Jaffar Raza, MD is a board certified Interventional Cardiologist affiliated with Lenox Hill, Hackensack and Holy name hospitals. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine at United Health Services Hospitals and his Geriatrics and Cardiovascular fellowship at East Carolina University. He completed his fellowship in Interventional Cardiology and Peripheral Intervention at Lenox Hill Hospital. Dr. Raza’s interests include complex coronary interventions, radial access, peripheral interventions, nuclear cardiology, and echocardiography. Dr. Raza has published numerous articles in well-known medical journals and is active in teaching residents and fellows and is a member of the AngelMD Clinical Advisory Board.

He is board certified in Nuclear Cardiology, Cardiovascular Disease, and Interventional Cardiology. He is a member of the American College of Cardiology and the Society of Coronary Angiography and Intervention.

Innovation4Alpha Episode Link

SPEAKERS

Tobin Arthur, Jaffar Raza, MD

Tobin Arthur  00:00

 Hi, everybody, this is Tobin Arthur, your host for Innovation 4 Alpha and I’m joined today by a very special guest, Dr. Jaffer Raza, MD, who is a Interventional Cardiologist based back on the East Coast. Jaffar its great to have you here. Really nice to have you spend some time on the weekend with me.

Jaffar Raza, MD  00:42

Thank you, Tobin. I’m really excited about this podcast and think we’re going to have some fun chatting about some interesting things.

Tobin Arthur  00:54

I agree. And I always enjoy chatting with you. But for those who don’t know, you want to talk a bit about your background; where you trained and how you got into Cardiology and a little bit about your pathway.

Jaffar Raza, MD  01:06

So I’m originally from India, I’m from South India a very small village called Kyle. It’s very close to the southern tip of India, I grew up in a small town and went to medical school for the first time in a big city called Chennai, which used to be called Madras. And from there, life took a different turn for me. While I was in college, I was the only kid in my family who went into medicine, everybody else went into business. And my family business was in Sri Lanka and, and Hong Kong, they were doing gemstones. So again, I went for my vacation to visit my family, I kind of got excited about business. So interestingly, I thought, you know, I’m going to do some business and see if I like it, maybe my future is as a doctor, but I could be a doctor-businessman. So I was one of the earliest people in 1993, to go to China to start doing business with one of my friends exporting electronics all over the country. But at the same time, I never left my medicine, I still kept in touch with my medical part of things. I used to take care of people there. I was so keen on going to England, and I thought it was a very cold, wet place. And then you see all these Hollywood movies with beautiful beaches in America. I thought I want to go to America. So I took my exams and I said, Okay, if I get into residency, I’m going to go to residency. If not, I’m doing business. To make long  story short, I got accepted into a residency program in the US came here. The reason why I chose to come to the northeast was because I had a very distant relative who was a practicing Cardiologist in Binghamton, New York. My parents were like, you’re going so far away at least be close to somebody who you saw somebody we know. And I didn’t know that being up there with that cold, no beaches. It was like so close to Buffalo which means it’s really cold. Binghamton is supposed to have the lowest number of sunny days in the whole country. I come from the sunny south India to this cold, dark.  I survived being engine and then when I came to this country. I came here on what’s called the J1 visa – most of the doctors know about it. It’s an exchange sponsor visa, which means that you have to go back to your country after for two years, at least before you come back to the US. You can work in an underserved area in the United States and then continue to stay as an alternative. So I went to North Carolina which was much more sunny and close to the Outer Banks. So I did my so called J1 waiver in Greenville, North Carolina. That actually that’s where I lived. But the waiver area was Wilson, North Carolina, which is the tobacco capital of the world. So all the tobacco auctions used to take place and Wilson  The reason why I took Cardiology was some people may joke, cardiologists are frustrated surgeons. Because the surgeons like to use their hands and guys who could not get into surgery, they go into Cardiology, especially interventional radiology, because we use a lot of our hands. But when I was in India, after I finished my medical college, for my internship, I worked in the plastic surgery department of my college. And my plastic surgery department was at that time the top plastic surgery department in the entire Asia theater. And, you know, we used to get a lot of lot of accidents. We were extremely good at hand surgery. So that’s where we were famous for hand surgery. People who have gone to India know, one of the drinks that is sold in the streets, sugar cane drinks, – so there’s this, this big machine that wheels around, and the guy feeds the sugar cane through that. And then the wheels squeezes out the juice, but they’re so busy that sometimes they let their fingers go through the wheel. And next thing you know, the whole fingers are shattered and ripped off. We used to take care of these patients, we used to do see one or two a day especially in the summer months.

