Louis Carter and ChenMed CEO Chris Chen, MD: Love, Accountability, and Passion at Work

It's great to have Christopher Chen on today, CEO of ChenMed. Christopher, welcome! It's awesome to have you here.

Well, I'm so excited to be here.

What I love about you is your true understanding and implementation of love in your workplace, as well as your practical, clinical, uh, and physics understanding of how love plays out not just in the workplace but also in the examination room. I want to hear more about you and how you've brought love into your workplace.

Well, you know, there, there are 3 things that helped us and propelled us to become, um, you know, a most loved workplace. First, our mission of transforming healthcare to the neediest population. It is a, it is a focused mission. Secondly, we give people a tremendous sense of purpose and community, two things that are missing in a lot of workplaces. And last, which is actually most importantly, most important, our values. Many people put those values on their wall, and, uh, but not us. We live it, we reinforce it, we talk about it all the time. And those values are love, accountability, and passion. Uh, you know, you have to ask yourself, like, how did we start here? Like, why are we doing what we're doing? And, and the reason why we're doing what we're doing is because we've actually experienced what happens when healthcare doesn't work. Right, my dad, um, had cancer. He was a doctor, uh, smart guy, right? He was the number one ranked student in the country of Taiwan, has a master's degree in chemistry from Washington University, a PhD in biochemistry, a medical degree, and, and so a lot of degrees. And, and he, he developed cancer, and we became a family full of doctors that, that really experienced what it was to be a patient. And we noticed that there were so many things that were missing in that process. Uh, we noticed that we didn't feel that people cared. We noticed that the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing. It was outrageously complicated. We noticed it was really expensive. Um, we noticed that, um, it was very inefficient. It's so easy to get lost. So we decided to create a company that would solve and transform that care model. That's number one. Number two, we noticed that people with means— we, we had means— were experiencing this type of healthcare that really didn't work. And my dad said, well, we're a family full of doctors. What about people in the most underserved and overlooked communities? What do they experience? And so therefore we immediately said, okay, then our vision is to be America's leading primary care provider, transforming care of the neediest populations. Transforming care, and we're going to go into the neediest populations. Now a lot of people think that's really hard, right? You're going to try to transform care, you're going to— and then you're going to go into the most difficult environments to do that. Um, and I tell people, well, in order to transform care— care, healthcare in America is one-fifth of the United States GDP economy. It used to be twice the size of Russia. So I would say, hey, if you're trying to transform care, get ready, or disrupt care, you're going to take on two Russias. Now, because of the current circumstances, Russia's economy has gone down, so now it's four Russias. You're going to take on four Russias every day. And if you are going to transform caring and take on this huge goal and then do it in the communities that we're talking about, you cannot do this alone. Your success rate will be 0% if you try to do this alone. And so that created this concept that the most important thing that we do with each other is actually embody that first value of love. We must achieve— build great relationships on a foundation of love, and we must deliver great results for our patients. And that's where the accountability comes in. But let me focus in on love. So let me give you some examples. At ChenMed, what we tell people is it's important to love our patients. But first, learn to love each other, bond together, build relationships with each other. We must take care of each other first because only people who are loved can love other people. So let's, let's take care of each other so we then together can go and transform care in the neediest populations. So we started this thing, for example, called Chemed Cares Foundation. In 2021, we donated over $200,000 to more than 150 team members, um, for— that were in crisis, right? When people are in crisis, that's— love is even more important. We had this, uh, thing as an example called ChenMed Cares Christmas Wish, where employees can nominate people who are in tremendous need. We can't figure out what's going on everywhere, so we said help us identify people who are going through crisis and hardship. And last year, we, during Christmas, we, you know, distributed over $130,000 to dozens and dozens of, of team members that were really struggling during those holidays where, or, you know, the times are sometimes the hardest. We had examples in New Orleans when Hurricane Ida came over and the home office, uh, got in, in trucks and started bringing generators and, and drove them from South Florida all the way to New Orleans and were even able to distribute and serve 750 hot meals and get— provide, uh, essentials first to our people and then ultimately, uh, to, to our broader group of patients. We started this, uh, you know, employee resource groups to look at two things: to look at achieving racial and equity and equality. It's called Aware2. And, and we also developed the Women Inspired Network. And you're like, well, a lot of people have resource groups. Oh, I love this one or these two. Why? It's about racial equity and equality, and it's about women. 53% of ChenMed employees are women of color. Let me say this again. We are, uh, on, on the Change the World list. We are the one of the, if not the leader, in value-based care. And 53% of our employees, of our team members, are women of color. So we have numerous other examples, but this is an example of how we have this tremendous mission and this tremendous goal. The only way for us to achieve it is first we need to build relationships with each other, gain the steam necessary and the power necessary of building that relationship with each other and loving each other so we can go out and love on these communities and make a difference.

