Episode 15: Empathy and Compassion in Healthcare, with Dr. Jeremy Blanchard

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Reliably Well brings you thoughtful conversations from those who are shaping the future of healthcare, focusing not just on the technical side of the industry, but on the human element, the stories, the struggles and triumphs of individuals who are driving change. Join us for candid discussions that highlight both the challenges and rewards of working in a field where humanity and healthcare intersect.

We’re honored to have Dr. Jeremy Blanchard as a guest on today’s podcast. His perspective reminds us what it means to lead with both excellence and fullness of heart. Dr. Blanchard serves as the chief medical officer for the entire system of North Mississippi Health Services, but we hope today’s episode proves that he’s far more than just his title. He spent more than 15 years helping healthcare teams build cultures of excellence.

that are grounded in both humanity and accountability. Known for his mindful listening and systems-based leadership, Dr. Blanchard has guided various medical teams to national recognition. As he once wrote in his piece, Sweet Home Mississippi, it was published in 2020, he wrote, I commit to meet you with kindness, to assume you have great intent, to be thankful for you and the blessings in my life, and to be curious about you and your journey.

That same commitment shows up in the way that he leads, proving that when people know they matter, excellence will follow. He would also be described to those that know him well as a loving husband and father, a faithful friend, a slightly above average fly fisherman, and a well above average pickleball player. Dr. Blanchard, welcome to the podcast. We’re glad you’re here.

Well, thanks. I think I would correct that. I think I would be known as a great fly fisherman and an average to a slightly above average pickleball. ⁓ I was hoping that you would pick up on the fact that I confused those things, but maybe we’ll talk about I need some help with both my pickleball game and my fly fishing game. Well, thank you very much for that kind introduction. It is really an honor to be here. I said before we went on.

podcast, you know, hopefully this will help my reputation because people, you know, often think of you by who you hang out with and who you choose to be your friends and colleagues. And I can’t think of two more stellar individuals to spend some time with than the two of you guys. So thank you so much. you, Dr. Blanchard. I know from five plus years of meeting with you that your schedule is pretty packed.

as you have to leave on time or early from one meeting to get to another. So I appreciate you carving out a few minutes for us on a Friday here. We heard some highlights from your bio there that Sumner went through, but I’d love to hear the story behind it. What’s the winding path that brought you to this job, to this state, to this town, and how has that journey shaped you? You know, I mean, it’s interesting, right? Because the journey is always in the eyes of the beholder.

So for me, my journey is as straight as an arrow. I have this personal mission statement that I will bring voice to the voiceless, help them achieve the quality of care they deserve, but hold them and myself accountable for achieving that. And because of that, that has really led me from being raised by a single mom with nobody going to college to ending up in the military doing my internal medicine and my critical care at Walter Reed.

running a neurotrauma research lab, attending at Johns Hopkins. And then, because my mom was my hero and she got sick, at that time I actually got out of the military and started an ICU from scratch and built a culture where people really truly did feel valued. had one year with 60 ICU nurses with zero nurse turnover and that was really a team effort. And that mission there, I think, captures a lot of how I’ve transitioned and that is every patient.

or receive compassionate, dignified care using evidence-based medicine in a team-empowered environment. And if I was going to change that today, it would be everybody that we interact with, patients, caregivers, EVS, RT, whatever discipline you choose, families, deserves dignity and compassion, and they need to be treated with high-quality care that is centered around caring for them as high-quality individuals, whether they exhibit it or not. And so,

That sort of those combination of ideas led me to get out of formal leadership in healthcare and become a consultant with a company called Language of Caring. And that’s where I learned a lot about advanced communication. I really learned how to listen there. And I think listening to understand, not to reply. And if you think about that for a moment, if you’re listening to this podcast, how often have you had someone listen?

to really understand you, not to wait for you to take a breath so they could tell you something. And then, and doing that without judgment. And then the real caveat as a leader, when somebody really feels like you heard their message, they now can hear yours. But until they feel like they heard their message, they can’t hear yours. And that has been a great part of my growth as a leader along that journey. And I think, you know, one of the things that has happened is little quotes have sort of

guided that journey like, know, nobody will hear what you say until you hear what they say or Maya Angelos, you know, people will not remember what you say. People will not remember what you do. People remember how you made them feel. And then Chance, Favors a Prepared Mind by Louis Pasteur. Those are really sort of those foundational things that have been the same for me the whole way. But yet my career looks colorful because after Language of Caring, I went into a pro football startup league and

