 (51:54):
That'll go on to put that in the like that's
really very, very important. Neil.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
I can't thank you enough for coming on and sharing
your story and what your company does.
Speaker 2 (52:11):
And I'm excited for you and very as successful. Folks.
You heard Neil. That's spelled an E. A. L. K.
Shaw today CEO and co founder of Kiri Yaya. Check
it out.
Speaker 1 (52:27):
All the information about Neil will be in the blog
that Jeanie White writes to the station manager and produces
the show. And folks, what a resource, What a tremendous resource.
I get excited because this resource is so necessary. I
wish it was available for me. It wasn't and that's
(52:50):
why I do the show.
Speaker 2 (52:52):
Folks.
Speaker 1 (52:52):
I want you all to know about resources. I want
you to know about resources and people who can help
improve the quality of your life and your loved ones life.
That's what I'm here for. That's what chatting with Betty
is about. And I just thank you all for listening.
Want to say, Lilian Coldwell, who's CEO a pesteable to
(53:13):
a radio network, makes it all possible, and thank you
for listening. Subscribing if you don't already. Chatting with Betty's
for free on Apple, Spotify, Spreaker, iHeart Amazon Music to
name a few, and you can follow me on Facebook
bet Ge Wurzel w u r z e L And
(53:35):
I just thank you Anil for having this company Kiaya
and this counter force help dot org. It just sounds awesome.
People will definitely need it. And thank you so much
for what you do for caregivers and their families.
Speaker 3 (53:57):
Thank you, appreciate.
Speaker 2 (54:00):
You are welcome.
Speaker 1 (54:01):
My pleasure and best wishes on more expansion, Folks, students,
caregivers go on the website www dot Kreyaya dot org
find out that you could sign up if you're a student.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
Sign up with your caregiver and you need help.
Speaker 1 (54:22):
This is awesome, just really tremendously awesome, and I'm so
happy I could share it with my audience and as
I always say, folks at the end of my show,
excuse me in a world where you could be anything,
please be kind and shine.
Speaker 2 (54:39):
You're light bright because we need it now more than
ever before.
Speaker 1 (54:44):
This is Betsy Worthal. You're a host of Chatting with
Betsy and passionate world talk radio network as the Soudary
Global Media Network LC. Chat with you later, Bye bye
now
Hello, everyone, This is Betsy Wurzel. You're a host of
Chatting with Betsy. I'm pastor Roltalk Radio Network, a subsidiary
of Global Media Network LLC Aramantos to educate, enlighten, and entertain.
The views of the guest may not represent those of
the hosts of stations, Folks, They'll have to bear with me.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I don't know why my froke.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
I kind of a sore last night, so I'm kind
of rasping, but I am blessed and grateful to be
here talking to you all. And I have my special
guests on with me today. And before I introduce my guest,
I have to share something, you know.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I've then interviewed a lot of.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Caregivers of story of their businesses, and in my opinion,
I've said this on my show.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Before I was looking for a.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Business, I want to go to a person who has
walked the walk, who knows what I'm going through and
who has a special type of empathy because they were
a caregiver. And that's just my personal opinion. And with
me today is Neil ka Shaw, who was a caregiver.
(01:16):
That's why he started his company. He is CEO and
co founder of care Yaya, a tech startup and applied
research lab focused on enhancing care delivery. Neil is a
former hedge fund manager turned social entrepreneur. He co founded
(01:37):
the company after a profoundly personal experience with caregiving. Care
Yaya is also launching new applications at ai to help
people better manage caregiving, and their mission is to empower
family caregivers and create a better future for care What
(01:57):
a such a necessary search this? I want to welcome you,
Neil Okay Shara to Channing with Betsy.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Thanks Betsy really appreciate having me on and excited to
tell people about our mission and you know, hope we
can help.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Yes, I say this, Neil all the time.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
I find personally the people who went through caregiving saw
a need for something that they didn't have available to
them and started their company, started a business to help
caregivers because they know what it's like, and.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
You know what it's like, and that, yes, is a
plus to me. That is a huge plus.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
And I just want to tell the audience folks, if
you haven't already been a caregiver, you will be. Are
You're going to need one, and you need to listen
to Neil saw today. So I want to ask you
about your background, y'all. Why was your caregiving experience?
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Thank you?
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Yeah, yeah, you know, think yeah, thanks thanks for asking.
You know, I I have a traditional background. Actually, I
up until my mid thirties, I was actually a hedge
fund manager in New York City. You know, so I'll
kind of like give you a quick overview, but you know,
to overlind.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
You know, I have a new Jersey, Calina.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
I have a new Jersey. Okay, great, Yeah, you live
in Manhattan since my early twenties. You know, up until
I was like mid thirties, and you know, I kind
of before I became a caregiver, I was running a
two hundred fifty million dollar Hatch fund investing across healthcare,
technology and other industries. And you know, I I you know,
so it's like a personal experience and mission for me.
But prior to that, I had a complete different career,
(03:50):
which was you know, I grew up in North China,
went to school at Penn, and then found myself in
New York doing investment banking right after college. Was good
at it, very quickly got hired by head funds to
invest across a variety of industries by my late twenties.