Wow, this is incredible, Chris. You, you had mentioned the statistic of racial equality that 53% are women of color. That's extraordinary. So how did— so how did you get there, and what is that like now at ChenMed where you're fostering and sustaining this incredible culture? Of racial equality?

You know, in today's world, love is not a commonplace workplace value. However, at ChenMed, it, it is absolutely core, right? It is the core. It is the first of our values, and we live our values. And so, uh, we practice love. I— this brings me back to a really interesting story. I remember when we were creating, uh, you know, what would our values be and our behaviors, and we were trying to, you know, codify it. And, and, uh, I was in my car and I had, uh, two executives on my team, right, my team members. And, uh, they called me and I guess they, they all drew straws, or a group of people drew straws to say, who's gonna tell Chris and give him this message now? Um, and they knew this is really dear to my heart. And so they called me and said, hey Chris, We love the value systems and we love what we're trying to do here. We love the mission, um, how we're trying to transform care and do it in the neediest populations. But this value of love, it just sounds so kooky and it's really not corporate. And we're growing so fast and we want to be a big— we're going to be a big corporation really soon. Um, can we consider something besides love? And I paused for a second and I thought this through and I said, guys, first of all, thanks for your courage. Um, and just to be vulnerable, I, I was on the fence. Uh, why was I on the fence? I, you know, I, I had a, you know, a mentor told me the same thing. So, but I said, you know what, when I was listening to you and you said love is kooky and it's not corporate. I immediately thought to myself, I said, well, why, why do we exist? Why do humans exist? Why are we all here? In, in my faith, in my belief, is that every person on this Earth was created to receive and to give love. That is the number one purpose of why we are all here, is to receive and to give love. And folks go to work for 8+ hours a day and they aren't receiving or expected to give love. That's very difficult. And it's now become such a normal thing that when you talk about love, it's quote unquote kooky. And not corporate. I said, you know what, that's a problem. So let's fix the problem. Let's bring love into the workplace. And so we made that, um, that strong decision to bring love into the workplace. And what that means is that we focus on serving others with empathy and selflessness. We give grace We place equal value in both results and relationships. We treat our patients and employees with kindness and dignity and the respect they deserve. And we value each other in our common purpose. We value their perspectives. And so, you know, uh, and then what you do is you add on accountability and passion, and actually everything falls in place. Everything falls in place, you know, in our neighborhoods. These neighborhoods are really struggling, um, you know, we, we take care of the old, the poor, the sick, and most of which are minorities, right? Close to 70% of our patients are people of color, and they are on average 72 years old. The average life expectancy in our neighborhoods is 72 to 74. So we're getting, you know, people pretty elderly and pretty sick and, and underserved and overlooked seniors. And so, um, and so if we're going into these neighborhoods, and many of them are health deserts, there are not care providers in our neighborhoods that we go into. That's why we go into them, and we want to make a difference. The only way you can do that is you have to do that together, together. And you have to actually— there's all these actions. You have to, you have to overcome your fear. And one of the strongest ways