Kyle Swinsky, the trailblazing CEO and co-founder of AMOpportunities joins today's show. His international upbringing and unique college experiences ignited a passion for global education, leading him to establish an innovative company that bridges the gap for international medical graduates seeking US rotations. AMOpportunities tackles head-on the pressing global issue of physician shortages.
Listen as we discuss the labyrinth of challenges regarding physician education during the pandemic, and delve into the role of technology in healthcare. Kyle enlightens us with the potential of data to enhance patient outcomes, and the transformative power of AI and virtual reality in the healthcare industry.
We also dissect the complex barriers faced by international students in obtaining clinical education.
Host David E. Williams is president of healthcare strategy consulting firm Health Business Group. Produced by Dafna Williams.
Kyle Swinsky, the trailblazing CEO and co-founder of AMOpportunities joins today's show. His international upbringing and unique college experiences ignited a passion for global education, leading him to establish an innovative company that bridges the gap for international medical graduates seeking US rotations. AMOpportunities tackles head-on the pressing global issue of physician shortages.
Listen as we discuss the labyrinth of challenges regarding physician education during the pandemic, and delve into the role of technology in healthcare. Kyle enlightens us with the potential of data to enhance patient outcomes, and the transformative power of AI and virtual reality in the healthcare industry.
We also dissect the complex barriers faced by international students in obtaining clinical education.
Host David E. Williams is president of healthcare strategy consulting firm Health Business Group. Produced by Dafna Williams.
0:00:10 - David Williams
As CEO and co-founder of AM Opportunities, Kyle Swinsky helps international medical graduates gain US rotations. The company leverages a variety of innovative technologies and touts itself as part of the solution to physician shortages. Hi everyone, I'm David Williams, president of Strategy Consulting firm Health Business Group and host of the Health Biz podcast, a weekly show where I interview top health care leaders about their lives and careers. Please leave a comment, subscribe or leave a rating. Kyle, welcome to the Health Biz podcast.
0:00:42 - Kyle Swinsky
No, thank you for having me.
0:00:44 - David Williams
Now I want to hear a bit about your background, your upbringing, what was your childhood like and any childhood influences that have stuck with you.
0:00:53 - Kyle Swinsky
Well, in my childhood I traveled a lot, so I like to say that I was lucky enough to visit a lot of countries when I was younger and really saw the value of internationalization and that really led to more work that I did through my college career, my undergraduate career, that led to the founding of the company about 10 years ago. So definitely thankful for international travel and really learning a lot about different cultures.
0:01:20 - David Williams
And was that sort of on your own, or were your parents taking you around, either for work or just for vacation or whatever?
0:01:26 - Kyle Swinsky
I would say both. So my father was an international consultant, so lived in Europe for a while, went to some other continents and he was in Asia for a while as well. So I think it was very fortunate that I had those experiences in my single digit years. But then as a college student I got brought back into international education where I found an organization that was about becoming a doctor and one of the focuses was international exchange and, through developing that programming, learning a lot from others abroad. It really led to the company at the initial phases, where international students they deserve access to education, they should be able to mobilize, and having students together from different cultures really makes it better for all.
0:02:17 - David Williams
That sounds good. I agree with you about kind of the early exposure to the world. Essentially it's a global village and yet people often haven't had that opportunity to go and see it firsthand. You learn a lot more when you do and I can see how this sort of progression from childhood through what you were doing when you were in school has made sense and leading to AM opportunities. But I saw also on your LinkedIn at least it looks like at one point you were a percussionist. You ever think about being? Is that like a glorified drummer or is that like the Glockenspiel or what's percussionist beyond drummer?
0:02:53 - Kyle Swinsky
I mean I'll drum on anything. I still have tendencies to definitely want to get back into the music career, but maybe that's the next life.
0:03:04 - David Williams
Yeah, that sounds good. My producer tells me not to bang on the microphone or anything like that, so we'll just keep kids like sit on my hands or something to prevent that. But that's always good. I always like that to have some music in the family, especially if it's something noisy what people know.
0:03:21 - Kyle Swinsky
No, definitely it was more of a jazz drummer and percussionist. But again, now you got to be sensitive to my hands.
0:03:28 - David Williams
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's okay. So you know, I noticed a couple of these kind of medical student associations. So I saw you were running an American Medical Student Association and then the International Federation of Medical Students Associations. Is that like an association of associations? What is that all about? Untangle back for us a little bit, yeah, I mean I can tell you.
0:03:50 - Kyle Swinsky
AMSA is the national group of medical students in the United States. Ifmsa is sort of like the UN of all of the AMSAs around the world, so there's an AMSA in every country and IFMSA has roughly 110. Countries represented by their national medical student association. And that's really where I got a lot of my roots, really learning about the importance of international healthcare, the importance of international doctors to the US healthcare system. Definitely a lot of those organizations.
0:04:27 - David Williams
So, as you mentioned, it's been about a decade since you founded AM Opportunities. So, coming out of the work, presumably with those associations and federations, what did you see as a need to be served with a company that wasn't already being done by the associations themselves?
