Dr. Gordon Chen (Chief Medical Officer of ChenMed)

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Welcome to the Mere Christians podcast.

I'm Jordan.

Hi, I'm Jordan Raynor.

How does the Gospel influence the work of mere Christians?

Those of us who aren't pastors or religious professionals, but who work as technicians, lawyers and fishermen. That's the question we explore every week. And today I'm posing it to Dr. Gordon Chen. He's the chief medical officer of ChenMed, this incredibly innovative healthcare company with 100 medical centers in 15 states.

Dr. Chen and I recently sat down.

And talked about their radical business model that is doing justice in some powerful and practical ways. We talked about how to embrace and address conflict at work in a God honoring way and what Jesus own work.

As a physician means for us.

I think you guys are going to love this episode with Dr. Gordon Chen. Doctor Chen, welcome to the Mere Christians podcast.

Happy to be here, Jordan, with you. Thank you for having me.

Oh man, it's a pleasure. I've been really excited about this. Hey, so I'm really digging this book you guys just put out called the Calling. And there's a story in there about the founding of this business, Chen Med. This is very personal for you, the founding of this company. Would you mind sharing the story with our listeners that eventually led to the birth of ChenMed?

Yeah, this is very personal. And actually since we've written the book, I've realized that anyone that reads the book that I interact with, they have so much personal detail of my life that it feels a little bit. It's interesting. It's almost like, oh, wow, I guess you know more about me than the majority of people. So how the book starts out, it's about 20 years ago actually. I was in medical school and I get a phone call from my dad who is essentially trembling on the phone saying, gordon, pick me up. And you know, as a son going, what do you mean pick you up? Like you taught me how to drive. Like what's happening? And then I soon discovered that he found out that a simple little numbness over his left lip and he had a CT scan to evaluate it, that he was told that he had a large cancer behind his nose that was going to kill him fast. And so, you know, thinking to myself, my goodness, you know, I was kind of, you know, competitive, relatively worry free medical student, right? Other than Tess studying, finding out that my dad has two months to live, what do we do? And I was engaged and we thought that he would have to have his face removed to get this golf ball sized mask behind his nose that was encroaching upon the base of his skull and causing kinds of nerve issues. And so as a family, we just were broken, you know, we believe we were broken with purpose. And we're a family full of healthcare providers that finally experienced what it's like to be a patient and to suffer and struggle through a broken healthcare system and, you know, so many different doctors and complications and one hand not talking to the other hand. And so we really needed to step in and fight for my dad's life and, you know, plead to God to spare his life. And this is where just, you know, we really felt God's presence just carrying us through that struggle. You know, there were, you know, ER visits, neutropenic fever, hospitalizations, you know, mini strokes. It was a very difficult six months. But we were so thankful that God brought us through, that. My dad made it through cancer free. That's essentially what brought us together as a family. We were already brought together through our faith, but that kind of what brought us mentally and emotionally together as a family. The six of us, my parents, my brother and his wife, Stephanie and Jessica and I. And then from there we started to not only experience the struggles of being a patient, but then figuring out how to keep my dad's business alive. And his business required him to keep his patients healthy for the business to be successful. And so you can imagine if he's a patient, how he's thinking about his patients, right, and fighting for their better health and designing technology that supports the ability to take care of patients in a way that not only supports their better health, but then that can help more and more patients. And then we began to notice as a family, we all are very different. We each had very unique gifts and talents and just being able to work together as a family, it was amazing to see puzzle pieces come together and then be able to kind of then produce something that's beautiful. So from those early days after suffering, we decided we need to do something about this. There's a better way to deliver healthcare. We're a family full of doctors. We love technology, we love the Lord. How are we going to design something that can impact more and more patients? And then we started figuring out how to go from one center to two, two to four. Before you knew it, we had six to eight centers in South Florida, trying to figure out how to scale outside of South Florida. And then we went to Virginia. Then we started going to multiple different states. And so today we have over 130 centers, 15 states, and we're doubling every two to three years in our size. And so God has just tremendously blessed our family and the organization. And we're very fortunate, Jordan, that we can be in a situation where we can be authentic with our faith. And it's a private company and so we can be who we are and we can live out our faith through our work. But then we can also have strong business accountability while we have strong mission accountability. And they go hand in hand.