I have an entrepreneurial master’s degree from University of Southern California and I’ve watched a company and I’ve done these different things, but they all were that same personal mission statement that I started with. And that’s how I got to Mississippi is the Alliance of American Football went bankrupt in 2019. It was, it was unpredicted. I mean, it was, came out of the blue one week. And so for, for the first time in my life since seventh grade, I didn’t have a job. Cause you know, when I was a kid growing up,

My mom didn’t have any money. We didn’t have any money. Car repossessed, those kind of things. So I worked. I paid rent since I was a freshman in high school ⁓ to help with things and then took care of my mom my whole adult life. And so I really had never been without a job. And even though I wasn’t fired, even though the company went bankrupt, I went through a lot of trials and tribulations, but I decided I wanted the job, not a job. So there were two jobs. This job that was

introduced to me by ⁓ a friend of mine who died during the search actually. And ⁓ then a job for the new CEO at ⁓ Swedish ⁓ out of Seattle and they had a new hospital that they wanted a new CEO. So I was a finalist in that. But when I interviewed at North Miss, I realized that this had everything I wanted. It had a population that needed a leader. It had a improvement

glide plane or vision that I could see would take at least 10 years. And it had this incredible medical staff and I am so blessed. I have the absolute best medical staff I’ve ever worked with. And so I decided this was the job. And so I actually pulled out of the CEO position and I am, I bought a house. had a contingency agreement, but I bought a house before I ever was offered a job. So there were five interviews for this job. And on the fourth one, when I came, I bought a house.

and didn’t tell anybody except the real estate agent. And I had a contingency agreement because I just knew this is where I was supposed to be. And then as Dr. Johnsey can share, I mean, we went very quickly through something together that, you know, will go down as through history. And that was a pandemic. And I was sort of built for that. mean, I’m military, I’m critical care. I really don’t fluster too much with conflict or.

chaos. And so I was just blessed to be allowed to be a leader there. And now I work with you guys and other incredible people. And I’m trying to build processes and systems so that when I retire, you won’t need a CMO like me. You’ll need a different kind of CMO that can really change the world and carry on and make it better than I could and my team could with me.

Yeah, I mean, there’s so many, we can spend hours kind of going back to different parts of that story as to kind of how that’s made you something that probably all three of us think about all the time is you’ll never be who you’re not in the process of becoming. And so this, this kind of idea of you’ve always been in that process to be the great leader that you are. You’re, you’re obviously familiar with Relias Healthcare as we have the privilege to partner with your system.

and emergency medicine and hospital medicine. ⁓ We have five core passions that we try to emphasize and try to hold ourselves to that standard. And those passions are people, innovation, quality, value, and excellence. In some ways, you probably resonate with all five of those in different times and places. But if you had to pick one of those, what would you say that personally, as Jeremy Blanchard,

Which of those five passions resonates the most with you? Yeah, you know, I knew of this question. Obviously you guys were kind enough to share it with me ahead of time. And, and, but I didn’t want to choose till I heard you read it because I could pick any one of those five and could, you know, opine on them for awhile. But the one that really touches my heart right now is value. And what I, what I think of or the perspective I’m looking at value from is broad. So the first value.

commitment that I see is to each other is the value to treat people with dignity and respect and expect to be treated with respect. Because out of that comes trust and all great teams trust each other. Just like I trust Relias and Relias leadership and have since the day I came here. And hopefully you trust me and North Mississippi Health Services as we go through trials and tribulations, but there’s this background trust. And I think it comes because you’ve treated us with respect, we treat you with respect and

And that then allows for trust to develop. The second value that I think is really important to see is probably the one that is our Northern star, but isn’t necessarily the first contact we have. So that’s why I put the value of each other first, but it’s the patient and their families. Is we value that we’re treating family members, community members, neighbors, and that we have to treat them with love and dignity and honor.

And also hold them accountable to treat our teams with love and dignity and honor. And so I really value those relationships. And I think relationships are the secret sauce of being healthcare provider in Mississippi that is lost in other places. It exists in Montana too. And that’s sort of why I fit here because I’m a Montana boy, but, relationships are key. My handshake means everything to me. And then the last value is value in managing populations.

And that’s the one that converts to financial impact. But if we value population management, if we help populations live a higher quality of life, we allow individuals to then meet my personal mission statement and our company’s, both of them’s mission statement to really be able to go to a grandson’s soccer game, to be able to watch a daughter be married.

