Dr. Wendy Tong on Coronavirus Outbreak and Healthcare System in the US

Intro (00:00):
From the bowels of uncertainty and fear, from the mountains of euphoria and success, from the faraway lands of China and the Far East to the warm glowing sun of California coast and the top of the Freedom Tower, we bring you the GlobalEdgeTalk. If you are an aspiring entrepreneur or a hardened enterprise global executive with an edgy story of winning war defeat, entering new markets, or getting out of the old ones, we want to talk to you. We want to share your story. We want everyone to be on the edge, and because of you, we want everyone to have the edge, the global edge, and now the GlobalEdgeTalk host Alex Romanovich.

Alex Romanovich (00:43):
Hi, everybody. This is Alex Romanovich of GlobalEdgeTalk. Today we have a very important guest, a very relevant topic. We're in the middle of a major global crisis. The coronavirus crisis, which is global. Dr. Wendy Tong is our guest. She is the internal medicine physician, who decided to transform the aging and the elderly experience through a new model of home care, which is coupled with innovative technologies. And we're hoping, and we're looking forward to it impacting the daily lives of our seniors and elderly. We all have family members and friends who are in that age category. Wendy is the CEO and founder of Wendy's Team. She founded the agency in 2016 and established presence in Denver and Boulder, Colorado. She shares the trials and tribulations of putting aside a high-paying executive position. She was a highly paid executive and managed care in various companies.

Alex Romanovich (01:48):
And she decided to pursue a dream and start her own company. And the impetus for that was not just her dream. It was also something that developed into her life, something that happened with her father. And she will talk more about this as well. Wendy, we're so happy to have you here. Welcome to our studio.

Alex Romanovich (02:06):
Thank you Alex, for inviting me.

Alex Romanovich (02:08):
We're very excited to talk to you about this and so many things in your life, but also in developments that are touching the lives of our citizens and global citizens. Our audience is always interested in learning more from global entrepreneurs. You have a very interesting background. You are a single mom of three children as well. You have made some amazing accomplishments. So you have some amazing accomplishments. You've made some incredible changes in your life, and a very interesting career, and multicultural background, a very dramatic experiences with your family. What drives you? When you accomplish something like this, what is driving you to continue to deliver this level of energy, this level of excitement and this level of drive?

Wendy Tong (02:56):
Thanks, Alex. So what drives me is really all about my family, and leaving a big footprint, and leaving a legacy. We all have to leave one day and I want to leave so that the world is a better place for my children to grow into. I have three children, they're very young, seven, six and six. And of course, my area of training and interest has been in the elderly. And the large part of it is also paying it forward. I've grown up within a family of great privilege and blessings. I grew up in Hong Kong and one of the motivations for me in really changing the face of home care for seniors is actually my own father. He's now 80 years old and he had always wanted me to pursue medicine and supported me in my education. And actually in 2017, shortly after I started my company, he suffered a severe fall in the bathroom, hit his head and had a significant bleed inside his head.

Wendy Tong (04:03):
And that bleed has left him completely confined to the bed. He's actually dependent on a ventilator. And he had always expressed a wish for remaining in his home and being surrounded by family and friends. And so I've actually created hospital-level care, actually intensive care unit level of care for him in the home setting. And so there's a part of me that's driven by leaving a footprint at a better place for my children to grow up into. And part of it is actually neat, paying it forward and pay my debt back to my father and my family for having enabled to support me in this really privileged life and education that actually has subsequently allowed me opportunities to make an impact. So, as you mentioned, my family is in Hong Kong. My family is in the United States. We also have family businesses in Canada, and it's truly an appreciation of connecting this with the world that I contribute my services to.

Alex Romanovich (05:06):
Wow, that's incredible, Wendy. You're a business owner. You're part of another business, family business. You care sometimes remotely, sometimes in person, your dad, who's in Hong Kong. You are also taken care of through a network and the association with over 90 caretakers and guardians as you call them in your business. You've taken care of hundreds of elderly citizens here in the United States. Let's talk a little bit about your early career with managed care and US-based hospital system. As we're beginning to see that our system, healthcare system is going to show cracks, is showing cracks with coronavirus, with what's happening out there. We've seen globally that something like this is unforgiving. We looked at Italy, we looked at China, we looked at other countries and it's mind boggling. What do you think is going to happen here? What do you think we need to do in terms of US managed care and the hospital system? And will any of the systems, be it Medicare-for-all, or self-paid, or a combination of two, what is going to work here?

