Michael S. Chen, Interventional Cardiologist

 

109.Michael S. Chen

SPEAKERS

Michael S. Chen, Will Bachman

 

Will Bachman  00:02

Will Hello and welcome to the 92 report conversations with members of the Harvard and Radcliffe class of 1992 I’m your host. Will Bachman, and I’m delighted to be here today with my Lowell House friend, Mike Chen, Mike, welcome to the show.

 

Michael S. Chen  00:18

Thank you so much for having me. Will So

 

Will Bachman  00:20

Mike, tell me about your journey since graduating from Harvard.

 

Michael S. Chen  00:25

So currently I’m in Gaithersburg, Maryland, an eventual cardiologist. And it’s it’s been a great journey after Harvard actually deferred from University of Pennsylvania medical school for two years and did investment banking. I was at hamberton quest. They’re a smaller investment bank focusing on high tech and healthcare companies, and spent a couple months in San Francisco training, and then I was in New York City. Rest of the two years doing a corporate finance Analyst Program. Had a great time with that. But then ultimately, I knew I wanted to go into medicine. And my dad was a cardiologist, and just had visions following in his footsteps. So, you know, after two years investment banking, doing mergers and acquisitions and some IPOs, went to University of Pennsylvania for medical school, and that’s actually where I guess met my future wife, you know, Arlene. We actually met on a blind date. There. She was a PhD in a lab, and I had an MD PhD friend who introduced the two of us on a blind date. So that worked out well, after that, went to UCSF in San Francisco for internal medicine residency, and then came to Cleveland Clinic for general cardiology and interventional cardiology did that three years for General cardology, two years for interventional cardiology. And after that, came out in 2006 to the Maryland area, to Gaithersburg, Maryland, and joined cardiac associates, which is a private practice in Montgomery County, Maryland, and just been with them ever since, it’s worked out well. Been with for the past 18 years in in 2022 cardios became part of Adventist healthcare, and so now we’re part of a hospital system, and I’m kind of out here, Chair of cardiology over at ChiTo hospital, kind of our main Community Hospital, and then director of the cat lab, cardio catization lab at wider Medical Center, tertiary center. So it’s been, been a great journey.

 

Will Bachman  02:30

Okay, so investment banking, when you were doing that, were you thinking it was a possibility that you would stay in investment banking, or did you just want to dip your toe and get that experience before you, you know, went to medicine, like, was it? How certain were you there and tell me about that decision?

 

Michael S. Chen  02:50

Yeah, sure. So I will, you know, I was pretty sure I was going to go into medicine, but I’ve always been very interested in business as well, and and so with that, I really wanted to take the time before devoting the rest of my life to medicine, to say, hey, here’s a good time to just learn about something else. And it was great learning about stocks, companies, corporate finance. And, you know, it’s also right after Harvard, there’s obviously a ton of us classmates in, you know, in New York City, it was a great time. Work hard, play hard. You know, had fond memories of, you know, many good meals with Steve Kemp, Dave Lim John biotti, among others. It was really a really good time. But I’d say, to answer your question, was really more a chance to learn something about another discipline. But real thing, I probably would end up going to medicine.

 

Will Bachman  03:40

What did you learn from that that has continued to kind of inform your worldview or thinking? Has it helped you at all as a physician?

 

Michael S. Chen  03:54

So I guess you know physicians are notorious for being bad investors, bad you know, not much financial acumen. And I guess I’m fortunate there, you know, having gone through spreadsheets, profit loss statements, you know, cash flow to maybe have a little better handle on some of that stuff. So, you know, in talking with, I guess, hospital administrations, when talking about budgets, you know, I feel I’ve got a little better handle, maybe than the average physician about some of that stuff. And so, for instance, like, when we’re becoming part of Venice healthcare, they had various projections about, you know, how they thought we would do. And, you know, kind of sat with them and went through the numbers, line by line, and, you know, raise some rebuttals. And, you know, you so it was good to have that, you know, financial knowledge, I guess, you know, since then, um, yeah, I mean, it’s been help. I guess I’m also, like, on the sort of Scientific Advisory Board for a, you know, a small, kind of startup company called Open DNA. And. And it’s probably helping able to because, you know, with that, sometimes they’ll have me talking to venture capitalists trying to get investments in the company. And it’s probably helping able to not just talk about the science, but also some about the business. Part of you know of startups,

