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INTERVIEW | Make Money by Solving Expensive Healthcare Headaches with Marly Brodsky
00:27:56
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- [00:01]
A
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- [00:30]
B
You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by gohighlevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet. Just go to gohighlevel.com travis what's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Travis Makes Money podcast where it's our mission to help you make more money. Today on the show, I am talking to a friend of mine, Marley Brodsky. She's an international healthcare expert, licensed health educator, mom of to and CEO of MedCompanion, a groundbreaking service providing virtual human support during doctor visits with over 19 years in healthcare leadership. She founded MedCompanion after losing her grandmother to cancer. The turning point that exposed how confusing and overwhelming care can be, which I second now from having experienced many of that many of those problems myself. Recognized by Forbes and Psychology Today for redefining the patient experiments, experience and delivering the human prescription. She blends real world advocacy with lived resilience, sharing a journey from global public health leadership through homelessness to building innovative solutions that put people back at the center of healthcare. Marlee, what's up? Welcome to the show.
- [01:40]
C
Hi Travis. Thank you so much for having me.
- [01:43]
B
So it is a large jump in most people's minds to go from working a job, something that you know is they were trained to do from day one type of a thing. They go the traditional path, they get the schooling, they get the education, they go get the job. It feels really daunting to leave that and move into uncharted water waters where anything can happen. So tell me about your journey through that transition process. What did it look like for you? How long did it take you to finally take that first step versus how long did it take you to really go full force at it? You know, things like that.
- [02:16]
C
Yeah, of course. So I would say that growing up, it was never in my dream or vision to be an entrepreneur, to start a business. I wanted to go to medical school and instead did not get into med school and ended up working in health care for the largest medical scribe company where I led over 15,000 employees and over 4,000 clients in the health care industry to provide better care while still having better documentation and roi. I never planned on leaving, but once the pandemic hit, I was given the news that my grandmother had cancer. And unfortunately, that was a big turn turning point for me from a grieving standpoint, but also from a professional standpoint because I never thought of leaving my company. I really enjoyed what I did, but it was just seeing my grandma go through so much and seeing how difficult it was for her to navigate the system, how hard it was for me as a caregiver to try to do it remotely, understand and help her really shed a light in a gap that I had been seeing in the healthcare industry for many years. And I remember telling my, my husband, you know, like, somebody should do something about this. Like, how do patients do this? Like, this is heartbreaking. And I remember him telling me, he was like, well, you are somebody, so do something. And that was kind of the moment that things really started. Like, could I really do this? Should I do something? How would I do it? And there were so many unknowns, of course. And I would say the hardest thing is leaving something that you are comfort. I was in a healthcare corporate role. I was really high in the company, I was making a great living. So all of a sudden to just burn the boats and say, I'm going all in on my business was really, really difficult. But I decided to do something about it. And I always go back to one of my high school teachers who once told me, never let money be the reason you don't achieve your dreams. So when I was sitting there with no extra money to start a business, I was like, how can I start a business with no money? And that's really what set me on this path to try to figure that out. And I ended up. Oh, go ahead.
- [04:44]
B
Yeah, sorry. I was going to say, how long did it take you from, from, from idea to be like, maybe I should do something about this? To actually taking the first step in doing something and how. And was there like sort of a transition period? Meaning, like, did you hold on to the job and the. For X amount of time, did you want to make sure you had X amount in savings before you pursued this path? What, like, was it a, was it a burn the boats, go all in day one type of a moment? Tell me, you know, details on, on that.
