🎙️ Top advice from a hero with wings. And wheels - Episode 51

I have a feeling the average American doctor is satisfied with a successful practice making a difference in people's lives and that's an amazing accomplishment. But every once in a while, we meet somebody who is not satisfied just making the difference in one person's life or one practice's life, but somebody who built out a medical practice that has hundreds and thousands of people working for him and impacting hundreds of thousands of people across the tri-state area. And if you think that's enough, you have to hear what he's done to help the greater Jewish community. From putting sick people on planes to literally going down to the south of Israel on October 7th, the story of Avisha Newman is fascinating. This week on Jewish Grit. [music] Welcome to Jewish Grit. This week we have a fascinating guest and I think if I'm not mistaken we've interviewed dozens of people and we've never had a doctor and which is so strange because half of the Jewish people are doctors. So Avisha Newman, Dr. Avisha Newman, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for coming in. >> Thanks for having me. >> Avishi, it's it's nice to get the perspective of a medical professional. It's even nicer, I think, to get the perspective of somebody who has a broader perspective on the medical profession as somebody who has, you know, practice that's in four different states. Um, take us into your world a little bit. Uh, talk to us a little bit about what type of doctor you are, what you're doing. Tell us a drop about your journey. >> So, I grew up in Queens, Jamaica States. That's where I uh >> That's in New York, right? >> That's in New York. Okay. >> Um, Donald Trump is from Queens. Okay. Just for the record. From Jamaica States. >> From Queens. I went to high school in MTA University for those that uh are familiar know. Uh from there I went to yeshiva spent two years in Israel. Came back and was in Queens College while I was doing Yeshiva or which is also in Queens. Uh from there I went to medical school in Israel. Spent four years in Tel Aviv at Sackler. >> Did you live in Tel Aviv? >> Lived in North Tel Aviv. Yeah. >> Wow. Nice. It was >> How's your Hebrew? >> Great experience. Pretty good. >> Okay. Were the classes in Hebrew? >> Classes were all in English. This is a New York State American program that was founded 1976. And uh after four years in Israel, I came back, I did my residency. I did internal medicine for a year at my monities and then three years at uh Sunni downstate for anesthesia. And then I went into private practice. Um I spent uh my first seven years also as an attending at uh New York Presbyterian of Queens mainly doing labor and delivery anesthesia and at the same time I started my own practice centurion anesthesia which uh focuses exclusively on ambulatory and office based anesthesia and today our practice uh like you said is in four states primarily four states we are probably the largest anesthesia group ambulatory and office-based anesthesia group definitely in New York, New Jersey and uh let's see you where where we're going to go from here, but uh it's it's a practice that encompasses surgery centers, offices. We work with a lot of the major hospitals here in New York City, NYU, Mount Sinai, New York Presbyterian. We work with HHC, which is the New York City Health and Hospital uh system during COVID. And uh we take care of, you know, north of I would say 180,000 patients per year across our entire practice. >> And you're preventing each of those people from having pain. That's meaningful. >> That's very meaningful. I mean, it's more I would say more than that, but yeah, we're making sure that they wake up at the end of their surgery >> or that their baby comes into the world. >> That their baby comes into the world. Yeah. So, we do all uh or yeah, creating we we work with uh fertility specialists. We do anesthesia for thousands of patients that are undergoing fertility treatments every year as well as pain management procedures, general surgery, orthopedic surgery, eye surgery. How often do you take a step back and focus on the fact that you're helping people versus running a massive company? >> The one thing that keeps me up at night is everyone going to wake up at the end of their surgery and go home in a safe way. So you cannot take that for granted and it's something that's even though we're running a big company and it's a today a business uh practice of medicine is unfortunately in many ways you know become a business in in many respects but uh I'm very thankful that I have the opportunity to to be helping people every day. >> I know another thing about your medical practice which I don't think we've either had anyone that does this. You are a card carrying member of Hatsala. >> Yes. Could you share with the broader world what Hatsala is? >> So, Hatsella is the largest volunteer ambulance organization probably on the on the face of the earth. Um, there are branches in all major Jewish uh epicenters, cities across the United States, Europe, South Africa, Australia, and in Israel. So, it's a great story. Back about 50 years ago, um, Rab Hershel Weber, I believe, was the founder of Hatsella, was walking across the street with his friend who, uh, clutched his chest and was having chest pain. They called 911. Took about 20 to 30 minutes for the ambulance to arrive. And by the time they arrived, that friend of his passed away. And he said, "This is unacceptable." That in New York City, it takes 20 minutes or 30 minutes for emergency personnel to arrive. And so he went out, got himself a oxygen tank and you know told the neighbors, friends, family that if you ever have any chest pain and you need some oxygen, call me and I'll come running over. And then slowly, you know, other people said that's a great idea. And uh not not long after they formed and formalized Hatsala. They uh trained a number of EMTs. They decided that it didn't make sense to have the equipment