 

Will Bachman  05:16

talk to me about a typical day or a typical week for you, and it sounds like you have several leadership positions. You mentioned your director of the cath lab. I think there’s several other leadership positions you mentioned, and I think you’re also a practicing clinician, and sounds like you have some, maybe business responsibilities. What’s a typical week look like for you in terms of your time allocation and what you’re involved in?

 

Michael S. Chen  05:45

Yeah, sure. So typical week I’m usually I’m in the office, probably three and a half days, so like Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and half day, Friday, I’m in the office, seeing patients. And those are pretty busy days, often maybe 3035, patients during that time, and then Tuesday, all day, and then Friday afternoon, I’m usually in the cath lab doing procedures with that. There may be some administrative meetings as well. I try and kind of mix in sort of family working out with, you know, with work as well. So usually getting up around 630 try and work out, either bike around, do something, and then take my oldest to to high school. He’s, he’s a sophomore now, so in my gosh, he’s counting down by six months or so, he probably driving, but, you know, enjoying the time driving him to school until he starts driving himself and and then, you know, day by goes in most days probably, you know, start around eight. 830 goes till maybe seven ish or so. They’re long days, but they’re not crazy days. We always have dinner as a family together,

 

Will Bachman  07:00

and in terms of your kind of administrative and type leadership type activities, it sounds like you have some responsibilities there as well.

 

Michael S. Chen  07:08

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So over at White Oak Chair of the cardiac catheterization lab there, and so that’s kind of combination of trying to make sure the physicians there are performing appropriate procedures from an individual point of view. Sometimes they have requests for equipment, trying to balance their request for equipment with the fact that, you know, in the hospitals, they often have limited budgets, and we can’t have everything we want. So trying to prioritize. Unfortunately, sometimes a physician, physician behavior, sometimes could be an issue, how they’re talking to cath lab staff and trying to be an intermediary, and then over at any shady group hospital, you know, we try and just focus as well on, actually, have both hospitals on meeting certain performance measures, making your patients are on the right medications after procedures. As an individual, cardiologist also take care of heart attack patients. And one big measure that we get, we get looked at, is it’s called door to balloon time. So if someone’s having a heart attack, then you want to try to get that blood vessel open for them as quick as you can. And so one measure is from the time the patient hits the door, door of the hospital, to the time and to Balloon. Balloon is like the the equipment we use to open up any blockage. So that, you know that door to balloon time you want to try and, you know, keep that under, you know, 90 minutes. But, you know, keeps as short as possible, but there are certain sort of performance improvement projects we can do to try and decrease that that time. So that’s kind of part of what you know, time spent from on an administrative point of

 

Will Bachman  08:53

view. I love that metric. What are what are some of the door to balloon? What are some of the other metrics that you look at That’s fascinating? Yeah.

 

Michael S. Chen  09:04

So, I mean, other than that, then a lot of them relate to making sure the patients are on the right medications. So if they have a stent put in, then they should be on aspirin and usually another blood thinner. And so, you know, there are so we’ll measure percentages of what patients are on the right medicines there. If they have heart failure, they should be on certain types of medications, say, like something called a beta blocker, another one called sglt, two inhibitor. But, you know, just different class of medicines. And so there are measures to see, you know, how well is the hospital as a whole meeting? These, these various, these various measures.

 

Will Bachman  09:43

Why is that hard to get right? You would think, as a layperson, oh, you’d have a chart, you know, like you just told me, Hey, if they just had a stint, aspirin, if they had something beta blocker, what makes that difficult for a hospital to implement? You know,

 

Michael S. Chen  09:59

I think. Some of it is, is kind of human, human error in terms of, you know, I mean, you’re right. Someone has a stent, they should be on medication, X, Y and Z. Sometimes it just gets missed when, when you’re going from, say, from patient being a hospital to patient being discharged, because the discharge medications, you know, ideally probably would be whatever they’re on in the hospital. But sometimes the discharging physician may omit one of the medications, you know, unfortunately. I mean, that’s where you think, with this whole ego traffic medical records, you know that we have that you know, should go try and prevent some of that we try. We’ve been involved in trying. Been involved in trying to, like, make the process more, you know, more fail safe.

