The Tarryn Reeves Show

Why 6.5 Million Canadians Don't Have a Doctor - and What One Entrepreneur is Doing About It

• Tarryn Reeves • Episode 58

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Revolutionising Healthcare with AI, Advocacy, and Entrepreneurial Thinking

In this compelling episode of The Tarryn Reeves Show, I sit down with pioneering healthcare entrepreneur Dr. Raymond Rupert to uncover how he's transforming primary care access across Canada — and why innovation, advocacy, and AI are the future of medicine.

After four decades as a frontline physician, Dr. Rupert shares his deeply personal story of advocating for his daughter's life and how that experience ignited a passion for solving complex healthcare challenges. We explore how his company, RCM Health, and his latest venture, Halon, are revolutionising the patient experience through advanced technology, team-based care, and a bold new model of sustainable healthcare delivery.

Tune in to hear:

  • Why patient advocacy is non-negotiable in today’s system

  • How AI is streamlining diagnosis, record translation, and patient support

  • What’s broken in Canada's public healthcare model — and how entrepreneurs can fix it

  • A powerful workaround for offering private care in a public-only system

  • The critical need for team-based models in preventing physician burnout

  • Real case studies showing tech-enabled healthcare in action

Plus, hear Raymond's take on stillness, leadership in medicine, and the real cost of not thinking outside the box.

This episode is a must-listen for visionary entrepreneurs, healthcare leaders, and anyone passionate about creating systems that serve people better.

🎧 Hit play now and get ready to challenge the status quo in healthcare.

Connect with Raymond:



