6.10.2 - Newsmakers: LiverRight Launches America's First Virtual Hepatology Clinic

Roger Green talks with LiverRight CEO Brandon Tudor and Chief Medical Officer Alexander Lalos about the launch of LiverRight, America's first virtual hepatology clinic, which has recently begun treating patients.

Brandon starts the conversation by telling the story of how he and his partner, Pete Celano, started LiverRight: they saw liver disease as a growing disease in a medical system that was ill-equipped to provide front-line care. When the two men "secret shopped" getting doctor's appointments, they found extremely long waits (3-5 months in examples provided throughout this conversation) for appointments that put stress on the patients and their schedules (days off from work, hours of travel to the clinic). Brandon gave one example in Arizona, where LiverRight could get a hepatologist certified and accepted by insurance months faster than the patient could get an appointment at a local hepatology center. 

Al amplifies the issue by noting that when the patient in Arizona was scheduled to see a transplant hepatologist, who certainly could treat the patient but was "not really appropriately matched to [the patient's] condition. To Al, who is a transplant hepatologist himself, the virtual approach provides three benefits: convenience, speed and a better match between provider and disease. As Al notes, transplant hepatologists spend their time doing transplants, an important and highly specialized skill. A far broader swath of providers could treat a patient seeking testing for MASLD. 

Al notes two more benefits he sees with virtual clinics. After online triage during the initial visit, the patient is routed to the level and type of provider best matched to that individual's need for care. The second benefit, which Al says "may sound crazy," is that an online visit, where the provider is looking directly at the computer (and patient) while entering information, feels far more personal than an in-person visit where the provider is looking at the computer monitor instead of the patient. 

The rest of the discussion covers various advantages that the LiverRight executives believe accrue from virtual care. The most important, in Brandon's words, is that virtual "allows us to move to a preventive world instead of a reactive world." One that Al mentions is that the quality and breadth of knowledge of the virtual providers is higher than he expected and leads to both guidelines that are appropriate to task and special knowledge in key areas such as nutrition.

NOTE: Roger Green is a paid advisor to LiverRight