 

Will Bachman  10:50

What should we do as patients, or maybe children of elderly patients, you know, if you’re taking your parents to the hospital for something, what should we do to make sure that the medications are correct, you know, you know, do you check chat? CPT, hey, my father just got a stent. What medications would you recommend? Please take on the role of an interventional cardiologist. What would you prescribe? You know, ask, what, what was it? What should we be doing to make sure the medications are right, right?

 

Michael S. Chen  11:20

I think best thing is probably making sure you’ve got, you know, in that case, it’s a good cardiologist or a good doctor you trust be a cardiologist, or if it’s medications in general, you know, good primary, primary care doctor, and you know, following up with them, having them take a look at the medications too. But as you leave in the hospital, it probably would be, you know, because you know, the average person won’t know what medications are, right or not. You’re kind of, you’re left to having to have faith in the the hospitalist, whoever’s discharging you, you know, maybe just you know, the conversation with the hospital is, hey, you know, are you sure these are all the right medications and going with that. But then, you know, then I get with that probably close follow up with cardiology. Your whoever your cardiologist is, have them double check the medications and make sure that they’re happy with medications that you’re discharged from from the hospital. Sounds like that’s

 

Will Bachman  12:16

one of the major sources of error, is that transition from the hospital to the discharge. So kind of doing a audit on those, like taking even though, as a layperson, you would have no idea what they’re for, even necessarily, take a look at what you had at the hospital, what you had as when you’re discharged, and compare them and ask, why is this one not being continued? Yeah, exactly.

 

Michael S. Chen  12:37

And can be confused. You know, some of these patients, they come in on eight or 10 different medications, not all heart medications and and then in the hospital, sometimes some medications get changed, some get stopped, some get started. And then the patient goes home, and they got their old pill bottles. They got new ones. And it can be confusing, overwhelming for them. Which one should I be taking? Which one should I not be? You know, that’s nothing. I always recommend to my patients try and when you go see your heart doctor, you know, or primary care doctor, when you see your doctor after being in the hospital, bring in your medication bottles and that way, and also probably any list from the hospital, we need to get online, but bring your bottle so we know what you’re actually taking and we can kind of work at it from there.

 

Will Bachman  13:17

Tell me a bit about how interventional cardiology has changed over the past couple decades that you’ve been practicing.

 

Michael S. Chen  13:26

So Interventional Cardiology is, is a great field. And, you know, just for every everybody out there it, it’s basically doing procedures. I mean, the main one probably would be someone has any kind of blockage and blood vessel, the heart, you know, then, you know, I’d go in and fix, fix a blockage, and that can be kind of on a more stable basis. For someone who’s having chest pain, gets seen as an outpatient, has a stress test that’s abnormal, and then comes in and has the procedure done as an outpatient, you know, to more extreme where someone has cardiac arrest, they’re they’ve gotten CPR and and their EKG shows, you, know, a acute heart attack. So you can kind of arrange the gamut. I guess the way it’s changed is that number one, we have something called drug coded stents. And those Drug Code sense are sensor hollow metal cylinders that prop open the vessel that’s blocked, and keep keep vessel for keep teaching from regrowing and causing recurrent blockage. So I guess before I started, you know, it, we would, the college would only use balloons to keep up the vessel. But there’s no scaffolding. And so then there’s a high chance for the stent I’m outside, for that area to close off. So sensor help prop that vessel open, and then the drug coding helps decrease the chance for residues, for new tissue growth within the scent, which would be a new blockage. So that’s been, certainly a an advanced and then I was more probably 1015, years ago, more recently, probably the big couple big trends. One would be, what’s. Going when you do these procedures, we used to do them through the leg all the time, like when I was training Cleveland Clinic, and we did, I think, everything through the groin, through the femoral artery. And in the last probably five to 10 years, we’re doing a lot more through the radio artery, through the, you know, through the wrist. So now patients can kind of come in have the procedure done. And worse, in the past, you used to have to lay flat from two to six hours, sometimes stay overnight after your stent. Now a lot more often, you can be up walking around within an hour or two, and sometimes even right away after your stent, once sedation wears off, because you’re going through the wrist and so they don’t, you know, so there’s much less chance for bleeding that way. And sometimes they’ll even go home the same day after their stents been put in.