Wendy Tong (06:20):
Even before coronavirus, the US's performance in health care outcomes was already abismal. And I think coronavirus has actually uncovered or revealed even more deficiencies. And I'm anticipating that we will have these deficiencies in our healthcare system will be even more apparent in the ensuing months. So, speaking of even before the coronavirus just to give you an idea of how poorly US healthcare compares to other countries of similar size and wealth, there's an index called the healthcare access and quality index or HAQ index. And this score is based upon the idea of amenable mortality, which means a death that could actually have been prevented if timely and effective health care was delivered, the lower the score - the poorer the quality and access to healthcare and the US scores dead last, no pun intended dead last among all G13 countries.

Wendy Tong (07:24):
And yet we also have access to the most amazing medical knowledge. We have the most number of Nobel prize laureates in medicine. And so there's a discrepancy, how do we actually have the worst healthcare outcomes? And I think it's really access to healthcare and that's across all areas, whether it's geographic, social, economic, cultural, educational, you name it. And I think that the coronavirus is going to really demonstrate how there are just so many barriers to access some care. Now you mentioned, managed care and Medicare-for-all would that work, would a hybrid work, at the end of the day, if you have something like Medicare-for-all and I'm drawing from my own experience because I was actually a physician executive at one of the largest insurance companies in the US and how is part of the leadership team that rolled out the Medicaid expansion back in 2014.

Wendy Tong (08:29):
And yes, we increased coverage significantly for my area that I covered from 230,000 members to 430,000 members and from 5 to 18 counties. And it did improve access. And at the same time, we also were aware that giving somebody an insurance car, you still have to build up the infrastructure to support the actual delivery of services and overcome other barriers to the care. I think that our healthcare system is really broken. There's a problem with access. And we also, as a business women, we spend so much more in terms of dollars for healthcare, and yet we don't get what we are paying for. I think that, Medicare-for-all will increase coverage. I think that just like Medicaid expansion, really the impact is going to be seen more in the already underserved areas which is actually the part of the country that Wendy's Team is most interested in expanding into. We're currently in Colorado, but we're looking at Arizona, Nevada, Texas, the more as compared to the coastal areas which actually met reflects the experience I got from our Medicaid expansion, which is the rural areas really did benefit more than the urban areas where there's already much better access to healthcare.

Wendy Tong (10:01):
So I'm looking forward to Medicare-for-all. I think that there will be of course, multiple providers of healthcare, that there will be improved reimbursement rates for providers to deliver services in the underserved areas. So it will be very interesting. I think the impact, the cost will be initially very expensive, but then the long-term savings, actually we'll get that health care outcomes in the long-term, which will equate to long-term savings in terms of health.

Alex Romanovich (10:33):
I see. Let's talk a little bit about your decisions and a little bit about the history of your family. Shortly after starting Wendy's Team, your father had an accident, you mentioned that. This was one of the contributors to dedicate yourself even more so to Wendy's Team. What other factors contributed to your decision? Why do you think that your contribution with Wendy's Team is going to help our elder citizens? Obviously, we have baby boomers that are coming up the age curve, and you would say we're beginning to see now is not the most friendly country to elders, based on all the issues that we're seeing and we're beginning to see. So tell me more about some other factors. Tell me more about what specifically you're going to be doing.

Wendy Tong (11:25):
So, my background, I'm an internal medicine physician. So my training background has always been in the elderly, the chronically ill and chronically disabled. I was a hospital-based internal medicine physician or hospitalist. And actually what I saw in my clinical practice days is that I make a lot of difference for my patients when they're in the hospital, but when look at it, the average length of a hospital stay for a senior is six days. And I started to wonder what happens in the other 360 days of the year. And I also saw that in the senior population, at least one in three seniors ends up being readmitted into the hospital within 30 days of hospital admission. And usually the reasons why they bounce back into the hospital is actually preventable. And if a senior were to receive a little bit of home care, and the home care isn't anything fancy, it's just helping with meal preparations, maybe, taking a shower, helping was just daily living type of activities.