To be able to know that your baby that’s going to be delivered is in the best place they can be. To know when the ATV accident hurts your child that they’re going to an ED that is totally manned and prepared to take the best care of your patient. Or to know when somebody in your family comes back from a long plane ride and has a blood clot go to their lungs that they’re going to get great care in the emergency department. They’re going to get great collaborative care as they then

are taken care of by a hospitalist many times who’s going to be realized as well. So I think that value of each other, that value of patients and family, and then that value as we treat populations is really what I’ve committed my life to. And then the whole umbrella behind that is, and this is, don’t know if your comfortability with this on this podcast, but it’s really that Jesus died for us.

and valuing our relationship with God and how we take the blessings we’ve been given and we bring them forward to care for others. And I think it’s that three values contained within our overwhelming commitment and desire to live a godly life that has been presented to us through Jesus Christ’s passing that really makes all that happen. So to me, value was the one that resonated today the most. comfortable with that.

That last value you brought out there. No problem with that. Putting the spotlight back on you a little bit. John Quincy Adams said the influence of each human being on each other in this life is a kind of immortality. Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking credit finding their life passion based upon a particular high school teacher that focused on them and kind of…

nudge them into science. My Angelou that you quoted earlier, she said that her grandmother’s mentorship instilled her passion for literature. So who is the person or people that most inspired or shake you in your journey and thus kind of live on through you? And what did that teach you? Well, thank you, Joe. And as I transitioned to that, I can’t help but be the little brother that I always am. And Joe knows this. So I picked my specific cup today.

for this real audience meeting. You know, I feel seen right now, Jeremy. It is so good to gang up on Joe ⁓ to say that Ole Miss is not all that bad. Yeah, so Joe, why don’t I have a Mississippi State Cup? Why is that, Joe? Libbo, can we make that happen, please? It’s because Ole Miss people buy me nice things, but Mississippi State never do. Anyway, so, you know.

As I was thinking about that, there’s really three people that I think, you know, I, this is a really interesting question because I’ve never thought that way. I’ve never thought, okay, who I’ve, I always have thought of one of these and maybe even two, but I hadn’t thought who helped me be the physician I am because there’s really those parts and then who helped me be the leader. And I would say, you know, you could pick a lot of people, but there were, there were four people very quickly that, that, did that. So the first was.

When I was delivered, was delivered with forceps in the injured my neck. So I had neck surgery when I was three years old and in fourth grade. And in fourth grade, I wore a halo. It had a band that went around my head. had a leather chin strap. It had a metal bar that went down connected to a metal framing that like a vest that went around the rest of my body and had struts covered with leather and then straps that hooked across. And I had to wear that.

Every day and every night in fourth grade and every night in fifth and sixth. And I don’t know if you’re from Mississippi and you’re listening, you know, but the kids in Maybin and Houston and Oklahoma, they’re, they’re are not any different than Eureka Montana. And they’re not very nice sometimes to kids that are really different. And I remember my mom took me to a physical therapist. And he was the only person in my life, other than my mother that looked at me and didn’t see it. He just saw.

a kid and it was the greatest feeling in the world. I thought, man, I want to be him when I grow up. And I thought I was a doctor. So that’s why I ended up striving to be a doc. So he was a first. And then the second was my mom, because my mom said, you can do anything you want. You’re just going to have to outwork everybody. And so that’s been really one of my MOs is I’ve been able to outwork everybody. I’m not the smartest. I’m not smartest on this podcast. But what I am is I have great common sense.

can work. then, and then the third person who really affected me was a guy named Jack Psyche. And Dr. Psyche is a hematologist on, well, was a hematologist oncologist in New Mexico, where I went to medical school and he met each person where they were. And his ability to empower a patient to feel like they were valued was, it was inspiring. And I still, you know,

To this day, remember those moments being in exam room with him and him sharing those kinds of things. And then I would say the last person was a minister and he was, I was a Methodist Youth Fellowship president when I was in high school and there was a minister, his name was Reverend Kleiber and Reverend Kleiber had a saying. It was, will be every man’s bridge and no man’s doormat.

