Revolutionizing Senior Wellbeing: An Exclusive with Dr. Sanjay Shetty

Revolutionizing Senior Wellbeing: An Exclusive with Dr. Sanjay Shetty
CenterWell Comes to The Villages: Dr. Sanjay Shetty on Senior-Focused, Value-Based Primary Care

In the Season 8 premiere of Villages Vitality: Senior Life Unscripted, host Mike Roth interviews Dr. Sanjay Shetty, president of CenterWell, following Humana’s purchase of The Villages Health and the rebrand to CenterWell Senior Primary Care. Shetty explains CenterWell’s scale (about 400 locations in 15 states serving roughly 600,000 patients) and its senior-focused, value-based, team-based care model designed to improve outcomes and help people “live longer well.” He confirms CenterWell in The Villages is not currently accepting traditional/original Medicare, instead partnering with multiple Medicare Advantage plans, and he is unsure about specialty care coverage details. The conversation covers access and appointment timing, longer average visits (about 40 minutes), behavioral health and depression screening, fulfillment research using patient surveys, proactive prevention and evidence-based screening, care coordination with specialists and hospitals, post-discharge follow-up, home health services, and Alzheimer’s screening and support.

00:00 Season 8 Welcome
00:45 Meet Dr Shetty
01:19 CenterWell Expansion
02:34 Medicare Plans Explained
03:35 Care Philosophy
04:18 Fulfillment Research
06:13 Appointments And Urgent Care
07:21 Measuring Fulfillment
10:02 Mental Health Screening
10:53 Longer Visits For Seniors
11:53 Alzheimers Tip Break
13:36 Medicine 2 Value Based Care
16:26 Imaging And Care Coordination
17:18 Proactive Heart Screening
19:20 Stem Cells And Peptides
20:14 Prevention And Treatment Plans
21:02 Hospital And Home Health
23:23 Alzheimers Screening
24:12 Research And Wrap Up
25:49 How To Learn More
26:17 Credits And Next Episode

Villages Vitality Listeners, I've got some good news for you. In season 8 most new episodes will released as both audio & video versions. Videos on Apple Podcasts, Busssprout.com and YouTube. If you're listening via our Buzzsprout feed, you can ask questions via the Fan Mail button or leave me comments as a text or in our new feature, you can send it as a voicemail. If you'd like a response, make sure you leave your name, email address and cell phone number.

Transcript

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Nancy: 0:14

Welcome to Season eight of Village's Vitality Life, Senior's Life unscripted. 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, we will add more information for all seniors.

Mike (2): 0:39

This is Mike Roth on Villages Vitality, Senior Life Unscripted. I'm here today with Dr. Sanjay Shetty. He is the president of CenterWell, which has just purchased 10 locations here in The Villages. offer senior-focused primary care. Dr. Shetty, thanks for joining us

Dr. Sanjay Shetty: 1:01

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to have a chance to chat.

Mike (2): 1:04

Good. Dr. Shetty is a board-certified radiologist and graduate of the Harvard Medical School. He has an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School . Let me first thank you for, again, for being on the show. I wanted to talk for a moment the recent purchase of The Villages Health by, Humana. Many other CenterWell care centers are there around the country?

Dr. Sanjay Shetty: 1:30

Thank you for the question. So we obviously were very excited to be able to purchase the clinics in The Villages, the former Villages Health, now Senior Primary Care. And it joins a very large family of CenterWell Senior Primary Care locations all across the country. We currently have approximately 400 locations operating in 15 states operating both as and in CenterWell e locations, like in South Florida and Texas, as Conviva. But all of them actually make us the largest senior-focused primary care organization in the country

Mike (2): 2:08

Did you say 400?

Dr. Sanjay Shetty: 2:10

That's correct, sir. Yes, 400 operating in 15 states. And right now we're actually caring right now caring for 600,000 patients across those centers

Mike (2): 2:20

That, that's a lot of seniors. Is it primarily senior care around the rest of the country or is it all ages?