- [05:14]
C
Yeah, so I probably should have kept my job. And I know how difficult this is going to be, but for me, as a person. I knew that if I felt too comfortable, I wasn't going to to move and I wasn't going to do what I needed to do to really start and run this business. So I talked to my husband and I was like, hey, if I quit my job tomorrow, would we be okay and what would this look like? And we sat down and had a conversation, and he was like, okay, like, just do it. We'll figure it out. I had his support and I quit my job the next day after that conversation. And then I sat with this for a month. I kind of had like a panic attack. Like, I can't believe I just did that. And I kept going back and I'm like, I don't think I could do this. And at that time, I was also in grad school, so I was working on what I thought was improving my skills for business. And I had a professor who was like, you know, if money wasn't an issue, what would you do? And that was like our assignment. And I wrote this whole proposal on the business and I flushed it out and he was like, is this a real thing? Are you doing this? I'm like, well, it's. It's in my head, like, I quit my job to do this, but I don't know. So I ended up meeting with this professor and he was like, I think you should do this. I think you need to do this. And that was probably a month in I registered or a month after I quit my job. Then at month two, I registered my business. And month three is really when I started doing something about it. And nothing really happened because I was still trying to piece things together. I was still trying to find money for a good, like, six months. And then at that six month mark was when I came across this amazing company that helped me get business credit from 0 to $250,000 in 90 days to fund my business.
- [07:18]
B
Hmm. Okay, so let's talk. Let's talk offer structure, bare bones of the business. At the beginning, what was the core problem that you were really trying to solve and what was the idea to solve it?
- [07:27]
C
Yeah, the core problem I was trying to solve was the overwhelming complexity that healthcare brings to patients. Because there are so. There's so much red tape. There are so many gaps in the system that make it almost impossible for a patient to really navigate the system. And what I had seen from my grandmother and what I had experienced myself as a patient is that when you're sick and you're not feeling well, it's really hard to remember everything. It's really hard to have the energy to do things yourself. And that is unfortunately the most dangerous place to be because that is how you forget things, that is how you make mistakes, that is how you make uninformed decisions. And at the end of the day, it is your health and your loved ones that stay suffer with you. So I was really trying to solve that gap, solve the confusion and the overwhelm and take something that I knew to be easy for me and share that with other people.
- [08:32]
B
Yeah, even speaking from personal experience, when I, when I had that cancer diagnosed a couple years ago, that was probably the most surprising thing about the whole, the whole journey to me was how insanely difficult they made it to go get treated. Like, I, leading up to this, it was always like, you know, I was mainly pretty healthy guy, you know, I had some sports injuries and a couple surgeries and things like that, but ultimately, you know, pretty healthy, didn't really have to worry about much. And so I just, I viewed the healthcare system lagging on things as just being like, ah, it's annoying, but it's whatever. But I always just assumed that like if you got this big C word diagnosis that everybody would be all hands on deck. Here's what you do next. Here's how to solve the problem. We're going to put a sense of urgency behind this. And I was so taken aback by the complete lack of really urgency that there was in the space where it was like, oh, we got a diagnosis but you know, in order to get the next step, you got to set up this appointment soonest. Availability on the calendar is about nine weeks from now. So let's put you on the calendar. I was like, nine weeks? What, what do you expect me to do over the next nine weeks? You just told me a life changing thing and now you just expect me just to like sit on my hands for nine weeks until you get it figured out. Like, this is insane. This is asinine that you're asking this of me. Luckily I had a very supportive wife who is, who, who was very much my advocate during that time and spent hours on the phone with different healthcare facilities and different. And then, then you got to worry about insurance. So it turns out, you know, like we couldn't even get, we couldn't even get in to see the doctor to get the diagnosis at first because I just, I had this like bad feeling about it and, and we had gotten an ultrasound and there was some concerning things on there and I was just like, I just have a really bad feeling about this. But the soonest availability was eight weeks out in order to go in and sit with a doctor to look at the image that we got done at the ultrasound. And I was like, this is crazy. So she calls through, spends a lot of time on the phone, and basically finds a. Another clinic that would. That had an appointment in the next few days, goes to make the appointment. She, they ask about insurance. They're like, oh, we have this insurance, but. And they're like, oh, we, we, we, we don't cover that insurance. And she was like, okay, well, we'll just be a cash patient. And they're like, no, we can't see you even as a cash patient because you have this insurance and not this insurance. And I was like, but I have money and I want to pay you. You know what I mean? Like, but you literally can't see me. So we literally were forced to basically lie on the phone, which I don't even know if I should be saying that publicly. But we're pretty, pretty much forced at that point to call another clinic and say. And tell them, we just told them we didn't have insurance. And then, surprise, surprise, two days later we got in for an appointment, paid cash to be seen at that appointment. But then when it came to solving the problem, they couldn't help because they realized that we had insurance that wasn't covered under their plan. So then we had to go back to the original one that eight weeks out the first time, convince them, because we got the diagnosis now to the whole thing was insane. And I could not help but think about, like, again, somebody's grandma.