Tobin Arthur  06:59

What do you do in that case? Generally speaking, what’s the outcome?

Jaffar Raza, MD  07:05

It made out very well, because we were able to repair the tendons most of the time, the tendons were the ones that were cut off. So we used to do everything under local, we didn’t have sophisticated things as they have in the United States. So every patient was like an outpatient they come and we did an axillary block. With didn’t give any general to these people. We did an axillary block, we repaired these tendons, we repaired the skin. Sometimes we had to take skin grafts. So we used to take skin grafts from either from the shoulders or from the thighs and put it on them, patch them up and then send them home. They come back for a follow up in outpatient center. So, yeah, it was like fascinating what we could do with very little resources we had, things have changed since then. I’m talking about 1993, it’s 30 years ago, things have changed a lot. But we were able to do amazing things and the surgeon who I used to work with used to tell me, you should become a surgeon, you have good hands. I could not continue to do that. Because when I came to this country, as a foreign graduate getting into residency its extremely tough for foreign graduates. So you better go into medicine. So and then, you know, while you’re doing residency also, you see the the group of doctors that were respected a lot among the residents and the interns were the interventional cardiologists, because, we see this macho man coming in at the gates coming with a heart attack to the emergency room, he takes him to the cath lab, you know, 20 minutes later, he comes up say that we saved his life,  There was some instant gratification there. And I don’t think there’s any field in medicine or surgery that has as much impact on somebody’s life as interventional cardiologists do. Which is very true, because every minute, makes a difference. Right? seconds make a difference. You know, somebody is having massive heart attack and the Widowmaker artery i closed or whatever it is. And we take them to the cath lab. The guy thinks he’s dying. And five minutes later, after I opened up his artery, he’s like, Doc, when can I go home? You could never forget that feeling when you hear that from your patients. But at the same same time, it’s also it’s very humbling because there are times when there are young people who come and we couldn’t save them and I have to come out and talk to their children or their mother, parents wife saying that I’m I’m sorry, I couldn’t save your husband or your father, your son, whatever it is, and makes you very humble.

Tobin Arthur  10:08

By the way on that, on that point real quick, we just were talking with a family the other day. And they were talking about one of their brothers had passed away. He was in his mid 30s had young kids but died of a heart attack, how often does that happen anymore?

Jaffar Raza, MD  10:28

Heart attacks at a young age is not very common, you know, I think you kind of get the attention of a lot of the people because it shakes people up, when you hear that a 32 year old 33 year old guy died of a heart attack. I have my one personal example of a patient like that. When I was doing my fellowship, there was this guy who used to play college football, he finished playing and then after that he was working as I think his prison officer or something like that. He was well built, like you imagine a good football player. So he was brought to the hospital. And saying, having chest pain and he around the same age – 30 to 33. And I go see him in the emergency room. And he’s holding his chest and chest pain. His daughter, I still cant forget this case, because his daughter was eight or nine years old, standing there. Her father is like this macho man, you know, nothing can affect him. He’s the strong guy. He’s a football player. And she was like, my dad is having that same chest pain, he’s complaining of chest pain. By the time we rolled him from the emergency room to the cath lab, his heart stopped. So we immediately got him on the table, when wewent up with the catheter we had no pulse, we were lucky to get into his artery. When we took the first picture, the left main corodid artery, which is the artery and the left side branches into other branches, that artery was closed. And in spite of all the things that we did, we couldn’t save him. So that’s what we meant by saying that minutes, seconds can make a difference here. He had so much thrombus, his arteries, or big arteries are so much thrombus it doesn’t matter, whatever. machine we use to suck out the clot. He was continuously going down and down and down. It was very sad. He was well known among the community. So there was a lot of people that 30 to 40 people showed up in the hospital and I had to go and tell them that this 32 year old died. My attending was the one who was doing the talking and I was standing with him and it was not an easy conversation to have.

Tobin Arthur  13:11

I’m sure. Wow.  One other thing I wanted to touch on, you mentioned having grown up in India, for those not familiar, my understanding is it’s very competitive, and difficult getting to University Medical School, in particular, talk a little bit about that.

