How I Doctor with Dr. Graham Walker

Dr. John Dayton is an emergency physician, Stanford innovation fellow, and co-founder of Wildfire Partners, a new healthcare seed fund built around a simple but data-backed conviction: physicians make better health tech founders than the industry has ever given them credit for.The data is hard to ignore: more than a quarter of billion-dollar healthcare companies built in the last decade had at least one clinician co-founder. John did not just write that paper. He built a fund around it.In this episode of How I Doctor, Dr. Graham Walker sits down with John to dig into what it actually takes to build a health tech company worth funding. They walk through John's Seven Ps framework for evaluating startups, what makes a pitch compelling versus an instant red flag, and why the barrier to entry for physician-founders has never been lower thanks to AI.What You'll Learn in This Episode:The Seven Ps framework John uses to evaluate every health tech company he considers fundingWhat kills a pitch immediately and what signals a founder has actually done their homeworkWhy AI has dramatically lowered the barrier to entry for physician-founders and what that changes about building a company todayHow to think about the principal-agent problem when selling into health systemsWhy ambient AI tools matter more for physician burnout than the time savings data alone suggestsWhat John learned about scalable, practical problem solving from practicing in resource-poor clinical environmentsWhat winning actually looks like and why it is about more than financial🩺 Offcall is more than a platform — it’s a community. Join today!📝 For a full transcript of this episode click HERE🎧 Subscribe to receive new How I Doctor episodes directly in your feed here: https://episodes.fm/1767429315👨‍⚕️Follow Dr. Graham Walker onLinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/graham-walker-md/IG https://www.instagram.com/ubergraham/Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/drgrahamwalker.com✉️ Join our newsletter On/Offcall here https://offcall.beehiiv.com/subscribe🟧 Follow Offcall onLinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/joinoffcall/IG https://www.instagram.com/offcalldotcom/TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@offcalldotcom

Most physicians have had a referral disappear. Many have spent days tracking down a colleague just to coordinate care for a single patient.In this episode of How I Doctor, Offcall co-founder Dr. Graham Walker sits down with Dr. Basil Kahwash, an allergist and immunologist in Columbus, Ohio, to talk about one of the most universal and underappreciated problems in medicine: the referral system is broken, and independent physicians are paying the highest price.Basil didn't set out to become an advocate for fixing referrals. He trained at Vanderbilt, where reaching a collaborating physician was as simple as sending an Epic message or jumping on a 20-minute Zoom call with three specialists at once. Then he went into independent practice in Columbus and discovered that none of that infrastructure existed. No shared records. No easy way to reach a referring physician. No directory of local specialists. Just a fax machine, a stack of paper charts, and a phone number he hoped was still current.The referral black hole isn't just a physician frustration. It's a patient safety problem. Basil shares the story of a pregnant patient with a rare drug allergy whose referring OB-GYN he couldn't reach for three to four days. These aren't edge cases. They're a typical Tuesday.Graham and Basil co-authored the referral manifesto at offcall.com/manifesto, making the case that independent practice doesn't have to mean isolated practice. This episode is the conversation behind that letter: what's actually broken, what it costs physicians and patients, and what a connected network of independent physicians could change.What You'll LearnHow patients have become the de facto middlemen in a system that has no better optionWhy most referrals arrive as little more than a diagnosis code, and what even a small amount of added context would changeHow the fax machine became the rate-limiting step for physician collaboration and why EHRs haven't solved the problemWhy hyperlocal physician networks exist within specialties online but not across specialties within cities, and what filling that gap could look likeWhat winning looks like if the referral problem gets solved: coordination fades into the background and physicians get back to patient careResources and Where to Find Basil and OffcallRead the Referral Manifesto: offcall.com/manifestoLearn about the Offcall Referral Product: offcall.com/referralsFind Basil on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/basil-kahwash-mdFind Graham on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/graham-walker-md🩺 Offcall is more than a platform — it’s a community. Join today!📝 For a full transcript of this episode click HERE🎧 Subscribe to receive new How I Doctor episodes directly in your feed here: https://episodes.fm/1767429315👨‍⚕️Follow Dr. Graham Walker onLinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/graham-walker-md/IG https://www.instagram.com/ubergraham/Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/drgrahamwalker.com✉️ Join our newsletter On/Offcall here https://offcall.beehiiv.com/subscribe🟧 Follow Offcall onLinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/joinoffcall/IG https://www.instagram.com/offcalldotcom/TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@offcalldotcom