to overcome fear, in my mind, is the only way to overcome fear is through love. Love, love covers fear. When you have fear, it's very hard to act. When you have fear, you cannot innovate. When you have fear, it's very hard to invest. Um, when you have fear, you don't have the freedom to have fun. So you, so what you got to do is you got to cover that fear with love. So that's what the bonding is. That's why building relationships, that's why loving each other is so important. And then you can go out and make a difference. So let me give you an example. What does that love look like in a practical sense? Well, during COVID we made 1.2 million love calls during the pandemic. You're like, Chris, you guys are doctors. No, we had a lot of scared people. We called patients. We wanted them to know these are love calls. We love you. What can we do to help? And that yielded a whole host of things. We were buying toilet paper, running around and picking up supplies. For our seniors, right? Today, 93.3% of our patients feel that they are genuinely cared for when we surveyed our patients. That, that number is way above everybody else. What about our team members? We talked about first providing love for our team members first, and we openly invest in our team members to help them grow and develop. So we have one of the most robust and large physician training programs. It's a 9-month training course called ChenMed U, um, uh, that we, uh, provide for our doctors. Uh, in addition to that, for our leaders, our business leaders, we have physician leaders and business leaders from top to bottom. We also invest them very deeply with a 6-month leadership training course about really how to get the best out of people through love and then accountability and passion. We have a, a number of employee resource groups that we've talked about besides the ones that I've already talked about. And And the other thing is we've also moved upstream. What we realize is the way that healthcare is practiced in America is healthcare is about crisis care. You wait for people until they're very, very sick, maybe they're about to die, and then you— they go to the hospital and you try to rescue them. You know what, if we really can love on our patients, you need to provide that love way earlier. So we have to teach our doctors how to practice preventative care and build relationships with patients. To prevent bad things from happening. And a lot of that could be, could be changing their lifestyles. I had a patient of mine who ate a bucket of fried chicken every night, every night. 400 pounds, had heart failure. Now, I could just walk in like a typical doctor and said, you gotta stop doing that. She's not gonna listen. Or I can love on that patient, say, let me get to know you better. Let me figure out what's really going on. Let me see you every week if I need to. What? Here, let me, let me take a look at your— tell me about your children. Tell me about your grandchildren. Let me show you my children on my phone, right? And we started the bond, and we started to have a loving relationship. And I said, hey, you know, we all exist to give and receive love. You like to give and receive love, right? If you eat a bucket of fried chicken every night that's going to get in the way of that. And let me show you what that looks like. But if you can stop eating a bucket of chicken every night, let me show you what that looks like. And I— and she trusted me. Why did she trust me? Because I showed love to her. I gave her time. I was empathetic. I got to know her. So, you know, she loses 150 pounds after not eating a bucket of fried chicken every night. Her heart failure almost entirely disappears. We probably added 20 years to her life. So that's a perfect example of how love translates in our organization into the examination room that yields superior health results.

