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Blake Peart - How to Know When It Is Time to Consider a Strategic Partner
152 Plays1 year ago
When it comes to strategic partnerships, surgery centers have many options to choose from, but timing is everything. Blake Peart is the Managing Director of Vertess, and he's on the show this week to chat about when it is the right time to consider a strategic partner, key indicators that its time, potential benefits and advantages, and identifying the right partner.
In our news recap, we'll cover National Nurses' Month, regional anesthesia, the latest breakthrough in AI imaging, and of course, end the news segment with a positive story about the first RSV vaccine.
Articles Mentioned:
Celebrating the Invaluable Impact of Nurses
Using Regional Anesthesia Could Improve ASC Performance
Google adds image analysis capabilities to generative AI model, enabling dialogues with doctors
Brought to you by HST Pathways.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to This Week in Surgery Centers. If you're in the ASC industry, then you're in the right place. Every week, we'll start the episode off by sharing an interesting conversation we had with our featured guests, and then we'll close the episode by recapping the latest news impacting surgery centers. We're excited to share with you what we have, so let's get started and see what the industry's been up to.
Strategic Partnerships Discussion
00:00:27
Speaker
Hi, everyone. Here's what you can expect on today's episode. When it comes to strategic partnerships, surgery centers have many options to choose from, but timing is everything. Blake Pert is the managing director of Virtess, and he's on the show this week to chat about when it is the right time to consider a strategic partner, key indicators that it's time, potential benefits and advantages, and how to identify the right partner.
News Recap Highlights
00:00:54
Speaker
In our news recap, we'll cover National Nurses Month, regional anesthesia, the latest breakthrough in AI imaging, and of course, end the news segment with a positive story about the first RSV vaccine. For those of you who stopped by the booth at ASCA a few weeks ago or attended either of our sessions, thank you for spending a few minutes of your time with us in Louisville. And next week's episode that will come out on June 6th will be a full ASCA recap, so make sure to tune in.
Interview with Blake Pert Begins
00:01:24
Speaker
Hope everyone enjoys the episode and here's what's going on this week in Surgery Centers. Blake, welcome to the show. Thanks, Nick. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Can you tell us to start a little bit about your firm, Burtess, and where you guys focus in terms of working with ASCs?
00:01:48
Speaker
Absolutely. So, Vertex is a M&A firm. It's kind of an intermediary firm, we call it, which we're part of the facilitation process of taking someone to market. We do about 90% sell side work and maybe about 10% buy side work. So, our focus is primarily on sell side.
ASC Industry Trends and Growth Drivers
00:02:06
Speaker
So, when a person wants to go to market, they want to either sell their business completely or they want to do a recap, have a strategic partner.
00:02:14
Speaker
We're a great group to basically start at evaluating the first, give them a full evaluation of what we feel our company will bring to the market, trends and comps. We do a full evaluation with this. At that point in time, if they decide to sign and sign with us with the other information we presented on how we take people to market, what's unique about us, then we'll take them on board and go through the whole entire process.
00:02:40
Speaker
It's a pretty lengthy process, about six to eight months, to sell someone and to get them to find the right buyer for them. Great. It's a difficult process. Okay. Thanks for that overview. There's so much going on, Blake, right now in the ASC industry in particular as it relates to consolidation, capital inflows, acquisitions, partner buyouts.
00:03:03
Speaker
What do you think is driving this influx of capital and increased interest within the ASC segment of healthcare in particular? No, it's a great question. Part of it is it goes back for a number of years and then you have this current changes in the recent years that have really facilitated this growth in the markets and on both the seller and buyer side. So right now they estimate there's about $1.8 trillion in private equity at the moment, the city.
00:03:32
Speaker
And so this is something, obviously there's a lot of investors, venture capital, a lot of strategics out there that are looking to acquire ASC. There's one part of the healthcare platform. And so there's a lot of opportunity with this. What I've seen from my perspective is someone who was an operator of ASCs for a number of years. And we acquired some privately owned ASCs, the large strategic company that I represented.