Dr. Sanjay Shetty: 2:25

No, it's primarily senior care. That, that's again what makes us one… the largest in the country when it comes to senior-focused, value-based primary care

Mike (2): 2:33

Okay. Now the question that most people in The Villages would like to hear an answer to is the past, The Villages Health did not take, traditional Medicare, only took Advantage plan. Are you guys planning on going back to what the original Villages Health had, which was both types of plans?

Dr. Sanjay Shetty: 2:54

No, for right now we are not accepting traditional or original Medicare. We are partnered with a number of partners with respect to Medicare Advantage, including UnitedHealthcare, Humana, Florida Blue, and Aetna. So there are lots of choices for our patients who want to use at The Villages So lots of choices for folks who want to see us at the locations in The Villages

Mike (2): 3:19

In the past The Villages Health, allowed traditional Medicare for their specialty care. Are you going to be continuing that? I understand that CenterWell is honoring legacy patients who have original Medicare and are seeing specialists but are not able to accept new patients with original Medicare for specialists. Okay.CenterWell must have a philosophy of doing business in the medical space that you're in. Could you share with other listeners what your philosophy is as a company?

Dr. Sanjay Shetty: 3:55

Yeah, absolutely. So CenterWell is really built around trying to ensure that older adults achieve their best health, and we do that because we are both trying to simplify the path to care and because we believe we can improve health outcomes for everybody that we're serving. That's the underlying philosophy. The way that actually shows up in the clinics is we really believe in a team-based approach to care where you have your physician or other provider, but you also have a large care team that is surrounding the patient in order to help them achieve their goals

Mike (2): 4:28

Can you tell our listeners bit about research that you guys have done about fulfillment for medical services during retirement.

Dr. Sanjay Shetty: 4:37

Yeah, for sure. This actually w- came from a recognition that as a healthcare company, we at are immediately gonna think about the impact of healthcare on the patients that we serve, specifically older adults. But what we really wanted to do is say, "How can we broaden the aperture of our understanding of what really matters to people, particularly as they age?" And that's why we did this research. It actually took place over multiple years: 2023, 2025, it continues today, serving thousands of patients. I think now we're over six thousand patients that have been surveyed. And the concept is, what are all the elements that make somebody feel fulfilled? Fulfillment itself is an interesting concept, but it basically gets at the idea of the quality, the value of how one perceives oneself, one's life, and one's impact. And it's a, a metric that is used in the literature to describe how people are really feeling and how they wanna live. But this was the first research that really broadened our approach to how we think about older adults. And so we took that concept of fulfillment and started to dig deeper and realize what was it that actually makes a person feel fulfilled. And that's where the research led us. It actually told us that healthcare and health status is one important thing, but it's certainly not the only thing. And I think that challenges a lot of what Americans historically thought about aging, right? They said, "If you're healthy, you must be happy." We know obviously that's not the case. And so it really ties well to what we're trying to do at , because our goal is not just to have people live longer. We want them to live longer, but we really want them to live longer well, and that's what ties to this concept of fulfillment

Mike (2): 6:23

Good. In, dealing with, seniors one of the questions that always comes up is how long am I gonna have to wait get an appointment to see my primary care physician if I have a a medical situation that crops up that was unexpected? How do you guys handle that at CenterWell?

Dr. Sanjay Shetty: 6:44

So our aspiration is to see patients as soon as they need to be seen. Typically for new patient appointments, we will be able to see you through a virtual visit within a couple of days and then an in-office visit shortly thereafter. But for urgent issues, particularly if you're an established patient with us, we will work with you in order to see you as soon as feasible. Because our model is really built around how do we keep you healthy and well, so very different from a traditional medical office where they may see you, but they don't really care if you just go to the emergency room. We care. We know that patients who go to the emergency room sometimes will get admitted to the hospital, sometimes for things they don't need to be. We'd rather see you in the office early, help you take care of it proactively and keep you doing what it is you love.

Mike (2): 7:32

Now we were talking about fulfillment a second ago. How do you measure fulfillment? I know how doctors measure blood pressure or Temperature

Dr. Sanjay Shetty: 7:40

Yeah

Mike: 7:41

but fulfillment is a, term to a lot of folks. How do For sure.