By the time I was twenty seven, I became a
partner at a multi billion ar fund where I was
running a portfolio of like turnaround and kind of restructuring investments,
(04:13):
and then throughout the financial crisis, I was like the
only person on the team with that skill set, so I,
you know, kind of ended up managing a lot of
capital and had very successful investments, to the point where
one of the investors in the fund backed me just
tore my own fund I was. I was thirty one,
and I grew that fund from one investor and ten
million in capital to multiple investors and was running two
(04:33):
hundred and fifty million I was the time I was
thirty five, So I was kind of a track of
like in finance. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Yeah, it was like really, yeah, that's something.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
You know.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
I enjoyed the work, you know, I thought it was
like very interesting intellectually, but you know, personal circumstances, you know,
led me to leave my career behind. And it was
really two care experiences, you know. In my early thirties,
I helped my family navigate care for my grandfather through demansia,
kidney failure, cancer, and then of life care and really,
you know, I was like the research person in the family,
(05:04):
you know, finding resources and you know, figuring out how
we could handle it. And then you know, most of
the direct care burden telling my mom and she left
her career to become a caregiver and what was supposed
to be a short term stint turned into a multi
year process, and you know, after that, she was not
able to kind of get back into the workforce. And
it was just like the toll it took on us,
you know, emotionally, physically, you know, just kind of time
(05:26):
and and and really the interaction with the care industry,
you know, like the lack of ability to get good
help really made me interested in you know, kind of
caregiving as like a societal challenge and also a kind
of like innovation opportunity, you know. So that's my first foray,
and at the time, I'm still writing my fund, so
I was kind of like thinking researching what are the
care companies and wise in this being done well. And
then it hit me very personally when at thirty five,
(05:48):
my wife became sire really ill and went through years
of cancer hospitalizations, multiple different therapies. You know, that didn't
work states in the ICU. At one point was in
a medical coma, and I kept taking sabbaticals from running
my fund to be her caregiver, and you know, I
just found it was very hard to get good care help.
(06:09):
You know, I thought that, you know, this is something
where quality really makes a difference in the outcome. So
I ended up taking a bunch of sabbaticals and then
ultimately wound up my fund and became a full time
caregiver for a couple of years. And I was like, yeah,
it was very difficult, you know, emotionally, I think it
was very difficult, kind of like financially after having had
that career to just kind of she wasn't working, I
wasn't working, but bankfully, knock on wood, she finally had
(06:32):
a successful outcome and you know it's not been in
remission for a few years. And that was really what
was the inspiration to say, Okay, now I've experienced the
problem intellectually, I've experienced a problem secondhand, and then I
have also now directly experienced the problem firsthand. And I
realized just like how broken ourcare economy is, and I
have the skills that I can use to fix that.
(06:53):
Instead of just like being a passive investor in other businesses.
So that really led, you know, kind of almost a
shift of my life work to focus on caregiving. And
you know, it's kind of like made a very conscious
decision of Okay, now I'm gonna just like focus my
energy and my skills on building a better solution and
like solving the problem at scale.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Wow, that's some story.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
I'm glad your wife is doing okay now, and sorry
about your grandfather. Yes, when when you've become a caregiver,
especially when you were caregiving, when I was caregiving there,
you see how broken the healthcare system is, how unreliable,
(07:38):
how difficult it is to have reliable services. I wish
there was care yeah yeah in my area for my husband,
my son, and I did a tag team of taking
care of my husband.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Matt, excuse me. And it's very difficult. You probably know this, Neil.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
That mortality rate among caregivers is like sixty three percent.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
It's even higher the older you are.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yeah, as you know, let's face it, I'm a baby boomer.
I'm sixty seven, and I've already been a caregiver. Uh
A couple of times, still a caregiver. For my son
who had to come to disability. But he's great, and
you know, the services just aren't there, and how do
(08:36):
you get reliable help and what you know.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
It's a six billion yeah problem, it's crazy, crazy because
their economy and the care eaders and you know, I
can't believe that in twenty twenty five we don't have
your services.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Set up exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
And as people are aging and I'm one of them,
which is I have to laugh when I hear when
I hear, you know, people talk about seniors and aging
in places like wow, that's me now, put the.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Wrap my head around that. It's it's difficult.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
And the more you know, I mean baby boomers, we're
a large group of people and we don't want to
be in the facility. And I believe we're going to
change the way here is being focused. We want to
stay at home, but we need reliable help and sure, yeah, yeah,
sounds fantastic.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
How did you come up with that name?
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Gosh?
Speaker 2 (09:36):
I like the name.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
I wanted something. I wanted something positive, positive, fun, playful.
You know, I feel like a lot of the care
industry sometimes the names are like a little more sad
or you know, focused on kind of like the care
need as opposed to like a positivity. So one, it's
just the wordy as twice. You know, it's fun and
playful and seems more new age and kind of pack oriented.
But also the word ya means grandmother in Greek. The
(09:59):
word i also means caregiver in Hindi and Swahili and Thai,
so it has kind of multiple meanings in different languages.
And then also ya ya is an acronym for you
are your advocate, which I thought was like the future
of self directed care. So yeah, the name just had
like a bunch of like positive connotations. So it was
a lot of like a lot of fun having that.
(10:20):
And it's just like saying the word ys twice, which
is fun. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Oh, I love that you were your advocate. That's true.
We need to be advocates. We used to say that
all the time because what I heard your name Kiri Yaya.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
I used to work at a preschool and one of
the students called her grandma ya.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Ya that's right, and that yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
That's what made me think of that.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
What I really like when I've read about your company
is that you hire college students, and I think that
is great because they used to say a long time
ago that anyone going into social work to be a doctor,
anyone in the medical community, I felt, should have experience
(11:15):
being with a caregiving family, especially I have a sense
of humor.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Although it's twisted, Neil, especially during a.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Full mood, so that you cannot so they can now
what it is like and what caregivers experience daily. And
the only way to know that is to be with
the family. So what a great education these college students
(11:45):
are getting. They're getting an education you can't get in
a classroom, that's for sure.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Yeah. I totally agree. I totally agree. You know, I
totally agree. And if you think about it, you know,
these are these students or you know, we have all
health career your focused students. So these are going to
be our future doctors, our nurses, our physician assistants, social workers,
physical therapists. Yeah, these are going to be the future
clinical professionals of America. And you know, I think that
it's one thing to work at a hospital, you know,
(12:12):
while you're in school and be a nurse ade and
you know, do your shifts where you're kind of like five, ten,
fifteen minutes in and out of a patient's room, you know.