What really caught my eye in your bio, there's this line that says Dr. Chen believes doctors can fulfill the moral imperative needed to create a healthcare delivery system that produces social justice through better health. End quote. I really want to hear more about this. I want to learn about how you're solving this problem, how you're producing social justice. But first, like, just awaken us to the problem, right? Like, in what ways does injustice manifest itself in health care?

Oh, you see this very often. First of all, the number one reason why people in America go bankrupt are health care bills. Okay? We know that. Everyone knows that if they do, if they have a hospitalization or if they have an mri and then everyone's sticker shocked at the bill, what the heck is going on? Right? There's no price transparency. And so there's financial hardship that hits patients. Now, certainly it's going to hit the poorest patients in the most underserved communities. And then we also know, because certain communities either don't have access to health care because of the social determinants of health, we know that there's a 20 to 30 year life expectancy gap just based upon where you live and perhaps the color of your skin. So you can be in New Orleans in one community and have a life expectancy in the mid-50s and tend to be in minority communities, and two to three miles away, you can have a community that is living 25 years longer. Okay? So whenever you see big gaps in these healthcare disparities or life expectancy and they're due to differences in social or racial backgrounds, then you got to scratch your head and you got to go, oh, why is that? And what we've discovered is if you go into those communities with the right model, what we call full risk approach, which puts us at risk for the patient's health outcomes and their health care costs, and we start working on improving health care outcomes in a means to lower medical costs, then we can actually close the gap on the healthcare disparities, and we can bring what we're interpreting as social justice by helping people to experience more love and better health in those communities compared to when we weren't there versus when we're there now.

And you guys are intentional about where you locate these medical centers. I mean, you're rushing into these low income communities, correct?

That's right. There are a few Reasons why we're rushing in. First of all, the number one reason is that's where our heart is, is helping those that are hurting.

I mean, I think that's where Jesus heart is.

For the record, by the way. I mean, our faith, every time you're diving into the scripture and you know, we're called to help the poor, the needy, the suffering, you know, the orphans, the, the widows, right? The foreigner. We go there because we feel like that's part of our mission. You know, it's funny, even my mother selects our locations. You know, she's like, she sees too many, like, you know, wealthy stores in the neighborhood. She's like, this is not for us.

And Trader Joe's across the street, move.

Along LA Fitness, not for us. So no, I'm not even joking. It's. And then as soon as you go into a neighborhood and you're like, ooh, like feeling a little bit like uncomfortable about safety, we're like, oh, this is probably the right location, right? And you know what's interesting is we can go in those neighborhoods. There's tremendous healthcare need. That's the other reason. First is mission. Second is like, we can grow our centers and attract a lot of needy patients that can help to make that medical center sustainable. You can't have a very expensive medical center that doesn't fill up with patients. It's not going to make it right. Then we can fill it up with patients and then the burden becomes on us to take a very sick, complex population of needy seniors in a very poor community and aggressively invest in their health, right? Like detecting their high risk conditions and aggressively managing them and lowering their hospitalizations or which is the number one cost burden and the number one determinant of whether or not we can help them to live longer, right? And so if we're lowering their unnecessary hospitalizations by upfront, preventative, proactive primary care based upon creating trusting relationships with one of our key values of love, then you could heal those patients, you could heal the community, and you could bring social justice. And you can do it where it's financially sustainable because you're cutting out the medical waste. If you can invest up front and prevent the heart attack before it happens, prevent the stroke before it happens, detect the cancer early, you know, manage the chronic conditions before they get out of control. Every hospitalization that you Prevent is like 15 to 20 thousand dollars in savings. Then what do you do with that? You invest it back into your people, your technology, your processes, prevention. And then you invest it into other needy communities and it becomes this beautiful virtuous cycle that it's just like, it's just wonderful to see happen over and over again. And that's kind of the journey that we've been on.

It's such a beautifully redemptive business model too. You mentioned this term kind of breeze past it. I want to park on it for a second because I don't even think I fully understand this. A full risk medical practice. What the heck does that mean in.

