Economic Observer Reporter Zhang Ling One afternoon before National Day, Zeng Gao got off the operating table, walked to the lounge, turned on his mobile phone, and replied to the patient who was looking for him to consult on the Internet. An hour later, he entered the operating room again. He still has two operations to complete, and he is optimistic that he will get off work at 10 o'clock in the evening.
Zeng Gao is the main founder and person in charge of the Children's Neurosurgery Center of Xuanwu Hospital, Capital Medical University. More than ten years ago, China's Internet medical care was just starting out, and he became a first-timer and treated his children through the Internet.
In recent years, online consultation platforms have accelerated their development under the influence of policy support and the COVID-19 epidemic. Zeng Gao became an "Internet celebrity doctor", with 130,000 followers on Douyin , and the total number of visitors to Haodafu Online on the online consultation platform reached 1.26 million.
On the Internet, parents in need across the country were able to find Zeng Gao. Their children often suffer from diseases such as childhood brain tumors, cerebrovascular malformation and . In China, it is not easy to find doctors who can treat and operate these children.
Zeng Gao interacted with the patient, and they were all done in different surgical gaps, coffee time, and meal time. According to big data statistics, he spends an average of one hour a day. In order to calm the anxiety of the sick child's parents, he sometimes responded in the middle of the night.
Famous and Benefit
1 has been in contact with Internet medical very early. In 2009, he settled in the Good Doctor Online, which has just been established for three years.
When I first registered an account, Zeng Gao did not use it often, so I simply stopped using it after one or two years. The reason is very simple, he doesn’t like to talk about money. He felt that online consultations were controversial and instinctively resisted this type of platform: "It's like making money on it, I don't like this method very much."
About three years ago, I heard that the graphic consultations could be set to "0 yuan" without charge, so he started logging in again and set them for permanent free. It was also during that time that the new coronavirus epidemic began to break out. A large number of patients flocked to the Internet, and the consultation platform became the "second battlefield" for the fight against the epidemic. In just a few months, Internet medical care has completed the most extensive user education and market popularity in history.
In June 2021, Zeng Gao joined Douyin and has released more than 1,200 videos and more than 130,000 fans. He doesn't have much energy to put on Douyin, and he records it twice a month, once for two hours, and then edits it into multiple short videos by a professional team and publishes it every day. At that time, he would even reply to every private message on TikTok for consultation.
Douyin is not a medical consultation platform. A few months ago, the team suggested that Zeng Gao not reply to fans' messages. He felt relieved, "the quality of life will improve immediately."
Zeng Gao and this team only have an intersection in the workflow. He knew that after the account was operated, the team would have their own way of making money, but it had nothing to do with him.
"It's not that I'm so noble. If someone asks you for directions, will you take care of people for money? I am a doctor. I spend a lot of my time treating people. I don't have to pay economic returns if I spend time."
Zeng Gao made a rough calculation with the Economic Observer: According to the current online consultation volume, if the fee is charged at 100 yuan per patient, he can get an additional income of more than 20,000 yuan per month.
"Isn't this a small number? Will there be times when I feel moved?" Hearing the reporter's question, Zeng Gao smiled: "The more I say, I feel more moved, haha, but people are trustless, I can't stand it, I'll let go of everything, and I will never charge. This is great. More money will not make me happier, and less will not make me hungry."
Zeng Gao has gradually become an in-depth user of the online consultation platform. There is a special folder "inquiry" on his mobile phone, which has placed more than a dozen online consultation platforms, including Haodafu Doctor, Baidu Health, WeChat Doctor , Youlai Doctor , etc. Zeng Gao felt that in this era, excellent doctors can grow faster with the help of Internet medical care and let patients know themselves faster.
Sometimes, when you see some children who are misdiagnosed, mistreated or have complications, Zeng Gao will regret those children. If you do it yourself, there may be different results: "There are too many wrong information on the Internet that confuses the audio-visual of the children's parents. I need to make my own voice. I have confidence. I believe I am a rare and excellent doctor."
Neurosurgery is a high-risk surgery, and the occurrence of complications cannot be completely avoided anyway. Zeng Gao said: "Every doctor has a grave in his heart." His requirement for himself is to control the proportion of complications in the surgery below 1%. He also hopes to lead his team into China's best pediatric neurosurgery team, no doubt about it.
Doctor and patient
Zeng Gao was blocked by two gangsters at the door of the emergency room, choked and spit out. "That feeling is not just grievance, but also humiliation."
came online, and this form of harm became online violence . Because there is no charge, Zeng Gao has a "trump card": when he occasionally encounters a very nonsensical, trouble-prone, tangled, and irritating consultation partner, he just refuses to reply.
is on Haodafu Online. Zeng Gao has nearly 500 post-diagnosis reviews, almost all of which are praises. But Zeng Gaogui cares about criticism evaluations. If the scolding makes sense, reflect on it. If there is no reason, find opportunities to eliminate misunderstandings. If there is no reason, ignore paranoid and insults. "On the Internet, you can pull out a mule or a horse." Zeng Gao believes that every doctor has self-esteem. If you want a good reputation, the transparency of online evaluation will definitely stimulate doctors to improve the quality of medical care: "We must learn from and learn from colleagues. We cannot just see the praises of doctors during meetings and communication, but it is more realistic to see the evaluations of patients on the Internet."
