Vitalic Health: Transforming Senior Care with AI Technology

 Vitalic Health: Transforming Senior Care with AI Technology

How Vitalic Health Uses AI and Clinicians to Identify and Treat Undiagnosed Depression in Seniors

Season eight of Villages Vitality Life: Senior Life Unscripted introduces a new format featuring leaders and resources relevant to seniors in and around The Villages, Florida. Host Mike Roth interviews Vitalic Health co-founders Ben Gardner and Michelle Hoy about an AI-enabled program that screens Medicare Advantage members for depression and connects those who screen positive to immediate virtual care. Michelle explains that AI voice agents, texting/email, and timing optimization support outreach while preserving patient choice to speak with a human clinician. They discuss CMS requirements for annual depression screening in Medicare Advantage, the impact of undiagnosed depression alongside chronic conditions, barriers and stigma that lead to false negatives, and Vitalic’s “warm handoff” to coaching, therapy, and medication support via telehealth. They also cover suicide-risk screening (PHQ-9), crisis guidance including 988, and how ACOs in traditional Medicare may partner similarly. Contact details for Vitalic Health are provided.

00:00 Season Eight Kickoff
00:37 Meet Vitalic Founders
01:35 How AI Screening Works
03:01 Medicare Screening Mandate
05:00 Beyond Screening to Care
06:10 Why Seniors Avoid Help
07:19 Traditional Medicare and ACOs
10:32 Telehealth Warm Handoff
11:52 Alzheimers Tip Break
12:55 Caller ID and Voicemail
13:43 AI Voice Script and Learning
15:38 Honest Answers and Stigma
16:36 Real Patient Turnaround Story
18:35 What Families Can Do
19:22 Suicide Risk and Intervention
21:53 How to Reach Vitalic
23:59 Final Thoughts and Signoff

New FAN MAIL features TXT & Voice Mial

Transcript

NANCY: 0:27

Welcome to Season eight of Villages Vitality Life, seniors Life Unscripted. Our podcast used to be called Open Forum in The Villages, Florida. In this new season, we talk to leaders of clubs and interesting folks who live in and around The Villages. We also talk to people who have information vital to seniors. You will get perspectives of what is happening in and around The Villages, Florida. In addition, in this new season, we will add more information for all seniors. We are a listener supported podcast.

mIKE: 0:59

This is Mike Roth on Villages Vitality, senior Life Unscripted. I'm here today with Ben Garner and Michelle Hoy, their co-founders of Vitalic Health. Michelle has spent two decades in behavioral health with deep focus on older adults. She developed a phase based care at MindSpring Health and her national recognition, including the Sherman Award. Vitaly is the lead in clinical strategy for AI enabled program that identifies and engages seniors with undiagnosed depression before the crisis hits, Ben has spent 25 years at the intersection of healthcare and technology focused on the outcomes in older adults for Medicare Advantage. Now, Ben, when you were working in with Medicare Advantage, were you working for the government or one of the healthcare providers?

bEN: 1:54

For a provider or for other solution providers that would help MA plans provide the care that they do to the population.

Mike (2): 2:02

Michelle, can you explain AI enabled model that proactively identifies seniors at risk and how it works?

mICHELLE: 2:10

We use a AI in several ways. We can use it through phone calls and having a voice agent. That really simply looks like when we call somebody, it might be an ai, not a real person who is talking to them and offering screening around their mental and emotional health. We also provide some assistance around texting and email chat function. We also use AI to help identify when people. Are more likely to be able to take a phone call and talk with us so that they can complete these screenings, which are really important for their health. We always offer the ability to opt out of that and talk to a person in our clinical team if they would prefer. We believe choice is a really important piece of engaging with older adults. We know that all of us, me included, really want to have a choice in who's providing our healthcare, including things as simple as screenings. So we have a lot of different choices.

mIKE: 3:26

That's the first question in my mind. How do you select who gets a screening telephone call?

mICHELLE: 3:32

The Centers for Medicare just mandated that all Medicare Advantage plans screen everyone who is part of their plan for possible depression in the very near future. There's a mandate that all older adults who are part of a Medicare Advantage plan receive a screening around their mental and emotional health.