0:04:44 - Kyle Swinsky
Access to education that's equitable. At the time, 22 percent of US healthcare workforce is trained abroad and the marathon that an international student has to go through to get into our workforce is very nuanced and difficult. And what I learned and what we've seen in the last 10 years is that getting access to those initial clinical education blocks that we call rotations. It's months working with the doctor, learning what life is like, say in internal medicine or cardiology. They need that as a stepping stone to get into the system. Without those blocks it's really difficult.
So the formulation of the business was let's democratize this education so that students can have access. And I love to say that access to education is still resolving and while I would say a real good portion of our business is growing internationally, it's now become access just down the road or in different states. In the United States, where you see, nurses have issues with their rotations because their school wants them to go to a different state, or physician assistants, physician associates or doctors in the United States as well. And at the end of the day, it's access to education that enables trainees and students to go and do what they're best at become doctors, become PA, as become nurses in practice.
0:06:12 - David Williams
So I think I understand it at the broad level, but help me understand it at the level of, say, an individual student who is, you know, they're going to school outside the US, they want to work here. Like, what is this path that somebody takes and how do you help to smooth it specifically, that's a great question.
0:06:31 - Kyle Swinsky
The path to becoming a healthcare professional starts in the classroom. You do your pre-medical years, your pre-clinical. It's a lot of learning in the classroom with the textbooks, but typically after two or three years of that, depending on which country you're from. Then you go on these clinical rotations and that's more the clinical education component of your career. So you have this with medical schools, you have this in PA schools, nursing schools, going out and learning what it's like to become that professional. And typically you need a year to three of those to progress into the next phase, which for doctors it's residency.
You apply for residency to the match for PAs, for nurses, once you get your clinical hours. A lot of times that factors into your licensure. So, state by state, you have to have a number of hours to get licensed, depending on the profession. But all of this comes down to those clinical blocks and I tell you, I tell you it's so sad when you hear students say I couldn't graduate this year because my school couldn't provide this rotation. So we have students that want to get into the workforce when we need them the most and they're being held back by this access to education piece.
0:07:46 - David Williams
Got it. So there's obviously a lot of discussion about physician shortages in the US, also nursing shortages, any kind of health care professional, and I'm wondering just broadly is this a US specific issue or what does it look like from an international basis?
0:08:02 - Kyle Swinsky
It's a global issue. I tell you, the United States is one of many countries that you see mobilization of health care workforce. You see students that train in one country, especially in the European Union. You see a lot of mobilization across countries and it comes down to access to their system and being able to culture it and get into the workforce as soon as possible. So you see, especially countries like the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Germany, countries that have shortages and are heavily dependent and relying on internationally trained health care workforce.
0:08:42 - David Williams
You have this concept you talk about, about clinical training exchanges, and I'm wondering what those are and how those help address this physician shortage.
0:08:54 - Kyle Swinsky
So really the exchanges themselves are giving students the education they need as the roadblock. So a typical student that we see they'll finish their classroom learning but they need to complete certain blocks to graduate, whether it's one internal medicine rotation or 12 months of all specialties to finalize that third or fourth year. But they come in many different shapes and sizes. Some students need a virtual psychiatry rotation because they can do it remote and their school allows for that. Some students need three months because they need to factor in their electives, which is, you know, hey, I'm interested in anesthesiology or radiology. Those are a little more subspecialized, so students choose those to learn more about it the first time and ultimately sometimes it's a deciding factor on what they practice in. So they use those as a look, you know, not just for classroom, you know, augmenting their learning but, you know, to get through into the next phase of the career.
0:09:53 - David Williams
Got it and you know, if the company started 10 years ago, say around 2013, then you were up and running for a few years before the pandemic, then you went through the pandemic and now hopefully we've emerged on the other side at least of this, this pandemic. What was the experience like for your business specifically during the pandemic? And you know all the other things going on with us. You know physician education during that time.
0:10:18 - Kyle Swinsky
I would say there were three big trends that we saw, obviously. The first was the exhaustion of our healthcare workforce. So obviously, resources in healthcare being pulled into the response efforts, a lot of clinical educators didn't have the time to teach, so you actually saw a crunch of clinical education where it was brought down and a lot of schools and students had to rely on our services because schools were losing clinical education. So the first trend was the healthcare workforce was stunted, they were very busy and it was more difficult to teach. The second thing, with that being a factor, was the shortage itself. I think we all saw a shortage coming into the pandemic but exacerbated it. You not only have burnout doctors and healthcare professionals you know it was tougher but you also put a spotlight on how short we were on healthcare workers, because the response of course necessitated more nurses, more doctors, more PAs and lastly but we also saw was international mobility. So obviously, with the shutdown of travel globally, it was a third factor that stunted the training of healthcare workers that if you couldn't travel from one country to the other, well then you may have to wait another year or two to accelerate into the next phase of your career. And I think, with all those combined, amo was a real force in terms of helping.