 

Will Bachman  15:42

Okay? I have been wondering about this for a long time, so I now get to ask the question, all right, so you are threading this thing up through the person’s artery, right? Yep, femoral artery or the wrist, okay, so explaining it to a layperson here, yeah, how? Number one, how do you see where you’re going? Do you have, like, a little light and a little video camera? And number two, if there’s any intersections, like, how do you choose, like, the left fork or the right fork? Can you make it go right or left a little bit? So how do you Yeah, how do you navigate up to where you want to go? Yeah, those

 

Michael S. Chen  16:24

are great questions. And so it’s interesting. It is a a common misconception that we have some kind of camera in the catheter in the wire, but actually we don’t. So the way it’s done is we got the patient in the catheterization lab, and then so we’re actually guiding our movements by X ray. So, yeah, so you step on X ray, and then we can actually see where the catheter is and where the, you know, where the wire is. So just based on, I guess, knowing what the anatomy is, you know, it’s ever go through the arm, usually I’ll put a wire and the wire, that wire would be like, oh three, five inches in diameter. I mean, if that means anything to people, but, you know, oh, three, five inches and and you can see the wiring kind of goes up, and you just, you know, the course that the vessel should be taking, from the wrist radial artery up through what’s called the, I guess, subclavian artery, and then ultimately into the aorta, and then close to the heart, where the arteries of the heart Take off. The lava is just almost like pattern recognition, knowing where your your wire should be going. And then once we think we’re in the artery, we kind of get take the wire out, and we connect the catheter to the contrast. So contrast, we inject the contrast through like syringes and through the catheter, and then that goes through the catheter into wherever we’re at, hopefully, you know, a blood vessel. And so the contrast, because you’re an x ray that then kind of lights up much, you know, much like, say, a, I don’t know, like a CT scan with contrast, or somewhere, you light up the blood vessel. That’s kind of, it’s working with the contrast is what we see on X ray. And so the camera is really, you know, outside the patient. It’s the X ray tube underneath the patient.

 

Will Bachman  18:02

Oh, so you don’t have a little tiny video camera helping to guide your way,

 

Michael S. Chen  18:07

yeah, whereas now the thing is, like, if people were doing it like a gas a GI doctor, gastroenterologist, they’ve got a camera, and they’re looking at you when you have your colonoscopy. But for us, we don’t have a camera in the catheter. Our camera is sort of outside the X ray tube. And then, so

 

Will Bachman  18:22

how do you kind of know, is it just with this X ray, when you are at the right kind of spot to to put in the the balloon, or whatever you’re going to

 

Michael S. Chen  18:32

be it’s kind of with the X ray. And then when you check the contrast, then the the vessel will light up. And you can actually see an outline of the port. You know, the content will fill the whole vessel. Again, you see where the vessel is, how big it is, where the blockage is, and then the way we direct, you know. So let’s say, if someone had to, you know, blockage and when their vessel is, you know, that could be a couple branch points down. The way we direct it is really with the wire. You can imagine, if you have a wire and it’s just a straight wire, you really don’t have much control over it. So I’ll make a little, almost, like, two small, little curves on the wire, you like, you know, imagine the tip of the wire, and if you make a curve on it, then you can kind of, then rotate the wire and, you know, make it go up, or make it go down. And I’ll make a couple different curves on the wire to then try and be able to direct the wire by controlling it from from the back end that make any sense, that you can, kind of it does. So

 

Will Bachman  19:21

yeah, with the when these new techniques come out, or new tools or new devices, how do you learn how to do it? How do you get trained in it? Is it just trial and hopefully not too much error? Or do do they have medical device reps who come to your operating area and sort of give tips.