Wendy Tong (12:55):
These seniors could not end up having a fall or another outcome adverse event that actually lands them back in the hospital. And not only that, I also realize that most seniors do not want to make that ultimate decision to move from their home and into a nursing home. And that with a little bit of help and support in their home, they can prolong that decision. And as we started doing Wendy's Team and providing services, we found that not only that, but actually people can age and die and transition in their homes without ever being institutionalized. And it doesn't take very much more than supporting the family and that loved one in their day-to-day activities. And because these are activities that I call day-to-day, it's what people do for themselves or family members do for them. Anyway, you don't need fancy credentials. You don't have to have an RN after your name. And so the support is actually very affordable and can be accessible very easily. And so that was the premise that was the foundation for me, starting a home care agency, even though I have a medical degree, it's actually non-medical meaning that, it's actually really accessible to everyone because we have a large pool of people who can provide these services,

Alex Romanovich (14:42):
Very important points. And another very interesting development here is that our system, as I mentioned before, is beginning to show cracks with coronavirus. But I think the cracks were there even prior to that, when we started in the process of getting our democratic candidates ready to vote or to not to vote, excuse me, but we're on the path to developing the path of candidacy with the presidency. And there were a number of interesting debates that we all participated in, in terms of listening and caring and participating in many cases. One of the challenges that you have experienced in transitioning from being an executive and managed care, and being an executive in part of a system, part of a healthcare system. And now you wanted to start the business in the same industry, in the same segment if you will. How will different policies, whether we're looking at Republican policies or Democratic policies, and I realize that they don't want to become political, but do you see the support of what you doing it on one side or another? I'm just very curious about that.

Wendy Tong (15:53):
Actually, the policy that I'm most concerned with, it's actually not necessarily a healthcare policy, but it's actually, with regards to the work status of independent contractors. So Wendy's Team is able to provide services that are so affordable. We are the lowest priced home care agency in Denver. And we have a large pool of people who are caregivers, and we can only actually pursue that business model if we use independent contractors. And there's actually a lot of concerns about policies, governing, independent contractors. A lot of you have probably heard about this in California with Uber and Lyft and the restrictions on independent contractors, should they actually be employees? I'll tell you that for the kind of home care services that we deliver, which is termed unskilled or really kind of entry level, if we were actually have to provide employee benefits and employee salaries, the model would fall apart that we would actually end up having to pass those employee benefit costs to customers.

Wendy Tong (17:13):
And we wouldn't be able to provide our services at the rates we have, and our clientele are on a fixed income. And so this would be a very devastating, this would be the most devastating piece of policy if it was enforced that our caregivers had to be employees, although we have taken, we anticipate that our company will evolve and there will be a pool of caregivers who are employees, but we are going to be still dependent on independent contractors and that business model that has an independent contractors. As to healthcare policies, in terms of a single payer, really a Wendy's Team at this point is all private pay. And there are so many people for the value that we give, they're willing to pay privately that we have been able to maintain our operations without partnering with insurance companies or third-party payers. In fact, we've avoided Medicare or Medicaid provider because of all the compliance measures that are required and what that would failed in terms of costs. And just more human resources dedicated to credentialing compliance that just we don't need to work with insurance at this point because we have sufficient demand. People are willing to pay for these services.

Alex Romanovich (18:47):
Interesting. So we were in the middle of coronavirus, global pandemic raging across the globe, impacting so many lives in so many states, in the United States as well. Elderly specifically are at much higher risk of their condition being immunosuppressed, weak of health in hospitals, in nursing homes, in assisted living facilities, just recently three people passed away in Washington state. We now have a state of emergency in many States in the United States. And we have Wendy's Team. How can you help? How can you assist with this situation? What can be your response and how do you see this development?

Wendy Tong (19:32):
So whenever there's a place where there's a large concentration of seniors, that is an area where they're at risk, really for contracting any infection, not just coronavirus. And of course, nursing homes really fall into that category. You have the most frail, the most sick seniors short of being in the hospital. I think at this point, I've actually been telling families who are on the fence about whether their senior, loved one should go into a nursing home or stay in their homes, especially in light of coronavirus, I am really encouraging families to keep their loved ones in their homes. And it's really possible to keep a senior in their home for much longer than what most people think is possible. And all they may need is a little bit of support. And we've had so many experiences that in the past people really had culturally thought that even at end of life, that a loved one should be in a nursing home, but we've actually taken care of over 25 families through end of life.