- [11:48]
C
Yeah.
- [11:49]
B
Who is like, you know, in their 70s or 80s and they're trying to navigate this world. It's like we're young, energetic, healthy for the most part, minus the cancer thing. Healthy couple with, you know, competence, navigating the online world and phone systems and all this other stuff. And we're having this much trouble figuring this out. How many millions of other people are experiencing this and just are never getting taken care of because of just direct incompetence in the field. So as somebody who's been through it, I genuinely do appreciate the work that you're doing in the world and the light that you're shedding on this. So what, what was what ultimately has become the solution to the problem now? Like, what has MedCompanion turned into?
- [12:30]
C
Yeah, so Med Companion is a virtual patient advocacy service where we provide a human advocate through. Through an app so everything remains secure and safe. And one of the reasons why Forbes has called us. The human prescription is that we work very hard to bring humanity back into health care. That it's not just about the numbers. It's not just like, oh, you're a diagnosis. It's like you are a person who is going through a lot and we're going to make that experience easy. So instead of you waiting on hold, instead of your wife making phone calls or your loved ones spending all that, like your med companion will do it for you. We'll book the appointment, we'll let you know where to go. Would advocate to get you in sooner, especially for cancer patients. That's one of the things that I think hurts me the most and what really like forced me to do this, that I couldn't just sit there and not do anything, was that for cancer patients, time is everything.
- [13:32]
B
That's right.
- [13:32]
C
Time is everything. And for my grandmother, missing an appointment that she forgot she had was really the main reason why her cancer became more aggressive. And by the six week mark that she went back, it was too late to actually start the treatment. So she passed very quickly. She went from diagnosis to passing within three months. So for us at med companion is like, time is everything. We work, we sit, we sit on hold on your behalf so you don't have to so you can enjoy your life. We advocate for you, we fight with your insurance. We have med companions who are really good. Some insurance companies already are like, oh, they're calling again. Yes, we are calling again. And we ultimately do everything through an easy to use app that keeps not only you as a patient important, but your family members too. So if you live far away, your family member can have access and see exactly what's going on, what's happening with you, what we're working on. And so we really are like your health ally and all things health care. You need blood workbook, you need an advocate, you need us to fight with your insurance. You need to get reimbursed because you're now being charged for something you should have never been charged. Like, we are your ally for all those things.
- [14:47]
B
Yeah. And if you're, if you're listening and you're, you've not gone through something like this and something comes up and you have to. I am speaking from personal experience to say having an advocate like this would be a complete game changer. I just got lucky because I happened to be a little bit more health aware and I had just read a book about how our still our number one fight against cancer is basically just prevention and early detection. That's like the still the number one way to prevent, you know, death from something like cancer. And so I'd read that book and then I had a. I had a friend from high school who, she was a nurse, and she was having stomach pains for a while. She knew, she asked the doctors to test this certain thing. Nobody would do it. And then like eight months later, she finally gets somebody to do this particular thing that she was asking for, being a nurse, knowing exactly what she was looking for, and then gets diagnosed with stomach cancer. But eight months passed before the time that she started feeling it, until the time that it was actually diagnosed, they could do something about it. She ended up passing within a year or so of that, of that diagnosis at like 27 years old. You know, super healthy, vibrant, full of life type of a person. And so, like I said, that's the only. Like, like I said, that's, that's my only. The only thing is I kind of got lucky because I happen to be aware of, of the early detection and prevention thing. And then having had a friend, like, seen from afar that she just went through this, and then having a supportive wife who was willing to spend hours on the phone advocating for me while I was trying to run a business and deal with the news, like I said, I got super lucky in that, but not everybody's that lucky. And so, you know, use, use the service, MedCompanion. Go figure out how they can help advocate for you. And I just generally appreciate the work that you're doing in the world. Marley, now, on the business side of things, you mentioned you got some funding early on to start developing this concept out. What has been the maybe most surprising, most difficult part of actually scaling the business? Like it's, you know, once you have the idea, that's great, but now you got to execute against the idea. So what have been some of the biggest, you know, obstacles that have come up along the way?