Mike (2): 7:45

it?

Dr. Sanjay Shetty: 7:46

I love the question, and I'll answer it two different ways. The way that we measure fulfillment is actually through a survey. We're asking people questions about their approach to life and what gives them strength. And so I think it's important. Fulfillment, I agree with you, it's a hard concept to think about. Again, it has a definition, but what's more important is what's underneath it. What actually makes a person feel fulfilled? And in our research, what we saw was that the most important thing was actually your approach to life. Are you feeling emotional stability? Are you feeling self-contentment? Those are the things that make you feel fulfilled. And below that, the things that support that are actually where do you draw your strength? And people draw their strength in different ways, but there are certain commonalities. There's things like optimism, gratitude, a sense of purpose, spirituality. That's where you start to draw your strength. And then below that are the items that are happening in the day-to-day. Those are definitely affecting how you feel in the moment, but they tend to be underneath those other key factors. And those are items like your physical security, your health, your emotional connection, financial security. So those day-to-day things really matter. But what we do know is that healthcare isn't the only thing or even the most important thing. And so health status matters, but it's not alone. And so what really we aspire to do at is to try to treat the whole person. But I love the other part of your question, which is like, how do you use this measure? And I would say this, say it this way. All of those traditional measures of healthcare, like lab values or vital signs, those are very important. We will continue to use those at because they're crucial to the healthcare that we're trying to drive. But the other part of what we will do is we want to more and more be able to spend the time with our patients to understand the other aspects of what make them feel fulfilled. Because sometimes your health status may be okay, but there's another barrier to why you're not able to get the care that you need. You may not be able to afford the car ride to the specialist visit. You might not feel like you're connected to the broader community, so you're not really feeling up to going to see the doctor or engaging in other activities. And so we wanna get at this as not something to replace traditional vital signs or lab values, but more to complement it. It's almost like an early warning signal, right? If we can start to learn about patients who are not feeling fulfilled, we can go deeper, we can understand why, and we can even begin to work with them in the ways that we can help fix that.

Mike (2): 10:13

At , do you have a policy of, administering a a s- I hate to bring the subject up, but suicide prevention in seniors?

Dr. Sanjay Shetty: 10:22

Yeah I love the question. A very routine thing that we do in all of our primary care centers across the country is to screen for depression, right? So behavioral health screening is a really important part of what we do, and we're particularly proud of the models that we have at the locations at The Villages that bring behavioral health specialty into the clinic, right? And allow us to engage with patients who are having issues that relate to mental health. So that is absolutely something that we're doing more broadly. What we also love is that we are able to spend more time than most patients get in a traditional office, and we use that extra time to learn more about the patient to be able to address exactly these types of issues

Mike (2): 11:04

In term-- speaking of time, what is the goal in terms of time for each patient visit at? Dr. Sanjay Shetty: Yeah, so if the country, our average visit time is about 40 minutes. Now, obviously that varies. Sometimes there's a really quick issue we can deal with. Some visits go a lot longer because of a particularly complex issue. But we really appreciate that ability to spend more time. I think what a lot of people don't appreciate, particularly if you're younger and now rising up to be an older adult, is that the burden of disease actually increases as people get older. We know that over 90% of patients who are over 65 have one or more chronic disease. 78% have two or more chronic diseases. And if you try to finish a visit in 12 minutes, you're never gonna be able to address everything that is going on with the patient, much less these other existential issues or things related to fulfillment. So that extra time is really important, particularly as we get older, so that we can talk about everything that's going on Good. Let's take a short break and listen to a Alzheimer's tip from Dr. Craig Curtis.

