Sandeep Bhashyam, M.D.

New chief medical officer at Liberty Resources wants to build a larger medical team to serve the community. ‘We’re trying to build out a multidisciplinary model so the patient can get all of their routine care in one place,’ he says

By Chris Motola

 

Q: You are the new chief medical officer at Liberty Resources.

A: That is correct, as of Nov. 25. I recently started, so I’m getting to know Liberty right now. I came here from another position at FCHC [First Choice Health Centers] over in Connecticut. It’s a federally qualified health center with a lot of service lines. We took care of around 18,000 to 20,000 patients with diverse issues, facing a lot of challenges. It was a great experience. And then I moved over here to the Syracuse area for this great opportunity with Liberty Resources. So now I’m here.

Q: Liberty Resources has a heavy social services aspect to it. How does that factor into your role as CMO?

A: With the patient population that we see and Liberty’s crisis services and home-based services, we have a lot of home-based services. They’re a great network with great resources that we can utilize. The primary care arm that we’re trying to build out now will hopefully integrate and be able to utilize those services. A lot of the patients that we get have a lot of health issues. We take care of a lot of patients who are homeless, who have financial issues. So we have to bridge those barriers while taking care of their physical and mental health issues. It’s the challenge we’re trying to figure out. I think a lot of the resources that Liberty has are very well-positioned to take care of these patients in a more integrated manner, addressing gaps in care, reducing hospitalizations and getting quality outcomes.

Q: Are you specifically overseeing primary care?

A: Yes. I’m overseeing primary care. We’re just growing, so we just added on some new physicians — including myself. So we’re able to provide more services, including pediatric services. I oversee the primary care side. I also oversee GYN services. It’s good. It’s exciting. We’re bringing on new staff, new nurses.

Q: Coming from another human services-oriented provider from another state, what are some of the differences in approaches between Liberty Resources in Syracuse and FCHC in East Hartford?

A: So I can definitely say there are differences, but there are a lot of similarities, too. Hartford is a very urban setting. A lot of patients have issues with social determinants of health. There’s a lot of homelessness. That’s very similar to what we see here. But here, because of what Liberty Resources is known for, we see a lot more issues with patients with mental health issues that require mental health services. That’s the main difference. We also have some demographic differences. Syracuse has a large Nepalese demographic here that isn’t in Connecticut. I’m still getting to know the Syracuse area myself. There are differences in networking too. We have a lot of streamlined services with St. Joe’s as well as the ability to do a lot of things in-house.

Q: Mental health does get touched on by primary care, but it’s usually not a major focus. How does Liberty Resources go about integrated the two?

A: With a vast amount of resources. We have case managers. We have crisis coordinators. There are a lot of people here that we use to try to close our gaps in care. It’s been great to be able to use these resources for primary care. We have a lot of the same challenges when we’re screening patients for social determinants of health. Here everything’s integrated. We can screen from both sides. If I need to find a therapist for the patient I can just walk down the hallway to get a better idea of what’s going. On the primary care side, if a patient’s mental health isn’t being taken care of, I’m going to have a lot harder time fixing the physical side. And that’s goes both ways. If their diabetes is out of control, it’s going to affect their mental health. There are a lot of areas where we can collaborate. So we’re trying to build out that multidisciplinary model so the patient can get all of their routine care in one place.

Q: What’s your approach to building this model?

A: A lot of teamwork. A lot of networking. A lot of networking and teamwork and a lot of hard work. One thing I noticed with Liberty and a reason why I chose Liberty, is that there are a lot of great people who are innovative and want to make a difference. We do a lot of workshops, a lot of work groups. We target specific populations and work from there. Sometimes it’s trial and error, but it’s also assessing needs and matching services to needs for the population.

Q: What got you interested in healthcare administration?

A: When I was first starting out I didn’t really know which area of medicine I wanted to go into. I wanted to do a little bit of everything. As an attending physician I came to see what patients were going through and became more interested in the system of health itself. How things work. How we deliver healthcare to patients. What we can do to keep patients out of the hospital. I went back for my healthcare-focused MBA over at Yale. It gave me an idea of how to do sustainable care delivery models. There’s a lot of innovation you can do. It’s a lot of fun.

 

Lifelines

Name: Sandeep Bhashyam, M.D.

Position: Chief medical officer at Liberty Resources

Education: Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at University at Buffalo (2009); Yale University, executive Master of Business Administration, 2016; The American Board of Internal Medicine, board-certified in internal medicine; SUNY Stony Brook School of Medicine, residency in internal medicine, 2012; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Bachelor of Science (BS) in biology and chemistry, 2004 (dean’s list)

Career: Chief medical officer, First Choice Health Centers, E. Hartford, Connecticut; associate medical director, Primary PartnerCare ACO, Great Neck; founder, We Excel Tech LLC, New York; chief medical officer; Conduet MED, New Haven, Connecticut

Hometown: Yonkers

Organizations: American Board of Internal Medicine, American Medical Association

Family: Wife, two sons

Hobbies: Basketball, tennis, movies