Startup Physicians

Redefining Success: From Burnout to Breakthrough with Dr. Hansa Bhargava

• Alison Curfman, M.D. • Season 1 • Episode 19

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In this episode of Startup Physicians, I sit down with Dr. Hansa Bhargava—pediatrician, writer, and Chief Clinical Strategy and Innovation Officer at Helio—to unpack her journey from clinical burnout to a purpose-driven career in health media, technology, and innovation.

We talk about what it really takes to step away from traditional medicine, why you don’t need another degree to move into industry, and how physicians can leverage their clinical background as a strategic asset in startups and AI development. We also dig into the mindset required to make bold transitions, how to navigate hybrid career paths, and why control over your time may be the most important variable in long-term fulfillment.  If you're a physician looking for impact, autonomy, and alignment, this episode will help you see what’s possible—and how to start. 

Episode Highlights

[00:00] - Navigating the Journey of Medicine
[09:08] - The Importance of Work-Life Balance
[17:58] - Transitioning from Clinical to Innovative Roles
[27:06] - Embracing Change and Growth in Medicine

Dr. Hansa Bhargava:

Two things are really, really important. Keep talking to people. It's so important networking you'll never, you know, you don't know what door will open to you if you talk to people. The second thing is, you know, learn how that growth mindset.

Alison Curfman:

Welcome to StartUp Physicians. Please Like and follow our show to join our community of physicians who are reimagining healthcare delivery. Hi everyone, and welcome back to startup positions. I'm your host, Dr. Alison Curfman, and I am joined today by a colleague. Dr. Hansa Bhargava, she is an incredible physician who has had an amazing career throughout multiple different facets of industry, and is such an incredible inspiration to me and to so many other physicians and so Hansa, thank you so much for joining me today. Alison, thank

Unknown:

you so much and for those kind words. Really appreciate it.

Alison Curfman:

So I would love if you could start off by telling us a little bit about your career journey. Yeah, of

Dr. Hansa Bhargava:

course. So like you I'm a board certified pediatrician, and you know, my heart was always about taking care of families and, you know, maximizing potential of health like that was why I went into pediatrics. I worked at in clinical practice as like, as a hospitalist, as in the ER and urgent care teaching residents. So I did all of that, actually for about 10 years. And then basically I during my pregnancy of carrying twins, which was a really rough pregnancy for me, I had undergone fertility treatments as well. And, you know, had multiple episodes where I was hospitalized during that pregnancy, you know, doing those long shifts, actually, it was a light bulb moment. I was, what am I doing? I still remember this one time where we, you know, we had, it was flu season, and and I was pregnant, and I had not had time to go to the bathroom or eat anything, and, and I was just sitting there, and I'd seen 30 patients already, and there's three more hours to go on the shifts, and and in the shift, and I was like, oh my god, how am I gonna get through this right? And then also, I do think this is important, and, you know, for parents out there. Also, when my kids were about three or four years old, they started asking me, why aren't you home for bedtime? Why aren't you here on a Saturday? Why aren't you at my soccer game? And I started thinking, I don't know if this can actually work long term. So the confluence of just all of those factors, and, of course, our health system and all the issues it has that led to my burnout.

Alison Curfman:

Yeah. So I just want to highlight a couple of things that you said that I think a lot of people relate to. So first off, I totally hear what you're saying about being, you know, pregnant, treating all of those things still working. I, for those of you who don't know, I have four kids myself. I had almost all of them during my residency fellowship. Never once had maternity leave, but I always worked up to the very last minute because I wanted to have, like, a little bit of time off if I used all my vacation. So yeah, I literally almost had my third kid, like, in the pediatric er, I think I made it to the actual adult hospital with like, 25 minutes to spare. But, you know, we push ourselves so hard, and we almost put that on a pedestal in training and in medicine, like, Oh, we're gonna pull these, like, 30 hour shifts, and we're gonna, you know, see so many patients, and that's celebrated. But when you look at like overall wellness of you as a physician and you, as you know, trying to be a healer of people, it's like, how can we heal other people when we're kind of, you know, just running on Steam, and I too, felt the pull of, you know, how do I balance, you know, a career as a position with this family that I'm trying to start and put really front and center. And I think that the thing that has been so clear to me in every job, in every career stage, everyone that I've ever talked to that a lot of happiness is rooted in how much control you have over your own time, because when you're working a job that has very little flexibility, and it tells you when To be where, and you don't have a lot of ability to kind of create and design your life. That is when I see people feeling the most burned out. And I think that we all have the opportunity to truly design our lives, and even if it takes a leap. Faith sometimes or a intentional decision to make less money. I have had at least three or four points in my life where I made an intentional decision to make less money, to go create something else, and every single time, it has turned out very well. So I just wanted to highlight so many things that you're already sharing about your early stages and what made you make a change, because I think that is just probably resonates so much with this audience.

