{"podcast":{"title":"Ground Truths","slug":"ground-truths-6775458","podcast_index_feed_id":6775458,"rss_url":"https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/587835/s/119690.rss","website_url":"https://erictopol.substack.com/s/podcasts","image_url":"https://substackcdn.com/feed/podcast/587835/s/119690/7846ac2b5f4bca0979630aef836f7df7.jpg","author":"Eric Topol","episode_count":90,"summary":"Facts, data, and analytics about biomedical matters.","last_synced_at":"2026-06-27T04:20:21.652805+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/ground-truths-6775458"},"episode":{"title":"Owen Tripp: Why Can't I Find and Get to the Right Doctor?","slug":"owen-tripp-why-can-t-i-find-and-get-to-the-right-doctor","published_at":"2025-07-13T23:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/ground-truths-6775458/owen-tripp-why-can-t-i-find-and-get-to-the-right-doctor","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/ground-truths-6775458","url":"https://erictopol.substack.com/p/why-cant-i-find-the-right-doctor","audio_url":"https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/168110344/44a521e3a914790474225f605a990808.mp3","summary":"Eric Topol ( 00:06 ): Hello, this is Eric Topol from Ground Truths, and I'm delighted to welcome Owen Tripp, who is a CEO of Included Health . And Owen, I'd like to start off if you would, with the story from 2016, because really what I'm interested in is patients and how to get the right doctor. So can you tell us about when you lost your hearing in your right ear back, what, nine years ago or so? Owen Tripp ( 00:38 ): Yeah, it's amazing to say nine years, Eric, but obviously as your listeners will soon understand a pretty vivid memory in my past. So I had been working as I do and noticed a loss of hearing in my right ear. I had never experienced any hearing loss before, and I went twice actually to a sort of national primary care chain that now owned by Amazon actually. And they described it as eustachian tube dysfunction, which is a pretty benign common thing that basically meant that my tubes were blocked and that I needed to have some drainage. They recommended Sudafed to no effect. And it was only a couple weeks later where I was walking some of the senior medical team at my company down to the San Francisco Giants game. And I was describing this experience of hearing loss and I said I was also losing a little bit of sensation in the right side of my face. And they said, that is not eustachian tube dysfunction. And well, I can let the story unfold from there. But basically my colleagues helped me quickly put together a plan to get this properly diagnosed and treated. The underlying condition is called vestibular schwannoma, even more commonly known as an acoustic neuroma. So a pretty rare benign brain tumor that exists on the vestibular nerve, and it would've cost my life had it not been treated. Eric Topol ( 02:28 ): So from what I gather, you saw an ENT physici…","meta_description":"Eric Topol ( 00:06 ): Hello, this is Eric Topol from Ground Truths, and I'm delighted to welcome Owen Tripp, who is a CEO of Included Health . And Owen, I…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":1947,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/ground-truths-6775458/episodes/owen-tripp-why-can-t-i-find-and-get-to-the-right-doctor/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/ground-truths-6775458/owen-tripp-why-can-t-i-find-and-get-to-the-right-doctor.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}