Dr. Craig curtis: 12:50

When we talk about the causes of heart attacks and strokes and peripheral vascular disease, we all know about things such as diabetes, smoking, and poor diet choices. Those are all called modifiable risk factors. You can change those and you can lower your risk. And 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: 13:24

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

Dr. Craig Curtis (2): 13:30

That's right. There is a cholesterol known as lipoprotein A, that cholesterol has been known about for a long time. However, scientists over the last decade have discovered that this is one of the major. Risk factors for heart disease, cardiovascular disease, cerebral vascular disease, such as strokes and peripheral vascular disease, such as problems in the legs. And what they've discovered is that this is a genetically linked lipoproteins. What that means is. It runs in families, and unfortunately, we've had no way to modify this.

Warren: 14:10

Learn more, visit his website, CraigCurtisMD.com, or call 3 5 2 5 0 0 5 2 5 2 to attend a free seminar.

Mike (2): 14:20

This is Mike Roth. I'm back with Dr. Sanjay Shetty, is the CEO of CenterWell here in The Villages. Dr. Shetty, I'd like to talk for a couple of minutes about various levels of healthcare. Traditionally American healthcare has been in what I call healthcare one. It's kinda like fix and repair. Yes, we can fix your broken arm. We can give you an X-ray, put you in a cast, maybe give you antibiotics if you need it. You got a problem? We're gonna fix it. And that's been all well and good, it seems like the, the newest wave in American medicine, or newer wave, is Medicine 2.0, where, the doctors are proactively treating people to prevent serious conditions like heart attacks or strokes. What is CenterWell doing in the area of Medicine 2.0?

Dr. Sanjay Shetty: 15:16

Yeah. I, Mike, you, I love your description of it. I think you, you really said it for your listeners to understand the difference, right? Which is do you just go in to get the repairs, or are you thinking about staying out of the shop altogether? And that's what we're trying to do at. We're trying to do the like we are responsible for our patients, whether they're in the office or not. And so much of what we're doing to support a patient is actually how do we make sure that we're testing proactively everything that we need to do to understand your full health status? How do we make sure we get you those preventative services that you need to keep you healthy, not just this year, but next year and the year after that? And how do we s- again, spend the time and do the right number of visits so we can deal with all of these problems? I think if you will fall back on what you described as Medicine 1.0 and you just fix the problem there is you tend to fix the problem that's most obvious, right? You may have a broken arm in the moment, but you also have high blood pressure, but you're not paying attention to the high blood pressure when you're sitting there with the broken arm. What you really need is a doctor to be saying, " I know you may have a problem, a really urgent problem today, but even next week when you're not having that, you're still my patient. You're still my responsibility. And not just me, but the entire team that is built up at is gonna be thinking about you to check your labs, to check your vitals, to check where you are with respect to closing certain needs that you have for the year." and that's how our model is built, and actually that's how our incentives are built. So I'm really proud of the fact that's a model we've deployed not just at The Villages, but all across the country, including in communities, for example, outside of Florida, where that's a pretty innovative model. I'd say the folks in The Villages are lucky. They're in a place where seniors are everywhere, right? And Florida is ahead of the game when it comes to understanding what it takes to do senior care, and we at CenterWell and Conviva are really proud of the fact that we have leaned into what you describe as Medicine 2.0, what we would call value-based care, which is how can we improve outcomes, how can we improve quality, how can we improve experience for our patients, and not just focus on the problem that's right there?

Mike (2): 17:18

Now Medicine 2.0 is about finding the problems that the patient doesn't know are there. Correct me if I'm wrong, but at Centre Care you guys don't have X-ray and, CAT scan equipment in the centers. Am I right about that?

Dr. Sanjay Shetty: 17:33

I believe that's correct. Yeah, we may have some radiology equipment in certain centers, but generally we don't have the advanced imaging like you described, CAT scan or MRI. But I think it's important to know that the way we view… Yeah, the way that we view primary care though, is that the primary care doctor's the quarterback, right? Part of what they're gonna do is order those tests when they're needed. They're gonna work with the specialty care that's required. They're gonna help coordinate the care all around the patient. And so although we may not own the imaging equipment or directly have it, we're gonna use it when we need to, and we're gonna absolutely help the patient understand those results and use them to drive best health.