That emotional connection you're discussing right now with patients is so essential, and the way in which you did it is really beautiful. The way you asked her about her life, you shared your own values and your life with her, you became one with her, and then it was easier to make a co-created decision. And isn't that true with physicians too, right? Having those relationships with physicians, the trust levels go up when you're helping to develop them and grow and realize that they have lives too, they have families too, they have financial needs too, and so do your patients. It's so— it's, it's this constant discussion and connectedness that it's more than apparent you're doing. This 1.1 million calls— wow, love calls, that is so cool. I'm gonna— I definitely going to, to remember that, uh, the incredible ways that you connect with patients in difficult situations, in palliative care situations. Amazing, uh, and preventative, as you just said, for somebody eating a bucket of fried chicken a night. These are exceptional. The things you're doing is exceptional and so connected to what we do. We couldn't be more aligned.

You know, it's— people think love is kooky. It's not. It's highly practical. Um, so let's just talk about some statistics of what having love as, as sort of your— one of your guiding, key guiding values, and really breathing that into your organization. We reduce hospitalization rates by close to 50%. We reduce, um, ER visits by over 30%. Um, we can potentially double your 6-month survival from cancer, uh, for our patients. I mean, that's just tremendous, right? Um, we substantially reduce heart failure admissions. Um, you know, we're studying now amputation rates. So these are really practical outputs of creating an atmosphere in a culture of love. You know, unfortunately Um, you know, I, I trained at some really prestigious places, and, um, and what I'm discovering is, is that the way that we train caregivers is sometimes in an atmosphere of fear. And so right now, physician burnout and actually caregiver burnout— so it's not just the physician, physicians and the people that support those physicians— there's a lot of burnout. And most people think that the reason why they're burning out is because there's too much of something. It's too much. I would venture to say that it's not because it's too much of something, it's because it's not enough of something. And what are they missing? People can do remarkable things when they feel loved and supported. People can do remarkable things when there's purpose and there's a mission. Think about it, what you can overcome. And in the spirit of how you're working, I remember being in Nicaragua. We do a lot of— our company goes to Nicaragua, there's a lot of mission work there. And prior to COVID, right now it's a lot more challenged. And I remember we saw 600 patients, like, I think it was like in a day at one point. It's crazy. And at the end of the day, I was thinking, why don't I actually feel— I'm tired, but I feel refreshed. It's very interesting. And that's when I realized, uh, and of course we bonded at the end of the night. We talked about it. I realized is, you know, if we can create environments of feeling loved and supported and give people a genuinely beautiful vision and a mission and attach them to that purpose, you know, that's what we exist for, right? Then, then you're flowing. You're, you're doing what you were made to do, and you don't burn out. And that's one of our goals.

I love it. You know, I think about, uh, what love does in terms of health. The feeling of love with oxytocin, releasing oxytocin in our brains, uh, and then increasing T-cells.

It—

we're talking about a health effect of love. And it's— which is just amazing that you're, you're actively having success in ER visits, actively having success statistically in people's long-term care, their short-term care, within physician burnout. I mean, you're actually showing this reduction because of the word and because of the exercise thereof, love.

Thank you, Louis Carter. It's really a pleasure to be here. And when we discovered that we were the highest ranked healthcare company on the Most Loved Workplace list, um, it was really humbling. And, um, uh, you know, we were really, really excited. I still remember we found it around Thanksgiving, and we cut out this huge heart, um, and we had all the team members sign it and talk about what what they loved and why they love. And, um, but I truly believe that if, if we can— people think of love as kooky, right? They go, oh, that's just, it's kooky. It's not. It's not. It is, it is the fuel. It is what we are creating. It is the, is the energy in this, in this, in this universe that flows into us and allows us to flow it into other folks. And so if you can allow that energy, that, that love to flow freely, there are things that we can do that are well beyond any of our expectations. And we can go after some of the biggest problems in this country today. Healthcare. Healthcare is getting more expensive every year. Healthcare is delivering worse results every year. Life expectancy was dropping even before COVID Love can fix that. It has a huge role in that. What about massive disparities between our neighborhoods? Within each city in America today, there's a 20 to 30-year life expectancy difference between the poorest neighborhoods and the wealthiest neighborhoods. 20 to 30 years life expectancy difference. Well, disparities Love can solve that, right? And so, and we're showing that in reality, that, that there's data and evidence to support that. If you can get a group of people, align them to a mission that is worthwhile for them, and have them create an atmosphere of love first and then go outwards, the results, they're beautiful. And they're important. We're looking for people to join us. We are growing so fast. We literally doubled the organization every roughly 22 months. We doubled the size of the organization. So we are hiring people, um, like crazy, and we are looking for people who are dedicated and are compassionate and who have this eagerness to, to really get attached to a mission and to build relationships first with each other and then with our patients. And, and what we can offer them is, you know, great incentive programs, great benefits, competitive compensation, but also we will invest in you. We'll give you opportunities to train and grow, um, leadership programs, mentoring, you name it. We have great wellness programs. But most important, you're going to be surrounded by equally mission-focused, love-driven people who are trying to make a big difference in some of the most challenging things in this country today. So great, great to see you, Louis Carter. Um, check out chenmed.com/careers to get more information, and would really, really, uh, you know, enjoy watching more people join this mission.