just sitting on ambulances and the ambulances parked wherever they are. The emergency could be anywhere and they uh decided that the best way was going to be for each member to carry equipment in their car and in that way have the fastest response time. Today a seller's response time probably is the fastest anywhere in the world. Fast response time especially if somebody's you know found on the floor is critical and those minutes are life-saving minutes. >> So forget a moment about the anesthesia. You're literally saving lives all the time. >> So, we're we're doing that. And then the other thing I think you uh I'm not sure if you're familiar with Hutsala Air. >> Sure. But why don't you share what it is? >> Yeah. So, Hutzala Air is another division of Hutzala that uh is the aviation arm and uh about I want to say seven years ago, I had the privilege of starting that organization with my good friend Ellie Row and we started Hatal Air in 2019. We had one plane that was uh donated to us. We started doing emergency flights for people that were in need. >> What does that mean? Like why would a person need an airplane? >> So, you know, you're you're vacationing in the Caribbean and unfortunately you have an accident, a car accident or a medical emergency and you end up in a clinic that is not capable of treating you, taking care of you, and you need to get out of there quickly. What are you going to do? You don't have on on the ground over there. you don't even have, you know, let's just call it a first world style hospital that you're accustomed to. You can imagine going into an emergency room and they just don't have the medication that they need in order to treat you. So, Hutzella Air was was born out of necessity to, you know, recognizing that today it's a global world and people are going all over the place. Even within the United States, there are certain hospitals, specialty centers that you can get specific treatment that you can't get anywhere else. I mean, we fly patients from New York City to the Cleveland Clinic. And you'll say, "Well, they're, you know, >> Cleveland, six major medical centers, if not more, within the New York New York City area. Forget about, you know, the New York metropolitan area. You go down to Philly, you've got CHOP, up to Yale in New Haven, but we still [clears throat] fly specialty patients to the Cleveland Clinic, to Cincinnati Children's Hospital, to the Mayo Clinic, um, to Houston, Texas. you know, there's an entire uh you know, cancer center over there. And when it comes to Boston, it comes to specialty situations, you may not be in the right place even though you're in, you know, the biggest city in the world right now >> everything is free when you guys get a call and you take them on an ambulance. Is it free to go on the plane also? >> For an emergency, it's free. >> Wow. >> In other words, like if somebody's in a bad situation, they were in a car accident and there we'll go there and we'll get them for free. Um when it comes to transfers, you know, we either charge insurance or have sponsors or the patients themselves have to pay like any Hutzella would. In other words, when you call Hutzella, if you're asking them to take you from, you know, hospital A to hospital B, they're you know, that's not their that's not their job, their role. Um when you're having a heart attack, they'll take you to the closest hospital. So, it's the same idea. >> Are you the pilot or you just accompany people? >> No, no. I take care of the patients in the back. There are people that fly the plane and then we we make sure that they get from point A to point B safely. >> At 35,000 ft, is the type of care that you need to provide different than on the ground? >> It is different in the sense that there's nobody helping you at 35,000 ft. There's no backup. You can't pull over on the side of the road to the next closest hospital. You can land, but it doesn't always happen right away. you have to be able to manage and deal with whatever situation is at hand for the next foreseeable future versus if you're, you know, in an ambulance on the ground. Even if you're driving, let's just say between Lakewood and and Philadelphia, you may have one or two stops along the way that allow you to get a higher level of care and in the air you are the highest level of care. Uh we recently flew a patient around the world. There was one of the um injured uh Isra actually Israeli in Bondai Beach at the Bondai Beach terrorist attack that rushed the terrorist and was shot and almost uh bled to death. Uh was taken to an Australian hospital. They saved his life and he needed extensive rehabilitation. And when he was stable enough, they asked us to come get him and fly him back to Israel, which we did. We flew around the world to Australia, picked up the uh the patient uh really a hero and flew him back to Israel through uh through Bangkok, Thailand. >> It was a literally around the world mission to save, you know, save a life. >> What does it say if you save one life? It's you save the whole world. >> Save the whole world. Yeah. >> Avisha, how do you balance like a very extensive professional career and flying around the world? Because you just take two days off to to go to Australia and it's the best thing, don't get me wrong, keep doing it. But like what happens to everything else? >> You know, you said balance. I think balance is the key to life. >> Mhm. >> So, you know, I say work hard, play harder, >> but you have to have balance. Um there are certain missions that you clear your schedule for. When you're involved in so many different things, you know, they say if if you're if you want to get something done, give it to someone that's busy. If you're in that mindset, if you're in that cadence of doing, then you'll figure it out. >> If you're um radio oneoff right now, would you run out and take that silicone? Uh if it was here, yeah, I'm sorry I would pause the podcast. I'd be gone and come back. We'd finish it up. >> We would be happy if you got