Dr. Hansa Bhargava:

Yeah, Alison, I'm just going to echo your the whole thing about, why do we feel like we have to prove ourselves over and over again, the badge of honor of doing that long shift like, like, I talked to my physician colleagues, and I still have a friend who's OB GYN, best friend from med school, right? And she's like, she'll, she'll. She's stressed out. She's in her 50s, and she's stressed out a lot, but she will still say, Well, I saw this many patients and that many patients. And I'm like, Yeah, but your back hurts and your neck hurts and like, Why? Why are you still trying to prove yourself, right? So that whole badge of honor? I'm not sure where that philosophy comes from, but Well, the really

Alison Curfman:

funny part is I felt like my entire training, despite the fact that we were working like 80 hours a week, and my husband and I would literally, like, take call every other night from each other and just hand off the baby in between. Like, we'd bring the baby up to the hospitals, like, hand off to the POST call person. And we were also being told the entire time by a generation ahead of us, like, you guys don't work enough. You guys have an easy you have work hour restrictions, which only applies, really, to interns, and they kept everyone else at 80 hours a week. Like, is that really, like, lazy? Like, so I simultaneously felt like I was, like, totally burning both ends of the candle, and was being told that, like, we had it much harder than you. Yeah,

Dr. Hansa Bhargava:

it's so interesting, because obviously burnout is systemic, right? But there's so much that we have ourselves right and to your point, like when we lose control of how we spend our time, and we don't take those intentional decisions right to Yes, I took a pay cut to, like, when I left full time clinical medicine, I did take a pay cut, and it was okay, because that was an intentional decision. So, so I totally, you know, I told that really resonates with me. And the other thing is, Alison, I do wonder, and I wonder what your thoughts would be about this, you know, to be, actually a hybrid physician, or doing things that actually, like, give you joy. And you know, in addition to your clinical medicine, like isn't couldn't that be one of the solutions to burnout, you know, to be able to have that joy. And I'll tell you how I did it, like when I was getting burnt out, I reached higher. I wanted to be on system committees for protocols for the hospital. You know, I started working with kids who had disabilities. Like these are things that gave me joy, and therefore I was somehow less burnt out, even though the health system hadn't changed anything. Oh

Alison Curfman:

yeah, for sure. I mean, I still practice clinically. I work in three different ers, but I choose my shifts, and I choose when to do that, and I love it still. I think that all of these concepts are so important. It's one of the things I really try and emphasize to people. You can design your own life. You can choose to take a different path, even if it will temporarily change your financial situation. You can choose to practice medicine on your own terms. And there is a world of opportunity out there that of other places and people that need doctors and need their input. So I just, I really appreciate that perspective, and I'd love to hear what, what happened next for you? Yeah,

Dr. Hansa Bhargava:

I would just, I'm sorry before I tell you that I would just add one more thing to that list, and it is that you don't have to go and get a second degree or certify in something else to change your path. So that's

Alison Curfman:

true. I agree completely. A lot of people, we are very trained as doctors, to feel like you need another fellowship, you need another degree. Should I go get an MBA? And I almost feel like it's just a, it's a, it's a comfort object for us, like, I'm just gonna go get some more letters after my name, and I'm gonna pay another, you know, 10s of 1000s of dollars for more degrees. And truly, they need you now you have what they need. So,

Dr. Hansa Bhargava:

absolutely. So, yeah, so, so I got burnt out, and I started looking, and, you know, I was approached by recruiter who was actually working with this health media company and that, you know, he couldn't tell me what was but they were looking for a director to run their new partnership with a big Midwest hospital system for about. Doing pediatric obesity. And so, you know, I walked into that building, it was actually Web MD, and I was like, I just had this gut feeling. I was like, Oh my God. Like, I'd done work in obesity before. It was my passion to help in my passion was always public health and prevention. And I was like, Oh my gosh, like, can I actually do this? And to me, the appeal was that was not just treating one patient at a time, but like millions of patients, one

Alison Curfman:

to many impact.

