Clinician Spotlight: Kailin Hsu, MD

Director of Ambulatory Product Solutions

Clinical and support staff are the backbone of the healthcare industry. Often asked to work with few resources to deliver care at the most important times in a patient’s care journey, clinicians deserve recognition and appreciation for all they do. 

Faced with a workforce crisis like never before, health systems and hospitals need someone who understands these challenges — and at Get Well, we do understand. And we certainly appreciate those on our staff who have spent time as clinicians. That’s why we’re launching the Get Well Clinician Spotlight series — an opportunity to give the clinicians who work for Get Well the recognition they deserve and the space to share their stories and thoughts about the biggest challenges facing today’s clinician workforce.

Kailin Hsu
Kailin Hsu, MD
Director of Ambulatory Product Solutions

Please share a little about your clinical background and what brought you to Get Well. 

I’m a pediatrician by training. I completed my pediatric residency at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., and worked as a pediatric oncology/blood and marrow transplant hospital physician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for two years before joining Get Well in 2021. I joined Get Well because I wanted to apply my skillset on a broader level to increase healthcare accessibility and patient engagement for underserved patient populations, and to create a more streamlined healthcare experience for patients, families, and providers. 

How have you used Get Well solutions in the field? 

I used what must have been the GetWell Inpatient solution when I was in residency to provide health education to patients/patients’ families before they were discharged (e.g., seizure education).

What do you enjoy most about your work? 

I love the people I work with at Get Well. Everyone who I’ve worked with has been so passionate about improving healthcare and ensuring that we are promoting health equity in everything that we do. I’m learning a lot from the different perspectives they all bring to the table. I also love being able to combine my clinical training and experience with creativity when I develop and optimize programs and services to improve health equity, facilitate comprehensive care, and provide patients with a more streamlined healthcare experience.  

What are some of the biggest challenges facing today’s clinician workforce? 

Clinicians are always pressed on time when they see their patients, leaving little time to delve into a lot of the non-clinical aspects of health that contribute to patients’ overall health. If clinicians do have time to dive deeper into these aspects, they may not have time to follow-up with patients after their clinical encounter to see if the resources were helpful, or they may not be as familiar with resources to navigate patients to. Social workers, community health workers, and patient navigators are an essential part of the care team, but they are overworked and understaffed. We have a shortage of time and personnel when it comes to addressing social care in the context of healthcare. 

What is the best way to address those challenges? 

Extend the efficiency and reach of the care team by providing clinicians with a toolkit of resources to navigate patients to, having patients fill out social care screening questions before their visit so clinicians can review those prior to seeing the patient (sometimes patients fill them out as they are talking to the clinician, which takes up a lot of time), tech-enabling social workers/community health workers/patient navigators (i.e., use our Navigate platform), and/or using Get Well navigators to serve as an an extension of the care team.