Becker’s Healthcare Podcast Ryan Ribeira, MD, MPH, Medical Director and Clinical Assistant Professor at Stanford Health Care
Dec 3, 2025
Ryan Ribeira, MD, MPH, is a medical director and clinical assistant professor at Stanford Health Care, specializing in emergency medicine and health tech. In this discussion, he highlights how health systems can tackle capacity issues through virtual visits and predictive analytics. Ribeira emphasizes the shift towards hospital-at-home programs, which enhance care delivery while reducing ED congestion. He also underscores the importance of efficiency in diagnostics and triage, advocating for tech investments that can transform patient care.
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National Boarding And Rising Acuity
- Emergency departments face rising patient acuity and chronic boarding that reduce available inpatient capacity.
- Ryan Ribeira says this creates a systemic challenge of sicker patients with fewer usable beds.
Use Virtual Tracks To Save Beds
- Funnel appropriate ED arrivals into virtual visit tracks to avoid using physical beds.
- Ryan Ribeira says telemedicine carts can treat many patients on-site or prevent ED arrivals from SNFs.
Measure Efficiency Beyond Throughput
- Virtual zones may show lower patients-per-hour but free physical geography and patient time.
- Ribeira reports the virtual zone handles about 10% of daily arrivals without needing beds and is very popular.