Jaffar Raza, MD  13:31

Yes. You know, it’s just the sheer number of people. India has 1.2 billion people. So, you know, when we took when I took my lecture in India, you go from 12th grade to medical college, you don’t go to undergrad. So the 12 exam really makes a difference how much mark you score and and there’s also something called an entrance exam. So the combination of your scores from the 12 standard, and the combination and the score from your entrance exam makes a difference. And this makes or breaks you at 17 years old. So this is a huge burden. Something similar to what happens in South Korea. In South Korea, this exam is supposed to be the end, you hear a lot of suicides, because the kids did not score the marks they wanted to score and similar things happens in India with suicide among young people. So you’re competing because of the sheer volume, you’re competing, like for example, the 12th grade there is like 2 million kids in my state alone writing the exam. So literally like eight Medical Colleges, so you know, each one has about 150 seats. So you just calculate 1000 seats, you’re competing against 2 million kids right in the exam. And for Indian Indian dad, Indian parents You have to be a doctor. So just a little bit of pressure.  So there is a lot of pressure, and you know, thanks to God, I was one of the bright kids in my school, and I was the first in my school in the 10th standard exam, which is, and then again, in the 12th standard exam.  I’ll tell you something about why I became a doctor too, I did not want to be a doctor. And my dad, it seems he wanted to be a doctor. And I was a good student, and I got accepted to both medical college and engineering college. And at that time, the computers were coming up. So I wanted to really go into this famous university called online university in Chennai, which is very good engineering program. So I got into that, and, the conversation with my dad was like, “Listen, I got into a very good in university for computers, and maybe I wouldn’t want to do that.” And all along, I was thinking that I’m going to go into business, I can do engineering and going into medicine I might not be able to go into business. You know, my dad played this game of like, “you know, I really wanted to be a doctor, but I couldn’t get into medical school you got into medical school, you are the only child for me, or make my dreams come true.” emotional pressure, I could not say no.

Tobin Arthur  16:44

Oh, yeah. He loaded it on you.

Jaffar Raza, MD  16:46

Yes, yes. But I don’t regret it now. With what I have achieved, sometimes, as a 17 year old again, what do you know? Right? So I am glad I listened to my dad,

Tobin Arthur  17:01

You had a chance recently to go back and visit which was difficult during COVID. So you probably hadn’t been back there for a while. Have things changed? How was travel? What was that experience like just getting to get on the plane and go?

Jaffar Raza, MD  17:16

I mean, yeah, it was used to be like, you get on the plane, and now especially, there’s not many direct flights from here to India. So you had to go through the Europe or Middle East. And so the restrictions are quite a bit, you know, you have to make sure that you had your COVID testing within 48 hours of traveling. And it happened to my cousin, he was supposed to come at the same time, and you have different kinds of COVID testing, I got the right one, he didn’t get the right ones. He was left behind for two more days to get his test and everything organized. And India has done a very good job with screening. And you know, as soon as you land there, especially if you’re coming from a high risk country, you cannot leave the airport without being tested. So I was lucky that I didn’t have to go through there. But if you’re coming from Europe, quite a bit of the countries, especially when Omicron was going on. They have a lot of the people have to test and go back. And same thing coming back again, you have to have all these testing and everything done.  In India, Indian people are very resilient people. As I told you, it’s because of the sheer volume. It’s all about survival of the fittest. So, you know, whether it’s education, whether it’s business, whether it’s in just about anything, even walking on the street, you’ve got to find your way to go through it, and walk along the street. Because if you walk on the streets of Chennai, it’s crowded. Fifth Avenue is nothing compared to the streets in Chennai. When I took my wife, in a she’s not Indian, when I took her for the first time, she was a well traveled person, she had traveled because her father worked for the United Nations. So she had traveled quite a bit with him. Different countries, and she said that nothing prepared her for a visit to India. It’s the smell, the sounds, the colors, She said nothing prepared her and the dichotomy between the rich and the poor. You know, you’re staying in a five star hotel with all the amenities the best of any world can offer. When you open your window, right below you, you see a slum, where a little kid trying to take food out of a garbage. So those kinds of things. It just really, really touches you.

Tobin Arthur  20:00

That’s incredible. Let’s fast forward come to the present day year, you ended up New York and New Jersey talk a little bit about your practice and your focus over the last couple of years.