But I feel like, really, you know that what's lacking
in today's clinical system is like the bedside manner and
the empathy. And I think that really happens from spending
a lot of time with someone. You know, you got
to spend time with someone in their home, you got
to spend time with someone around their family. You got
(12:35):
to spend time with someone consistently hours and hours at
a time, you know, days and weeks and months, and
really building a relationship. And I feel like that's when
you start seeing beyond the disease and you know, being
seeing beyond the disability and start seeing the person as
a person and seeing start seeing the family and both
the joys and the sorrows and the stresses and everything
in between. And I think that you know, today, like
(12:57):
healthcare has become so kind of clinical, you know, in
a good sense or bad sense. But you know, when
you see somebody for five ten minutes to resume, as
this is a cancer patient, that's very different than when
you take care of someone living with terminal cancer and
you see them for six months, three days a week
at five hour shifts and see all the life experiences
they're going through and I think that that builds a
lot of empathy and hopefully that builds better doctors of
(13:20):
the future, in better nurses and people who carry that
empathy with them into the rest of their life and
their work. So yeah, I think it's it's awesome. Yeah,
I love the fun aspect of running the program.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yes, I absolutely agree. How do you ve the college
students and match them with the for like a better word,
match them with the family that would be best for their.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Experience?
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Yeah, so we so we started it very locally. List
So I'm in the robing Durham North Kin area, Spen.
The first year we were just running it here at
the university and UNC Chapel Hill. Now, thankfully, after three
years of hard work, we are nationwide. We have over
thirty thousand students on the carria ap platform and we're
available kind of in your area in New Jersey. We're
in New York City, We're now in Florida, We're in Texas,
(14:14):
We're all over California, and then we're extending to other
states like Michigan, Ohio, kind of wherever there's like a
top fifty university in the country. You know, we are
at now over thirty at the top fifty schools and
spreading you know, kind of outward. What we do is,
you know, we usually the students will learn about us
from the pre health career advisors at the university, so
(14:34):
we do a lot of close collaborations with the universities
biology professors, chemistry professors, career advising as well as like
a lot of the student clubs, like the pre medical
societies will be at different universities, Nursing Club, pre Physician
Assistant Club, physical Therapy. So you know, people kind of
like hear about it through trusted sources and we build
relationships with those trusted sources so they send referrals. Then
(14:57):
we do a multi sub betting process where we background
check everyone that applies, We verify enrollment at the university
that we're partnering with, so we don't just kind of
let anyone on. And then we also do extensive video
based interviews and kind of like use a lot of
technology that we've built over time to kind of like
give a score and a rating based on how we
(15:17):
observe people are performing out in the field. So that's
kind of the cool thing about building all this technologies
that the technology can do a lot of analytics for
you and predict based on how somebody responded to certain questions.
Are they likely to be reliable, are they likely to
be on time? Are they likely to be rated well
by families, et cetera. And then we use a lot
of like personality prediction based on the family that's being onboarded,
(15:40):
the personality of the person that's being cared for, and
then the personage student and then kind of like doing
educated guessing using technology analytics on are they likely to
be a good fit. The cool thing about this is
that because it's like a very technology forward system, there's
a tremendous amount of data being generated. So the data
can kind of like keep refining the matching and kind
of like the prediction algorithms, which then makes for a better,
(16:02):
better experience. And like I would say, you know, it's
kind of cool to do this with technology because our
ratings and like reliability are through the roof, because like
the tech is actually fairly accurate, and you know, like
we have like tons of like very very you know,
four point nine out of five star Google reviews. We
have you know, now over you know, tens of thousands
of care sessions on the platform. Each session is rated
(16:23):
by a family and averaging like you know, four point
eight something internally. So it's like really cool to see
how you can use technology to like improve care quality
and significantly reduce the administrative overhead.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
You know.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
That's like my favorite part about the whole thing is
that the cost of care through carrya in most cities,
like what's in New York City, for example, the prevailing
costs through a local care agency might be like forty
to forty five dollars an hour, where that agency is
paying less than half, you know, and by the way,
that's not the money's not going to the caregiver, right,
They're paying less than half to the caregiver. All that
money is being een by administrative overhead, profit margins of
(16:55):
agency sales, marketing, advertising, all that stuff. Right, So you
as a person paying forty three dollars an hour, are
underlying just paying the care worker maybe seventeen. And then
you know the rest of your money is being wasted
twenty six bucks an hours going somewhere to the ether,
so it's not going to your care carry ads the opposite,
you know, you book in New York City, you get
a Columbia Social work student and it's twenty bucks an
(17:19):
hour and you pay them directly like we charge that fees.
So it's kind of like cool in the sense of
we have like streamlined the administrative overhead costs down so
much to the point where our families and then of
course we are just taking the hit on that, which
is like a different interesting challenge. But we've kind of
gotten social impact funding and grants and everything to scale
(17:39):
our platform. But we're delivering way way better care at
thirty to fifty percent lower rates in most markets, so
that way more families can get the help. And critically,
the caregivers get to earn every dollar. That's the family pace,
so the caregivers love it. So it kind of creates
like a very virtuous cycle, if you will, where caregivers
are happy, they're better, are paid, families are paying less
(18:02):
so they're happy they can afford it. There's full price transparency,
there's tons of like data ratings, reviews, optimized matching. So it's, yeah,
it's really cool to build something. And it's because it's technology,
you know, it can run with like a very very
low overhead, so it can serve a lot of people
in scale. So yeah, our goal is like over that
a couple of years of scale's all over the country
(18:22):
and get half a million suicide.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
That sounds awesome. I know what you're saying, Neal is
one hundred percent true because I worked as a licensed
practical nurse. I checked into private duty a one time
back then. I'm talking many many years ago. They would
pay the agency, say forty sixty dollars for me, and
(18:51):
I would only get maybe twenty twenty five. So yeah, yeah, absolutely,
they're not getting the person who's works and it's not
getting that fifty sixty bucks and now exactly funny or
whatever their their rate is. And how do you train
(19:12):
the students, says I'm sure it's probably more like companion.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Yeah. Service.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Yes, it's only a commination right now, so we don't
offer we don't offer clinical or higher acuity. Usually, if
we get somebody who has higher needs, we like would
refer them out to like a local care agency or
other care options to help them find caregivers on their own.