Mike (2): 18:10

I'm gonna tell you a little story of a, a friend of mine who w- was, would call very thin, and her and her husband went over to this Clearview Imaging and got the free heart scan, okay? He passed it, and they told her she had three blocked arteries, and to a cardiologist, and they found three arteries blocked at 80%, 85%, and 95%. And so she got three stents. Proactively what is, CenterWell's position on referring patients out who seem to be healthy to something like a scan?

Dr. Sanjay Shetty: 18:45

What I love about what we do at is it is all evidence-based. We have physicians obviously in The Villages a very great team of docs, but also physicians all across the country who are experts in these conditions and working on how do we build the programs that allow us to screen patients for these conditions and refer for the testing that's appropriate. For example, CenterWell is a leader when it comes to actually diagnosing a different condition of the heart called arrhythmias. We work with patients to understand their risks. We will work with them to actually put a monitor that's really non-invasive, that allows them to go about their day. But we are finding things that the patient isn't even noticing that allow us to then intervene when required. And so that is very much the, a program that we've built all across , but what we really wanna do is make sure that it's all based in the right evidence, that we're helping patients understand their risk, that we're proactively treating conditions when we find them. That is very much our model because as you said, w- the ability of this person who got the test and got the stents, being able to do that in a controlled setting when the patient was feeling well led to a much better outcome than if something had gone wrong, right? If she had s- come to the hospital with a heart attack, the outcome could have looked very- If she had waited. Yeah, exactly, if she had waited. And so what I love about this proba- proactive screening is, yeah, it can lead to faster diagnosis, but more importantly, even better outcomes, and that's really what we're all about, is driving the better outcome.

Mike (2): 20:13

Now, there's been a, there's been a big push here in The Villages by various vendors medical services vendors for w- what I consider to be 3.0, which is things like stem cell treatments and peptides. What is CentaWell's position on those kinds of treatments?

Dr. Sanjay Shetty: 20:32

Yeah, I would say

Mike (2): 20:33

they

Dr. Sanjay Shetty: 20:33

re--

Mike (2): 20:33

the well

Dr. Sanjay Shetty: 20:34

Yeah, no we currently don't offer those services at CenterWell. Again, what's really important to us is that we are sticking with the best evidence and understanding what is important, required, recommended based on what you would expect from the medical literature. That being said, we always wanna collaborate with our patients to help them understand their options within the community, help them understand the evidence, and then for many of these services, patients will make their own decision. And so we wanna be good partners to our patients and help them navigate that broader system

Mike (2): 21:06

Are there any advanced medical, procedures that you guys recommend at CenterWell for seniors?

Dr. Sanjay Shetty: 21:13

At this time, our main focus is on prevention. And so a lot of what we're doing, I would say, others might characterize as the low-hanging fruit, right? So much of what we're focused on are let's make sure that we've covered all the bases with respect to the seniors that we're caring for. And so a lot of our focus is on the traditional things like diabetes, hypertension, cardiac disease, behavioral health, as we've talked about. So that's gonna be our main focus, but certainly we are working with every patient as an individual. We wanna understand all of their past medical history. We spend the time to understand it. We also spend the time to understand their goals, and from there we can come up with a customized treatment plan that works with each patient

Mike (2): 21:54

patient at CenterWell needs to go to a, advanced care hospital how does that work? they get referred by their primary care physician?

Dr. Sanjay Shetty: 22:03

Yeah, so there are times where that, that visit to the acute care hospital will happen as a result of a primary care referral. There are other times it's gonna happen because an emergency comes up, right? And the patient goes to the emergency room and they're admitted. We're really proud of the fact that at we collaborate with hospital partners all across the country. In The Villages we actually have hospitalists, doctors who collaborate with our primary care doctors, who are actually in the hospital working with those patients. What we love about that is it improves the continuity of the care that we deliver. We're tracking you when you're in the hospital, and when you get discharged from the hospital, we make sure that your primary care provider knows what happened so that they can see you right away afterwards. But regardless of where you get your care in, in an acute setting, our goal is to make sure that we're there to help ease the transition back to home. We get you back to doing the things you love and enjoy. We see you as promptly as we can in order to make sure that everything was done correctly and that you understand the recommendations coming out of the hospital. Again, our job is to try to help coordinate that care o- on behalf of our patients.