Jaffar Raza, MD  20:15

Um, let me go back a few years to my training days. When I was working to get my J1 waiver in North Carolina, I had to do all the publications and everything to prepare myself as an applicant for Cardiology. So I eventually got accepted into East Carolina University for Cardiology. I did my general Cardiology there. But I knew I always wanted to be an interventional cardiologist. So I was looking at different places where to go. I had a choice to stay there if I wanted to. But my wife is from New Jersey. And she said, Why don’t you just try the city a little bit more. For me, it’s one year it was a big deal. You train and you come back. So I visited different hospitals. And then the hospital I liked the most where I wanted to train was Lenox Hill Hospital. And they were amazing, amazing teachers there, you know, Dr. Gary Rubin, who invented the first coronary stent. You know, he was there, Dr. Howard Coffin. It was the trinity of the carotid interventions. They did almost every single study that’s needed for carotid interventions,  the catheter is named after them the products are named after them and things like that. So when I had this kind of amazing teachers that wasn’t my choice to go. And I did my training, there was unbelievable experience learning from these gurus in Cardiology, interventional cardiology. My plan was, again, to go back to the south, I didn’t want to stay in the Northeast because it’s too cold for an Indian. So I had a very fantastic opportunity in West Virginia, and I was walking the last month of my training. I was in the cath lab and Dr. Rubin comes in asked me, Jeff used to call me Jeff, Jeff, what are you doing next year, next month? I replied that I got a fantastic opportunity in New York. I’m going to go there and start there. What do you mean, you’re going there? You’re my star fellow, I want you here. You know, when that happened, obviously, I couldn’t say no to my teacher and my mentor. And as everything happens, you know, people transition. the attendings retirement and all these kinds of things. I had this opportunity to move to New Jersey to start Cardiology for a multi specialty group. So I came here, started the Cardiology group, for this huge multi specialty group it 200 to 250 physicians at that time when I came, and we have grown year over year even in COVID, nothing has stopped us and we are growing 20% to 25% and it has been a great ride so far.

Tobin Arthur  23:38

Where’s that group in terms of locations? Are they exclusively in New Jersey? Are they spread out a little bit?

Jaffar Raza, MD  23:45

So this group was started by a pediatrician 40 years ago. And then it grew into this huge group multi specialty physician mostly in Bergen County in New Jersey. So most of the practice is in northern New Jersey, but about a few years ago, this group was acquired by Optim. So now it’s part of the  tristate, We are expanding all over the state, and we have our sister organizations in New York and Connecticut also.

Tobin Arthur  24:26

Oh, wow. Is that adjustment having a big parent group like that?

Jaffar Raza, MD  24:31

It’s definitely an adjustment. Before this was more like a family corporation. Decisions were made right here in New Jersey. Now there are definitely several layers of decision makers we have to go through to get anything done. But there are also tremendous advantages too – now I’m able to relate to my peers from all over the country. Now we have practices are in Texas and Florida, in California, in Washington. And we are all in different panels and different committees, I’m in the Cardiology committee for Optimum. So we all learn from each other.

Tobin Arthur  25:31

That’s kind of neat. There’s advantages and disadvantages to just about anything.

Jaffar Raza, MD  25:36

Sure. Being an optimist myself, I just always look at the positive things.

Tobin Arthur  25:42

I like that. We talked about your business acumen and interest early on, and that’s never really left, I suspect. Talk a little bit about some of your side projects.

Jaffar Raza, MD  26:11

You know, I always want to do things new, it excites me just about anywhere I have gone. I always try to see what is the next thing we can do. It’s my personality, I’m never content with what is status quo. Way back. About 15 years ago, when nobody was talking about remote monitoring or anything like that a friend of mine, wh has an engineering background, I went and spoke to him, I said “listen one of the highest visits to emergency room is for chest pain. You know, and several billions of dollars have been spent on ER visits for chest pains. And less than 5% of the patients who end up going to the ER end up needing admission or has some kind of coronary syndrome. So 95% of the people don’t need to go to the emergency room. So if we can keep these people out of the emergency room, the amount of saving to the government or the healthcare expenses, is significant. So we did come up with a way of monitoring people’s EKG, we came up with a special way of how the patient can put leads on themselves. And the lead will be transmitted through to their phones, to the doctor, the call center, the center, which is monitoring them. And we can give an instruction to the patient, yes, you need to go to the hospital. No, you don’t need to go to the hospital. And we even had a way of communicating that patient’s information to a doctor’s office who they were related to. I wish we had some kind of AngelMD at that time, we didn’t have enough funding for that. And because of that, we could not proceed further. And my friend was also very, did not want to exchange ideas with a lot of people. So that kind of, eventually didn’t come through. And like now you see all these big companies, whether it’s Apple, or all these companies doing what I wanted to do 12 years ago. Maybe I was ahead of the game, but didn’t know how to finish it.