Welcome to the Tarryn Reeves Show, the podcast for elite entrepreneurs, visionary leaders, and high impact CEOs who are ready to grow their brand, amplify their message, and build a legacy. I'm your host, Tarryn Reeves, multiple international bestselling author, publishing strategist and founder of Automatic Authority Publishing and Press House. Each week we dive into powerful conversations with trailblazing entrepreneurs and change makers who are using storytelling. To scale their business and impact. So grab your favorite drink, settle in, and get ready for a dose of inspiration, strategy, and the truth behind what it really takes to turn your wisdom into wealth. Today I am joined by Dr. Raymond Rupert, who is a pioneering healthcare entrepreneur, who is working to transform primary healthcare delivery in Canada after four decades as a primary care physician, he founded RCM Health, which now employs 37 professionals and partners with over 4,000 specialists in delivering complex care. As CEO of Halon, his newest venture, Dr. Rupert aims to revolutionize primary care access across Canada by helping physicians integrate new technologies and expanded clinical teams supported by a sustainable patient subscription model. His work demonstrates how entrepreneurial thinking can enhance healthcare delivery for all Canadians. Dr. Raymond Rupert, welcome. Thank you, Tarryn. Uh, really happy to be here today. It's an absolute pleasure to have you Now, would you like us to call you Dr. Raymond or Dr. Rupert? Oh no. You can call me Raymond. My mother really loves it. Just Raymond? Yeah, Raymond. Just for Raimondo, if we're in Italy, so. Oh. Oh gosh. You know what? I wish I was in Italy. I think I could go big bowl of pasta right now. But that is spy the bye and goodbye. Today we're here to talk about healthcare. I'm really interested, Raymond, in your journey from being a primary care physician to really going into the arena, I suppose, of being a healthcare entrepreneur. I think that's really inspiring. Can you share with us what sparked your transition into entrepreneurship and what gaps in the healthcare system you felt compelled to address? Well, that's, that's a great question. I guess there are two parts. One is. Why did I go into Complexity Care?'cause our focus is on solving complex problems. Yep. And part of solving complex problems is advocacy, where we're representing the rights of the patients to appropriate care. So my very first case was my daughter who was 18 months old, and she was in a large children's hospital with sepsis, dying of an infection. And no one knew what was happening. So this is my little daughter Farra. Yeah. And there she was essentially dying and she was being taken care of by the chief of this service and that sort. But no one really knew what was happening. And so I started pushing, being an advocate. I wanted to make sure that they at least tried to figure out what was happening. And I pushed to get an abdominal ultrasound done. Mm-hmm. This is a long time ago. Eventually they wheeled her off to another hospital close by and got her an abdominal ultrasound done, and she had a ruptured appendix. Oh, wow. And it was only because I was pushing as an advocate and I was thinking out of the box slightly that we're able to figure out what was wrong with her. And she had her operation and survived. And now she's quite a distinguished prosecutor for the government of Canada. And the police love her because she's a pit bull. So that worked out really well. Takes, takes after dad. Hey. So that was the very first case I did, which involved creative thinking, uh, pushing, advocating, and getting an outcome that was positive. And at the same time, I was the doctor who read the business pages of the newspaper. So I was always interested in business. How do businesses happen? How do they get shaped? How do they grow? So I went back to school and did an MBA at the University of Toronto. And after that I went into healthcare investment banking for about six years. Healthcare, investment banking. I've never heard of such a thing. Yeah. So I was putting deals together in the healthcare sector and I actually edited two books on investment banking. There's one of them. Oh, wow. A Canadian Investment Banking Review. And so I edited two books on corporate finance and so on. Slightly financially literate, which helps. Yeah, if you're trying to run a business, always. Yeah. Money's big topic business. So I have this interest in complexity because I like helping people and I have this interest in management and how organizations operate. So then I started my first company called RCM Health. RCM Health has been around now for 30 years, and its mandate is to address complexity, patient complexity. We've developed a very large global ecosystem of over 4,000 specialists, and we're integrated into about 30 centers of excellence in the US and Europe. Wow. And so we can find solutions and we've got a lot of very smart people that can work on teams. And figure out what to do. So that's the advice part. And now we're using ai. Mm-hmm. Which is unbelievably important when you're dealing with complexity. Definitely just such an interesting story, Raymond. So you were a doctor at the time, like general physician at the time of your daughter becoming ill. Yep. And I wanna talk about advocacy for a second because I think that is such a important part that is lacking in so many healthcare systems. And you know what? Actually in society in general, because I think that as human beings we are very conditioned to. Not upset the apple cart, if you like to not step out of line and especially when it comes to healthcare, because we are taught that doctors are very smart people. They know what they're doing. You should just trust them. And if you think about it, it's kind of bizarre. The amount of power as a human, you hand over to another human to put you to sleep, cut you open, stitch you up. Make you, well give you medicines that you've never even heard of, and it takes a certain amount of courage, I suppose, to step outside of that conditioning. And advocate and I mean, when it comes to our kids, I have too myself. Like there is