- [16:54]
C
Yeah, for me, I would say that the biggest obstacle is really creating this movement and shedding light in a problem that has been there for so long, but nothing has truly been done. So it's been the education and the broken healthcare system that most people don't see until it's too late or until they've experienced it themselves. So it's the visibility and the continuous education on healthcare system is broken, and this is what it needs. This is how we fix it. And really, just creating that movement has probably been the hardest thing. Right, because we're not the type of service that most people are searching for. We're not like Your typical car wash or if you need something fixed, you're like, oh, I go and get a handyman. It's like nobody's really thinking about a medical companion when they are looking for things in healthcare. So really creating the, the visibility and the voice so that when people are feeling lost or they're feeling confused or they just have this life changing diagnosis, our goal is that the first thing they think about is, let's get a med companion.
- [18:08]
B
Yeah. Yeah. It's the awareness that this is something that exists because it's like the bottom line is, the bottom line is we're, we're just, we're dealt this crappy hand of a broken healthcare system. It's like you can whine and complain about how the government should fix it all day, every day, and they should, and you would be right and justified in that whining, complaining, but it's also not going to do anything for you and the problem that you're coming up against. So unfortunately, businesses like yours have to exist because, because the, you know, government's not taking care of the problem the right way. So you kind of have to step in as a private operator to say, hey, we can actually help you through this really difficult time in your life. I mean, creating awareness around that is obviously absolutely essential to that. What have been, what have been some of the big wins? What have been some of the major successes or milestones that you feel like, wow, that's really cool that we're able to do this.
- [19:00]
C
The biggest wins are honestly our patient stories. Seeing their success, seeing them thrive after coming to us at a point where they felt like life just had no more joy or, or this is just the way it's going to be. And seeing them thrive in their health, where they now don't miss their appointments, they get their medications on time, they get the resources that they need, they're not being charged extra for things that they didn't need. And just hearing their stories of I can go back to having a life, I can go back to pickleball, I can go back to spending time with my wife and just seeing that from a patient who is really struggling to. Suddenly we can hear the happiness and the joy that they feel in life again is probably like the most rewarding. And we have so many of those stories.