Wendy Tong (20:47):
And they passed away in the comfort of their homes that is really possible with a robust home care delivery team. It's just so possible. And I've actually experienced that myself in the care of my own father, what we've been able to do. He's been in Hong Kong in the eye of the storm of coronavirus being in China through at all. He has not had any developments in terms of even a cold or pneumonia. And that's because he's isolated from other patients and other seniors. And has nurses are the ones who only have him as their patient. So they're dedicated to him, if anything is really protecting his nurses as they're out in public and they come to his home, but that's what I see can be really contribution of home care.

Alex Romanovich (21:41):
So from what I understand, and you told me about this a little bit earlier, is that you created this home environment for your dad, with visiting nurses and caretakers. Talk a little bit about that particular setup, for the lack of a better word, I'm going to call it a setup, but it was a special need setup. Talk more about that and what you've been able to accomplish.

Wendy Tong (22:02):
My father, this was in 2017б, he was in the intensive care unit at the hospital in Hong Kong. And his apartment, I basically reconfigured his apartment. He is actually in the living room of his apartment and there's a hospital bed, there are two ventilator machines, one is a backup he's on the ventilator. He's dependent on the breathing machine 24 hours. He has actually a feeding tube and a catheter for his bladder. His nursing staff are there in 12 hour shifts, two 12 hour shifts. We also have a live in helper who is not a nurse, but assist the nurses in the physical lifting and the more physical things, and to keep the house clean. And he doesn't need to go to the hospital because his physician actually does home visits once a month to change his breathing tube, to do any checks. He doesn't need to go to the hospital for any blood work.

Wendy Tong (23:06):
We have a lab that sends somebody to draw blood from him. He gets because he's laying on his back. He has not had a bed sore in the past year and a half. And that's because every two hours the nurse and his helper rotate him, shift his body, and they do whole body cleaning, a sponge bath twice a day. We've been able to keep him comfortable. And he has a lot of moments where he's awake and alert and is aware of what's happening in his environment. And we can do certain things in his home that you can't do in a hospital that really creates that home feeling for him. For example, Chinese New Year, his room is decorated and all Chinese New Year decorations, Christmas, we had Christmas decorations and then family come to visit more easily than at the hospital where there are strict visiting hours.

Wendy Tong (24:01):
And when I'm there, I pretty much mostly at his bedside, I'm working, I'm doing my work with him and talking with him and we can have the TV as loud as he wants to, or have the channels that he likes. But really the important thing is that he is not exposed to the really unhealthy environment in a hospital where there's the sickest of the sick and the worst infections are concentrated. So he really has minimal risk of contracting any infection, including coronavirus. It does take a team to do this.

Alex Romanovich (24:36):
Do you think this is possible to recreate or to create something like this here in the United States with what we have in terms of reimbursements, or is it only affordable to some that have some level of resources and so forth?

Wendy Tong (24:52):
As I mentioned, I come from a family that has financial resources. And so in Hong Kong, also labor is a lot less expensive than in the United States. We have domestic helpers who are from Indonesia and the Philippines who help us, that is certainly not available here in the United States. I do believe that the hospital's setting can be reproduced maybe in a much smaller setting than the hospital per se, maybe, in a group home. It really hasn't been done yet, but I do think that it is possible to do. There are a lot of devices nowadays, like the ventilator I mentioned that are portable, IV infusions can be done in the home. And it might be, really looking at how currently hospitals are huge facilities with lots of patients where are smaller settings, where even pretty intensive healthcare can be delivered.

Alex Romanovich (25:54):
I was just going to say that with the experience that we're living through with nursing homes and assisted living facility, controversies with nursing homes, the challenges, I mean, there's sort of a very important purpose at the same time. There's certainly a lot of risk that's involved with the hospitals, which may be completely overrun by patients during the coronavirus crisis, at the peak of their capacity and above capacity. I think it will be a lot of interest to look into home-based facilities, independent living type of environment and so forth. This information is extremely important. We will be posting some pictures and some information and links to what Wendy and her family were able to accomplish. And certainly we'll be posting a lot of information tied to Wendy's Team links and supporting information as well. A couple of other questions, Wendy, I'm amazed by you.