there to save a life. So, thank God you've had a a career where you're providing assistance to other people and then you were able to really take that and scale it in a substantial way, but I'm sure that it wasn't all smooth sailing and that there were some peaks and there were some valleys. take us into a moment in your personal or professional life where all of a sudden it didn't follow the narrative and you find yourself in in a difficult spot and you need to grit your teeth and climb out. >> When I was finishing my residency at Downstate, I would say that that the majority of doctors graduating residency, if they weren't going on to a fellowship, were looking to get a job in generally a hospital setting or a hospital-based practice. And at the time the thinking was get into a practice that's stable into a partnership track. You'll work really, really hard for a couple of years and then you'll get to become a partner within the group and at that point you're quote unquote set because at the time most anesthesia practices were were you know partnership model practices so that if you worked really hard and you became a partner you did really nicely professionally and and financially. And it was I want to say that that was pretty much you know for a resident looking forward you know you're you're 30 32 33 years old finishing training after 12 years that's the golden goose right >> I started interviewing at a bunch of uh different prospective jobs and they said well you know if you're going to keep shabas if you're not going to work on Friday night and Saturday night then we can't put you into a partnership track and the reason is because you're not doing what everyone else is doing. >> And so I said to myself, I mean, listen, I get to determine my own schedule at this point. You know, for the last 12 years, everyone was telling me when to come, when to go, when I can eat when I can't eat. Now I'm finally, you know, a little bit in control of of my schedule and how I'm going to work and my work life balance. And so I decided I wasn't going to do it. I wasn't going to try to, you know, fall into a situation that was going to force me to work on Chabas. And when I look back at that, um, you know, the the group that I ended up going to work for, they said, you know, we we're going to put you in a position. You'll be, you know, a regular anesthesiologist in the hospital, not you're not on the partnership track. I said, no problem. I'll start my own practice. And they looked at me and they laughed and they said, yeah, good luck. And, uh, that's actually what I did. And so I when I look back on on those years, I say, you know, I protected Chavez and now Chavez is protecting me. And I'm sure that as a person who has so many things going on in their life, Shabas still continues to gift you. >> As I get older and as we get busier and I could use 26 hours in the day right now, Shabas is the best part of the week by far. You know, it's it's it's it's the the bookends of the beginning of Shabas and the end of Shabas are just I don't know how I would do it. You know, turning off your phone, turning off everything external and being able to connect with your family, with your kids, with your grandkids, >> with yourself. with yourself uh is you know being able to sleep which is nice. >> Oh my gosh that if so for someone who doesn't keep shabas they will never experience the beauty of a shabas afternoon nap. Yeah, >> it >> it's so qualitatively amazing. You know, >> even, you know, it's interesting. Uh Charlie Kirk was fascinated and I think you even wrote a book. Correct. >> So I think I think there, you know, people are starting to see the value and realize how important it is, how important it is to disconnect, you know, take time for yourself, to take time to recharge, to regroup, to to think. >> Where does the rest of your family fit into your narrative? because residency is grueling and then having your own practice and working in another practice and then all of a sudden exploding and hatal and hatal air, you know, I'm sure the rest of the Newman family is really sweet, but like where do they come into your world? >> So, they get a lot of credit. My wife gets the most credit for putting up with me as do my my children. But that's that's sort of the beauty of Shabas. Shabas has always dedicated time to the family. And for for many years, I also would not work on Sunday. So even though I would work three nights and five days a week, I was not working shave and Sunday, I I always try to make it a point to be home for the majority of the day and not pick up extra shifts or work in the hospital even though there was the opportunity to do so. And it was lucrative. And you know, come in on the weekend, you're taking over for somebody. Um, you need to, you know, create family time. And I think what I've done over the years and what I've modeled is there are periods of intense work, but also periods of intense focusing on the family and being with them and all and going away with them. And if you work really hard, it's important to play really hard because then you throw your balance off. It comes right back to, you know, balance is is really the key to life. >> You did four years of of medical school in Israel. Do you still have deep roots in Israel? Do you go back there often? What's your connection? >> We Yeah, I still have deep roots. My entire family is there. I've got four siblings and my mom that all live in Israel. >> Oh wow. >> And uh we're always there every year. Suck as we're in Israel and we've been doing that since I was in medical school. >> Were you there on October 7th? >> I was there on October 7th. Yeah. >> Was that like it was it was >> it was crazy as as anyone, you know, can imagine, anyone who was there saw. We sort of knew what was going on in the morning. I had my phone on me, but I didn't take it out. The morning of October 7th, I was walking with uh my good friend Yako of Gay past the US consulate and the guard there was getting