Practice for you guys? So typically healthcare is called fee for service, which means every time you see a patient, you get paid. Every procedure you do, you get paid for. Every time you order a test, there's some type of transactional payment and that's fee for service. And that drives. The vast majority of healthcare runs on fee for service. So every hospitalization you have to pay for, right? Or someone has to pay for full risk means that you're accountable for the total cost of care. So in our current system, if you can prevent hospitalizations, then the full risk models actually do better when the patients do better. Does that make sense? So we're aligning our incentives with the patient's incentives to say we want a trusting, durable, long term relationship that produces better health. And when you produce better health, guess what, you, you have lower medical spend. It just makes sense. Right? And so what we've been able to do is to scale this full risk model. Now of course, you know, fee for service is far from, it's not ideal, it's actually very broken. The full risk model is, I think, far better than fee for service, but it's not a perfect model. There are kinks to work out, but I think what it does is it aligns from a physician perspective or a clinician or a healthcare provider perspective, it aligns our interests to think about what we can do to help patients achieve better health, not just perform transactions or not just transfer knowledge to patients. Because that's not good enough in our model. It's not good enough to say, here's my expert opinion and it's up to you to figure out, good luck with that. That's more of an expert model and a transactional model where your work is done as soon as you transfer the knowledge. In our model, we need to see behavior change occur in a way that supports better health. Otherwise we're not accomplishing our business goals. But by the way, when we focus on the behavior change, then the people that we attract, it actually accomplishes their mission goals as well, which is producing better health. And so we as a company, our Mission is to honor seniors with affordable VIP care that delivers better health.

I love this so much. How has God's Word shaped your. I was reading in another interview you did a while back that you said that being in the Word, expand your vision, end quote for your work.

How so?

Talk a little bit more about that.

My appreciation for Scripture has skyrocketed over the last 10 years. I've been a Christian majority of my life. I remember perceiving Christ in a very young age, probably five or six, and then reaffirming, rededicating my life to Christ, you know, at age 11 in a church retreat. So I've been a Christian a long time, but just really diving into the Word, but then not only diving in and doing daily devotions, but memorizing and meditating on it just has been a tremendous blessing. So I've got, like, my favorite Bible chapters. One of the things that did want to mention, I read this book, and this is after, you know, high school, college, medical school, training, where I had to take so many tests, I ended up reading this book called Unlimited Memory. I thought that I had difficulty, like, memorizing Scripture and other, you know, long things, right? And I read this book by Kevin Hornsley, Unlimited Memory. And I use the techniques in the book to memorize Scripture. And it's been awesome. So I've been, for the last six, seven years, just adding to my, like, repertoire of, like, memorized Scripture and then coming up with a daily and weekly routine to just play it in my head over and over again. You know, when I wake up, you know, when I go to bed, if I wake up in the middle of night, and it's just been so meaningful for me. And then it's just a time to just play it in my head, but then also keep myself connected to truth.

Which of those truths that you've memorized do you think about the most as you're building this business? You're sitting at your laptop, you're doing site selection. Maybe you're seeing patients. Like, what passages come to mind most frequently as you're doing your work?

So many Romans 12 is probably one of my favorite chapters. Not only, you know, does it talk about, do not conform to the pattern of this world. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is, right? His good, pleasing, perfect will. It just constantly. How do you renew your mind? How do you renew your mind and then. And your heart? And then, you know, I had a theme. How do we have our hearts and minds set on the right things, which is, you know, on heavenly things, on things of God. So that was very meaningful. And that continues to be something that just, like, I don't think we can get enough of that. Right. How do we continue to transform our mind in a way that aligns with Christ? So that's been huge. The other thing is this concept is also in Romans 12, but it's also referenced all over Scripture. Right? So, like, you know, as members of one body, you know, like, we all have different functions. And, you know, you're the hand and you're the foot. And, you know, we all need to realize that we're all part of the body of Christ and Christ is the head, and that we all have different talents and gifts, and we need to celebrate that. And so that's been very meaningful, particularly as a family, realizing that we all have different gifts, but we all come together in this unique way. But then even as you're building your leadership teams, how are you designing leadership teams that have complementary gifts, strengths, you name it. That has been really beautiful because it allows us to make sure that we're in check, that not one person can really do it on their own. And ultimately, we have to yield to the head, which is Christ. So it gives us in our family a mindset of and a reminder that we need to humble ourselves and be able to work together and then serve Christ together.

Yeah, it's like a recognition of, like, mutual submission.

Right.

Like, if Christ is the head, we can each submit to each other, kind of regardless of job title. I mean, obviously there's functional necessity to some organizational hierarchy.

Right.

But it's a posture, it sounds like, of submission to one another. Am I reading that right?