Mike (2): 23:09

The center will have their own rehab or additional care after someone is discharged from a hospital

Dr. Sanjay Shetty: 23:17

Yeah, so one of the things that we do have in The Villages community is CenterWell Home Health. So another part of , separate from the primary care, which you've heard about, the, the Village, what used to be The Villages Health, we have an entity called CenterWell Home Health. That's actually one of the largest skilled home health providers in the country, with 350 locations operating in 37 states. One of our locations is right there at The Villages, where we care for patients typically who've been discharged from the hospital, sometimes who are being referred by a local doctor who need services in the home because they're homebound. They need skilled nurse. They need a therapist, like physical therapy, even sometimes speech or occupational therapy. We're able to coordinate those services as well, both through Home Health as well as other home care providers in the community

Mike (2): 24:08

Let me a- ask you another question before we we wrap this thing up Where was my question list? I have to ad lib a question. One of my favorite things to talk about on the podcast is Alzheimer's disease. What kind of Alzheimer's screening do you guys do at CenterWell for your patients?

Dr. Sanjay Shetty: 24:25

Yeah, so that is a really important health concern for seniors, and so it is an area that we do focus on. A lot of our work is exactly as you describe it. We are screening our patients. We're understanding what concerns they have or their caregiver or other families migh- family members might have. And so we certainly are screening patients and working with them in the earliest stages of dementia as, as they need the help. We will also collaborate for patients who are progressing in their dementia to ensure they're receiving the right specialty care, but also the right measures to ensure that they are comfortable in the right living situation with the right level of support.

Mike (2): 25:04

Is CenterWell involved at all in any medical research projects?

Dr. Sanjay Shetty: 25:08

Not at this time, no. We we do participate in research that relates to health services, so specifically how are-- how is our work contributing to better health for our patients? An example of that is the arrhythmia work I mentioned earlier on the podcast. We've actually published that and presented that at conferences. So we do research to talk about how our care models are performing. But we, for example, don't partner directly with pharmaceutical companies or device companies to do research on their behalf

Mike (2): 25:39

Is there any question that I forgot to ask you today that you want to tell our listeners about CenterWell , Dr. Shetty?

Dr. Sanjay Shetty: 25:46

I would just say for CenterWell , we are just so excited to be in The Villages community. There couldn't be a better place for us to understand what it takes for an older adult to feel fulfilled. I see it when I'm in The Villages community. What an amazing, exciting, and vibrant group of folks you have there in the community. And we're just So honored and so privileged to be able to provide healthcare for the Villagers who have been so loyal to us through this transition. We're so appreciative of our teams. And so I guess the question is what comes next? And, we're just excited to be able to continue to serve in the community. We're looking forward to the potential to continue to grow along with The Villages and to continue to think about how we evolve our care models to take ever better care of the Villagers and keep them healthy and well, and in the vein of fulfillment, to help them live longer well.

Mike (2): 26:36

Great. I want to thank you, Dr. Shetty, for being on the show with us today

Dr. Sanjay Shetty: 26:40

Mike, really appreciate you having me. Thank you

Mike (2): 26:42

Is there a contact number or a website people can go to get more information about CenterWell here in The Villages or any place else in America?

Dr. Sanjay Shetty: 26:50

Yeah best place to go is www.CenterWell.com. You'll have information about all of our stuff, and obviously contact your local clinic if you want to consider being- coming one of our patients. We would love to work with you.

Mike (2): 27:05

Great. Thanks again for being with us today, Dr. Shetty

Dr. Sanjay Shetty: 27:07

Thank you so much, Mike. Really appreciate the time. Remember, our next episode will be released next Friday at 9 am. Should you wanna become a major supporter of the show or have questions, please contact us at mike@rothvoice.com. This is a shout out for supporters, Tweet Coleman, Ed Williams, Duane Roemmich, Paul Sorgen, and Dr. Craig Curtis at K 2 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, VillagesVitality.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.