Dr. Hansa Bhargava:

It was really, honestly Alison just being at the right place at the right time, but knowing enough to and I know you know this, when you are talking to industry, when you are trying to potentially have an opening for yourself, it's very, very important for us as physicians to be able to pitch ourselves. And so that was really an important learning in that whole interview process. And I'll tell you the reason is that they kept asking me, they're like, Well, you have, you published any books? Because they, you know, they're, they were a news organization. They wanted authors, and they wanted people who had published books, or have, like, literally 50 or 100 publications academically. And I didn't have any of those, you know, but what I realized was that I did have value. And so I talked about the publication that I that the hospital had put forth in terms of protocols for fever less than three months for concussions, and I talked a lot about that, and I talked about the work I had done, you know, in education, and, you know, patient education, and you know, the programs I developed. And so that was, you know, enough. So I think the point the learning of from that is basically, you know, what's in your background that you can actually, you know, present in a way that actually shows your value. Does that make this is,

Alison Curfman:

yes, it's so funny. It's like, almost like you have, like, taken my course. I we spend the whole first week about defining your narrative, which, that's you know, pitching yourself, like, what do you have to offer? And how are you unique? And then we spend time focusing on transferable skill sets. So exactly what you just said, like, what do you already know how to do? What do you have evidence of being things you've done, you've you've improved processes, you've trained residents, you've educated people, you found some QI project. Qi is very transferable. You just have to, like, frame it in a different way, and all of a sudden it's, it's a skill set. It's a true skill set that matters to industry. I just never knew some of these things were actual skills. We

Dr. Hansa Bhargava:

didn't. That's not where training is, right. So, so, yeah, so, you know. So I go over WebMD as a medical director, and that project last for about three years. I loved. It was amazing. And here's the thing, Alison, again, back to that. Do I need another degree? Do I need to have another certification? That was my fellowship in journalism like it was. That's how I view my years at WebMD fellowship in journalism, and I learned so much, and I will tell you, like, I could tell you so many funny stories, but I remember at being asked to write for the WebMD magazine, right? Like, like, and the editor in chief, who was an amazing, super talented woman, you know, said, Okay, well, we'll try this, Hansa, but you don't really have any experience writing a column. And I was like, okay, but I still want to try again. Be willing to try those things, right? And and so I still remember Alison, like, the first time we wrote an article for that magazine. And she was she was hardcore. She literally was sent it back to me, and then I write it again. She sent it back to me. And after about the fifth iteration, I was like, Oh my God. Like, I have this medical education, and I can't write an article that is patient facing. I mean, is this actually happening to me? But it was very similar to when I was in residency and I worked on a research project, and my, you know, my supervisor kept sending my abstract back, and I had to write it. Do you remember that experience like the research narrative process

Alison Curfman:

to write anything right? And sometimes the hardest thing is to be able to find the words to give it in a in layman's terms, or in a way that people can really understand

Dr. Hansa Bhargava:

totally. So anyways, so I became a writer and, and the reason I became a writer is, honestly, because of my fellowship, or I would call it experiential learning, like she really coached me, and now I can write. I write for Forbes, you know, I write for a lot of other organizations, obviously, at Helio, that's, you know, my my day job and, and so that's, you know, it's been wonderful. So, yeah, very again. So it sounds like you had some transferable skill sets, and then once you got out there, you developed a whole lot more skill sets, absolutely. So that probably led to the next, the next jumps you made, yeah, so the next. Jump was that project ended, you know, in about three years. And so then I started getting again another, you know, I learned these skills along the way, and I'm sure you did too, Alison, because it's not in our medical school training, right? And one of the other skills that I think is very important, that I think has helped me in my career, is just to talk to people, like, like, I was in this new world, but there was, there were, like, there was a technology department, there was a, you know, PR department, there was a marketing department, there's a journalism department, and so I just was very lucky to talk to these people. So I got pulled into projects, you know, that weren't necessarily on my job description, but I was always saying yes, because I want, I always viewed it as an opportunity to learn more skill. Yeah,

Alison Curfman:

yeah. And I tell that to people too, if they're just starting with startups, and maybe they get their first, like, almost trial thing, where it's like, maybe they're working with a pre seed company or pre revenue company that can't pay him as much. It's like, it's still in like, knowledge exchange, like I actually knew when I was making this big leap to, like, quit my job, have my husband quit his job, and move our family of six to another state to work at this private equity firm. I was like, there is a chance this company will never launch. There is a chance, I don't think it's going to happen, but there is a chance that it will never work. And I won't start a startup, but I still think that the experience of being able to work at this firm for a year, I will come out ahead, because I will know so many other things that I can do

Dr. Hansa Bhargava:

totally and that's the thing, like, take that leap of faith. Don't be fearful. You know, if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out, like, who cares, right? Like, I always think about,

Alison Curfman:

like, if that doesn't work out, I'll do something else. Like, I'm like, I'm really good at finding things to do,