But right now we only do CampaignOn and level care
because we feel like that's just something that we wanted
to be inclusive off like all the students, and I
think that there is like an interesting thing where if
(19:40):
you make the students have only CNAs or whatever, then
you exclude a lot of students who are well intentioned
and it could be great companions, but they don't have
the funds to kind of go pursue the certification during
this college, right, So campaigning level only, which, by the way,
we do a lot of research with ARP, and we're
backed by AARP. We've actually received some funding from them
through the h Tech collaborat and their statistics suggests sixty
(20:03):
one percent of the cumulative hours that are being cared
for for older adults our companion care. So it's actually
like huge market. You know, if you think about a
six hundred billion dollar market of care for older adults,
sixty one percent being companion, that's a market we can
serve very well. So you know, to your point, we
do companion level only. How do we train them? We
give them a lot of video based instructure and curriculum.
(20:26):
So we have worked closely with UCLA Alzheimer's and Dementia
Center and there's a great training curriculum available for free
for anyone on YouTube, so we give them those modules.
We also received a grant from the National and Student
on Aging and the Johns Hopkins University to build the
first ever AI powered at dementia caregiver training tool, which
(20:46):
we called the Gaia Guide. So under that grant, we've
developed a lot of personalized curriculum which takes a student
from the beginning, quickly figures out what their skill level is,
what they know about dementia care, what they don't know,
then serves up personalized content to them. You know, many
people and you know, kind of in that whole process
called it like what our proposal is like similar like
(21:06):
the dual lingo of dementia care. You know, I don't
know if you're familiar with that app, but it's like
a language learning app that has become very popular among
gen Z students for how do you learn Spanish and
how do you learn other languages? And it's like, you know,
kind of what they call bite sized micro learning modules
that you can, you know, do one minute here, two
minutes here, five minutes here to learn something and then
build up your skills, take little quizzes, gamified experience. So
(21:28):
we built that to train the students. So those are
kind of like the most you know a Perton training methods.
Then yeah, they're going like really well, Like a lot
of students like feel like highly confident and well equipped
after that. And of course they also learned from doing
the care of themselves. You know, like a lot of
times the families, because they know these are students, they'll
be going out of the way to explain, you know,
(21:49):
how things work. And also because we're running this, a
lot of times the medical schools to reach out to
us and host webinars. So we oftentimes have webinars with
like doctors at Duke University of Medical School again John Tompkins,
sometimes at Stanford Medicine, and you know, the like Geriatrics
will put on a webinar of like okay, x y
Z things you need to look portn Geriatrics, you know,
palliative cab webinars. So yeah, it's really awesome. Like when
(22:11):
we build something this, like there's so much interest from
the existing kind of like universities as well as like
medical schools to instruct and kind of like educate the
students on how they can do a better job on care.
And then there's also like a lot of like grant
funding rooms re received to build out better training programs,
which is like really awesome.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
That's really exciting.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
You must be so proud of yourself me from a
tragic situation. You have this wonderful company helping thousands of people.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
And this is what I that's really You're welcome.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
This is what I talk about all the time, neal
that I just love to interview people who had well,
not that I like to they had an unfortunate event,
but they had an unfortunate event and turned it into
a life changing experience and going out and serving others
(23:13):
and helping others. I mean, how important is this? I
mean I could tell you personally, as a former caregiver,
I could have used carry ayap And I think when
you have a young, you know, vibrant college student, we're
not to knock down.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
All the workers because you know my age.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
You know how much yeah, you know how much energy
they bring into your house.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
They would bring such.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Energy to someone, especially if someone has any kind of dementia,
and I think they have more patience and because they
are getting well paid, I think you won't have that
turn around, you know, like you have.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
With other agencies. And I just think that, yeah, that's
just great. Now, where the students allowed to drive.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
The clients to stay to a movie or a restaurant.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
A great question. Great question. So, because we're running it
kind of for free in terms of we don't have
any fees or markups and the students are getting all
the competition, we decided have to kind of like take
the liability of that on the student's side because the
insurance costs is very high. So we've done a partnership
with lyft where the students are able to call the
lifts and get like a better rate to take the person.
(24:44):
So that way it's almost like, you know, let the
driving companies get at the driving and we'll let the
students be get at kind of like the caregiving side.
So the students on their own we can go do
errands in terms of like somebody needs something at the
grocery store and things like that. But you know, it's
like two high risk populations to directly ensure even all
or adult gets into a car with somebody who's just
started driving a few years ago, you know, it's like
(25:05):
the enturance cost ourselves right then. For now, we're just
kind of like partnering with right share companies to handle that.
But at some point we may introduced the feature, but
for now it's just kind of like partnership, which works
pretty well.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah, well, just to you know, be in the home
and get the caregiver a break is just so important
because you know, like I said, and I'm going to
keep saying it, folks.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
The mortality rate for a caregiver is high. That is
the fact. That is a harsh reality. And I'll tell
you what.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
I cared for my mother in law for five years.
I cared for my husband for ten Neil. I thank
god I'm sitting here talking to you. I thank god
that I'm that. I'm pretty, you know, in good shape.
I have some minor issues, but you know what, I'm
a lot better off.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Than a lot of caregivers.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
I have could tell, you know, stories of so many
caregivers whose health deteriorated right after they lost the loved.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
One and they weren't around.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
And I think these are these are like yeah, oh
go ahead, go ahead, and Neil, oh oh sorry, okay, yeah,
I'm gonna think their stats like, we did a lot
of research with the Arapy on this, and the interesting
stat was, uh, thirty three percent of caregivers within one
year of taking care of a loved one developed significant
(26:29):
mental health challenges and twenty five percent of them developed
physical health challenges. So think about that. I mean, I
see this every day. It's like, you know, just like
literally last week, I was talking to a gentleman in
his early sixties taking care of his wife early onset dementia,
and you know, he's been doing it for like now
two years. You know, we help him out a bunch,
you know, which is awesome, but he's just so stressed
(26:50):
all the time. Meanwhile, she's like very calm, you know,
like very calm. Like of course she's like losing some
of her cognitive abilities, but in terms of like overall
stress and happiness level, he's bearing the brunt of it.