nothing and nobody I wouldn't take down for those kids. Right. That's right. But I'm interested to hear your viewpoint on advocacy and how you've experienced not only as a general physician, but even now leading into entrepreneurship, leading other people and, and how you teach the people who are under your leadership to advocate for themselves. Yeah. So patients need agency. It's terrible when the patient feels powerless. Mm-hmm. And so our job is to educate patients in terms of options. So we've got access to all the ip, all the smart people, the networks, the advances and research. And now we can use AI to summarize that and to provide an educational experience for the patient. So an advocate has to be fearless. Let's, let's talk about ai. Because you're confronting Yes, the established bureaucracy, and you have to understand what the rules are of the bureaucracy and what the options are for the patient. So let me, let me give you a case study, a case we're handling today. I'd love that. Yes, please. Yes. So Frank James, not his real name, was on a Caribbean cruise when his defibrillator went off. And he has a history of heart disease and has an implantable defibrillator. Yep. So his sister retained us to advocate because he is now gonna be stopping in Nassau and being admitted to the hospital. And then we have to figure out how to fly him back to Toronto. Okay. So we did our due diligence on the appropriate hospital'cause there are two hospitals. One is a public hospital with very poor service, and the other one is an excellent hospital. So he then checks in and his health records were in French. Okay. Okay. And so I had to translate them. So I took 75 pages of French health records and put them into Claude ai, and it translated it into two pages for me in about five seconds. Yeah. Okay. So that clinical summary was incredibly important because now I could share it with the team in Nassau. I could share it with the Air Ambulance Company and we're wired into a network of 93 air ambulance companies. Mm-hmm. So I can get competitive quotes on flying him anywhere. So now we're getting to know about this patient and he actually needs a heart transplant. Okay. And no one has ever talked to him about a heart transplant. He's only, he's 47. He's not a terribly old person, and he could do brilliantly with a heart transplant. So now we're gonna advocate for him to get him into a transplant program. And that just came outta this because we have a fair amount of experience with transplants and he could do brilliantly once we get him through the program. Yep. Okay. So we're advocating, we're listing options. We're using AI and our expert network. We're generating options. We're now gonna represent him in a transplant program. And hopefully he'll do well. Okay. Yeah. So not the little vignette. Well, I hope that Frank, your Caribbean crew enjoyed himself before the defibrillator went off, and that is not transplant as well. Yeah, he told me he was really enjoying the meals, the evening showers. He might have had a few drinks. Too many. Oh well we've all been there. After he does his transplant, he'll be able to go on a longer cruise. Well, that'll be nice. I think he deserves it. Now, you've spent over four decades in the healthcare industry, and I can imagine that you've seen it evolve quite drastically with AI just being one of them. Right. What other kind of advancements are you seeing in the industry? Well, Canada's quite unusual in that we don't have private healthcare, don't you? No, we don't have Medibank. We don't have private health insurance. Okay, so we only have public sector health insurance. So there are three countries in the world similar to Canada with no private healthcare insurance. Do you wanna guess what the three countries are? God, I wouldn't even have a clue. Yeah, Switzerland. Okay. Well here they are. The first country with no private is North Korea. Okay. Well, I mean that kind of makes sense. The next one, the next one is Cuba. And Canada. And Canada. So that is our little circle. North Korea, Cuba, and Canada. So we're a little bit of an aberration in that we don't have private health insurance. That's so interesting. Why do you think that is? Well, about 40 years ago, the politicians at the time decided that everyone should be in the same place. And for some reason, private health insurance would, would give some individuals an adapt. And it would be, uh, profit seeking. So they decided that we would prevent private healthcare insurance from happening. Do you think that was a mistake? I actually don't because I've just had major ankle surgery. Yeah. And I have private health insurance here in Australia. And honestly, it's a bit of a joke because there's still so many out-of-pocket expenses. I pay a stupid amount every month to cover myself and my son. Yep. And then they send you more bills and they're like, oh no, you have to pay this excess fee that you weren't expecting. Sorry about that. It is profit seeking. It is a business model. Yeah. And no, I don't necessarily think that that is a mistake. Okay. Well, how long did you wait for your ankle surgery? That is very true. There are pro, like just with everything, pros and cons, I had to wait eight weeks Yes. On, on five snapped tendons for my ankle surgery. Okay. Well in Canada, uh, you would've likely waited two to three years. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So when something that's considered an emergency, well, no, an emergency is different, but people are waiting two or three years for a hip. That's et so yeah. Wow. Here's the logic of private. So when you have private. And you have funds coming in, you can build private infrastructure. Mm-hmm. And you have public infrastructure, so now you have more capacity. That's true. Okay. So way back when in Australia, Medibank was formed. Mm-hmm. You know Medibank? I do. Yeah. So Medibank as a private insurer, and you could opt into Medibank or not. And so about 30% of Australians opted to get private health insurance. Which allowed for the development of private infrastructure. So you have mm-hmm. One stack of public infrastructure and another stack of private, and so there's just more total capacity to help, even though, yeah, we're paying for, we don't have that option. And so the, the capacity for surgery and for treatments in Canada is really, and that's very sad. It is when you put it that way. Yeah. I'm curious then, as an entrepreneur in the medical field, yeah. Do you see a gap in the market, so to say, that you could potentially fill when it comes to that aspect? Yeah. Well, we, even though you're not allowed to have private health insurance, we just introduced it with our company called Ion. Okay. Okay, let me, so how did you actually skirt that? Well, this is called a workaround. Yes. I love a good work workaround. You need little, you need a little workaround. So how do we do that? So we're using critical illness insurance. So critical illness insurance has been up around for 25 years, came outta South Africa. And what happens is that if you develop one of 25 conditions, heart attack, stroke, and cancer, you get a, you get a check. Okay. In our model, we've got, you can buy 10,000 of this for $8 a month, and so if the individual ends up with a check for $10,000, then we can buy private MRIs and accelerate the care. Yeah. Get the surgeon in Strasburg to provide a comment, et cetera, et cetera. So. In fact, we've now created a so-called private health insurance benefit for $8 a month. Yeah. Wow. That's very reasonable. Considering the amount we pay here for private health insurance. No, no, we're, it's very different from a fully baked, but it's an entry point or workaround. So yes, being an entrepreneur, you have to be creative always, and you have to be highly resilient as well. That's right. You do. Now, what about, let's talk about capacity, because if you are not building private infrastructure over there in Canada. Yeah. For healthcare, I'm assuming that would also come down to a shortage of professionals in the workforce, because if you've only got a certain amount of infrastructure, you've only got a certain amount of spots to fill. Right? Right. How does this impact patient outcomes and what are you doing with leadership to mitigate it, I suppose? Well, that's a very good question. So in fact, the government of Canada picked a. Strategy, which was to limit capacity because if you have fewer MRI machines, you have fewer charges for MRI imaging studies. If you have fewer operating rooms, you have fewer surgeries that you're gonna pay. And then they limited the number of graduates from medical school. Wow. Yeah. So not too many people wanna hear about that, but there's a very large country right beside us in the US with tons of capacity. So. About a billion dollars a year of sales go to the states for Canadians that are getting studies and surgeries done in the US so we could be doing the billion dollars of services in Canada, but the money's going south. That just seems bizarre to me. Yeah, well it is bizarre. That's why I spent a lot of cycles of a lot of energy trying to change things, especially in primary care, which is our focus right now. Well, I think that you were on the way for readers, for viewers and listeners who are currently tuned in and are not savvy with medical terminology, I suppose. What does primary care mean? We're talking about the family doctor. Yeah, so the family doc, everyone should have a family doctor. Yeah, as a confidant, as a resource. They should be available, accessible, et cetera. And in Canada. Six and a half million people don't have a family doctor. Wow. The, the family doctors are abandoning their practices because they get paid very little. They work very hard and they can just go off and open a medi spa or something. Yep. And so I started a company called Healthy On to really recreate primary care. And we have this AI enabled tech stack that takes a lot of administrative work away from the doctors and the nurses, and we bring in team-based care. So every patient can see a team or be serviced by a team. We bring in private health insurance, we bring in access to 4,000 specialists, and then we sell monthly plants, sort of like Netflix, and that funds everything. Wow. Okay. So all, all of a sudden this. Plan to renew family practice, primary care becomes robust and family doctors wanna work in this environment. So this took a lot of energy. It's the same model. Would work in Australia, would work in South Africa, would work anywhere. So we're very, so then that makes the question, any plans to expand? Absolutely. Absolutely. Sure. Of course, entrepreneur at heart going, going everywhere. Now, we already talked a little bit about how AI was a successful heart transplant person and taking his French records and consolidating that. Now you use Claude. Do you use any other ai? So we use, yeah, we use Claude. We use Chat, GPT, we use Perplexity, and they all are very unique tools. And most of our staff are using AI in different ways to summarize files, to write codes, to do all kinds of things. Absolutely. Yeah. That's really cool. And we just created, uh, my new friend called Mary the Boy Spot. Oh, okay. Tell us about Mary. Oh, well Mary is quite delightful and she is a bot, an AI bot, and you can ask her questions. So we just built Mary, and for this one clinic that has dentistry, foot care, eye care, et cetera, they have seven or eight divisions. And they have 12 receptionists trying to answer the phone. Uh, and they have voicemail. Chaos. Yes. So they asked us to build Mary the voice bot because Mary. Can handle the work of six people. Yeah. In terms of triaging people and messaging and building. Amazing. So, so somebody would ring up and they would chat to Mary first. Yep. And then get transferred to the right person, essentially. Exactly. So the clinic has 12 people answering phones and they're all frustrated and people leave voicemails and there's chaos. So Mary is gonna rescue that clinic. That's amazing. So I love AI Personally. I use AI for everything, even for stuff around the house. I use AI to plan my vegetable planting beds and things like that. Um, I use AI to find which grocery store is actually cheaper, that kind of a thing. But I'm curious in something like healthcare, which. In my opinion requires a very human