That's right. And, Jordan, I don't want to give anyone the impression that we as a family don't like, oh, we submit to each other and we don't have any conflict because just keep in mind, just look at my brother and I, we're these, like, pretty large football player, wrestler, very aggressive personalities, right? We have wrestled physically throughout growing up, but we also wrestle over different topics. And we as a family have never shied away from conflict. In fact, we think that shying away from conflict is probably, you know, not good, because you're not getting the best answer. You have to engage in conflict assuming positive intent, and then if the conflict becomes unproductive, then that's a great opportunity to really, you know, humble ourselves before God and each other and ask for forgiveness. And I think that that's probably been one of the reasons why we've been able to work together as a family so so long while building company.

Talk more about that. How do you address conflict in a distinctly Christian way?

Right.

Proverbs 27:5 is coming to mind. You're better as open rebuke than hidden love. Jesus gave us a framework for conflict resolution. How do you guys think about this within the business?

So conflict starts out with differing views, Right? Now the question is, when you have differing views, how do you get that all out so you can find the best answer if you're solving a business need? And then how do you. If it's something that's like whether or not you're debating something moral, then there's more clarity in the Bible, like, let's go to the Bible. If you're discovering what's the best business solution and there are multiple different views, if you don't have conflict, you're in trouble. Patrick Lencioni, you know, has written a ton of books. One of my favorites, five Dysfunctions of Team. As soon as you. You have that foundation of trust. His dysfunctions are like absence of trust and, you know, or I forget the exact terminology, but once you have a base of trust, then you can have conflict. And then if you don't have conflict, that's actually a dysfunction. Now, of course, how do you define conflict? You don't want it to be unproductive conflict. You want it to be productive conflict. But you're being open and vulnerable in a way where you're engaging in conflict and you're wrestling over different ideas and concepts. Now, shoot, when you're wrestling, sometimes people, you know, get unintended injuries. And then we need to come around and make sure that, you know, those injuries, you know, we can all recover from them. Right. But that's kind of how we approached it. And actually, I think it, you know, comes from my parents. Learned so much from my parents. Just so thankful for them. They encourage open debate and positive conflict to find the better solution.

Yeah, it doesn't sound like these. The way you guys address this is about winning. It's about what's best for the mission. Right. And ensuring that if there are injuries, there's repair for the people. Right. There's a deep care for all the people involved in debating through these issues.

Right?

That's right. There is not only deep care. There is, you know, assuming positive intent. We're trying to find the right solution. We're trying to find the best answer. And then also, you know, reconciliation. And I think this has been one of our strengths as a family because we, you know, we work together, we live together, we vacation together. I think being able to humble ourselves for God and each other and, you know, if we mess up, asking for forgiveness and reconciling, you know, I think that that's been a muscle that, you know, we've had to work out a lot and I'm thankful for. And so forgiveness is certainly part of it. And then the best that we can do to assume positive intent, as we're having animated discussions, we can even get to the results, the right solution in a purely positive way.

I wanted to ask you about one more thing before we get to our three rapid fire questions that we round out every podcast with. My wife and I teach fifth graders in our local church on Sundays and, and we just completed a study through the Gospel of Mark. I was just like really struck by, you know, it always strikes me when I read straight through one of the gospels, Jesus spends nearly as much time healing as he does preaching, right? Like, it's amazing to me that he isn't described as a doctor by many people.

As a physician yourself, what does that.

Mean to you that Jesus spent so much time caring for physical needs and not just spiritual ones?

It's very meaningful ultimately for myself and I'll speak for my wife also. Physician. Jesus is the great physician, right? And so ultimately, you have to love someone enough to help them where it is meaningful for them. And then once you show your love for them and they feel it, the opportunity for them to be open, you know, to whatever, to Christ, to biblical truth, to your perspective, you know, it becomes that much more meaningful, right? So if you can pour into someone in a meaningful way, and then the most obvious way is if they're hurting or suffering or sick, helping them with that, bringing better health, Right? This is kind of back to our family purpose. Our family purpose is to glorify God by spreading more love and promoting better health in all who come into contact with Chenmed. I love the example that Christ gives and bringing healing and then also bringing truth. I wonder how, as a Christian community, we can do a better job at meeting people's needs and, and showing love and mercy and healing before we just, you know, rush in to, to point out truth. I don't know the right balance there, you know, but there is beauty in searching for that right balance of just really pouring into people to meet their physical needs. Maybe it's, you know, mental or emotional needs and then being able to kind of share your faith and share What Christ means to you.