 

Michael S. Chen  19:43

Yeah, it’s a little bit of all of that. I mean, certainly fellowship is probably when you’re learning the most, most new techniques. But then after that, it’s important to try and continue to stay up to date. And with that, medical device reps you know can come out there. Been pretty well trained in some of the techniques or equipment. Sometimes it just, is just us getting in on cases with other doctors who’ve done it, either, you know, going to other hospitals for training, or those, those doctors may come to your hospital for, you know, to help train. Yeah. So some, sometimes even actually, you know, these this day and age. Sometimes you can learn online as well, you know, YouTube videos, yeah. I mean, honestly, yeah, there’s a whole different, you know, many different ways of learning. Oh,

 

Will Bachman  20:30

okay, tell me a bit about running a medical practice like an interventional cardiology practice as a business. It sounds like your your group was recently acquired. Maybe start there. Sounds like a lot of larger healthcare companies are acquiring practices of physicians. What’s the what’s the drivers for a group of physicians like yours to, you know, to take that offer as opposed to staying independent?

 

Michael S. Chen  21:06

Yeah, sure. So you know, one is it, as time has gone on, the business and medicine has gotten more and more complex, if you imagine, like all the insurance companies out there needing contracts with each insurance company. So, you know, one principle there said, in general, the larger you are, the more bargain bargaining power you have. You know, if you’re a small group of five or 10 cardiologists, it’s probably easier for the insurance company say, Well, you know, we will pay you a lower rate, and we’re not too interested in, you know, if you’re not in your net network, you know, you’re not in our network where, you know, with there’s some, I guess, strength in numbers, so that’s probably part of it. And you know, with that, maybe a little bit more financial security with, you know, with a bigger, you know, umbrex umbrella organization. I mean, there’s also also some, you know, some drawbacks too. I mean, it’s nice being, you know, your own boss. And, you know, if you’re truly your own boss, you know, five or 10 doctors, you have more autonomy. So you’re kind of balancing the autonomy you have in private practice versus, more probably, you know, Finance, Financial security, with with being proper to hospital or organization. There’s also a couple other, you know, trends which are interesting. I mean, one is that there’s a lot of private equity, private equity investing in physician groups, year groups, anesthesia, cardiology as well. And, I mean, we know, we are not with private equity. We actually got, you know, we’re not employees of a hospital system. But, you know, private equity is kind of an interesting thing there too, because we see worry about, you know, as far as private equity, obviously, they want to return on their investment. How old is that? Mesh with health care and trying to provide the best care possible, which sometimes may cost, you know, may cost more money.

 

Will Bachman  22:56

And tell me some more about like, what was it like running it as a say, I guess a group of five to 10 positions, tell me about some of the, you know, stressors that we as lay people might not be thinking about.

 

Michael S. Chen  23:08

Yeah, sure. I mean, yeah, stressors, you know, I’d say it’s really cash flow, because, you know, the smaller company you you know, just like you know you’re responsible for, you know, we’re partners, you’re responsible for your employees. And you know you have to meet payroll, and sometimes beginning the year, as you know, patients haven’t met their deductibles yet. You have to get the cash more from the patients, rather from insurance companies. It can sometimes be, you know, a little little dicey on the casual part, you know, point of view, trying to make sure you’re able to make make payroll. I guess another thing would be also just, you know, besides sort of the insurance part of things, there’s also electronic medical records and other sort of government regulations, and those can be expensive, could be harder to to meet. If you’re a small group of physicians, I suppose having a big enterprise trying to make sure you’re jumping through through all the hoops, have the proper electronic medical record, etc. So, I mean, overall, it’s been, it’s been a good, you know, a good, good fit so far. And you know, then been, been pretty happy with that.