00:03:59
Speaker
And we saw, you know, what the benefits were when a group of physicians, surgeons had kind of reached that point in their life where they're thinking, you know, where can we take this from here? How can we grow further? How can we create the right retirement for ourselves? Well, how can we create the right legacy for ourselves? How can we take some chips off the table that now we're having to address on our own where we can get some support for these issues?
00:04:22
Speaker
And so that's something that we're able to bring to the table as far as finding a strategic partner. That's a very important option for them. The key is, what's the right partner for you? And what are the terms of finding that right partner? And I think that's where we're able to help people direct them and find that right niche.
Challenges and M&A Dynamics in ASCs
00:04:40
Speaker
To your point about what's changed recently, well, we had this whole thing called COVID. And if you know, ASC for probably hit the hardest during that process, meaning obviously a lot of elective procedures. So, uh, depending what state you're in with lockdowns and some of the regulations, you may have been hit harder than other places. And so with that being said, a lot of, even some of the larger players who are still privately owned, who were thinking, you know, we really don't want to be acquired. We like how things are being run at this moment.
00:05:11
Speaker
Now we're saying, how do we mitigate some of this risk? We took a really hard hit. And, you know, how do we start to take some chips off the table, have another company come in that can help absorb some of these risks that we had to endure all of our own ourselves. And a lot of surgery centers probably own we're decimating. I mean, some never recovered. So this has also really pushed the movement to this to kind of have that acquisition process move forward.
00:05:36
Speaker
that I think just came from some of the experiences with COVID. And then sometimes it's just a matter of you're getting punished for good behavior. You've grown it to a point to where as a surgeon, you're having to address a lot of issues that really, that's not what you went to school for. You make money doing servers. No one else can do that but you. And when you're sitting here playing HR director, office manager, and you're having to go through all these different things with the state, it's probably time to find a partner that can help you mitigate those processes.
00:06:06
Speaker
Yeah, that's helpful in terms of getting to lay the land in terms of the different trigger points. And do you think that those kind of trigger points and dynamics that you mentioned are driving more M&A activity, more strategic partner interests and ASCs versus other segments of healthcare? Or do you see these general trends kind of going on within the healthcare landscape overall?
ASC Valuations and Strategic Partners
00:06:32
Speaker
I think it's overall, but when you start looking at certain lanes, you'll see it elevated and less than others. For instance, urgent cares, just an example, they did very well during COVID. But those numbers were rather artificially inflated, right? So I wrote an article a while back on what's reoccurring and non-reoccurring COVID revenue, how the buyers look at this and say, how do we look at a business and know they've recovered well? These are true numbers now.
00:07:02
Speaker
I'll be exposed to what they were getting at one point time that was very unique that's not going to be repeated we hope not. And so this is something that i think that some businesses had to wait a while twenty two was a very good list for a lot of business including on how they recover how they ramp back up.
00:07:21
Speaker
And it kind of went through that because everyone basically judges things pretty much on a 12 month trailing EBITDA and revenue, you know, margins. So they want to see that, you know, bandwidth go through that those things have been alleviated. They've kind of gone back to what's normal. And so now this is a great time for them to move forward. 22 was not a good year for M&A for primarily a lot of those reasons.
00:07:47
Speaker
interest rates, you know, risk of a recession, all the things that we were dealing with, but you also had, you didn't have enough time really to measure what was happening in 2021. And so people were a little, buyers were more skeptical and much guarded as far as moving forward in this direction. But now we've kind of gone past that. Sure. And coming out of that, Blake, I want to ask you a little bit about ASC valuations at a high level.
00:08:14
Speaker
from our audience that doesn't talk about M&A and valuation every day, what are some of the key high level factors that go into ASC valuations? Sure, great question. First of all, let's say a traditional transaction, if you've got a company
00:08:33
Speaker
that we feel, let's say we've got maybe 10 surgeons on board. They're producing, let's say $40 million, $45 million in revenue. Well, an even dollar, somewhere maybe around $6, $7 million. For the sake of math here, we'll say $5 million for that, which probably a little bit higher with that kind of revenue. But what you see, the higher the revenue that you're going to have at the center, typically the higher the valuation is going to be and higher the multiple.
