06/11/2024
Home Telehealth Workers Find a Way to Connect in San Francisco’s Noe Valley
By Matthew S. Bajko
Noe Valley Voice, June 11, 2024
For years, Rebecca Messing Haigler and Dr. Kathleen Jordan have lived a block away from each other near 24th and Castro streets. They also work in the health-tech sector and are part of the revolution in healthcare delivery known as telehealth.
Yet their paths didn’t cross until they attended the HLTH 2023 conference in Las Vegas last October for professionals in their field.
“When Rebecca and I met in Vegas, it made me laugh as it seemed ridiculous that we flew there to meet and connect, when we could have done so in our own neighborhood,” recalled Jordan, who has worked from home since 2021 as the chief medical officer at Midi Health.
Specialists in menopause and perimenopause launched Midi Health to provide virtual care to patients from across the country. As such, Jordan’s work environment had become vastly different from when she worked at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital, first as its medical director of infection control and eventually as its vice president and chief medical officer.
She was looking for an outlet to have the kind of personal interactions she had been missing because she no longer worked at a bustling hospital.
So was Haigler, who, also from a home office, operates her Noe Strategic Advisors healthcare consulting firm, which she launched two years ago.
“With our former companies, we used to do happy hours with people at the office. Now, we are all working at home,” said Haigler.
Jordan joked, “I needed to get out of my house.”
They wanted to offer an opportunity for people in the field to network and share ideas. Thus, they created the NoeHealthTech Hub. In naming the group, they were somewhat inspired by another neighborhood in San Francisco, one populated by people working in the artificial intelligence field.
“Getting Noe Valley to be known as a health-tech hub would be great ... much the way that Hayes Valley is getting dubbed ‘AI Alley,’” Jordan noted to the Voice. “The coffee shops in Noe are filled with people in health tech. It cracks me up when I do a coffeeshop meeting at how many people are in the industry also doing meetings.”
Last December, Jordan and Haigler invited people in the health-tech sector living in Noe Valley or nearby to join them for a meetup. More than a dozen did in December, gathering for drinks and dinner at Mr. Digby’s restaurant on 24th Street.
“You can’t walk around Noe Valley without running into someone who works in health tech,” said Jordan. And not far behind them are the would-be investors in health-tech companies, added Haigler.
“A No-Pressure Opportunity”
The two friends invited the Voice to the second Hub gathering, held in early May in the back patio of the newly opened Todo el Día on 24th Street. More than half a dozen people stopped by over the several hours they were there.
Among them was Michelle Pampin, the chief executive officer of Welkin Health since 2020. She works out of her home near 25th and Dolores streets and years ago had met Haigler through mutual friends when they all met up for happy hour.
At the time, Haigler was working as a health economics lead at Verily Life Sciences, owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet. Verily had signed up as a customer with Welkin Health, which provides software to healthcare providers for such purposes as electronic medical records and tracking appointments.
Pampin told the Voice she liked the laidback vibe of the health hub gatherings.
“It is a no-pressure opportunity to have conversations about the challenges we are facing and how to help each other,” said Pampin. “We can connect the dots for people if they should need help in figuring them out.”
More and more people are finding employment in alternative healthcare technologies, said Pampin, as people nowadays rarely need to visit traditional doctors’ offices.
“I can tell you it is only just starting,” she said. “We will have to leverage technology in the U.S. to scale up health care.”
50 States of Health Care
While at Saint Francis Hospital, Jordan had introduced the first telehealth services it offered. For her new job with Midi Health, Jordan is now a licensed physician in 47 states and working to soon be able to practice medicine in all 50 states.
She told the Voice she “fell in love with online health care” and doesn’t see herself returning to the traditional model of seeing patients onsite at a medical office.
“I can sit in Noe Valley and see patients in all 50 states,” said Jordan.
With various reproductive and sexual wellness services coming under attack in conservative-led states, Jordan can provide her patients the health care they need, no matter where they reside. Even in states with progressive policies around health care, people residing in more rural areas may not have a doctor within driving distance, so they often turn to telehealth.
“Half of the women we see have nowhere else to go, or there is a nine-month wait where they live to see a doctor,” said Jordan. “We can do it in two weeks.”
And, noted Jordan while seated at the Mexican eatery, “all of that is going on in a basement up the street. It is pretty cool.”
Women’s Health in Demand
Having attended the first Noe Hub gathering last year, Dr. Rebecca Yee signed up with Midi Health as a provider. She is also an independent OB-GYN who maintains an affiliation with Sutter Health’s California Pacific Medical Center.
“[Midi] opened the door for what is out there instead of a typical practice,” said Yee, who lives near 25th and Diamond streets. “It has been fascinating to deliver medicine in a different way.”
She said many of her telehealth patients are women in Pennsylvania. Often the care Yee provides involves prescribing hormone therapy in areas where doctors may be reluctant to do so based on an assumption that those who take hormones automatically face a higher risk of breast cancer.
That is not the case, said Yee, who has prescribed hormones for years to her local patients. Thus, she said, her decision to work with Midi was an easy one.
“It allows you to expand your practice elsewhere and provide services not available elsewhere,” said Yee.
All Are Welcome
Even those who do go to an office for work are welcome to participate in the Hub gatherings.
Vince Garmo commutes to his job as a health economist with Genentech, a member of the Roche group, at an office in South San Francisco.
He dropped by the Hub meetup in May, as a decade ago he and Haigler were coworkers at Abbott Labs. He came to say hi, meet new people, and network.
“I came to hear what people are working on,” he said.
The centrality of Noe Valley’s location is why Garmo believes it attracts so many residents who work in the health field.
“I think a lot of us live here because it is easy to get to the freeways. It is close to where I work,” said Garmo.
The group plans to meet quarterly at a neighborhood restaurant on a weeknight, starting at 6 p.m. Because of summer vacation plans, the next gathering will likely take place in early September.
Anyone interested in connecting with the NoeHealthTech Hub and attending its next meetup can email Haigler at [email protected] and/or Jordan at [email protected].
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PHOTO: After holding their second NoeHealthTech Hub meetup in the patio at Todo el Día in early May, telehealth experts (l. to r.) Michelle Pampin, Rebecca Messing Haigler, Jane Hatch, and Kathleen Jordan got together in another favorite outdoor spot, the Noe Valley Town Square on 24th Street. Photo by Art Bodner, Noe Valley Voice, San Francisco June 11, 2024