 

Will Bachman  24:24

It seems to be the case that cardiologists because the dollar value of the procedures is higher. It seems that you’re able to spend more time with patients than maybe like a primary care physician. Boy, when I go to the primary care physician, they’re like, in and out in two minutes. Yeah, they look at you, everything, okay, you know, and then boom, they’re gone. Whereas I’ve observed cardiologists can spend a bit more time and, you know, talk to the patient. Is probably because on the back end, you know, maybe you don’t get so much for the office visit. But when you do one of these procedures, I don’t know if you look at the bill. Before the insurance like, well, you know, 30k 50k or, you know, like some large 10k and some large numbers, is that the, is that, right? Like, the economics allow you to spend more time with with the patient in the normal office visit type thing.

 

Michael S. Chen  25:13

I mean, interesting. I’d say I’m not sure about that, to be honest with you. Yeah, I would just so I can’t really speak from a primary care point of view, I mean, but I mean, certainly I have heard of some primaries where it’s, yeah, they’re in and out, and others can take a long time. I say, in general for us, we’re probably spending like, around. I mean, I’m booked like, every 15 minutes. So, I mean, it’s an adequate comment. I mean, I don’t think I try and really sit down to patients and, you know, if they have a lot of questions, and then it will be more than 15 minutes, I try to make sure all questions are answered before they leave the room. So I never want to feel like patients are rushed. And you know, some patients, you know they’re if they’re regular folk, they don’t take quite as long, either from the reimbursement point of view. I mean, you’d be surprised actually, because, you know, when you get this big bill for your procedure law, that is kind of what’s getting paid to the hospital. As far as what position actually gets paid is actually a lot less than that you might think. So, I’d say, from a Kardashian point of view, there is, I guess, extra income coming from not necessarily, like the catheterizations, but maybe, like, from doing other procedures like echocardiograms or stress tests, probably some extra, you know, sort of revenue there. Oh, yeah, and, but as far as, like, you know, allowing for more time compared to primary care docs, I’m not sure about that. I’d say most of us are probably around every 15 minutes, or sometimes every half 20 minutes, half hour with patients. Hopefully they feel like that’s an adequate amount of time, but it’s not. It won’t be like an hour, you know, hour long visit or anything. Now, if you want that, you probably need like a concierge physician, and yeah,

 

Will Bachman  26:58

outside of medicine, tell us what else you have going on in your life. It sounds like you keep pretty active in terms of exercise.

 

Michael S. Chen  27:05

Yeah, exactly. So, I guess it sounds probably, you know, one of the main things, you know, love going running, working out. Now, we’ve gone on runs before during the reunion. That was a great time catching up with you. So, but this is actually a fun story, I guess it was, let’s see, 22,020 2120 Yeah, 21 you had some friends in the neighborhood. They said, Oh, you know, you should, you know, run a 5k and, I mean, which wasn’t a big deal, I keep in decent shape, but, you know, hadn’t really run 5k for the purpose of running 5k so I said, kind of sure, you know, so we all met up, kind of ran the five years, like a local 5k and then I think it was like, and that was like, Labor Day weekend, and then a month or two later, a month later, get a something from the mail from the race, and said, Oh, you came in. I think it was like first place in your age division. That point. It was like age 50 to 54 the gift certificate from Panera for 20 bucks. Like, this is kind of cool. And then it was then probably, like November of 21 got an email, and email said, you qualify. And this is again, I guess I was 50 at the time, so kind of in the age 50 to 54 group you call qualify for the National Senior Games. Like, oh, that’s cool, but I don’t want to be a senior. I’m only 50, so I looked into it some more. And I mean, it’s actually a big, big production, like these National Senior Games, they call it maybe, like 15,000 people, you know, go to them, and I don’t know, they’re competing all kinds of stuff, like a 5k 10k but then also pickleball, tennis, track and field, ping pong, basketball, softball, yeah, you name it, and it’s actually, it was actually, it’s been fun. So what I did was I was like, All right, well, you know, so next one was in that was in November 21 and and then the next one coming up, which I qualified for, was in May, 2022 in Fort Lauderdale. So I was talking with my wife, Hey, you want to come come down to me on but you know, May is school time, so can’t really do that. You know, kids have time in high school. So I said, Hey mom, you know, you want to come on down, you know, cheer me on. And she’s like, Okay. And then we looked more into it, and it turns out that there’s another event called the power walk, which isn’t just walking fast power walk. You don’t have to qualify for it. And my mom’s in pretty good shape. She was, I think, 70, maybe 77 at the time or so. So she actually entered it as well. Yeah. And it was great. We both competed in Fort Lauderdale on 22 and then, because of covid, got a little screwed up in terms of you just every odd year. So, so then we actually did it again in 2023 in Pittsburgh, she did the 5k power walk. I did the 5k and 10k road race, and actually in Pittsburgh, most recently, in July, 23 actually came in second, got a silver medal. That’s awesome. Yeah, and there’s an. These National Senior gains. Wow,

