Creative Outlet Rejuvenated Family Medicine Leader

Abhyankar said she was “burnt to a crisp” when she quit her job at a federally qualified health center in New York in January 2021. She took a few months off before accepting a six-month fellowship with Health Affairs.

“It wasn’t until I applied for the podcast — and got the podcast — that I knew I could go back to clinical medicine,” Abhyankar said. “It was almost as though I needed a validating, creative outlet that inspired me to go back to patient care. I learned lot about myself, including that I can rejuvenate myself by putting creative things out into the world.”

Abhyankar produced a six-part, investigative series for Health Affairs regarding consolidation in health care and its impact on independent primary care. In the process, she rediscovered her passion.

“I loved it,” she said. “It was one of the most challenging things. It felt like a master’s-level thesis project, and it’s something that I really enjoy doing. I interviewed so many people and learned about a topic that was completely foreign to me.”

Abhyankar, who is chair and co-founder of the AAFP’s Technology  Empowered Clinical Optimization member interest group, has put her new skills to work by producing a podcast with MIG vice chair Kelly Nieves, M.D., of Temple, Texas, that summarizes the key points of the MIG’s meetings.

“There are not a lot of situations where you have two female physicians talking about tech and medicine,” Abhyankar said. “I find it really interesting to put these ideas out there and having a rallying point for people. Maybe somebody else will hear it and understand that there’s a lot that family docs can talk about within tech.”

Abhyankar has a lot to say on the topic of health care technology and has brought that interest to her role as district medical director for Carbon Health, which offers primary care and urgent care in more than a dozen states.

“Technology integration has always fascinated me,” she said. “I don’t have a tech background, but I feel very strongly that doctors need to be involved in creating their own tools. That is the crux of my passion right now, making sure physicians know how to get involved in building these tools. Unless you’re also a computer science major or a designer, it’s impossible to create things from scratch, but you can partner with people.”

Just as physicians hone their communication skills to explain diagnoses and treatments to patients, Abhyankar said physicians can explain their own difficulties to those developing health care tools.

“The solution may not be what I think it is,” she said. “Instead of advocating for a particular solution, sometimes it’s better that we drill down to the specificity of what the problem actually is. Then people who can build the solutions for us really understand our challenges.”

Abhyankar has embraced that approach at Carbon, where she helped pilot a charting tool with OpenAI, the artificial intelligence lab that created ChatGPT. 

“I’m not actually doing any of the coding or any of the back-end work,” she said, “but without having iterative clinician input these things probably wouldn’t make sense.”

She said the tool, which has been embedded in Carbon’s EHR system companywide, has reduced the time it takes to complete the average visit note from 15 minutes to three. It also is able to determine “what’s actually relevant, what’s not and create patient instructions based on the conversation that you’ve had.”

“It’s a remarkable tool,” she said. “In terms of the time that it has saved me, it’s very much worth the time that I put in to it. I saw a full day of patients recently, and when I came home I still had the bandwidth to cook dinner. So, it makes me happier. There’s less cognitive burden overall.” 

Abhyankar oversees three of Carbon’s sites in California. The opportunity to lead was one of the factors that drew her from the East Coast to the West Coast.

“I have a lot of clinical confidence,” she said. “What I needed was the soft skills, like how to manage people or how to lead a team or organizational change. That is not something that they teach you in medical school, and the closest thing you have in residency is to be chief. But that’s nothing compared to what true management or leadership is actually like. Carbon gave me that opportunity while also being tech forward and tech adjacent. What’s cool is that because we're building out our own EHR and because we’re trying a bunch of stuff, everything has room for improvement and everyone has the ability to provide input.

“When I ask to be involved in projects, people make time to include me. So, if I’m in patient care Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, people will make time on Tuesdays and Fridays so that I can participate in design meetings and pilots or so that I can provide feedback.”

Abhyankar is also taking on leadership roles in her new state. After serving on the Board of Directors of the New York AFP, she has taken a similar role with the California AFP.

“While I was in the New York State academy, we did a lot of strategic planning meetings, and one thing that everybody talked about is that they come back to the AAFP because it provides a sense of fraternity that is really difficult to come by,” she said. “It has been really lovely to see and experience that when I have met with some of the local chapters here, too. That has been my North Star when it comes to AAFP involvement; I find a sense of community.”

Abhyankar likely will expand her family medicine network July 28 when she participates in a mainstage panel discussion during the National Conference of Family Medicine Residents and Medical Students in Kansas City, Mo.

“This is an amazing opportunity,” she said. “I’m so glad to share some of my story with medical students and residents. I hope to share how I’ve leaned into self-trust and working with a multidisciplinary team to collaborate on solutions in primary care.” 

Abhyankar, who was an assistant clinical professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and an attending physician at the Institute for Family Health in New York, continues to mentor medical students as a volunteer assistant clinical professor for the University of California, San Francisco.

“UCSF has a really cool program where you take one medical student once every two weeks for the whole year,” she said. “It’s a longitudinal curriculum, and you get to see them grow, evolve, change and learn.”