00:09:04
Speaker
because the investor knows they're going to not only make the money back, they can make it back quicker and they can, you know, it's going to be a greater valuation as far as multiple. So, you know, when you're starting to see things of valuation of 60, 80, a hundred million dollars, you're starting to really look at some high multiples of EBITDA. We're talking seven, eight, nine, 10 sometimes, you know, when you start really dissecting it. When you start looking at smaller surgery centers,
00:09:30
Speaker
Let's say it's $5 million, $6 million in revenue, maybe one million and a half, two million, even though I made this one or two positions. Typically those are still very well desired, but they're going to be a little more conservative on the valuation because any buyer is going to see this as a little more risk. You've maybe got two physicians, three physicians. You know, what's the chances of maybe they take some chips off the table, they roll back 20%, but at the same time, maybe they go a little soft. Maybe they don't want to work as hard as they did. Maybe one wants to retire.
00:10:00
Speaker
That's one third or two thirds of your entire workforce. So it has more risk in it. And of course being less revenue, you're going to have less money built up on that as far as in the next two to three years, when they may want to turn that over or flip it. A lot of times a private equity group will come in, they'll roll back money. They want to maintain that workforce that's there. And then they'll grow it maybe two, three, four times.
00:10:27
Speaker
And then they can flip it to a strategic. And that's when a strategic will come in because typically they have a higher level of discretion on what they will purchase. They'd like a little bit higher number of revenue, a little more certainty to acquire them.
00:10:39
Speaker
And so that's typically the kind of the standard, if you will. Sometimes it's broken, sometimes it's not. But for the most part, that's pretty much the standard that you see as far as how valuations are done. So A, higher earnings of ASCs, good EBITAs, run well, we're going to always bring higher multiples.
00:10:59
Speaker
uh, lower, uh, revenue, maybe under 10 million revenue. They're going to have a little bit lower multiple, but still greatly desired. It really had a lot to do with the stability of the position force that you have on it. Great. And so it sounds kind of at the highest level, it's the, the EBITDA, you know, which is kind of a proxy for the profitability of the facility and some kind of multiple on that, which at a high level, you know, might be in the seven to 10, 10 X range.
00:11:28
Speaker
So take it there, right? That's correct. That's right. And again, the higher usual devaluation that comes out with the, with the ASC, typically the higher the multiple will be for that AS. Yep. That makes sense. One thing you mentioned earlier, Blake, that I want to kind of circle back to.
00:11:47
Speaker
Is this concept or this term strategic partner? And I hear this term strategic partner thrown out there. And I feel like sometimes it can mean different things or sometimes it can be a little bit confusing. In the case of ASCs in the M&A landscape that we're talking about, what does strategic partner typically mean? What does that mean to you? It's a great question. And sometimes I use it for two different definitions. One, we could say strategic.
00:12:17
Speaker
buyer is typically a very specific buyer that is very much in the ASN space. Without naming them, you know who they are, the big players out there. And those people come in and they are looking at an ASC. And they're going to add it to the portfolio. They have a very good pulse on landscape, the geographics, the circumstances within that location.
00:12:42
Speaker
And they want to, they want, they want footprint. They want to be able to get some access there. They probably have, maybe they're working and partnering with a hospital system. So they, they have a very good plan about how they come in. And they, a lot of times they like to do like a 49, 51%, a 49% physician on 51% and this part of it, that's what they do. I've worked with those companies before and maybe they even partner with a hospital system for supply chain reductions and payer network, payer reductions and rates.
00:13:13
Speaker
So that is really kind of the definition of up to your future. It's very specific company. That's what they do. So, you know, those names out there when you say them, you know, you, you know who they are and that's what they do. Then you've got PE groups and other groups like
Importance of Partnership Terms
00:13:29
Speaker
that, that you may be utilizing that may be in that lane, but they're kind of a platform to building a platform that can do some add-ons to it.