Zeng Gao often meets uneasy parents. One question was explained three times, and the family members were still asking it repeatedly, and Zeng Gao couldn't help but get irritated. Sometimes I went out of the clinic for a whole afternoon, and in the last few patients, I was so arrogant that I could continue to speak. There are basically no such worries on the
consultation platform. Zeng Gao wrote hundreds of common terms for different diseases, which were very detailed, including films, diseases, outpatients, surgery, thanks, and rumors, which made his reply efficient. "In the outpatient clinic, all these have to be explained to everyone."
Zeng Gao can also choose whether to reply or when to reply according to his mood. His average reply time on Good Doctor Online is 4 hours, and the patient's evaluation is 5 points, which is not easy to achieve. During the outpatient clinic of
, Zeng Gao often encountered patients with the wrong number, and even old men and women appeared in the clinic outside the children's gods. Some people came from another place and lined up to enter the door and found that they had the wrong number. Zeng Gao was so amused that he could only suggest that they return the account and tell them whose account they should hang. "There is almost no such embarrassment in online consultations. Both doctors and patients are very efficient."
In the field of pediatric neurosurgery, many diseases require early detection and early treatment. Parents do not have corresponding knowledge and it is already very late to discover symptoms. After doing popular science on Douyin, many parents discovered problems with their children because they watched Zeng Gao’s videos.
In September 2022, a mother recorded the medical treatment process in the comments of Good Doctor Online. Her child suffered from cerebellar tonsil hernia accompanied by syringomyelia. She saw Zeng Gao’s popular science on the disease on Douyin. She had a first diagnosis at Good Doctor, and then went to Beijing for an interview and surgery. She is now recovering well.
Change
Zeng Gao was the earliest important member of the Chinese Doctor Volunteer Organization. He led the volunteer doctor team to provide medical assistance in Guinea, Africa, , Ethiopia, .
If it weren't for work, Zeng Gao might not have set foot in these two countries in his entire life. In Guinea, children aged 14 and under account for as much as 45% of the total population, but there is no pediatric neurosurgeon in the country, and the medical level is very poor. Children who need surgery are often abandoned by their parents.
In China, this situation is getting fewer and fewer, but pediatric neurosurgeons are still not enough. Zeng Gao introduced that there are about 260 million children under the age of 14 in the country, and only 200 to 300 people are truly engaged in pediatric neurosurgery, and there is only one pediatric neurosurgeon for every 10 million children on average.Zeng Gao's activity on the Internet is not unrelated to this current situation.
44-year-old Zeng Gao is often praised for his handsome and young appearance, which makes him quite confused. "I am young and I am very at a disadvantage as a doctor. Everyone likes old experts." In order to look mature, Zeng Gao has been wearing a beard for a year.
Zeng Gao’s parents are both retired doctors and have never been exposed to online consultations when they were in their careers. Sometimes, Zeng Gao would introduce Internet medical treatment to the elderly. When they were sick, Zeng Gao would also check for suitable doctors on the consultation platform.
Zeng Gao showed his WeChat address book, which contains more than 1,500 patients and three large groups of 500 people. These patients will ask him for consultation on WeChat, and he will take time to reply. This almost completely eliminated the last boundary between work and life, Zeng Gao was very tired.
In the past two years, he basically no longer added the patient's WeChat, but asked them to consult for free online and respond in a concentrated manner - the boundaries are slowly being rebuilt. "Internet medical care has replaced some of the functions of maintaining order that should have been achieved by hierarchical referrals, making doctors and patients more efficient."
has a large number of consultations on the Internet, and many doctors have their own teams. Zeng Gao's team consists of his three subordinate doctors and two doctor assistants, who mainly answer non-medical questions about beds, medical treatment procedures, etc. About 90% of medical problems were answered by Zeng Gao himself. What I feel more deeply is that with the advancement of Internet consultation, patient follow-up and management have become more and more convenient. In the past, outpatient clinics "rely on the weather for food", and many patients disappeared after being discharged. Now, Zeng Gao often conducts follow-up visits through consultation platforms to understand the patient's recent situation.
inevitably, the working time of the last high becomes longer invisibly.
Zeng Gao likes to read Jin Yong , Lao Zhuang, watch dramas, and play badminton, but the seamless connection between offline and online work has squeezed his living space to a very small extent. He played football about once a week, and he only had time to watch the American drama "Prison Break" ten years after it was broadcast. When he was following " Game of Thrones ", he hurriedly watched the commentary version.
In the corridor of the Children's Neurosurgery Center of Xuanwu Hospital, the children wrote thank you letters and cartoon portraits painted by Zeng Gao all over the walls. He put away his cell phone, hurriedly passed by here, and walked towards the operating room.