mIKE: 3:54

A hundred percent of the Medicare. Advantage plan members, no matter which advantage plan they have, should be getting at least one screening phone call per year.

mICHELLE: 4:03

Yes. Or a screening in their doctor's office or somewhere because the system, and we know research has said for many years that when an individual has one or more chronic conditions, so things like diabetes, heart conditions, high blood pressure, asthma. COPD, anything like that, and has undiagnosed depression or anxiety. The individual is much more likely to end up in an emergency room or having poor health outcomes and not leading the life they can have , which is really very sad and it's avoidable. Really important thing to consider, and I know that the thought of mental health can be scary. Intimidating and off-putting. But really I think of it as things like you would call someone for some help or a tip if you were having trouble with your computer or you needed help with your plumbing at home and you weren't handy yourself. And so if you are just not feeling well and all of the medications for these other conditions aren't helping you probably just need some tips and tricks from a professional in emotional mental wellness. To help get you over that last hurdle from feeling better.

mIKE: 5:28

So at Vitalic, go further than just the screening.

mICHELLE: 5:31

Once somebody is screened, they are positive, meaning they have certain symptoms, we connect them to one of our clinical team members right away. And we have a lovely team. They're friendly, they're easy to chat with, and we do a, an assessment. And work with someone to identify what is causing them pain and problems right now, often people have a hard time with sleep, might be having a lot of pain. They might have just endured a loss in their life or had a major transition to becoming a caregiver or having to receive care. That's a very hard transition for many people, and so having someone. Neutral and outside of your support system to talk to about that and learn some tips and tricks for how to manage that and cope with it can be really helpful. We provide coaching therapy and we can help with mental health medications, things like antidepressants or an anti-anxiety.

mIKE: 6:37

Why is it that you think seniors don't seek care for depression or anxiety or other mental scenarios?

mICHELLE: 6:46

I think there's a couple of things at play. One is that I've talked to many folks. When you have high blood pressure, heart condition, and diabetes, you already have a lot of medications. You may just not feel great, and so if you're having a hard time sleeping or some pain or some worry about these conditions, it's really easy to chalk it up as normal. This is just the way I have to live now. It's easy to chalk it up to my heart condition or what's making me feel this way and not understand fully that things like depression and anxiety express themselves at a cellular level, just the same as a heart condition. They make you feel not well. And we help educate folks that these conditions really exacerbate and make your already. Standing medical issues feel worse and we can improve them and you can feel better. I think also that

mIKE: 7:46

I wanted to ask Ben about seniors who are on traditional Medicare. Are they covered by what you do at Vitalic?

bEN: 7:55

We certainly work with provider organizations, so there are certain provider organizations called ACOs, accountable care organizations that assume the risk. The insurance risk, if you will, to provide the insurance to members that are enrolled in Medicare Advantage, those that are enrolled in just Medicare. We will work with those ACOs in really a similar way that we work with the Medicare Advantage plans.

mIKE: 8:21

I've never heard of an A CO, so they work.

bEN: 8:24

So think of

mIKE: 8:25

how does the senior get associated with one?

bEN: 8:27

Think of it as either a really large primary care practice or a health system and Medicare. Will provide them full financial responsibility for a set of members in their geographic area for the year. And so now this primary care practice, let's say, has got 5,000 members, 65 plus that are enrolled in traditional Medicare. And the primary care practice is now responsible for all of the outcomes, all of the costs that would be incurred by these 5,000 members over the year. Really, they're like an insurer. They're acting the same way. And so they would engage us to help do this kind of proactive outreach and provide this behavioral health to these members that we know it can help to reduce unnecessarily going to the ed, et cetera.