00:13:36
Speaker
And they do like to roll over. Of course, they really like the team to stay on board. And then they're used to go within three to five years. They're going to flip it usually maybe to a strategic for another sale. So they built it up. Maybe it wasn't quite ready for that strategic or for whatever reason was being passed on a strategic. They're going to fill in all the holes, fill in all the gaps, get it perfect. And then usually they'll sell it off. They usually don't maintain it for a long, long period of time.
00:14:02
Speaker
So that's kind of the difference in those two. You know, when I use the word strategic, sometimes I'm referring to meaning what's right for you, what's right for that buyer. And sometimes it is a PE, sometimes it is a big strategic buyer. And, you know, and that all depends on what the physicians, the owners of that time want. I mean, if they want to stay on board and they want to be a part of this and they want to grow it, and maybe they're not quite meeting the revenue standards they can, and they want to have a lot of control.
00:14:31
Speaker
over the process and control over efforts, maybe the best thing would be a great private equity group to come in. A strategic, just, you know, by rule, typically they kind of have a very well oil process. But, and although you may be very much a part of that process, they're going to pretty much take over a lot of the overall operations and everything. Now, some, some position groups, that's great. They don't want to do it.
00:14:59
Speaker
But some don't want to lose that control. So this is why, you know, bringing in a company like Pertest is important because everyone talks about valuation. Everyone talks about what I'm going to need for my company. But at the end of the day, those valuations, when you narrow down to three or four of those buyers, they're going to be so close. That's all going to be relevant. It's going to be how that money's paid out. Is it earn out? Things like that. How much of cash flows. Those things are all negotiable and you're going to get tight with all those factors.
00:15:28
Speaker
What's different is the terms, the terms of it. So what does that mean as far as what's the rollover percentage? What's going to be the employment agreements for each one of these positions? Are you going to keep the existing operators on board? Are you going to put someone on the board? Are you going to make sure you have certain control facets in this? Do you have a say so when this gets sold to who that buyer may be? Those are all terms that have to be negotiated
00:15:58
Speaker
difference between a real strategic buyer and maybe a private equity. And I'm not pro or bar either one because I think they both fit with that right seller, but it's making sure you navigate through those waters and you don't drown in the process of getting through it and find the right person that works best for you. Yeah, those seem like really important considerations because as you said, evaluations, evaluation, that's an important part of it. But a lot of times in this ASC space, these physicians
00:16:27
Speaker
These physician owners are staying involved in some form or fashion, and a lot of times highly involved. The go-forward operating model, the ownership structure, the governance structure, the operational processes, and the people, it seems like it can vary widely depending on the type of partner or the type of investor. It's true. Always remember, I always tell my physicians or the owners of the ASCs,
00:16:57
Speaker
The best part about the valuation and the money that we come to is going to be when you close and you see that money at your account. However, the terms are what you're going to live with every day for the next years to come. And so that, that really is more important when it comes down to it because those, that valuation is going to be very close no matter who you choose. It's going to be very close. If you're running, you know, if you're running a really good tight bidding process through, which is what we do a really good job with.
00:17:25
Speaker
But those terms is what you're going to have to really negotiate and make sure you don't have any, you know, potholes down the road that you see that, like I say, the fine print, make sure we've gone through all this process. And that's, that's, that's what's going to get you through it and make your happy exchange down the road. Yeah.
00:17:42
Speaker
You mentioned earlier some of the potential benefits of taking on an investor or strategic partner.