And you know, he had to check himself in the
r and then they kept him in the hospital for
monitoring for four days because of heart issue. And during
that time he's reach out to us so worry about
(27:10):
his wife and are there going to be caregivers and
what are they doing in this ad? So you know,
it's just kind of like it really like hits home
that the caregiver is bearing so much strain, you know,
when yeah, worrying constantly about the person that they're carring
for in I mean, that has to have second order
impacts on heart, on stress level, on sleep quality. You know,
I've heard another person we helped for with care. You know,
(27:32):
we do a lot of overnight care, by the way,
which is really interesting that I would have never guessed that.
But college students, as you can imagine, you know, sometimes
have classes during the day, different schedules and all that,
so you know, of course they'll do the care. But
like whenever a Thursday afternoon care session goes on our site,
you know, it might have to go out to ten
different students before somebody can accept. But overnight, everybody's available
(27:53):
and they want to do it. You know, they can
sometimes do homework and other stuff during that time. So
that's a very popular thing people are using cared for.
And I found one thing is I talked to some
of the people who get overnight care for like a
spouse with dementia, and literally we'll hear from their friends
in the dementia support group that, oh wow, Mark feels
like a totally different person now since he started getting
(28:14):
Carriaya because you can actually sleep, you know that, you know,
spouse is a caregiver around and you know, same with
like the sons and daughters so it's been really interesting
to see that. You know, by getting good care, I
think you can get a break as the family caregiver.
And I think that's really like, of course the person
needs the care too, but I think that sometimes the
indirect effect of the solution is that it relieves a
(28:37):
significant amount of stress on the family caregiver, which I
feel like is underfocused on by our current healthcare system. Yeah,
that person, yeah, has the illness, but no one thinks
I'm a caregiver. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Actually, Neil, I could hug you, absolutely right, absolutely right.
I remember my neurologist and this is when Matt was
still alive, and he started asking me a, well, how
are you doing, Betsy, Like now they're starting his wife
as a psychiatrist at Rutgers Behavioral Health, and he said
(29:12):
that they're starting to focus on the caregiver and their
needs and how they can help the caregiver.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Which support it is, and it's about time that.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
You know, the tide is very slowly changing. But I'm
a Jersey girl, Neil, so I tell it straight up
and like it is. And I've said this in my
show many times and I'm going to say it again.
Self care folks, is not selfish. It is a matter
of your life and death. That's how serious self care is.
(29:49):
And if you want to enjoy life after caregiving, and
you have every right to do so and life during caregiving,
you need to take care of yourself and that means
having a.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
College student help you. Then do it. I think, I really.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
I mean, you know, people might tell, well, I can't
afford twenty dollars to pay, well, can you afford to
be sick? Can you afford that to be in a hospital?
I mean I might sound harsh, but this is the reality.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
And you know what, and you know what, if you're
not around, who's going to take care of your loved one?
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Like absolutely logical, like even unselfishly, you need to be
healthy so that you can kind of continue, you know,
caring for the one you have. And I think that
you're right. Like I think there's a lot of timescarecivers
don't think about the software because they're just so busy
dealing with crisis to crisis. And I think that it
is important both for like your own sustainability of the
(30:50):
care situation, both for your sustainability of your health after
the care situation is over. I think that Yeah, it's
something that's like very underdiscussed. So yeah, it's like people
are so frame and silence, you know, and people don't
I think the other challenging about carrying me. I found
even when I was getting through caregiving life, it's like
people want to talk about it because there's like a
social shame or a stigma, Like you don't tell your
coworkers what you're going through because you feel like you'll
(31:11):
be judged. You know, you tell your boss what you're
going through because you feel like people think, oh, you're
going to be distracted doing other stuff. So you know,
a lot of people keep it themselves. Oftentimes, I find
a lot of people like lose friendships and relationships because
you're like the sad person at the group gathering that's
talking about the challenges where everybody else. And I found
this especially from like a middle aged caregiving perspective, where
(31:34):
you know, in our mid thirties, most of my friends
were having kids and talking about vacations that were going on,
and I went through years where you know, I was
talking about my life illness and that's just not fun. Yeah,
So like you find like a social stigma there where
people kind of gradually even even not out of bad
intention to anything, but people just kind of distance themselves
(31:54):
because you're going through a tough time and sometimes people
don't want to hear that. So I think, yeah, you
find yourself in treating isolated, And I guess there has
to be like society when I way more recognition of
this and support of this, because millions of people are
in this situation. So like, if this isn't a one
in five Americans, I think are like dealing with some
form of long term care for a loved one, and
(32:15):
I think that's like a yeah, there needs to be
better recognition of that.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Yeah, oh why you Grimmage were said, absolutely, you do
become isolated, And I twiked about that like eight years ago,
you know, way before the pandemic. Caregivers have felt isolated, abandoned,
and you know, when COVID.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Happened, people got a taste of that.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Then they didn't like it. And I'm me, being who
I am, I said, well, now, how do you think
a caregiver feels all the time?