That is such an important thing to recognize as a leader because people at times are going to ask inappropriate things or try to create inappropriate action out of you and having the intestinal fortitude to say, you know, what is the right thing? What’s the next right thing to do? Even when it’s not easy is really powerful. So I’d say those four individuals, you know, the physical therapist, my mom, Dr. Psyche and then Reverend Clyburn were really

the four most foundational people. There were many, many other people that have impacted me, but those four. Yeah. And every time we ask that question to a guest, would love, you know, like I almost like envision an auditorium of all the people, of all of our guests and how I would, like, I would love to have known your mom, you know, and just to know all these people of those that we respect and we’re fortunate to

work for with or alongside that it would just be really neat to have like a big party and get all those people together. One quick story about my mom, Sumner. So my mom, so I, an entrepreneur, I launched an end of life company called the Joy Life Tool. And my mom was married to a different man and sort of last name was Man Love. And so I did an interview with a newscaster that I used as my marketing video. And so I knew what, you know, what gave her joy, what gave her dignity. And she had a huge stroke.

And she lost everything that gave her joy and everything that gave her dignity, but she wasn’t sick enough to die. And so for the next three years of her life, she was a bit of a shell of who she had been, but she also lost any filter. So she became much more entertaining and not always in a good way as she went through these last three years. So I remember I went to the, to the assisted living to watch a Montana Grizzly football game with her. And every time I go see her.

and we were in public area, she would call people over, she’d say, Hey, hey, come here, here, hey, hey, come here. And they come over and she go, this is my son, the doctor. And I hated that because that’s just not, well, I shouldn’t say, I dislike that because that’s not who I am. That just happened to be what I do. And so I said, mom, when we go down this time, please do not introduce me as a doctor. And she was sort of huffy about it. And so I rolled her down the wheelchair, we’re there and she goes, Hey, hey, come here. I’m like, okay, here we go. And they came over and she goes, Hey,

This is my son, the plumber. And so then when they left, she goes, how’d you like those apples? And I actually sort of liked it because they do good work and you need a plumber. mean, you know, it’s not like always an easy thing. but that was that my mom was definitely spunky. Whenever you see any little sauciness from me, that’s, that’s mom-esque. That’s coming straight from mama. So one, one thing that stuck, I think will be a bridge to the next question is sometimes they’re

there is a difference in what we have to do and what we’re called to do in our job and who we are. I think the goal is to try to weave those together, but there are times where we have to do things that don’t. So what’s a challenge in the current healthcare landscape? It certainly feels like healthcare is different post pandemic, and that’s kind of a tired line. But I think with the workforce and

how the acuity of patients and inpatient setting, certainly it feels like they’re sicker today than maybe they were a while back. But what’s a challenge that you face within the current healthcare landscape in your current professional environment? And how are you navigating that challenge? Well, I think the biggest challenge, and I don’t know how well we’re navigating, and I think it’s an institutional and nationwide, is that we reimburse people on productivity.

I just think it’s a mistake. mean, I fought it as an intensivist and never had RVUs assigned to us. It was tried by administration on multiple attempts and I always fought back against it because nobody on my team needed to work harder. They were already hardworking, but I wanted them to be about the quality of care they gave and the joy of delivering that care and the teamwork, not about how many patients I can see and how can I shorten my notes so I don’t have to document as much. And that may be a cynical

thought process, but I really think productivity is a problem for healthcare. Because I think people are going to be productive no matter what. When we provide higher quality care, the type of care we have to deliver will change. And it allows us to move certain types of care to different places. Because if you’re population management, now you’re going to have people doing preventive health in different areas. So I think

That’s the second thing is we don’t do preventive medicine. We do reactor reactionary medicine. Just to use an example that I think really brings it home, you know, how many insurers for head injury do you think there are in the NFL? There’s 32 teams, right? How many, how many insurers do you think there are? Probably either close to one or close to 32. I’m going to go with one. Yeah, I’ll be the silly guy. There’s one. So the NFL, what the NFL does is they work.

on treating head injury for the most part. They don’t look at preventing head injury. You know, ⁓ one of the, one of the schools is very novel is Brown. Brown does most of their practices without helmets because rugby players don’t have head injuries. It’s because with a helmet you target with your, with your head. And so I think healthcare has that issue. We treat head injuries. don’t prevent them.

Think about in Mississippi, obesity or domestic violence. We have this whole model called adverse childhood events. When have we ever heard of an adverse childhood event clinic in Mississippi? Dr. Katherine Burke Harris started one in California. It’s extremely successful. But finding someone who wants to do that model of care is one of my dreams for North Mississippi. Because when you do adverse childhood events, you affect the whole family and you allow them to get better.