That's good. That tension's a good one we need to be wrestling with. All right, Dr. Chen, three questions we ask every guest on the podcast. Number one, which books do you find yourself recommending or gifting most frequently to others? And these can be Christian living books. They can be business books. What's your go to? Like, what are you buying the most on Amazon to send to friends?

There are a ton of books. Most recently, it's interesting, there's. There have been a lot of people kind of, like, searching for answers, you know, with their faith and whatnot. And so I really love Tim Keller's the Reason for God. That's a fantastic one. Of course, you know, then it goes along with, you know, mere Christianity. C.S. lewis, Francis Collins. The Language of God is a great one for anyone in science and medicine. And you've referenced, you know, him being a guest. That's a wonderful book. Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus. That has been an amazing book as well. And so that tends to be the books that I recommend for people. You know, they're in science or medicine that just want more clarity and how to think through that science, faith, relationship.

Those are good. You know what's funny? Dr. Collins's books were Mere Christianity and Reason for God. How about that? Great minds think alike. Great minds think alike. Dr. Chen, who would you want to hear in this podcast talking about how their faith shapes the work they do in the world?

A colleague of mine, Faisal Syed. He's a doctor. He became a Christian a few years ago, but has just been on fire for Christ, actually, you know, he grew up Muslim and came to Christ. He, I think, would be just an amazing person to have on this podcast. And we encourage each other in the Lord. He immediately comes to mind. I mean, I think my mom.

I was gonna say, the way you've been talking about your mom, I'm like, I think I want your mom on the show.

It would be just amazing to hear her perspective. I mean, she did write a book in record time before Chris and I. You know, she's like, I mentioned to my mom, hey, we're gonna try to write a book on our family story. And, you know, she's so focused, and she's like, okay, yeah, I may do the same thing. And she, like, beat us by a year.

That's amazing.

And her book is just a wonderful testimony of what God's done in her life. And I think just having such beautiful, simple faith, there's so much power in just clear, simple faith. And so you know, it's been interesting is watching the difference between my mom, my dad had to, you know, go through all of the intellectual hoops and understand all of the detail and then finally, you know, coming to know the Lord. And my mom was just like, God loves us, Christ died for our sins. And she's very straightforward. Yeah. You know, and she has this beautiful way, you know, it's like, of just simplifying things. You know, we don't get something that we thought we wanted. She'll say, if it's not for us, it's not for us. I'm like, okay, thank you, Mom.

That's so matter of fact. I love that so much. Hey, Dr. Chen, you're talking to this audience of mere Christians doing a lot of different things vocationally. We got some physicians listening, we have entrepreneurs, we have, I don't know, foresters, I, I don't know, retailers. What's one thing from our conversation you want to reiterate to these mere Christians before we sign off?

One thing, Jordan, that resonates with me is that it doesn't really matter what job or role that God's put us in. We are all part of the body of Christ. We all have our role and responsibility to serve Christ and serve Christ in a unified way. And so we have the Bible. How can we really dive into scripture and change who we are? And once we really change and continue to develop who we are every day, like, how are we changing to be more like Christ every day through scripture? But then when who we are changes, then what we do and how we do it changes. And then just allowing the Holy Spirit to kind of work through us. I would just love to see us as the body of Christ, just whatever role that we have, just know that we are all serving Christ together. And I actually think even those that are not in full time ministry, I don't think folks that are pastors or whatnot, like are serving God in a better way than anyone else that may be listening that doesn't have like a pastoral role. I think we can serve God in just beautiful and intense ways right where we are.

Amen. I think that's why Paul called believers to stay put wherever they were when Christ called them. Thank you for doing that, Dr. Chen. I want to commend you for the extraordinary work you do for the glory God and the good of others, for reminding us of Jesus, call to go to the margins of our communities and serve the least of these. And thank you for giving us a really compelling case study of what that looks like. Not in a non profit but in this for profit business that is doing justice in some real intangible ways. Hey guys, if you want to learn more about Dr. Chen and his family story and the incredible work they're doing at ChenMedia, make sure you check out this great book called the Calling A Memoir of Faith, Family and the future of healthcare. Dr. Chen, thanks again for hanging out with us today.

Thanks so much Jordan. And everything that we've done is is really by God's mercy and grace.

Amen.

Thank you.

Got somebody you'd love to hear on the podcast?

I want to know about it. Contact me@jordanrayner.com contact to recommend a guest, even if that guess is yourself. Guys, thank you so much for tuning in this week. I'll see you next time.

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