Speaker 2 (32:48):
You know, yep, yeah, this is how we felt.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
I'm nosy, and Neil, do you know offhand what colleges
in New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Get into so.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
Yes, we're at We're at Wreutgers, We're at Fair States,
and then we are also just in New York City
where we started. We're at Columbia and Fordham and Hunter College,
and then we're expanding kind of gradually. It extends kind
of like mostly word of mouth. Like consider wherever a
bunch of families sign up to get the care, then
we'll like be building relationship with the nearby university, or
(33:27):
sometimes the university will reach out because they have, you know,
the professors and pre alb advisors have relations with other universities,
so we kind of build both ways. But yeah, I
think that you know, between New York and New Jersey
that might be like ultimately like a huge opportunity for
us because there's just so many students in a geographically
dense area and such a unaffordable care market, you know. Otherwise,
(33:50):
you know, in terms of like the prevailing kind of
like agency based rates are often worth of forty dollars
an hour, so you know, we can run our model
and like several a lot of people who you know
kind of fall through the gaps there in the care
economy and may not be able to afford agency based
care I say, most of the people use care are
either looking for solutions on their own, so this just
makes it a lot easier, safer, and more vetted to
(34:12):
do it. Instead of just posting up flyers at your
local school, are going to care dot com and just
trying to find the random people. And then some people
are just like, hey, you know, with agencies, they can
only afford so much or I can't afford it, and
you know, with this I can. So I think that
we also have that. So yeah, but we are we
are like spreading, We're we're rugvenues in the York, New
Jersey area as if only like three or four months ago.
(34:35):
But yeah, like there was like a big segment that
CNBC did about our work and that really launched the
New York, New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Market for us.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
So that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Wow, well congratulations.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
I know, like I think a year or two ago,
like local paper you welcome, there was a big argle
about aging in New Jersey and I forgot the amount,
but it's in the millions. Of how many senior there are,
I'm one.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Of them now. But yeah, and we'll be needing you know, care.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
This is really I'm excited. Neil I'm so glad I'm
talking to you because I know there's a need for
this in my area. There's definitely a need. There was
a man this is last year in Woolgreens. His wife
was with him. She had Alzheimer's and he said, I
have no help.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
I'm alone.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
And he's not the only one. There's people who are
in need of services and they don't know where to go.
They don't know where to turn to. And kier Yah
Yah is an excellent resource. Now, what happens during the
summertime when the students go home?
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Great question. Actually, so this was a challenge in the
first year or so of building it because in the
first year we were only at two universities, Duke University
and UNC Chapel Hills. And when the students went home,
the availability of a number of students dropped quite a bit.
But to a pleasant surprise, about fifteen to twenty percent
of them stayed on campus, you know, for a variety
(36:14):
of reasons, just like socially, or take a summer class
here or there, or work part ten jobs. So and
then whoever stayed because they didn't have class, they had
a lot more time. So on balance in the first
year or two while we were running it locally, it
meted out where the number of students dropped, but the
ones that are available increased their hours per week four
or five times, you know, so then the same amount
(36:36):
of care was being delivered. Then as we started spreading
into other geographies. Now there's an even cooler thing where
there's a migration within the Carrie AIS system where if
there's a student at Emory University in Atlanta, but you know,
mom and Dad's from New York and then they come
back to New York. Or there's a student from New
Jersey who's going to school at Duke, but they're back
(36:59):
home for the summer, or you know, the same thing
with like, okay, we're in San Francisco and there might
be a student who has the University of Michigan, but
they're back in San Francisco for the summer. So now,
because we have thirty thousand students all over the country,
as they go back home for the summer, most of
them are actually in places where Carrie is available, and
because they've done it during the school year, many of
(37:20):
them will do a lot of it during the summer.
So generally near like larger city areas. We have found
there to be like an increase in the availability of
care over the summer because the students kind of move around.
And then that's one of the benefit of running around
like this nationally is that if they're on it at
University of Michigan and then they came back home to
(37:41):
you know, kind of Summit, New Jersey, Okay, well if
there's carry going on there, they're going to do a
lot of it, you know, because they're like, I already
know this program, and I'm already in the program, so
I don't have there like go back home to Summit
and apply to like local jobs. I can just keep
doing this. So I'd say, yeah, pleasant sur brides that
this like past summer was the first test and that
went really well where care actually went up summer, so
(38:02):
that was really cool.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
That is cool.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
Now is there a supervisor that comes around and checks
up on the student and how the family is doing,
how they're connecting and getting along.
Speaker 3 (38:18):
It's all through technology, you know. So that's kind of
the one pro and con of doing it this way
is that in order to extremeline the cost and keep
just like the cost super super low, all of it
is ratings that the family leaves for the students and
the students leave for the families. We will manually insert
ourselves and go check if like there are lower ratings,
(38:38):
so you know, like if on the family side, if
they rate a student less than four stars out of
five more than once, we'll reach out and see what's
going on, you know, and if we don't have a
good explanation, we'll deactivate you know, the student's profile and
they're not kind of allowed to be on a care
platform again. So please to say, you know, that's like
extremely infrequent. You know, we don't have to do that much,
(39:00):
and the quality of the care from the students is
really good. But yeah, based on having empowering the families
to do it and to leave reviews, you know, we
feel like, okay, that's a great way to get data
from the market of like, okay, how are people liking
the care?
Speaker 2 (39:13):
So yeah, I like that.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
I like that both the family and the student have inputs, yes,
because sometimes you know, you could have a personality clash
that happens sometimes and sometimes you know, it might take
you know a couple of times to get you know,
the right fit, just like what the therapist maybe the
first therapist to go to.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Isn't you know the ones for you? This is so
a mindful of for fate.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Because just like that's what I love about doing my show,
Neil is I love to tell people about resources that
I wish we're available when I was caregiving, and now
they are available, and now you will be listed as
a resource. I'm Pastoral Talk Radio Network. They look up
(40:07):
here getting you're gonna be uh, you're welcome. Your name
will come up and you.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
Know, it's just.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
I wish I could hide you because this is so
needed and not just that it's you know, intergenerational. How
much can a college student what benefit to.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Learn from another generation?
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Because I've interviewed somebody about that, you know, intergenerational relationships
and friendships.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
What they could learn?
Speaker 1 (40:39):
I know he's to love to hear my grandmother's stories,
to hear stories, to gain wisdom from another generation. This
is just an what an incredible learning experience. This is great,
great for college students, Neil. How does a college student
(41:01):
or family contact you to see if kr yayahs just
fit for them?
Speaker 2 (41:09):
And to no more?
Speaker 4 (41:10):
If both sides would we go to our website It's
www dot kaya dot org s c A r E y
A y A dot r G.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
And you know, they can sign up on the site.