 

Will Bachman  30:01

incredible. What is your current time for a 5k

 

Michael S. Chen  30:06

5k I guess I’m probably doing, I mean, I know there’s a lot of people out there listening, but probably even faster than me. I think it’s more that, probably not, that people show up in in our age groups. But I get, I don’t remember, I know, for the 10k when I ran it in 23 is, like, right around little bit over, like, maybe seven minute miles or so, like, 703, so, man, it’s good, but it’s not like, you know, track and field good or anything. And 5k I guess maybe would be in the maybe 650 range or so per mile, hopefully. Well, see, I actually have a 5k coming up on Labor Day week. Is that the same 5k Labor Day One? And this is fun, because this time my son’s running it too. So yeah, yeah, it would be his second 5k he’ll be, he’ll run with friends, but they do have, like, a father and son, sort of like team. Last year we came in second, so, you know. So we’ll see how things go this year. Sounds

 

Will Bachman  30:55

like your son’s a runner too. Those are some pretty legitimate times. I mean, you know, maybe not for a high school track meet or something, but that’s pretty for for folks in our age, you are going to leave me, well, very far behind.

 

Michael S. Chen  31:08

Yeah, not at all. So, yeah, anybody that’s listening on, look, look it up. National Senior Games, maybe, maybe we’ll try and qualify. And, you know, meet up in 25 it’s in Iowa, for what

 

Will Bachman  31:19

that’s worth, all right, and bring your parents for the power walk.

 

Michael S. Chen  31:23

That’s right.

 

Will Bachman  31:25

Mike, tell me about any courses or professors that you had at Harvard that continue to resonate with you, either, you know, don’t have to be professional, maybe a side interest that you developed, or something that was important professionally.

 

Michael S. Chen  31:39

Yeah,

 

31:40

I’d say, you know, one

 

Michael S. Chen  31:42

course that kind of resonated was, it was a lot of work. It was actually my senior thesis. And with that, I guess my advisor was Richard it was in biology as a bio major, and advisor was Richard Taylor. And then had a TA who was super helpful with my thesis. Well, Tom Roberts, so I actually looked at locomotion, energetic and locomotion, bipeds and quadrupeds. So sounds fancy. What it basically involved was, you know, bipeds, two legged creatures and quadrupeds, four legged creatures, trying to compare the the energetics and mechanics of of such and we basically had it was at a Concord fuel station, about 20 minutes away from from Harvard. They had a beautiful facility out there with treadmills and all that. And we actually, actually ended up putting in, putting these teacup terriers, you know, for good animals on the treadmill, measure their oxygen consumption, videotape them, look at their biomechanics and and then compare that to turkeys, and putting turkeys to look at animals on the treadmill and kind of making, you know, measurements of as well. It was, it was a fun, but crazy project. I mean, the thing I remember is that with the turkeys, well, actually, with either animal, you know, if you you have to kind of close the the treadmill. So you figure, like, a, you got a treadmill, you have like, a kind of a wall on one side of it, you know, it was, like, probably some kind of, and then plastic glass on the, on the on one end, so you can actually videotape the the animal, and you have, like, probably a little kind of gated something on the front, and then I’m at the back so that, you know, so the animal can’t go anywhere once on the treadmill, they gotta be running. And we kind of, you know, otherwise, you’ll get off the treadmill and run around the lab and, you know, get them in, you know, going a couple meters per second, probably. And thing I remember most of that, you know, it’s not necessarily our conclusions. There’s more. Especially the turkey, they tend to poop on the treadmill. So if I’m behind the treadmill, there’s poop coming at me at a couple meters per second, and it was good times, Turkey’s on a treadmill. Turkey’s on a treadmill, yep,