Pros and Cons of Strategic Partners
00:17:48
Speaker
You mentioned, hey, this can be a good way for owners to take chips off the table. This can be a good way to change the capitalization of the ASC to allow for partner retirement or ownership changes. It can fuel and help fuel and fund
00:18:06
Speaker
growth. And so I see a lot of those as great positives for taking on a strategic partner. What are some of the drawbacks that folks should maybe look out for? No, it's good. And we go through this with everybody who's looking to sell. We kind of did the pros and cons and what you're looking for specifically. Once we know what their goal is, one year, three year, five year. And
00:18:31
Speaker
To your point, if you're looking at a model and you're looking at ASC and you're saying, wow, you guys have done phenomenal work, I think we can find what you want to stay on board. Yes, we want to stay on board. Okay. Here's the benefits we can find. We can probably get you X amount by the valuation. We feel like this is what the market's yielding. Now you're looking at maybe the right type of partner, whether it be the strategic buyer, the PE buyer, where it may be.
00:18:55
Speaker
And I think the things that we say is what do you want? What do you want out of this after the acquisition? And then let me tell you what you're going to probably be able to maintain if you look down this direction and what you're going to lose if we go down this direction. And sometimes the losses are not truly losses. I mean, they're things that they don't want to deal with anymore. Like I told them, you're spending 10%, 15% of your time playing HR manager. That's not something you want to deal with anymore.
00:19:21
Speaker
But at the same time, there's sometimes disloyalty to a lot of the staff and employees that have been with them for a long time, especially if they're like office managers in certain positions. Well, sometimes large strategic come in and they've got people in place for that. So they may not need that position. So these are very candid conversations you need to have. The other thing too, is if you've maybe used special vendors that you've had different things that you've done, have been able to have certain arrangements that you've worked out through the years.
00:19:47
Speaker
Well, when you go into that large one size fits all part of our cost savings is we're going to conform to, you know, maybe certain, um, you know, certain payers we're going to be more focused on that may eliminate some of your existing clients. Hopefully not the goal, but sometimes it works out that way. Uh, actual supply chain is huge. So maybe if you've got certain, uh, certain types of vendors that you've always worked with, but yet we've got such a discount with these vendors.
00:20:14
Speaker
You try to accommodate and maybe the money, the dollar signs just don't add up. It's a great cost savings to take money off. It's sometimes streamlining business or sometimes there's a lot of waste that you find out. I mean, positions for the most part, you know, they go to school not to be, you know, MBAs and CPAs that are there to do other things. And so sometimes you find low hanging fruit that you need to cut. That low hanging fruit is coveted. You know, it's something maybe they like to do.
00:20:41
Speaker
So these are very candid conversations you have to have. I mean, I've seen some, I've seen some ACs that throw these really elaborate parties every year for the staff and things like that. And we don't want to take away fun by any means. You want team building and that's great. But you know, if you made $2 million last year and you could go $50,000 a party, that's probably a little excessive. You know, so it's just little things like that, that you kind of have to walk through the process with them. But again,
00:21:06
Speaker
This is the big step of moving to the next level. And these people can get you somewhere that apparently you were not able to get completely on your own, even though you built a great company. So allow them to do what they do best. And then you kind of go along with the ride and you'll be beneficial. Yeah, I agree with that. You can have a nice party for $50,000. So that's good. That's actually a true experience. I've seen it before. For position owners that aren't ready to take on a partner,
00:21:35
Speaker
or external capital today, but are thinking about at some point down the line, what should they be thinking about today in terms of getting prepared or maybe future trigger events, which might indicate, hey, this is a good time? No, great question.
Preparing for ASC Partnerships
00:21:51
Speaker
I think outside the obvious of what are you trying to do? Are you trying to enlarge your center? Are you trying to improve the quality of your equipment and bring in more qualified staff? Whatever you may be trying to do, what is your purpose?
00:22:05
Speaker
I think once you get that done, I think one of the considerations is how do you want to mitigate that debt in the sense of trying to reduce it on your same point? You know, whenever an acquisition comes up, the first thing we look at is what's debt. And that debt comes off the top of whatever they're paying, right? It is a clean deal when you do a deal. So if you buy a company for 10 million dollars, and yet they've got 2 million of debt, if they have that, 2 million comes off.