Alex Romanovich (26:54):
You are an entrepreneur, you're a former executive in the managed care segment. You're a physician. You have other business interests specifically in United States and Canada, in Canada you have hotel, a travel agency and tour bus operation, who literally to those who are in a small, medium-sized business segment, this virus is going to be very impactful. It has hit a number of industries and will hit a number of industry very, very hard. How have you been able to repurpose some of your businesses? What are you doing to mitigate the risk of what has happened? What is about to happen? How do you survive, how businesses survive in this environment and you share that?

Wendy Tong (27:36):
Certainly, I'll pull from our tourism and hospitality services, my family's businesses. Because I actually think that the home care business is actually going to increase due to the coronavirus, but certainly tourism and hospitality services were among the earliest and most significantly impacted in these first few months, our travel agency suffered an 80% immediate drop in sales because primarily we were providing package tours to tourists from China, Korea and Japan. And actually this morning, I looked at our year-on-year weekly sales for our bus company and we dropped 30%. We've only been able to sustain these two operations. The hotel and the bus operations have travelers from other countries as well as actually local travelers. And the bus company is now kind of pivoting on that and really looking towards drumming up local clientele with things like spring break student shuttles pass.

Wendy Tong (28:43):
But even then we've really had to tighten our belts across the board. We've had to make HR decisions in terms of cutting hours for our drivers, our managers were looking at cutting some of our routes. We're watching our competitors at the least match, what their prices are. We're anticipating, they'll be dropping their prices. And we don't know how much of an impact price war would even have. We don't want to enter into an aggressive price war either. At the end of the day there's actually a low clientele for everybody and we might end up killing each other with a price war. We're also aggressively pursuing a lot of RFPs, requests for proposals, basically, in the past that we might've found unattractive, but we're really like casting our net out wide.

Wendy Tong (29:39):
The other thing is that we're looking at commissions and contracts where we're paying a third parties for maybe an endorsement or some sort of exclusivity and renegotiating those because it is also in their best interest that we survive. And we're also looking at other revenue streams, other ancillary products that we might sell a company, our existing services, be it a flexible ticket feature, where buy your ticket now, but you can cancel it any time with a full refund, things like that. So we're being really, really creative. Fortunately, in all of our businesses we have that agility because we are the majority or sole owner. But I think it's going to be hard for large companies where they may not have that agility to flex as quickly and as responsively. But at the same time, I think it's not just the healthcare businesses that are going to be impacted.

Wendy Tong (30:46):
It's going to be all businesses and everyone at all walks of life who are going to impact it, then this might actually Harold a Renaissance because as we're confronted with the challenges of responding to coronavirus, everybody's going to be more agile, be more innovative, more creative in order to survive. So this might actually Harold, a lot of creativity and innovation in terms of businesses.

Alex Romanovich (31:16):
Great tips. We'll also summarize those and post them on the landing page. Wendy, let's talk a little bit about your personal life. You're a single mom of three kids, until recently very busy executive at managed care, one of the giants of managed care, now you're entrepreneur of a very busy and investoral. How do you manage, how do you reconcile all of that, your personal busy life, your crazy business endeavour, saving businesses, rethinking strategies, growing businesses and so forth. And what do you sa to all the single moms were dreaming of doing the same thing or thinking of surviving?

Wendy Tong (32:02):
Alex, I do have a lot of accountabilities. Actually, I'm at a stage in my life where I have more accountabilities than I ever had. And at the same time, I actually feel like, okay, I am able to manage all of them. And in fact, even broke my plate, not take any, I don't feel like I need to take anything off my plate, at least for now. The secret behind that is having delegates, having lieutenants in every area of my life that I can trust and who are, first of all, aligned with my vision. So, for example, one accountability is taking care of my father. So in place in Hong Kong, I have my aunt who is aligned with me and how we want to approach our care for my father.