You know, both the family can sign up to get
care the student can sign up and apply to be
the caregiver. Our process will then kind of check, okay,
are we at that student's university. If not, they'll go
on a wait list. And then when we get enough
you know, interest from a university on a weight list,
we might reach out and build relationships. And then same
with the family. The family can check through zip code
(41:46):
are they are we available there? And then if not,
they'll get on a waitlist, and then if they kind
of make it through, then we'll have onboarding processes with
people on our team that'll reach out to them and
on board them to see if it's a good fit.
And then they can also follo us onto media. We're
like pretty active if they want to learn more about
our work. You know, I'm reasonably active on LinkedIn, So
you know, you just follow like Neil n E A
(42:08):
L middle initial K, and then the last name shaw
as h ah, so people can look up Neil ksha
on LinkedIn with Carrie I A. I post a lot
about different topics and and kind of I do a
lot of care giving advocacy, you know, because I'm like
very impassionate about the topic and I feel like it's
under discussed in society. I mean, I also talk about
other initiatives, you know, we're always launching new initiatives. Like
(42:29):
recently we've been realizing obviously in light of all this
stuff happening in the news regarding health insurance and denied claims.
You know, we've been doing a lot of research around that,
and that's something that we learned a lot of our
population is dealing with where healthcare claims are being denied
at scale, you know, under medical advantage plans, even for
the caregivers themselves. A lot of middle aged people are
dealing with denials for their own health issues. And you know,
(42:52):
so as we kind of like learn and understand the
needs of people, you know, here's a cool thing, kind
of just complete unerrated where we went down a rabbit
al on this over the last two months and we
were as like, so many of our people using care
I are dealing with this, even though some of the
students are doing this by the way, believe it or not,
Like there I've got tons of students come out of
the word work and saying I just had twenty thousand
dollars of claims denied for a major surgery, and the
students are panicking up, like I don't have that kind
(43:12):
of money. So we then very rapidly built a technology solution.
They're using AI and training AI models based on strategies
to write really good appeals letters. Because we realize that,
you know, believe it or not, forty nine million people
that had to denied health insurance claim last year, less
than one percent of people appealed. So can you can
(43:34):
you believe that like people don't know their rights that
they don't know when yeah, you know Umana or unted
Healthcare or somebody just says okay, I deny this coverage,
you can actually appeal and then off the people who
bother to appeal, half of them win. So we were like, okay,
this this sucks. Like people are scared to appeal, they
don't know how to do it, they don't have a
doctor in the family, they think it's going to take
(43:54):
twenty hours to write a letter and a lot. So
we trained AI models to do this for you, and
we just kind of rolled out this product, which we
call Counterforce health and you know, just kind of posts
it on a site and you know it's free to use,
like it costs us some money, but we're like, okay, whatever,
we'll just go get a grant and give it away.
And so now we you know, anyone can come to
the site and in two minutes they can upload their
(44:17):
denial letter from a health insure, whatever the issue is,
upload any backup, you know, background documentation like the coverage
of the policy and any other notes from doctors, and
then it'll knock out in two minutes, a very detailed,
seeks to ten page appeal letter citing a tremendous amount
of medical necessity, kind of like references from journals, going
(44:38):
through policy and pointing out parts of the policy where
this says it should be covered. And then you know
you can kind of print that out and you know,
fax it or mail it in and you know, the
win rates are pretty good. So we do a lot
of stuff like that's like very care advocacy focused because
you realize, like a lot of these caregivers aures are
so stressed, and I've dealt with this myself when I
was caring for my wife, Like sometimes I'll get these
(45:00):
claim the Niles letters and I just like spend hours
on the phone fighting over like medication that was absolutely
essential that like Insurns was refusing to cover at one
point after a surgery, they were refusing to cover and
you know, so we're like, Okay, how con you like
use our technology skills to like reduce the burden for caregivers.
So that's been like a cool initiative. So yeah, I
think people can follow us on social media and where
(45:21):
they can learn about like initiatives like that, because we're
always like looking to get information from problems people are
dealing with and then use that to inspire, like where
can we dedicate our energy to building a solution?
Speaker 2 (45:33):
Well that is uh that that is awesome.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
I listen to this doctor on Instagram. I had interviewed
him a couple of years ago, and he said that
it's funny, but it's not funny that companies are using
AI to deny claims.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
So someone's not even looking at that, and I is
doing that.
Speaker 3 (45:59):
Healthcare big investigation more managed. There's a huge investigation ninety percent.
Can you believe that like in one of these one
of these investigations, And I think the government is waking
up to this by the way, because I think the
Department of Justice investigating, but like there was an investigation
of older adults living in nursing homes that were on
Medicare advantage plans ninety percent denial rate on certain medications
(46:24):
and treatments and it was because of AI. No one
is even looking at it, and and you know why
because they can get away with it because when they
do that, somebody on the other end has to spend
six hours writing a letter. And you know, can you
imagine like how short staff the nursing homes are, Like
the staff doesn't have the time, the older person can
advocate for themselves. The family member is probably strapped for time,
(46:46):
so it's like it just won't happen, right, Like no
one will appeal. So that's why I'm you know, I
think that the thing is like this is like a
new technology that has been weaponized by large organizations that
have the money and have the resources. But it's now
about to be up and nice the other way, as in,
we are building the thing so that people can counter
back because it doesn't cost that much. You know, it
(47:06):
just has to have like you know, a technology team
build the tool. But the each instance of the tool
is not very expensive. It's costs like a few pennies.