00:22:30
Speaker
So that is something that you always want to make sure that you're looking at as far as considering it, if you're going to move into it. If you want to spend a lot of money on that debt, then sometimes find that partnership may be something you want to move before that happens. Unless it's impeding you from obviously revenue opportunities, I mean, that might be a different story. But with that being said, you do want to have that partner come in because that's when you would want to acquire that debt because now you're sharing that debt.
00:22:58
Speaker
And that's going to be filtered into the overall valuation plan and to perform a moving forward. So that's going to be, you know, it's going to be capitalized through maybe five, seven years. And so that's what, how I think I would probably best look at it unless it's something you have to have, you know, in order to perform and do good things you're doing to do. Because again, you're taking all that on yourself and you're just going to devalue that. You're going to recap that into so many years over time, but that's going to be completely on you when you go to move forward.
00:23:29
Speaker
you know, with an acquisition. So why not try to take some of that off the table, immediately don't utilize it and have that part of the deal basically, part of the negotiation factor moving forward about what is needed to help them grow this company. And if you're working with a large company, a professional PE firm or a large strategic group, they're going to know this too. I mean, they're going to understand these are important factors.
00:23:54
Speaker
So the right, let's say the right one is, so they're going to know it's important factors to go forward. So these are all part of the process of finding the right partner. And I think if you can save some of that initially, that's just less money. It's kind of like building a house and you add a bunch of stuff to your house, that brings no value to it. And it just, and you borrowed against your house to build it.
00:24:21
Speaker
And unfortunately, you know, it's going to be a loss of what you're going to collect. So it's kind of the same principle. I just want to be careful. Got it. Final question for you here, Blake. We do this every week with our guests. What's one thing our listeners can do this week to improve their surgery centers? Well, I think as a former clinician myself, and I think it's always do no harm. Make sure you're always working to provide the best services for your patient.
00:24:50
Speaker
You're monitoring compliance risk, you know, you're addressing wrongs, you're addressing all the things that need to be done. Protect your staff, your great staff that you may have. Professional nurses, techs are worth their weight in gold as we all know right now. You know, take care of your staff, keep them there.
00:25:14
Speaker
working a bunch of contract people, and it's not that we've all done it, but it's not the same thing as having people who you know you rely on depends on it. I think that's a two factor. So if you're taking care of your patients, you're doing everything right, you're forming everything safe, I do truly believe a lot of the revenue and things will come. And it's just keeping mitigating that process and understanding it. Don't, you know, get what you need to get,
00:25:41
Speaker
Um, by what you need to enhance your business. And if you find yourself in a position where as a position that I, I have a harder time getting the OR than I did before. Then again, start thinking about how you can change that. And sometimes it can be some internal processes and sometimes it can be what we started our topic about is.
00:26:04
Speaker
Maybe I need to find a partner to take some of these operational and HR components and some of the things that I find myself being entangled in every day off the table. So I can spend more time doing what I went to 15, 20 years of school to do and focus on that. And I think that to me is just a factor of quality of life and it also helps.
00:26:27
Speaker
mitigate, like I said, a lot of the pressures that everybody has to go through when you're running these surgery centers that are very complicated, and there's a lot of process to get them right, have someone else take some of that burden off of you.
Final News Recap
00:26:40
Speaker
And look, a happier surgeon is a happier center, so I think sometimes that sometimes has combination. Fantastic. Blake, thanks so much for joining us today. You're welcome. Thank you very much, Nick. Appreciate it.
00:26:57
Speaker
As always, it has been a busy week in healthcare, so let's jump right in. First, happy National Nurses Month. I know we're at the end of the months, but it is never too late.
00:27:08
Speaker
Every May, the American Nurses Association recognizes the exceptional work of nurses across the country with their annual Nurses Month celebration. Now, hopefully this is old news and you have been celebrating all the nurses in your life so far, but the theme for 2023 is You Make a Difference, which is designed to highlight the many roles played by nurses in the healthcare system.
00:27:34
Speaker
ANA organized the month into four weekly focus areas, self-care, recognition, professional development, and community engagement. So naturally, the ANA offers a lot of suggestions on how you can celebrate this month, but you can also use these ideas anytime during the year as well. And I thought it was really interesting that the ANA has a nine-part gratitude podcast with tools to help make gratitude a daily practice.