touch. How are you balancing the integration of cutting edge technology like this with the human touch of healthcare demand? Yeah, that's a really good question. So we can use AI to organize knowledge. So for example, I had a patient the other day who's had a very rare neuromuscular condition for about 15 years, and so I took all his health records and I asked. The AI engine, what the root cause could be, and it categorized it into five different categories. So now we have a plan to investigate those five different categories, but we have a human, an empathetic human is talking to the patient. We're not giving the job totally to Mary and the AI bias. I'm wondering, have you met any resistance to having AI integrated into healthcare and the common misconceptions that you're seeing? Well, we're not asking AI to take the role of the doctor or the nurse. Mm-hmm. We're, we're using it in a way of organizing knowledge and enhancing administrative services and enhancing the patient experience, which are good places for it. Mm-hmm. But decision making and clinical judgment is really up to the, with being, being prompted by the ai. Yeah, I think that AI would really be removing a lot of inefficiencies and redundancies inside the healthcare system, allowing your health professionals to be more productive, to be more effective than they otherwise would've been. Being buried under paperwork and phone calls, and, uh, translating manually, translating 27 pages of French records, as an example into English in three sarcas. Yeah. My wife asked me if I checked to see if the AI was doing a good job. So please, please. And what was your answer? She's slightly skeptical. I'm sure you did. Now you have integrated as well as the ai. There's more team-based approach, which I think is really, really interesting because people, as an example, you've said everyone should have a family doctor, and I don't know what it's like in Canada, but here in Australia. I think they're allocated maybe seven minutes per patient, and you are kind of like slammed into the room. They wanna know what's going on and they want to diagnose as quickly as possible and get you out the door, which 90% of the time, in my opinion is A, not a very nice human experience. And B, not really the right diagnosis most of the time. And you can't really blame them when they're under pressure in a system like that. But. Moving to a more team-based approach, which is quite innovative. What challenges are you seeing for people who are currently operating, and I suppose that that's still single person or single practitioner approach, if they wanna move to a team, what are the challenges that you faced and how can they overcome them? Yeah, so problem with the traditional model of just the doctor is that the doctors tend to burn out. Mm. So when, when grandmother comes into the office and would like to spend 30 minutes chatting on about her rash mm-hmm. Or the fact that her little toe is a little off to the side. Yep. So we have a lovely nurse who talks to grandmother for 30 minutes, and then the doctor can come in for three minutes or five minutes and verify what's happening. The little thing or test or whatever. Okay. So the nurse, the physician assistant, the nurse practitioner are all sort of physician and extenders. Yep. And it makes a much better experience for grandmother and our doctors don't burn out. Mm. Very important. So we found a funding model that works to make that all work. Yep, yep. That's amazing. If there's one message, I suppose, or piece of advice that you. Like to tell healthcare leaders or share with healthcare leaders, given your experience, what would it be? Well, they have to create a new service model for patients and for themselves. It's really the right time to be innovative and creative. There's a lot of great tools. The public wants enhanced services, a better experience, so it's almost the perfect time to be innovative. All the economies, health economies are a bit different. So you may have unique solutions in the Netherlands, in Germany and Canada and Australia, and uh, I think, uh, I think the future could be very bright for these various healthcare systems. Yeah, it's very exciting. What a little bit of thinking outside the box, working around advocating and those are the words. Absolutely. Going up to what you want can do. Absolutely. Raymond, I love what you're doing to revolutionize the healthcare system, and if you ever come to Australia, I'll be very keenly watching the progress today. I'll dig you up on that, Tara. Absolutely. You better. I'm happy to be your Guinea pig. That is absolutely fine. Terrific. Okay, good chatting with me today. Thank you so much. It is my absolute pleasure. But before we wind up, we have a tradition on the podcast here called The Book Drop. We want to know what book that I'm sure you are very well read has impacted you either personally or professionally. Okay. We'll talk about this little book you see Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tole Beautiful. I think Eckhart is a brilliant teacher and leader. I think it's really worthwhile people digging in to understand what stillness is and presence. Yeah. And a world that is chaotic and confusing. I think it's a blessing to be able to, uh, enjoy stillness. Absolutely. 100% agree. And as someone who has an inability to be still both in my and body because a constant practice to do. But Ecop is a wonderful, wonderful teacher, Raymond. As are you. Thank you so much for spending time with us today and sharing your knowledge, and thank you for having the courage to tackle a system that can always be made better. Thank you for the opportunity, sir. Appreciate it. My pleasure. Take care. Thanks for tuning into the Taryn Reeve Show. If today's episode litter firing you, share it with someone who needs to hear it and don't forget to subscribe so you never miss a story that could transform your business. If you're ready to write the book that positions you as the go-to authority in your industry, visit automatic authority.com to find out how we can help you make it happen. Until next time, keep owning your story, leading with impact and building a legacy.