Wendy Tong (32:47):
And there's also a trusted caregiver, who's been with my father eight years and who really is like family to us. And she's my eyes and ears, not just in my dad's care, but in some of like the decision-making around his apartment, his rental property so forth. It's having those lieutenants. In my home with my children, I have a live in Oak pear, who's been with me a year and a half and she knows exactly how I want to raise my kids. And she is my delegate and she has a certain level of authority and decision-making as well. And then in Wendy's Team, the same thing, my operations manager knows exactly how I would do things. So she always, always based decisions that at the end of the day, when she runs them through me, I always say, that's exactly how I would've handled it, thank you.

Wendy Tong (33:38):
And the same thing with our family businesses in Canada is that we have a similar level of alignment. My father's business partners have been working with him for almost 30 years and they know how he would have made decisions. And so I represent him and we're really all aligned. So in all areas of my life, I've found lieutenants who are very aligned with what I want and what is the outcome. And so that they can put into action, whatever needs to be in place for that aligned outcome. That's one part of it. Now, how to reconcile my personal and professional life. I actually do a lot of personal and professional development and training works through a global organization that I also coached through this work. I've actually seen that all of my accountabilities, what I'm up to in life, are actually all aligned with motherhood.

Wendy Tong (34:34):
If I were to name one thing in my life, that is I want to be the best mother, that I can be. Everything in my life, whether it's being the best business woman, the best coach, best daughter, they're all aligned with me being the best mother I can be. And so I actually never see any discrepancy between anything that I'm doing that makes an impact and makes me a better human. They're all aligned with me being the best mother I can be. And my children get to see that and to experience that. My expression as a business woman, my expression as a coach, my expression as a daughter, all make me the best human I can be. And the best human I can be is what I offer to my children to be the best mother that they can experience. So there's never any conflict there.

Alex Romanovich (35:29):
Wow. It's certainly is a very delicate balance. And I'm glad that your priority is still being a great mom and that's so important.

Wendy Tong (35:38):
And you asked me about, what I might offer single moms. And I'd offer that whatever you may have against in the space that could be negative towards your former spouse or the other parent, put that aside really because it's quite a burden to carry blame or anger, resentment, sadness, and instead just put it all aside and create newly, that for me was what I undertook. And once I put that aside, then it left me with space to create a brand new co-parenting relationship with my former husband, the father of my children, and also like gave me space to create new businesses, to create new friendships, new relationships, maybe even reinforced some old friendships that had kind of fallen to the wayside. And so that's my biggest foundation for divorced husbands or divorce wives, single moms, however it is. And I actually wish my former husband every happiness and success, because he is happy and successful. That's the household that he creates for my children. And to really look at it that way and embrace it that way, I really don't have any animosity or resentment against my former husband.

Alex Romanovich (37:06):
First of all, it's amazing. It's refreshing to hear this. A lot of women struggle with something like this, with those types of issues, not just women, men as well, spouses or former spouses. So to hear from you, somebody who's extremely busy, somebody who has a very full life, lot of responsibilities and credibilities to give that piece of advice is extremely valuable. Let's talk about another very sensitive, very edgy topic, which is multiculturalism. And the fact that we're now getting even more isolated in the world based on coronavirus, but the isolation has always existed there, racism always existed there in this country and all over the world. You are Asian American woman. You came from Hong Kong, you were born here in the United States, or were you born in Hong Kong?

Wendy Tong (37:58):
I was born in the United States and went back to Hong Kong when I was five and grew up in Hong Kong while it was a British colony, while Hong Kong was preparing for the transition back to China, which occurred in 1997. So my generation actually experienced a lot of what will happen with communist China taking over Hong Kong. A lot of my parents' generation was still in living memory the impact of the cultural revolution. And there was a lot of fear. So my generation looks to boards, emigrating to countries that were not under a communist,

Alex Romanovich (38:43):
But with the rise of racism and isolation and very fast-changing attitudes, what do you think is going to happen in America? What do you think is going to happen to our Lady Liberty values and what will happen to America that we either imagined, or knew, or experienced with so many multicultural and immigrant families that came here a long time ago and instill those values in their children, what do you think is going to happen next?