mIKE: 9:20

What would happen for patients like me in private practice? Primary care,

bEN: 9:24

I guess it depends, Mike, if the practice, so look, we're not gonna reach necessarily everybody, but for starters, certainly. Medicare Advantage plans are mandated by CMS to provide this screening. If they don't, it's gonna have a kind of financial implications for them. If you are a primary care practice that is not taking any risk with traditional Medicare and your members are, or a patient comes in and they're in traditional Medicare, they likely. May very well not screen'cause no one's mandating that they screen. But Medicare's mandating all Medicare Advantage plans do. So the Medicare Advantage plans are working with the primary care practices to try to do it, but even if they do it, the issue here is even if a primary care practice does the screening, what's really important is for those that screen positive, we've then gotta get them into care. It doesn't. Do much good if we can identify that somebody has depression but they don't get into care. And that's really one of the biggest issues we're solving. We're really good at helping to identify and screen, but that's only half the issue. And so we're really good at once we've identified them, because of the friendly care team and really understanding how to engage, we're much more successful at kind of de-stigmatizing. The whole role of behavioral health, enrolling them in care and ultimately treating the depression.

mIKE: 10:59

When you say enrolling them, are you doing this via telehealth?

bEN: 11:01

It's all virtual phone video, exactly.

mIKE: 11:05

One gets screened by your questionnaire saying, this person needs help, whether it's a depression or an another mental condition. They would then be scheduled for a telehealth visit with one of your therapists.

mICHELLE: 11:21

We get them to one of our care team members immediately after the screening and transfer them from the AI call right to a care team member. We have an immediate warm handoff because we know this is a little bit scary sometimes to engage with, and we want individuals to hear. Our care team member be able to have a small conversation. If they're willing, we can complete our assessment right then and there, or we can then schedule them if they would like a day or two. But we work really hard to get people seen by our care team member immediately because somebody is on the phone willing to talk to us and learn why their pain and sleep problems might be able to be helped. It's the time to get started. Why wait.

mIKE: 12:18

Makes a lot of sense.

mICHELLE: 12:19

Yeah.

mIKE: 12:19

Let's take a short break here and listen to a Alzheimer's tip from Dr. Craig Curtis.

Dr Craig Curtis: 12:25

Then if we talk about non-modifiable risk factors, things you cannot change. There's a cholesterol that has been labeled the ghost cholesterol.

mIKE: 12:35

I've heard of good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. Now I have to worry about a ghost cholesterol.

Dr Craig Curtis: 12:41

That's right. So there's a cholesterol called LP little A, otherwise known as lipoprotein A. What we've discovered is that people with high values will have about a six times higher risk of. Having heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, such as strokes and this ghost cholesterol, we've had a blood test for a while, about 15 years that can detect it.

Warren: 13:06

With over 20 years of experience studying brain health, Dr. Curtis's goal is to educate the village's community on how to live a longer, healthier life. To learn more, visit his website, craig curtis md.com, or call 3 5 2 5 0 0 5 2 5 2 to attend a free seminar

mIKE: 13:22

when people get this telephone from vitalic. On their Medicare Advantage plan, what does the caller, ID say

mICHELLE: 13:30

it often has the name of their Medicare Advantage plan. We're calling on behalf of the MA plan, and so it would say that most often we are part of that team to, in order to provide these screenings.

mIKE: 13:45

What does your AI do for phone numbers that don't answer?

mICHELLE: 13:49

If there's an option, we leave a message. Or we call back, we make several attempts to get folks to answer the phone because this is so important. We know we won't reach everyone, but we make several attempts. Somebody doesn't wanna talk to us and answers the phone and says, please don't call me. We will make that happen too.

mIKE: 14:10

Which AI are you actually using to generate the voice over the phone?

mICHELLE: 14:14

There's a lot of AI platforms and we call it a stack, several different types of AI stacked on top of each other to create what we use, and we have built our own AI voice agent based on our stack of different services

mIKE: 14:33

For our listeners, can you repeat the script that your AI says when the person on the other end of the phone says hello? What does your AI voice say?