Dr. Hansa Bhargava:

exactly. So I got pulled into, like, developing, they were developing the pregnant pregnancy app, they were developing the baby app, they were developing the symptom checker. And so I got pulled into the software development mobile apps, not just for content, but actually understanding the process and CO developing

Alison Curfman:

technology and understanding how developers work and how their standards are going to be very, very different than our A plus plus standards as positions, because software development works better when you get a minimum viable product out there and use user feedback to test and iterate

Dr. Hansa Bhargava:

100% and that language may not be something that we're used to as doctors, but you learn it along the way, like you know, and so, yeah, I think that was really fortunate again. And then there was another project that I got pulled into, which is a maternity project, you know, postpartum triage, using SMS texting for that, and using AI. So my interest grew in all of those directions as I got pulled into these projects. So I knew that I was super interested in AI and technology. And so I started kind of going down that road.

Alison Curfman:

That's awesome. So what is Helio? Can you tell us a little bit about how you got started there, and what sort of work you do there, absolutely.

Dr. Hansa Bhargava:

So while I was at WebMD, the sister company is Medscape. And so one of the other things I did was I kind of reached over to the other side and said, Hey, I'm here. Like, is there anything you need me to do? So I got involved with some of their projects, which eventually ended up being Medscape, asking me if I wanted to come over to be the chief medical officer. So I did. I did that, and that was an amazing experience again, because they actually wanted me to take more of a business development role, so I did that. I was there for, I believe, two and a half, three years, and then basically when I left, I knew a lot of people in the industry, and eventually ended up joining Helio, but I wanted to be in a different direction. I had already done the Chief Medical Officer, so I talked to them, and they were very open, and I took on the role of Chief Clinical Strategy and Innovation Officer. So I've been at Helio for about a year now, and I love it. It's a smaller I call them a smaller version of Medscape, which is amazing, because smaller companies, as you well know Alison, have ability to be agile and pivot with the time

Alison Curfman:

absolutely and what stage would you say Helio was in when you came over? Were they like operating already with contracts, or were were they pre revenue precede, yeah,

Dr. Hansa Bhargava:

they, well, they've been their family owned business. They've been around for many, many years. They're a medical education company, but they wanted to kind of work on, you know, in the new direction of AI innovation and branding themselves in that direction. So. So I've been helping with that also very, very importantly, which I loved about them was that they really were worried about physician burnout, and, you know, they really wanted to figure out a way to kind of help doctors. And so one of their big products that I helped launch was Helio community, which is actually really focused on two elements. One is the well being of doctors, physical, mental, emotional. So we have a lot of content, videos and interactivity, like a community, literally on that. The second thing is they help doctors find new tracks, so basically their entire life. So I'm a doctor, I need help with physical wellness, emotional wellness. But I also need help with, you know, where do I want to go next? Do I actually want to go down a different career track? Also, do I need somebody to help me with contracts? You know? How do I understand, you know, what my legal rights are? So all of these things are part of being a doctor. The new track is particularly interesting. That's where the innovation comes in. We've established a Haltech community. We're actually doing webinars on physician entrepreneurship as well as health tech. We are probably going to be putting together an AI curriculum. So I'm just really excited, because just like you, Alison, I'm a creator, so I'm helping develop some of those things.

Alison Curfman:

Yep, that's amazing. And are you? Did you go into this as a top notch AI expert with a, you know, robust degree in development and computer science?

Dr. Hansa Bhargava:

Oh, my God, I wish I could say that I always laugh about how I'm the dumbest girl in the room or the dumbest person, but I don't mind, because it's all of what you said. Like, when you sit in a room with people that are working on something that is brand new to you, you get to be a learner, right? Yeah, you get to explain all that,

Alison Curfman:

and nobody expects you to know this stuff. Like, I remember I walked into the firm and I was like, I was like, I don't know anything about that. And they were like, yep, that makes sense. Let's teach you and but then you're considered the expert on everything clinical, which is true, because guess what? Every single doctor who's managed to make it through training has a lot of experience, has seen 1000s of patients, has incredible depth of knowledge and a very unique perspective on what's working or not working in the healthcare system. Yeah,

Dr. Hansa Bhargava:

I couldn't agree with you more. Alison, I think that I think, you know, I've talked to on panels about doctors being involved with AI development, with health tech and and it comes down to three things. One is, it's super important for doctors clinical experience to be part of that product development. Why? Because ultimately it's patient outcomes. But even for the company, bottom line like you want that MVP to be as good as it can get, right then the second part, where Dr super is super important in any of these startup companies, is integration, so you can develop, like, 1000s of AI tools for healthcare, but if it doesn't get integrated, it's dead in the water, right?