00:28:05
Speaker
But they also suggested you can request a proclamation from your local elected officials or state government that declares May as National Nurses Month. You can consider hosting a media event to highlight the roles nurses play in the community or bestowing an honorary nursing title to a deserving community leader. They also have a ton of resources and a
00:28:28
Speaker
full toolkit right on their website. So we will put a link to that in the episode notes as well. So whether you are a nurse or just know somebody who is, take the time this May to recognize the incredible work that nurses do every day and thank you nurses for everything.
00:28:47
Speaker
The May edition of ASC Focus came out a few weeks earlier this month. And as always, there are a lot of insightful articles, but one that caught my eye that I want to talk about today was all about the use of regional anesthesia. I know that this could be a hot topic with lots of differing opinions, so much so that at the ASCA conference a few weeks ago, they actually had a dedicated session to it.
00:29:13
Speaker
But for this article, a few different ASC leaders were interviewed and they all shared the same sentiment. By being able to use regional anesthesia, they have been able to increase the number of cases performed, change the types of services that they provide, shorten post anesthesia care time, reduce the use of narcotics, and most importantly, reduce post-operative pain for patients.
00:29:40
Speaker
I'm going to run through a quick list of tips that the article suggested, but I do highly recommend reading this article in detail. It's really a good one. So if you have not started using regional anesthesia yet but are considering it, here are a few tips. Find the right anesthesiologist. Secure surgeon buy-in. Provide the block in pre-op in order to maximize OR time.
00:30:07
Speaker
prioritize patient education, but do not pressure them if they're not comfortable. Stay current as advancements are rolling out all the time. And lastly, just consider this an opportunity and stay open-minded. So to learn even more, we'll link the article in our episode notes as well.
00:30:28
Speaker
In our third story, we are talking about AI again. I feel like we have an article of something else is going on every week about this. But in the world of medical imaging, Google is back at it again, and they are making another big leap forward with its AI technology.
00:30:44
Speaker
The company recently announced that it has developed an AI-powered image analysis tool that can be used in a variety of medical imaging applications. The goal is that it can recognize and analyze images of various body parts from x-rays to MRIs and provide detailed information to doctors and medical professionals.
00:31:05
Speaker
It's not intended to replace anything, but just to help identifying diagnosed conditions more quickly and accurately, leading to better patient outcomes. So while Google's tool is still in the early stages of development, it has the potential to revolutionize the field of medical imaging by making it easier and faster for doctors to analyze images and diagnose conditions.
00:31:29
Speaker
The tool could help improve patient outcomes and reduce healthcare costs. So as the technology continues to develop, it will be interesting to see how it is integrated into the healthcare system and what new applications it will enable. So if you are using AI at all right now, I would love for you to hop over to HSC Pathways LinkedIn page.
00:31:54
Speaker
and find this blog post or find this LinkedIn post, it'll be at the top, and just leave a comment on if you're using it, how you're using it, and maybe some ideas for how you think it might be used in the future.
00:32:08
Speaker
And to end our new segment on a positive note, the FDA on May 3 approved the first vaccine to prevent RSV, a milestone in the search for a way to protect people from the virus. This shot was developed by the pharmaceutical company GSK, and a Pfizer vaccine for pregnant women and the elderly is nearing approval.
00:32:29
Speaker
Most people with RSV report having mild to moderate cold symptoms, but older people are more vulnerable, and every year more than 60,000 American seniors end up in the hospital because of RSV. It can also be really serious for babies, which is how I usually think about it, and those who struggle to breathe are often hospitalized in intensive care units because of RSV.
00:32:54
Speaker
So this is amazing news that a vaccine has been approved and we'll be keeping a close eye on this story as always. And that news story officially wraps up this week's podcast. Thank you as always for spending a few minutes of your week with us. Make sure to subscribe or leave a review on whichever platform you're listening from. I hope you have a great day and we'll see you again next week.