Most physicians know a colleague who has struggled. Many know one who didn't make it.In this episode of How I Doctor, Offcall co-founder Dr. Graham Walker sits down with Dr. Stefanie Simmons, Chief Medical Officer of the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes' Foundation and practicing emergency physician in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for one of the most important conversations in medicine right now.Physician mental health isn't an abstract policy issue. It's the licensing form that places a mental health history question directly after "are you a pedophile." It's the peripartum depression Stefanie developed during her own residency that she never treated because a formal diagnosis felt like a career risk. It's Dr. Lorna Breen, chair of emergency medicine at New York Presbyterian, working 18-hour days through the first COVID wave in Manhattan, who received mental health care and told her family she was terrified it would cost her her license. Stefanie didn't know Lorna before her death. But like every emergency physician in the country, she was one degree of separation from her. And when Lorna's family started hearing from hundreds, then thousands, of healthcare workers who said "she wasn't alone," Stefanie was one of the people who called.Stefanie makes the case that physician mental health is a systems failure, not a personal one, and that the fix is structural. The foundation has already changed the credentialing language at more than 2,000 hospitals and across 70 state licensing boards, covering more than 3 million health workers. The Lorna Breen Healthcare Provider Protection Act was reauthorized in February 2026. The calculus is shifting. But the work is far from complete.This episode is an honest conversation about why physicians won't seek mental health care, what it costs when they don't, and how one foundation is rebuilding the system from the inside out.What You'll LearnHow the Dr. Lorna Breen Healthcare Provider Protection Act works, what it funds, and why its reauthorization matters for every physicianHow a single question on a licensing application has kept generations of physicians from getting help, and what the foundation is replacing it withWhy physicians massively overestimate how much their colleagues will judge them for seeking mental health care, and what the data actually showsWhat Stefanie's own experience with peripartum depression during residency taught her about the cost of not getting helpWhy burnout is an occupational syndrome, not a personal failingWhat a struggling physician can do right now, and where to find supportIf You or a Colleague Need Help988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988 / 988lifeline.orgPhysician Support Line: free, confidential, anonymous, staffed by psychiatrists / 1 (888) 409-0141 / physiciansupportline.comEmotional PPE Project: free anonymous mental health care for clinicians / emotionalppe.comAll For Mental Health resource hub: drlornabreen.org/all-for-mental-healthResources and Where to Find Stefanie and the FoundationDr. Lorna Breen Heroes' Foundation: drlornabreen.org Take Action: drlornabreen.org/take-action All In Wellbeing First for Healthcare Coalition: drlornabreen.org/all-inFind Stefanie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefsimmons/ Follow the Foundation on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drlornabreenheroesfoundation/ 🩺 Offcall is more than a platform — it’s a community. Join today!📝 For a full transcript of this episode click HERE🎧 Subscribe to receive new How I Doctor episodes directly in your feed here: https://episodes.fm/1767429315👨‍⚕️Follow Dr. Graham Walker onLinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/graham-walker-md/ IG https://www.instagram.com/ubergraham/ Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/drgrahamwalker.com ✉️ Join our newsletter On/Offcall here https://offcall.beehiiv.com/subscribe 🟧 Follow Offcall on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/joinoffcall/ IG https://www.instagram.com/offcalldotcom/ TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@offcalldotcom