Where, first, we launched virtual education, I would say a real big deal in 2020 was as we offered our clinical education remotely. So you still would get to work with patients, you still would work with a physician or a preceptor that would do the learning, but you would do it remotely, so the travel piece was a little easier. Also, our services facilitate the education. So when we work with a healthcare facility, a hospital, a clinic, we're providing them our services to actually augment what they have. So if you were a physician, teaching working with us actually makes it easier. So if you're saying, look, I'd love to teach because everyone wants to, it's altruistic. We want to give back into the workforce, but patients have to come first. So assisting with making things easier administratively, amo is really a factor. And then, just to the shortage as a whole, every year we saw an increase in the number of trainees. So we believe that ultimately, all of our trainees are entering the workforce that you access. Education remains the bottleneck in our mind.
0:13:00 - David Williams
You know, a lot of people did similar sort of things that you just described like telemedicine, virtual simulations. I'm not saying it was easy, but that was a kind of a classic response. I would say it's always something of mind. I wouldn't say it's a fully integrated with what we do, but I think that what you're saying in terms of where it's taking the industry, there's definitely a point where it's taking the industry.
0:13:39 - Kyle Swinsky
There's definitely places to grow with it. As a company, we more deal with it in terms of making ourselves more efficient. I think, in terms of helping students, there are ways to play, especially in the education, with the classroom. Education, the content and we all mean personalized education obviously is the way to go, where every student learns differently, and if we can use AI to make education outcomes better, it's definitely has a place. But for AMO, where we sit in terms of in person or virtual clinical education, I would say it's more on an apparel and would say Got it.
0:14:19 - David Williams
Now I'm wondering about. Us healthcare organizations are trying to figure out what to do for these workforce shortages and challenges and there's no one silver bullet, but it sounds like clinical rotations for international medical graduates is one of the things that they can do. Are there things that US healthcare organization should be doing specifically to facilitate those clinical rotations?
0:14:42 - Kyle Swinsky
Yes, and when we talk to a clinical system or healthcare system or clinic individual doctor, this is creating pipelines to talent. So when you work with AMO, we help your system attract talent. Many times rural healthcare sites that they don't have that local medical, pa or nursing school to bring them talent. Amo has this network of hundreds of thousands of schools that we work with. So for a clinical site, the value proposition is not only us helping with the education, but it's attracting talent into your workforce.
And I to your question, I think it's healthcare systems should not be only thinking in terms of you know staffing agencies and you know really the way that we work with them. You know really the traditional way to hire a healthcare worker. They need to invest in training their upcoming workforce because it may take a few years to build it, but if you are training, you know training your own, you're more likely to have. Those trainees want to remain there and work there and the statistics show. You know different sources say one third to the nearly half of all trainees remain working where they train and the healthcare system should really be investing in their education, not as a singular. We educate, they leave. But let's educate and attract, let's educate and retain.
0:16:01 - David Williams
Makes good sense, and so are these health systems your main customers, or what's the business model for AMO?
0:16:07 - Kyle Swinsky
I would say they are one of our top clients, but our customers are schools, universities, individual students and the healthcare systems that involve clinics, physicians all the way up to health systems.
0:16:20 - David Williams
Got it, kyle, just changing the topic here for a minute and really for the last question is I wonder whether you've read any good books lately, if you have anything that you would recommend to our viewers and listeners.
0:16:31 - Kyle Swinsky
Yeah, I mean I I believe that you can learn so much with the experience, but then you can always rely on others and in figured more out from them. A few recent good books I read Peter T L's from zero to one. That was pretty inspirational for me, you know, in terms of figuring out some, some business skills.
Another was you know from good to great, you know and we call them over case study that went through a bunch of Forbes 500 companies and talked about the difference between a good company and a great company. And you know all these books they do the same thing for me, where it's you know, giving you a toolkit to really say you know what's going on at a macro level. So, like the zero to one was a playbook of things that Peter T L learned with his portfolio of companies about building a business. And you know some things were helpful, some were not. And then you know from going from a good to great, that was looking at companies, say, like Chrysler or Ford, and you know how certain companies were good, what made them great companies. And obviously I'm a very firm believer in people and I think through a lot of those, those books, you really realize how you're mobilizing your people and such is really mission critical.
0:17:45 - David Williams
Great, those are some good ones. I've read both of both of those. They're pretty, pretty exciting and common and I think maybe it says something that the CEOs and founders tend to lean on those on those books. Well, kyle Swensky, ceo and co founder of AM opportunities or AMO, thanks so much for joining me today on the health biz podcast.
0:18:07 - Kyle Swinsky
Thank you, dave, I appreciate it.
0:18:09 - David Williams
You've been listening to the health biz podcast with me, david Williams, president of health business group. I conduct in depth interviews with leaders in health care, business and policy. If you like what you hear, go ahead and subscribe on your favorite service. While you're at it, go ahead and subscribe on your second and third favorite services as well. There's more good stuff to come and you won't want to miss an episode. If your organization is seeking strategy consulting services and health care, check out our website, healthbusinessgroupcom.