Alison Curfman:

And that is where I feel like when it comes to developing technology, the physician voice is so needed. I have seen so many tech companies that develop something that maybe didn't get the right clinical input up front, and what they ended up developing didn't solve the right problem 100% so

Dr. Hansa Bhargava:

product, workflow integration, and then the last part, which is particularly important, especially with AI. And I do have an understanding. I have taken Anthony Chang's, some of his courses on AI, and just through my travels, is that AI is not one and done. So especially with mini machine learning, especially with llms, it's super important for somebody to maintain that AI, and there must be a clinician at the table to make sure that it doesn't go off the rails, and that there is constant, you know, oversight of the product for both data integrity, but also as machine learning kind of evolves to make sure that it stays on track for the outcomes that you want it in the first place. Yeah, and it's such exciting

Alison Curfman:

work. I mean, I think that AI is something that is, there's no doubt it's going to massively change and transform the way we deliver care in the very near future. If you feel like it was an uncomfortable pace of change post COVID, with implementing so much telehealth and digital health like Get ready, because it's going to be a very uncomfortable pace of change. But that's why I feel like you do that, it's so important for physicians to come over to this side and to get involved. There is a huge demand and huge need. I keep kind of trying to validate my hypothesis when I started this whole podcast, and course, everything, I spent a lot of time with venture and every time I talk to someone, I'm like, try. Training these doctors, I feel like there's a huge need for them, and they're like, oh my gosh, Sign me up. Where do I get them? They all want access to well trained clinical expertise. And it's not just that. They want the person who wrote the New England Journal of Medicine article on their very specific thing. They want people who are able to think in a startup sort of way, so they want you know you at baseline being a physician, have a deep clinical background that would be valuable to a company in your field. It's the question of, Do you know how to adapt to a changing environment? Do you know how to, you know, determine those transferable skill sets, sit in a room and be, quote, unquote, the dumbest person in the room and treat it as like an incredible opportunity to be a sponge and develop all these new skills. And I think it can you help co develop technology and use design thinking, which none of us were trained on, but you can learn it. And I think that those mindsets are what I'm really trying to instill in physicians, to position them for success in this space.

Dr. Hansa Bhargava:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean the growth mindset to understand that we didn't just have, like, okay. Now I finished residency, okay. Now I finished fellowship, okay. Now I'm an attending, and that's the end of the road. It is not. It is the beginning of the road, because we have such valuable experience and we have such capacity to learn, like we are leaders and learners from the very outset and and so I'll just reiterate what you said, Alison, like we need our our colleague to come to the table. And again, like some colleagues will say to me that, oh, but I don't want to leave clinical medicine. You don't have to. Like, I was on staff for a very long time, while I work at webney, while I worked at Medscape, I was doing er shifts, yeah, me too.

Alison Curfman:

I'm going to work in the ER next week, all week.

Dr. Hansa Bhargava:

You can do it all. I mean, just maybe not at the same time, that's parenthood too. But right? Alison, I mean, we're, we're moms, and we're parents and like we can do, and it's just having that growth mindset and the positivity, I think,

Alison Curfman:

yeah, that's, that's an amazing point. And I feel like you and I really resonate on the same wavelength. And as we wrap up, I'd love to know if there's any kind of last, you know, takeaways or action items that you want to share with the audience.

Dr. Hansa Bhargava:

Yeah. And so I would say two things are really, really important, keep you know, keep talking to people. It's so important networking. You'll never you know, you don't know what door will open to you if you talk to people. The second thing is, you know, learn how that growth mindset. And lastly, I'm just going to make a plug for helio.com community. So come over. Come join us, but also come join the health tech group, if that's what you are interested in, or or know another group, you know, we are really hoping to embrace the doctor and be there for you. And if anybody's interested in AI, come join us in November at AI med. You know, it's a great conference. 75% are doctors, and a lot of a lot of them are just trying to get into this new world of AI. So, yeah, you'll meet

Alison Curfman:

people. Really fun. I'll try to go. Sounds great. So awesome. Well, if people want to get in touch with you, is LinkedIn the best way to find you?

Dr. Hansa Bhargava:

Absolutely LinkedIn. I'm also on Instagram, but LinkedIn is the best,

Alison Curfman:

awesome. Well, we will include your LinkedIn in the show notes and the links to the groups that you were talking about and your website. So thank you so much for joining us today. I really enjoyed this conversation. I'm sure everyone else did too, and I really just appreciate you joining

Dr. Hansa Bhargava:

us. Alison, thank you so much for the opportunity. All right, see you later.

Alison Curfman:

Thank you for listening to Startup Physicians. Don't forget to like, follow and share.