But if you’ve had a domestic violence issue as a child, if you’ve had poverty as a child, your odds of having COPD, heart disease, a stroke are markedly increased. And so to me, the focus on productivity takes the work away from focusing on preventive health. And that’s the true fallacy of American healthcare is we’re great at treating people who got sick because they didn’t take care of themselves. Yeah. ⁓

The episode we were with Dr. Suzanne Coven, who is the writer in residence at MGH up in Boston. She was talking about she had an injury and she had to go back to work and she had to see less patients in her throughout her day in clinic and keep me out of the ditches, Joe, but I think I’m on the right track here. And she was saying that forcing her to slow down was actually when she felt the most joy.

in getting to have those interactions where she didn’t feel like she was having to see so many patients per hour and kind of going back to this productivity matrix that I think we’re losing some of the joy and the humanity in healthcare because we’re obsessed with efficiency. And efficiency is not bad, but it can’t be our North Star. Yeah. I mean, when have you ever heard anybody say, I am so happy today because I saw

this many. You everybody’s, I’m so happy today because I had this episode. you know, if I was going to say that the greatest case that I’ve ever been involved in, there’s been a number, but her name was 22 year old Washington State University student. I knew her mom through hospice care and we didn’t have palliative care at that time at Cadillac, which is where I was in Richland, Washington. And so I did a lot of that kind of interaction. So one day,

I got a call from the ED and it was from an ED doc and he’s a great, great person, but he wasn’t one of the strongest docs. And ⁓ he said, Hey, I got a young gal and I think she’s got a pulmonary embolus. I’m waiting to get some stuff back, but I think she’s going to come to you. And he said, could you help me, you know, with what are the right standard of care and care path? said, sure. Do you want to do it now or you want to wait on the results? Well, let me wait on the results. Literally five minutes. hear code blue, ED, code blue, ED. And I just, knew in my heart, it was this young lady.

So I just decided I’m going. So I booked downstairs because we were on the second floor. They were on the first floor, came into the ED and I was right, it was her. And as I walked forward, my friend who was a chaplain, Tim Ledbetter, was talking to this woman who I knew briefly because of, you know, she was a hospice nurse. And I remember I asked what room and they told me and I’m headed to the room and I had to walk past them to get to the room. And as I walked,

past them, there was about a six foot diameter circle as I entered it, it went totally silent and it was Tim. I mean, he was giving peace at that moment. And, and as I went through it, there was a piece of God that I walked through and I knew, man, I am in the right place. So I went in there and they’re intubating her and she’s coding and thrombolytics came. And there was, at that time there were case studies giving thrombolytics while doing chest compressions. So I hung.

thrombolytics and we were giving them and I went out and I said, look, you know, where’s interventional radiology? We only had one, his name was Sarva. And I looked down the hall and it’s a Saturday morning and there he is with his son, who’s probably five, holding his hand and he’d just come in to read some x-rays at work. And he’s walking down the hall. I’m like, Sarva dude, I got to ask you, you got to help me. And he goes, well, who will watch my son? And I turned to the nurse who was a great nurse in the ED. said,

I know this is a lot to ask, but do you mind being a babysitter for a moment so I’d save this gal’s life? She said, sure. So we went in and we transported her and we couldn’t feel a radial pulse or a femoral pulse. She was getting the thrombolytics. We were ⁓ doing, had gotten back a pulse cause with the chest compressions and epi. So I my finger on her carotid the whole way and we went in and he did the thrombectomy and we saved her. And about

Seven years later, I got a letter from her. She was in Portland, Oregon. She had completed being a nurse and she was a mommy. ⁓ You know, it’s just, that’s the moment I think of not when I saw 20 patients and got all my notes done and, you know, and, and build really well. And, you know, my coding, didn’t get many alerts on my coding. And, you know, I don’t remember those days. I remember the days where I was allowed to make a difference. And I remember the days where I wasn’t.

when the 12 year old little boy died in my hands with his parents there. You know, that’s what I remember the moments and that’s what I want to give back. Actually, we’re going to be engaging through our community-based participatory research. We’re going to redo a study that was done in 2013 by SWAC looking for which physicians are happy. And so we’re redoing that with 125 physicians if it gets through the IRB and we’re going to ask two empathy questions and two compassion questions.

And you may not even know this Sumner, but you’re part of the reason we’re doing this because of your involvement in compassionomics and in ⁓ with Sam, with Pam Holt’s company as well. But we’re going to do that with the thought that then we’ll interview and then we’re going to recreate this with all thousand medical staff, seeing them as a community so that I can create the resources to try to deal with burnout and moral injury. I.

I agree with you that we’re at risk of losing joy of practice, but I don’t think that it’s hopeless. I think that Mississippi, because we focus on relationships in our system, that’s our secret sauce. I think we can leverage this to create an environment where physicians want to work. So we actually become more and more desirable for physicians and nurses and then patients because of the relationships we deliver. And so I think, but I think it’s going to be a.