off his shift and he took out his phone and he showed us what was going on. We still really hadn't grasped what was going on. Um and about midway through the day, uh there was a neighbor with a TV on and I saw what was going on. And once we realized, you know, what kind of crazy situation this was, I uh reached out to my um colleagues at Main DevO and they picked me up two o'clock on October 7th in Jerusalem and we drove straight down to Beva to start evacuating injured and uh wounded patients. >> So you you literally got people straight off of October. >> Yeah. The the craziness. >> Yeah. We were transferring patients between hospitals which was extremely important because the hospitals were completely overrun and so in order to you know there there were critical patients and then there were let's just call them critical but stable patients. So anyone that was critical but stable we moved out of uh out of Bereva out of Soka and brought them to Adasa and we spent uh the next three days doing that and then uh I got an emergency license. They actually needed anesthesiologists um in Israel and ICU specialists and [snorts] uh the Wednesday after October 7th they brought me to Barzili which is the hospital in Ashkalone closest to Gaza and uh gave me a temporary license gave me a tour of the hospital pair of scrubs and said go to work. >> I spent the next two months there um in Barzili. >> What happened to your practice here? I've got an amazing team of uh other anesthesiologists and infrastructure people that were able to hold down the fort and keep the practice running smoothly. And I was fortunate for them, you know, to be able to to let me, you know, have that experience to everybody wanted to help. There were so many people, so many doctors calling asking how do we do but not everybody had the opportunity happened to be in the right place at the right time. That was what what the next two months after October 7th look like. >> What makes you most proud to be a Jew? >> I think you know the value system that we grow up with. Somebody somebody pointed out to me during this war now between Iran, Israel, the United States. You know what a what's a rescue flight? A rescue flight is taking Israelis back to Israel. Yeah. [laughter] So counterintuitive flights go into war zones. You I'll tell you what, rescue flights going to war zones when people, you know, have such a connection to the land and to their brothers that they're running into the battle. That's I mean that's the Jewish people. I'm going to give you 90 seconds or more if you need it to address our 70,000 plus students and young professionals. You're a bunch of years ahead of them to put it mildly. and brother Hashem, God has blessed you with beautiful family, professional success, ability to give back to others. What would you like to tell them? They're just starting. They have wide open eyes and lots of optimism and maybe a little apprehension. What What message would you would you love to share? >> When you're just starting out, there's this kind of need for like killing it right away. You know, today it's not cool to be a doctor. if you're in finance now you're now you're talking but back then it was actually and I think part of the reason that it was more respected to be a physician or to be a dentist or to be a lawyer somebody that had to spend time kind of going through the process and going through school is because people saw what it took for people to go from point A to point B. It wasn't always overnight. It wasn't over a year or two years. Sometimes it I mean I didn't start working till I was 32. And I think that you know talking to younger people who are going into whatever profession they're going to go into, it's important to remind them that success takes time. It doesn't always happen right away. And just because it doesn't always happen right away doesn't mean you pivot and go to something else. I think focus is tremendous. You got to focus on whatever it is that you're going after and just kind of put your head down and keep doing it. When I started practicing and we had a little bit of success, I started getting into other, you know, distractions. Um, and we I opened up a sleep center. I bought a pain management practice. I had this whole idea that I was going to have this, you know, just multiple different things going on under one banner. And it took a few years to realize that that was not me. I just needed to do what I knew how to do really, really, really well. And I told uh, you know, my colleagues, my physicians, the people that I work with, we're not going to be the first one to the top of the mountain, but at the end of the day, we may be the only ones standing there. >> Nice. >> And that's how, you know, I refocused. I got rid of all these other practices that were dragging me down. they were taking away my attention from what I really knew how to do well and refocused, re-energized and doubled down and doubled down again, reinvested in our our in our group and our company and ourselves. And I think that is the message that you know you are your greatest asset. You got to invest in yourself and whether that means you know more years in school or more years working not looking for you know for the immediate kill that is what you know will get you to top of the mountain. >> Dr. Avisha Newman this has been really interesting fascinating and I guess the best way to to end this is by wishing you continued success >> and the ability to adapt to pivot to grow and most importantly to keep helping others. Appreciate it. >> Really appreciate your time. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you for listening to Jewish Grit and Ol mentorship podcast. At Mentorship, we believe that everyone needs a mentor. What better way is there to tap into your personal and professional potential than with a Jewish mentor at your side. [music] Learn more at olam.org/mentorship. Don't forget to keep listening on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.