mICHELLE: 14:42

I'm Clara calling on behalf of your Medicare Advantage plan. Am I talking to Michelle? And it starts a conversation and then explains what,

bEN: 14:52

and we're using both AI and human intelligence. For instance, we have a behavioral specialist actually out of Israel that we work with, whose expertise is in engaging the 65 plus population. We're constantly cycling through scripting, but then we are also using AI to listen to these calls, to learn quickly and continuously improve our scripting so that we're building trust and being effective and efficient in these calls. And helpful

mIKE: 15:26

once AI flags someone as having a problem because they answer questions. Wrong way indicate that they need help, whether it's depression, anxiety, sleep, becoming a caregiver, your system immediately gives them an option to connect to a live person. Yeah. Who can connect them with a healthcare professional.

mICHELLE: 15:47

Yeah. That's

mIKE: 15:48

correct. And, and that's a no cost to the individual who is called?

mICHELLE: 15:52

That's correct.

mIKE: 15:52

Their Medicare Advantage plan is picking up the expense.

mICHELLE: 15:55

Yep.

mIKE: 15:55

Good. Now, how long have you actually been doing this?

mICHELLE: 15:59

We've been doing the screening portion for about five months with our patients. I also wanna just say, Mike, that the way you phrase that question is interesting to me. Your thoughts about how to answer the questions is exactly the heart of what we are working on. I appreciate the question, which is, do I answer these screen questions right or wrong, and do I have a problem or not? I've talked to my mom about this because she's one of the folks that I worry about a lot, and I've said, answer the questions honestly, because if something's really going on, not necessarily a problem. It's something that you can actually just make better very easily. So it's just one of the little tweaks that we help people try and make in their thinking.

bEN: 16:49

Just to underscore that 50% of this population when it comes to these screenings. Have false negatives where there is the presence of depression, but they're answering it falsely. The questions because of the stigma,

mIKE: 17:03

so that once someone gets to the right support, what changes for the client patient on a day-to-day basis?

mICHELLE: 17:10

Often what we see and hear from our patients is that they're very surprised at how quickly they start feeling better. They can improve their sleep and feel more rested, can start to feel joy and happiness again, a bit more clearly about things like they have the energy manage the medications that they have. Manage their nutrition and exercise and health, spend time with friends and family that really, before they were just not going out and doing things because they didn't feel well. We worked with an older adult, I think she was 82. She had been feeling very badly after being in the hospital for a heart condition and. Her daughter was very worried about her. She did not wanna meet with us, but her daughter said, please, mom, try. Once she met our coach who speaks Spanish like this woman did, and connected with her. She said, okay, I'll give this a try. And within a couple of weeks she was feeling happier and moving around the house better. And within three months she was going back to the community center. Doing Zumba and lifting weights and having card games with her friends. Her life just changed completely and she thought that she couldn't feel better and that she was doomed in her home, have this heart condition, and that was it for her. And it turns out it wasn't. She had a lot left. That was a lot of joy. And her daughter said to us, I can't tell you how happy I am that I have my mother back.

mIKE: 19:02

What should seniors or adult children who have parents, if they suspect that something is being missed by their loved one's doctors, what should they do?

mICHELLE: 19:15

There's a couple of things that you can do. One is to just talk about it, talking about. Mental and emotional health is a proactive and healthy thing to do within your family and with your loved one. You can certainly advocate with the doctor to look at this and do a screening. You can also look for a mental health provider. Part of what's really difficult though is finding a specialist in older adult mental health. There are not a lot.

mIKE: 19:48

And living here in The Villages, I've seen it go downhill all the way to suicide, from depression to bipolar to suicide. I'm really interested in how, how Vitalic can catch these cases before someone takes their own life.

mICHELLE: 20:03

I think what you bring up is actually super important as a specialist in this area, older adults, 65 plus. Are the most likely to feel suicidal, attempt suicide and to complete suicide. It is very common. Caucasian males over 65 have the highest rate of completed suicides in our nation, and so this is a very serious issue for us. It's part of why we actually do. Full mental health screening. It's called a patient health questionnaire. Nine. It's a nine question screening, and the ninth question scares a lot of people or makes them uncomfortable because we do ask, and it's a standard question, have you thought about not waking up or wishing you were dead? Quite honestly, it's a very natural part of life for most everyone to think about that at some point and. When somebody says yes to that, we have specialized questions that are validated and evidence-based that help us assess if somebody's really thinking about hurting themselves or not, or if they're just thinking about death. There's so many things we can do to intervene. I would go back to one of the things I said earlier, which is that asking someone if they're thinking about hurting themselves is a very difficult question to ask, but anyone can ask it of anyone they know. It will not increase their likelihood of thinking about suicide or completing suicide or attempting it. In fact, it decreases the likelihood greatly because somebody was brave enough to ask them about it and open up the conversation.