Wendy Tong (39:11):
I think, sadly, the Lady Liberty values that you're referring to, that America is a land of opportunity for all. If you have the willingness to work and so forth, I think it's been eroding actually for many years that, actually, from outside of the United States, looking to the United States, United States has not really been a desirable destination for many immigrants. I'm primarily speaking from my Hong Kong experience where in the 1980s a lot of families who could afford to immigrate or considering countries like the United States, Canada and Australia, and often would actually choose to go to Canada or Australia because the barriers to immigration were a lot less. And immediately, I think that there's been a lot more rhetoric about racism, protectionist rhetoric since president Trump took office and there are a lot of people all over the world who may have considered immigrating to the US who no longer see immigration to the US as desirable and have opted to go to other countries.

Wendy Tong (40:36):
And what that means is that we really have an attrition of skills, and professionals, and talent, go to any large company in Silicon Valley and you can see how diverse and multicultural the workforces. And I think we've actually already started suffering from that, that we will lose our cutting edge in terms of innovation, in terms of the unique energy and robustness that a lot of immigrants bring with them because they are ready for a new start and they embrace that new start, not saying that that's unique to immigrants, but really there is a certain level of energy, interest, innovation, new ideas, and so forth that immigrants bring with them. And we're going to suffer from that

Alex Romanovich (41:30):
Very sad. If anybody is going to make prediction of what's going to happen two or three years from now, and if anybody is going to be qualified, it's probably going to be you, Wendy. What do you think is going to happen? First of all, what do you think is going to happen with you and Wendy's Team which is a wonderful organization, very relevant, very helpful, very valuable? And what do you think is going to happen this entire situation with the pandemic, the landscape in the United States for healthcare and elder care, medications, innovations, technologies? United States is not going to be the only one worrying about this issue. I mean, Japan has some issues that it needs to worry about, Europe as well, South America, all over the world. What do you think is going to happen? Give us your best prediction.

Wendy Tong (42:22):
Sure, as you pointed out, aging is a universal problem. And in the US we've talked about the baby boomers, but this phenomenon occurs worldwide. So in terms of Wendy's Team in the first three years of the company, we really dedicated ourselves to learning what the environment is about aging. And what we've noticed is that there are a lot of people who are aging themselves, what we call the young elderly in the age group of fifties-sixties, maybe even early seventies. Nowadays, we're redefining what elderly actually means. And then there's the elderly, there are more in the eighties and nineties. What we're coming across is that there are people living into their nineties and they have children who are in their seventies. People are aging themselves and taking care of aging parents. It's really unique to our generation because people really didn't live this long before or live as well for this long before.

Wendy Tong (43:34):
And so Wendy's Team has really got to understand this population and in the next two or three years with that understanding of this population, we're actually going to explore how home care can be revolutionized. And what I mean is that home care, as we also realized that the productive, the younger workforce in proportion to the aging part, the size of the aging population is going to be less how do we create home care that is even more effective, but maybe with technology that we can complement, andany person home care with say, technology, technological advances, such as a voice activated voice assistant, personal assistant, voice activated personal assistant, a virtual type platforms, wearable devices that can keep track of certain parameters like activity level, blood pressure, heart rate, that those standard kinds of measurements, but also keep track of where is that this senior going to, are they keeping their appointments with our doctors, are they taking their meals?

Wendy Tong (44:58):
And so we can actually through that data also figure out when somebody is declining and put in interventions, be it in person or connecting them to services like you need another medical appointment or something like that. So that's the next phase and Wendy's Team's development. We have a good concentration of seniors, and we're actually going to start launching some of these technological products that I mentioned within our population to test out and see what is the best marriage of technology and services to best serve people so that they can remain in their homes, age in place, and do so in a way that's safe and they can pursue their lives what they want in terms of quality of life.

Alex Romanovich (45:54):
Dr. Wendy Tong, I am absolutely flabbergasted by the amount of dedication you have for Wendy's Team, the caring for the elderly, your dedication to your family, your children, your loved ones in Hong Kong and the United States. You're truly the epitome of what we look for in the global edge. Not only living on the edge, which you have done many, many times, but also having the edge and having the trust, the credibility of your community, of your patients, of your clients. It's been a wonderful experience. It's been a privilege to talk to you. We wish you a lot of health, a lot of wellness, a lot of success in your businesses and hoping to talk to you soon.

Wendy Tong (46:42):
Thank you, Alex. Thanks for having me.

Alex Romanovich (46:43):
Thank you. Bye.