 

Will Bachman  33:51

and, um, that must have been a bit challenging. You know, we’ve kept turkeys for at least one year. We kept turkeys and that we also have chickens out here at the farm, and they are, maybe you can correct me here as a scientist, but they seem to be very dumb animals. Uh, yeah, I believe that we had, we had a couple all. We raised six turkeys, and five of them died. I think that they died it rained and they looked up in the sky. I think I might be making this up, but it rained, they looked up in the sky, and I think they drowned because they were looking up the sky after the rain. Well, all I can say is, after the rainstorm, five of them were dead, and I don’t think it was lightning. I think that they looked up in the sky, opened their mouth, and they just drowned. But they seem to be kind of, I don’t what was, what was your impression with turkeys on the treadmill? Pretty, pretty dumb animals, pretty stupid, yeah,

 

Michael S. Chen  34:46

pretty, pretty dumb, pretty stubborn animals. Yeah, you know, over there that the standard with the work of animals, we put on these kind of red, you know, zip up overalls to kind of protect ourselves from the animals from the pool. Who have gloves on and, yeah, they were not, they were not smart creatures, strong

 

Will Bachman  35:05

though. I mean, turkeys are no joke to, you know, pretty strong. What? What did you learn from having turkeys run on a treadmill?

 

Michael S. Chen  35:15

What I learned so, yeah, I mean, we kind of looked at, you know, the sort of mechanics of, you know, the of their locomotion, found that they actually ended up being, you know, pretty, you know, efficient at running. And I think actually the thing I remember most about just the whole project, well, I mean, one was really the collaboration. I mean, my T Tom Roberts, he was amazing as far as just helping guide me through the whole process. But then I guess, you know, I was, you know, fortunate up to have gotten like, a hoops Prize for it, which I guess was some of the top pieces. And, I mean, which is great, but it was more like kind of cool, because then I guess those hoops prize pieces end up in Lamont library. You know, you remember Lamont and, like, you know, next year or two, going back for whatever, you know, reunion, you know, going to Lamont. Oh, there’s actually my thesis right there, you know, on the shelf. So, yeah, which is a pretty, pretty memorable experience.

 

Will Bachman  36:15

Congratulations. That’s amazing on the hoops. So, Mike, where can listeners find you online, if they wanted to, you know, look you up or catch up

 

Michael S. Chen  36:27

with you. Yeah? So, yeah, I’d love to catch up with anybody out there. Please drop along. I guess, yeah, I’m with events health, healthcare. So you know Michael Chen at events healthcare, or probably email there is m, C, H, E, N, the number two@adventisthealthcare.com A, D, B, N, T I, S, T H, E, A L T H, C, A, R, e.com, and please, you know, drop along if you’re in the GitHub. Good Maryland area. Love to catch up with anybody, you know. I mean, it’s, you know, these Harvard bonds are really tight. I mean, feel fortunate, you know, kept in touch with, with, with, you know, my roommates. You know, Steve camp, Phil Hartley, Sean Kelly, Clark, Patrick, you know Matt, Matt Damon drew bent and Josh Brown. And you know, we still get together every so often. And, you know, got together in New York in December for actually, we keep it up with our Proctor, Keith Moon as well. He was our proctor in in Matthews. So it’s kind of surprised sees his birthday party for him, and he was pretty shocked when we were all gathered in a bar in New York City in December. Uh, last December. So, yeah, any listeners out there love to catch up with you. And you know, these Harvard ties are really will keep us together. All right,

 

Will Bachman  37:42

congratulations on the silver medal. Great catching up with you, Mike,

 

Michael S. Chen  37:49

thanks so much for the great seeing you will you.