bEN: 21:49

I think if you think about it like in a reverse, Mike, like you are not feeling well, imagine yourself not feeling well and not coming out of your house and basically showing signs of depression and a good friend of yours were to come over. And really clearly be there to understand what's going on and ask you, are you thinking of hurting yourself? I would ask you like, how does that sit with you? I suspect you wouldn't be upset with that person, but I don't know.

mIKE: 22:17

I think it's a tough question, but I think that you're right, Ben. There are situations where you really have to ask that and you can't hold back. Fear of being impolite if a senior listening to this podcast. Wants to get a hold of Vitalic to see if they can run through the questionnaire. By the way, how long does the questionnaire take to go through online? There's no problems.

mICHELLE: 22:41

It starts with two questions, which takes a couple of minutes, and depending on how the answers of those first two questions are, we might ask nine full questions. So it's anywhere from about two to seven minutes depending on how much the individual talks. So.

mIKE: 22:58

Someone wants to get a hold of you for themselves or a friend. How do they do that? Ben? Ben, how should people, seniors, and their family get a hold of you guys for help? If they want to reach out,

bEN: 23:11

they can certainly call us or come to our website. Now, the websites address is our name, Vitalic Health, so www dot V-I-T-A-L-I-C Health. H-E-A-L-T-H-C-O-M as you might typically think, just do co. So vitalic health.co. The number is,

mICHELLE: 23:38

Our phone number is +1 877-445-1587. And I would also offer that if someone is worried about their loved one, feeling like they're hurting them, want to hurt themselves, or they themselves are feeling like that. There is a nine, eight, eight phone number, much like nine one one. It's a national suicide prevention hotline. Anyone can call toll free nine eight eight and talk to somebody so that you can get some advice on how to help your loved one. Get some support if you yourself, are feeling like you're uncertain about wanting to be here.

mIKE: 24:25

I'm glad you brought that up. Is there anything that you guys want to add to the podcast that I have left out?

mICHELLE: 24:31

I just wanna reinforce and restate that when you're just not feeling well and you're uncertain what's happening, it could be very beneficial to check in with a mental health professional about mental and emotional wellness. It doesn't mean. You have a mental illness, it doesn't mean you're crazy. It just means that some extra support and tips and tricks could be the thing that get you really feeling better again, and back to living a really joyful, healthy life.

bEN: 25:03

And I would just underscore that at the end of the day, we're a clinical practice where kind of people helping people. We know that with this population being 65 plus, they deserve. Specialized care and there simply isn't enough clinical capacity trained people to, to deliver this care. And so we're using appropriate means necessary to deal with this issue and help people. And so we're using technology ai, but it really is just to help create efficiencies and connections for the scarce resources that we have. As clinicians.

mIKE: 25:46

Thanks a lot for being with us on the show.

NANCY: 25:49

Thank you.

bEN: 25:50

Thanks, Mike.

NANCY: 25:51

Remember, our next episode will be released next

Friday at 9: 25:53

00 AM Should you wanna become a major supporter of the show or have questions, please contact us at Mike. At Roth voice.com, this is a shout out for supporters. Tweet Coleman, ed Williams, Dwayne roic, Paul Sorgen, and Dr. Craig Curtis at K two in The Villages. We'll be hearing more from Dr. Curtis with short Alzheimer's tips each week. If you know someone who should be on the show, contact us at mike@rothvoice.com. The way our show grows is with your help. Text your friends about this show. If you enjoyed listening, use the fan mail button on our homepage, villages Vitality Life. To leave comments, be sure to include your name, email, and phone number. We thank everyone for listening. The content of the show is copyrighted by Roth Voice 2026, all rights reserved.