- [19:59]
B
Yeah, that's, that's the crazy thing about this advocacy to advocacy thing as well, is that it could pay for itself in a lot of ways because even just avoiding, you know, the, the volume of bills that we got, you know, through all the tests and everything that we had to do was insane. And then literally just fighting back against it a little bit saved us thousands and thousands of dollars to just, instead of just blindly paying whatever they asked, it was like, well, why don't we just wait a few months and see if they hit us up again, you know what I mean? Or why don't we give them a call and see if they would do it for this instead of doing it for this. And it was quite literally thousands of dollars. There was one building we got that was just like, it was like a mistake and I almost paid it. They emailed me the invoice. It was like a $1400 thing for some tests that I got. And I was like, well, whatever, I gotta pay it. And then something in me that was like, this feels weird because it was like seven months after the testing was done, which is always how healthcare works, you know what I mean? I don't know why. It's just like, you get something done, you get it taken care of, you think it's in the past, and then a year and a half later they're like, oh, you owe us $2,500. And so we push back against it. And they're like, oh, oops, our mistake. I was like, what do you mean your mistake? You sent me a thirteen hundred dollar invoice for a test from seven months ago. Like, get your shit together, you know what I mean? Like, this is already a difficult thing to go through and like again, very lucky and very blessed that we had the money and we could have paid it if we had to, but also very happy to have kept the money rather than paying it to somebody for something that we didn't actually have to be paying for. So if you're listening and wondering like, oh well, how much is going to cost and, and is it going to, you know, make, make me that money back? It's like, well, first of all, think about how much money your time and energy is worth that you're dumping into this new thing that, that, that came up out of nowhere. But then also it could probably pay for itself just in avoiding unexpected medical bills that you don't even have to pay, or that you can negotiate down to 40% of what the total invoice was when it was sent to you. And if you don't know how to do any of that and you, and you are uncomfortable negotiating those types of things and you feel weird doing that, having an advocate do those things understands how the system works and exactly what they should be billing you for. And if they're taking advantage of you or your insurance plan, you know, like, having somebody who's on the inside is extremely, extremely valuable.
- [22:17]
C
Yeah. And we, we help our patients save so much money, and it comes down to such dumb little things. Like, our. One of our patients was being charged $800 just because the clinic or the doctor selected the wrong diagnosis. It wasn't even like, the diagnosis so that insurance would cover. And it was like missing a word or missing something. So it was our advocate fighting to be like, no, like, that is not correct. Like, we will correct the diagnosis. We will have the doctor change the diagnosis. And it's like doing those little things just makes such a difference. And it's also like, one of the things that people think is like, well, my doctor told me I needed to go there. But doctors don't always verify that whatever they're referring you to is actually covered by your insurance. So you end up going to those places or to that clinic or to that specialist thinking, oh, okay, you know, my doctor told me I have to go here, so this is where I have to go. And we worked with a patient who every month was getting charged, like, $500 for this visit he was doing to a specialist. And we're like, why are you going there? So, like, my doctor told me, we're like, okay, but this isn't covered by your insurance. What if we got you a location that is covered by your insurance and just making that change was saving him $500 a month? So it's these little things that oftentimes you don't think about. And your advocate is constantly looking out for you and making sure that you know your diagnoses are correct, that you're not getting billed extra, or if you are, like, what's the reason behind that? And let's fix that. Like, we have the time to fix that, because time is money, right? Like, this is all about making money. And if you're an entrepreneur, taking the time to do this is costing you money in your business. So that is what we're here for. And we work with a lot of young entrepreneurs who are running businesses to make sure that they're being proactive about their health, to make sure that they're not the ones waiting on hold for three hours just to get something done. So that is ultimately what we're here for. It's like, healthcare shouldn't be stressful for you. Like, go enjoy your life and let us handle all the in betweens. And you get to show up, be happy and have what you need to have done.
- [24:39]
B
Marley, I love the business, love the concept. Appreciate you for stepping into this, this, this gap and providing a bridge for people very, very, very much needed. Where can people go to get more from you and from Med Companions?
- [24:52]
C
Yeah, people can go to our website, medcompanion.com we offer free consultations as well. So if they are interested in learning more or want to know if this is right for them, we're happy to provide a free consultation. They can also find us at MedCompanion Co on our Instagram page and they can find me at Marley Underscore Brodsky on Instagram.
- [25:16]
B
Arleebrodsky on Instagram. That's M A, R, L, Y, B R, O, D, S, K Y at Marley Underscore Brodsky over on Instagram and then medcompanion. Com, go check out some of the stuff that they got going on. Marley, thank you so much for taking the time. Everybody else, remember, money only solves your money problems, but it's easier to solve the rest of your problems when you got money in the bank. So let's solve that one first here on the Travis Makes Money podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Catch you guys next time. Peace.