So we're like, okay, fine, we'll just give it away
for free, Like we ate all day upront costs to
build it. Now anyone can come, you know, to our site,
which we run it as counterforcehealth dot org. That's where
we like hosted the tool here to kind of push
back against the insurance stiles, and people can just upload
(47:29):
letters and at the click of button get a detailed
appeal letter. So I think that you're right, Like, I
think this is now happening at scale because it's like
an unfair fight where if the insurer just like puts
an algorithm through, but meanwhile millions of people have to
waste six hours writing stuff. You know that of people
are going to do it. But if now the people
can just go one click it and you know, put
(47:50):
the thing back, then now the insurance kind of has
to pay it out. And in our case, we not
only send the appeal letter to the insure, we also
send it to the state insurance regulator that didn't want
to keep a check on these people. You know that
that okay, if then and then the insurance regulators calls
us because they're like, oh wow, I got no idea
like this. Many people are dealing with this because then
the regulators see, hey, these are frivolous. Like the denials,
(48:13):
a lot of them are just very frivolous. We're like
the insurance is like denying it, you know, even though
they know it's necessary, just thinking, Wow, if you don't
push back, you know, I just collect the profit. So yeah,
I think that there is like until regulation catches up,
I feel like you have to have innovators just building
tools to give to people so that they can fight
back fairly.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
Wow, of folks, I've definitely take that out.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
Counter Force help dot com. That's that's the correct that.
Speaker 3 (48:42):
Yeah, dot org. It's a free service. Yeah so sorry
about yeah dot com because like all our products are free.
Speaker 4 (48:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (48:50):
So yeah, it's like, wow, your commercial interests. But yeah,
it's Counterforce Health. We were initially it's gonna put it
on carry, but I realized that this wasn't just older
Americans you know this, There were so many college students
in this, there were so many millions people doing with this.
It was just like a systemic problem across the range
of the population. So yeah, yeah, we put it on
as like yeah, counterforce health dot org. Anyone can just
(49:13):
go and sign up to use the tools and within
then just get a really good appeal letter and that
can make a huge social intact.
Speaker 2 (49:21):
It was important. I mean, Neil, I believe you and
I could do a home show on that.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
At the home show, Yeah, on appeal. And now I
had experienced a few years ago and my husband being
on he was on the Generica the Excellent patch, and
I had a change insurance prescription coverage. They said they
(49:47):
would cover it, then they said that they wouldn't cover it.
Then I had appeal it, and I had appeal it again.
Oh no, try it pill. He did, try it pill.
He can't swallow it. He made a big difference. And
the cost because it was quite expensive, and you know,
they don't count on people appealing. My cardiologists told me
(50:10):
he had a fight with the company. His patient needed
a procedure. They had chest pains, they had blockage, and
they're denying it. How can you tonight a procedure to
clear out someone's arteries or veins when they show blockage.
I mean, this is just insane.
Speaker 3 (50:32):
I agreed, I think it's I think it's totally insane,
and I think, you know, to your point, like even
in your husband's they are like people going through alz
Emerson demensia now like compared to eve in a few
years ago. There's like actual therapies on the market, right,
but they're like kind of expensive, and even though Medicare
covers them, a lot of the private for profit insurance
plans are frivolously denying them. And you know, this is
(50:53):
kind of like tough because no one can out of
pocket afford you know. So I think that, yeah, these
like denials of I rocketed in the last few years,
and I think it's partly because a lot of these
places like using technology publicity denying. Partly it's because government's
been kind of asleep at the wheel, so no one's
really paying attention, and the entrance companies like, well, if
I can get away with it, let me do more.
(51:14):
So I think that you know, that is something you
can change from the ground up, where you can empower
people through tech tools to okay, now anyone can kind
of like appeal and write that quickly, and also everyone
can be one click sending the appeal and the initial
denial to their regulator. Like that, I think that kind
of movement can quickly create more conversation around the problem
(51:38):
the state level and at the federal level. And I
think I think this is going to be big. You know,
my personal opinion is in twenty twenty five years earlier
part of the year, but I think there's going to
be a hot fun this HUE this year and next
year because the crisis like getting out of control.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
Yeah, yes, well, thank you for sharing that resource.
Speaker 2 (51:54):
That'll go on to put that in the like that's
really very, very important. Neil.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
I can't thank you enough for coming on and sharing
your story and what your company does.
Speaker 2 (52:11):
And I'm excited for you and very as successful. Folks.
You heard Neil. That's spelled an E. A. L. K.
Shaw today CEO and co founder of Kiri Yaya. Check
it out.
Speaker 1 (52:27):
All the information about Neil will be in the blog
that Jeanie White writes to the station manager and produces
the show. And folks, what a resource, What a tremendous resource.
I get excited because this resource is so necessary. I
wish it was available for me. It wasn't and that's
(52:50):
why I do the show.
Speaker 2 (52:52):
Folks.
Speaker 1 (52:52):
I want you all to know about resources. I want
you to know about resources and people who can help
improve the quality of your life and your loved ones life.
That's what I'm here for. That's what chatting with Betty
is about. And I just thank you all for listening.
Want to say, Lilian Coldwell, who's CEO a pesteable to
(53:13):
a radio network, makes it all possible, and thank you
for listening. Subscribing if you don't already. Chatting with Betty's
for free on Apple, Spotify, Spreaker, iHeart Amazon Music to
name a few, and you can follow me on Facebook
bet Ge Wurzel w u r z e L And
(53:35):
I just thank you Anil for having this company Kiaya
and this counter force help dot org. It just sounds awesome.
People will definitely need it. And thank you so much
for what you do for caregivers and their families.
Speaker 3 (53:57):
Thank you, appreciate.
Speaker 2 (54:00):
You are welcome.
Speaker 1 (54:01):
My pleasure and best wishes on more expansion, Folks, students,
caregivers go on the website www dot Kreyaya dot org
find out that you could sign up if you're a student.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
Sign up with your caregiver and you need help.
Speaker 1 (54:22):
This is awesome, just really tremendously awesome, and I'm so
happy I could share it with my audience and as
I always say, folks at the end of my show,
excuse me in a world where you could be anything,
please be kind and shine.
Speaker 2 (54:39):
You're light bright because we need it now more than
ever before.
Speaker 1 (54:44):
This is Betsy Worthal. You're a host of Chatting with
Betsy and passionate world talk radio network as the Soudary
Global Media Network LC. Chat with you later, Bye bye
now
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