It’s going to be a tough battle to win this, but I think it’s winnable and we just have to, we just have to fight together. You may have just told it to us in, in the story that you related, but in case there’s another one, I’ll ask the question that we had planned anyway. Looking back on your journey, what’s one accomplishment, whether personal, professional, or something else entirely that you’re most proud of and why does it hold such special meaning for you? Yeah, you know, that’s almost a legacy question, right?

you know, what is your legacy? And I actually don’t care about legacy, but what I do care about is the people that I empower. So to me, the greatest accomplishments are yet to be because the more people I can empower to be the best version of themselves, the more people I can release from insecurity and from containment to impact the world in a beautiful and kind way. And they don’t even have to know it.

But the more I can create processes, systems, and individual support for people to make the world a better place, that’s the greatest accomplishment that God can have through me. So I don’t really look at what I can do. I just want to be the vessel that delivers that. I would say things other people think are significant, I suppose, would be

You know, one year with 60 ICU nurse with zero nurse turnover or something like that. But I just so don’t think that way, Joe. I don’t even know how to answer the question differently than that. My greatest blessings, I guess, in this have been the opportunity to care for human beings as human beings, and then for God to create suffering in my life so that I can see him more clearly. for those that are listening, ⁓ they clearly have heard from

⁓ a very thoughtful and wise man and clearly a talented clinician and an effective leader. So some might be questioning, are you actually a human, Jeremy? So kind of in our world that’s dominated with technology, we always have to, you know, click all the motorcycles online to prove that we’re human before we log into something. So we always like to close out every episode with prove that you’re human. Well, it’s kind of

something about you that we maybe haven’t covered or something you’d like to double click on to allow folks to know that Jeremy Blanchard does in fact have a belly button? Yeah. I mean, that’s a vulnerability question, right? Vulnerability is the antithesis of insecurity. So, and one of the superpowers of servant leadership. I think the easiest way to see I’m human is when I stumble and I stumble a lot. mean, I’m a passionate individual, so I have a big time temper.

You know, that you don’t see very often, you know, I’m sensitive. So sometimes I take myself too seriously and I get hurt. think the, the greatest place, and this is one of my greatest struggles I’m having right now is, is, is how do I bring God to the pickleball court? So how do I overcome my desire to fight and to compete and to win and to destroy the opponent?

And that just isn’t very godly. And so I think if you want to see my humanness, you could watch a video of my play last night when, you know, I did something very uncharacteristic. I had been in a hands battle, which is when the ball goes back and forth very quickly with another good player and I won it. And instead of quietly turning and walking back, I, you know, I let out a big yes, which is very uncharacteristic of me and actually was somewhat humiliating that I would do that.

I think that’s where it’s obvious. think the other place that it’s obvious is, is in my personal life. When I fail as a husband or as a father, and that seems so, and as a friend, that seems so prevalent to me because I have a high set of expectations. And really, if I was going to choose, not that this is ever a choice, nor would I want it to be, but if I was going to choose when God was most prevalent in my life and most obvious.

In my life, meaning that I got out of the way and let him seep out of me, it would be in my personal life. And yet that’s the place that for whatever reason, I think is the hardest for me to let him rain. So that’s my humaneness. I sincerely appreciate the vulnerability. Um, and you’re a good friend to Joe and I, um, and we’re thankful that we get to work alongside you. Um, and we’re really thankful that those that choose to listen got to hear a beautiful conversation.

Well, thanks. guess one thing I want to do is I just want to say thanks to all of you guys, all your team. I mean, if you think about the number of lives that you affect since Relias has started, I mean, it truly is not just one life. The beauty of what you do is you don’t throw a pebble into the pond. You throw a handful of pebbles into the pond because what you, the impact you make on individuals lives is unmeasurable.

And you don’t make them on those you want to make them on. You have to make them on everybody. Everybody that comes through your door, you treat. And that is courageous and it’s hard and it deserves respect and it’s inspirational. And I want to make sure not just Dr. John Z and not Dr. Abraham, but everybody in Relias, no matter what your role, you need to be able to look in the mirror and realize you make a difference. You make a difference in lives. You make a difference in.

in community, you make a difference in culture ⁓ and you are doing something that is honorable. And I appreciate that and respect it. Really gracious of you. Appreciate you in those words and your time. Thank you. You guys have a great day.

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