Tobin Arthur  29:06

Well, speaking of Apple, so they did their quarterly earnings call this last week. And Tim Cook was talking about the Apple Watch, and they’ve got a new generation coming up. But of course, one of the big things in the Apple Watch has been the heart monitoring. He was talking about the benefits and how the watch had instructed, I don’t know how many numbers of people but people that had some, some concerns to go to the hospital and it had saved lives. The article I was reading said on mass, it hasn’t had a huge impact, but there are some anecdotal instances where it’s had some, some benefits.  As a Cardiologist, what’s your perspective on things like the iwatch and the potential for that? Do you see is it impacting at all yet or is it still early or how would you gauge that?

Jaffar Razza, MD  29:57

You know, I think technology is going to play a big role in in healthcare in the future, not just EKG,  a company’s coming with amazing technology, where it can predict a fault respond to a patient, it can check their weight, status check, check their fluid status, you know, all this. So I think technology is going to play a huge role, it’s the way how we are going to use it is what is going to matter the most, for every one patient where something like Apple Watch, saves their life, we get several abnormal readings, which is really not abnormal, you know, so it causes panic, it causes stress in people. They’re seeing this at 10 o’clock at night, they cannot come to a doctor’s office to clarify things, then the whole night, they’re panicking. So it’s in early stages, I think the technology will get better, and these things will be sorted out, somebody can look, somebody with knowledge, can look at this thing and say that this is an artifact, it’s not nothing to worry about, as compared to a real problem, you need to get to the hospital. So I’m a big fan of technology, I think technology will play a big role in the future of medicine. But I think it’s too early for watches like this to make a diagnosis for a patient. That’s fair. And we were talking earlier, you gave me some pretty incredible statistics, but talk about the cost a patient in the hospital versus being treated at home. There is a pretty big disparity there. So this experience comes from being practicing in India for for a few years before I came here. So when I first came to this country, and you know, obviously, America is very well developed, we have so many resources, money is not a problem, things like that. When I was a resident or intern walking around the hospitals, I used to think that this person will never be in a hospital in India. The majority of the people, in ICU in India, the patient is intubated or immobile, major problems. Here, I walk to an ICU, a patient is sitting and talking to me. And if a patient has certain infections you try to treat them as an outpatient. Now, granted, America is prone to a lot of lawsuits so techniques tied to defensive medicine iare often being practiced here. RBut that’s not the case in India, and doctors are treated like gods there when your doctor tells you something, patients take it right there.

Tobin Arthur  33:09

Here, they argue with you because they searched on Google,

Jaffar Raza, MD  33:12

Right? They come up with in, they come up with a big list of answers and when you try to convince them they respond that’s not what Google told us. I said, I didn’t go to Google University, I went to Madras University. If you look at the expenses in America, the whole health care expenses, the doctors fees, the doctors payment, is less than 7% of the entire expenses. The majority of the expenses go to hospitals and drug companies and in medications and things like that. So if we can keep these patients out of the hospital and still give them the best care. Nobody wants to be in a hospital. And iyou you feel better when you’re at home, right? If you’re able to take care of what your needs are in your home, in your in your comfortable environment, then that will make a huge difference.  I’ll give you an example of heart failure patients right. There is over $100 billion being spent in management of heart failure patients. You know 50% of this expenses is for hospital care of these patients. The hospital is not a safe place when these are sick patients if they’re coming for management of heart failure. They can end up getting an infection, they can end up getting some other things that they would never have got it if they were at their homes. So if we’re able to monitor these patients like, that’s why I’m a big fan of all these remote monitoring, and everything that’s coming up, you know, really able to monitor the patient’s vital signs, the patient’s fluid status, the patient’s weight, the patient’s blood pressure, the pulse oximeter, all these things. And if we can keep these patients out of the hospital and get them the treatment, even having a nurse practitioner or nurse visit these patients do these care at home, even twice a day, it’s still gonna end up costing you much lower than what’s going to cost to keep these patients in the hospital. And the patients are happy because they’re at their home. Avoiding, getting infections and things like that. And I think that’s got to be the future. And the hospitals are also starting to understand that this is where the future is going to go. So many systems, insurance companies and hospital systems are trying to put together a team to take care of these patients with care coordination. And give them the best care and keep them out of the hospital.

Tobin Arthur  36:25

I was just to bring it home and wrap up the conversation. And I think you know exemplify the exact kind of physician that AngelMD was designed for, which is somebody who doesn’t accept the status quo. They’ve got an entrepreneurial, bent and entrepreneurial, not necessarily meaning they’re going to create a business, although many do, but entrepreneurial in the sense that they’re always looking for how do we make things better than they are today, either working with somebody else and supporting their own thing. As you look forward the next couple of years, and you are in an interesting position, now you’re in a large organization, you’ve got a very successful Cath Lab, what are the kinds of  projects or things that keep you stimulated, that you’re thinking about, outside of your day to day clinical work, which of course, keeps you very busy. But in those, those extra hours, what are you thinking about in terms of the future?

Jaffar Raza, MD  37:23

It’s a big question.

Tobin Arthur  37:25

Yeah, that was an unfair question. Because it is too broad. What kinds of things interest you sort of on a micro level, in terms of technologies or terms of trends or things that you’re passionate about, maybe clinically, and seeing where they go?

Jaffar Raza, MD  37:44

You know, I’m a doctor first. So I believe in giving the best care to my patients, you know, when when a patient walks to my office, I want to make sure that I’m present, I’m listening to the patient, giving them the best care, making sure that I give them the options of what are the different kinds of treatments needs to be done? And why why I think one is better than the other. You know, and I always tell them eventually, it’s you who have to make the decision. I can give you guidance based on my education, but it’s you, your body, you make the decision, what you want to do. Obviously, I’m not going to let them make a bad or wrong decision that’s going to hurt them. But when there are options to do different things, I always tell them that thing. And the other thing that I always am thinking about a lot is like the expenses of healthcare is not sustainable. You know, but at the same time, innovations need expenses. So it’s kind of a conflict new treatments are more expensive, the new treatments are needed. But at the same time, the amount of money being spent on health care is not sustainable. So I’m constantly working with people to say, okay, certain things needs to be done, even if it’s expensive because it’s giving quality of life to the patient, it’s prolonging the life of the patients and things like that. But then there are things that which we can do for example, as we talked about, we can take care of heart failure patients at home, if you we can reduce the cost by 50 to 60%. So that money we are saving we can put into the innovation. Well, you’re also saving money but you’re there’s no degradation in fact that money can be better care. We are not diminishing the inequality of the care Mr. Giving them the care, maybe even a better care because as I said, we talk we keep them at home, in which the patients like and the money we are saving we can spend in the new innovations and new technology the new you know, Talking about doing robotic caths. You know, you’re talking about preventing problems for the doctors by using radiation safety and all these things in the cath lab and similar thing happening across different specialties. You know, with the 5g, we’re talking about doing transcontinental surgeries. So I think there’s, it’s an exciting time to be in healthcare. I think the technology and knowledge of the doctors, the medical skills, the clinical skills are kind of coming together. I think the future is very good for anybody who’s wanting to be a doctor or being in biotechnology.  And that’s where I keep telling my children. I have a 15 year old and a 13 year old – two boys. And that’s our dinner table conversations, they engage me and they asked me smart questions. And I tell them, these are the different options you have, like, I didn’t have this option growing up in a small village in India, like nobody told me that what not to expect, when I came, so I had to swim by myself, but I’m happy that I’m this country, where advancement always happens, where the technology’s always the first place to come to. And I’m able to give these guidance to my kids. And I do that to all my residents and trainees and the students who come across by come across who come to my office or in the hospital, where I teach and things like that.

Tobin Arthur  41:40

Well, given the opportunities you had when you went to medical school, you don’t have to give the same talk to your boys that your dad did to you.

Jaffar Raza, MD  41:51

I know I set an example. They watch me and they can choose whether they want to do it or not.  They don’t like the long hours. Right? I think last year, the year before COVID, when you take your kid to the work day, I took my son to to the hospital, and he saw me doing catheterization and things like that. And he was super excited about it. It looks like he went and told all his friends that I got to see these cool things.

Tobin Arthur  42:33

That’s pretty neat. Well, Dr. Razza, thanks for spending time on the weekend. You were with family and so really appreciate your time getting away. It’s been great to chat and talk about a little bit of your life and some of your perspectives. Really appreciate it.

Jaffar Raza, MD  42:47

Thank you. Thank you, Tobin for including me in your podcast and for what AngelMD is doing its amazing. I think you’re giving a platform for the doctors who have the skills or the ideas but not able to take it to the next step. And at the same time, we are also able to identify the companies, which I’m able to see companies which are early stages, but coming up with amazing technology and I’m fortunate to be part of this organization. Thank you for having me.

Tobin Arthur  43:21

I appreciate it. Take care.