Personalized Healthcare Through Compounding and Telehealth with Strive Pharmacy’s Andrea Daniels, Director of Clinical Services, and Kaleo Alo, Vice President of Business Development

[00:00:01] This podcast is produced by Outcomes Rocket, your healthcare exclusive digital marketing agency. Outcomes Rocket exists to help healthcare organizations like yours to maximize their impact and accelerate growth. Visit outcomesrocket.com or text us at 312-224-9945.

[00:00:33] Hey everyone, welcome back to The Beat Podcast, recorded live here at Health in Las Vegas 2024. Today I have the privilege of hosting two amazing leaders in healthcare. First, I want to introduce Andrea Daniels. She is the Director of Clinical Services at Strive Pharmacy. And I also have Kaleo Alo with us, who is the VP of Business Development at Strive Pharmacy as well. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Thank you for having us.

[00:01:02] Yes, thank you. It's been an exciting event and I just want to kick it off by asking you, what brings you to health? So we are a compounding pharmacy, obviously. We're focused on personalized care, tailored medicine for our patients. And just excited to share everything we do with the health community. Yeah, and one of the things that we're also really excited about is that one of our big objectives is, first, just like creating this movement, right, around compounding.

[00:01:29] And personalized, optimized care is so important to us at Strive and everybody that works for our organization and also just our providers and clinics that we work with. We believe so heartily that it's this community that we're trying to create in this culture. We're trying to create to improve and educate the masses. And that's why we're here. I love it. Thanks for sharing that. And it's great to have you guys here. There's certainly a lot of opportunity for taking costs out of the system, tailoring care.

[00:01:58] And you guys are at the forefront of this. So really excited to have you both on today's podcast to uncover what you're doing. Tell us a little bit about your company. So Strive Pharmacy was initiated about six years ago by Mike Walker and Nate Hill. They initiated Strive Pharmacy with the goal of offering personalized care. And as I said, tailored care for our patients.

[00:02:19] So as Strive has changed and evolved, we've grown into just a very large community with the focus of people and care of those people. Yeah. And I think one of the things that really resonated with me when I joined Strive is the founders of this company, Nate Hill and Mike Walker, really truly believed in this vision that everyone should essentially have access to compound medications.

[00:02:46] And I know Mike, when he was in pharmacy school, he just fell in love with compounding. And that really resonates, I think, with our focus in like enhancement to new formulary and products that really help enhance. And really, I would say this more proactive approach to medicine versus sick care.

[00:03:06] And so that's been a vision of both Nate and Mike to be able to educate and make sure that people feel that from us and have the education and really the tools to be successful when it comes to personalized care. That's great. I appreciate that. It's really great to know about you guys. And that personalized care, one of the ways to get there is telehealth. So can you talk to us about the advantages that telehealth offers for patients seeking compound medications, especially in terms of access to personalized treatment plans?

[00:03:35] Yeah, I can start on that one. Cleo is very involved with our telehealth community, but patients are looking for access to care. Not every patient is interested in going and being seen in front of a provider or whatnot. And telehealth offers a patient to speak with a provider over the phone, over a computer or Zoom. So they may be more comfortable in that situation. It might be something that is more timely for them.

[00:04:00] The telehealth company can then help them find pharmacies like Strive Pharmacy, a pharmacy that they've taken a lot of time to vet, a pharmacy that they've asked all of the questions prior to even initiating their first prescription. So they can ensure that their patients are getting the best quality care. That's great. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. I'm just going to echo what Andrea is saying.

[00:04:23] But I think one of the things that also makes us very unique is that we have this very vertically integrated approach to providing those solutions for not only just patients, but also that experience, that customer experience with our telehealth partners.

[00:04:37] And so some of the solutions that we offer that helps to enhance that experience is personalized white label packaging and inserts is something that we're working on with some of our partners and innovating just our ability to offer these solutions for patients that don't necessarily want to go meet with a provider in person. Right.

[00:04:57] There's a lot of telehealth partners that we work with, again, provide that sort of async experience if that's the type of patient that wants that experience or vice versa, more virtual experience with a provider and that they can actually virtually see and meet with in person.

[00:05:12] So we want to offer those solutions, but also providing that vertical integration with not only just on the technology side, but our pharmacists and also clinical specialists that will help providers know exactly what to do, how to offer those clinical solutions and like really product solutions at that patient level. That's great. And I appreciate you sharing the approach and the vertical integration there.

[00:05:37] So staying on the telehealth theme, how does telehealth enhance the ability of your compounding pharmacy to collaborate with functional medicine practitioners and creating personalized wellness plans? Yeah, I'll start with that one. And that goes for the clinical team. So as the director of clinical services, we've spent a lot of time kind of tailoring medications and determining different formularies that would be best for patients. And we're able to share those with our telehealth partners.

[00:06:02] So you'll find one of us clinicians on the phone day in and day out working hand in hand with the telehealth providers to help them find the most optimized functional care for their patients. So that's a service that we provide that may not be found elsewhere. Just the constant communication, the constant education. That's one of our biggest goals. Yeah, that's really important. Keeping people informed and understanding the entire process. Love that.

[00:06:29] What role does patient education play in your telehealth services, particularly when it comes to understanding and managing personalized compounded medications? I would say that one of the things that we've noticed with a lot of our clinics, telehealth clinics, is that patients sometimes are a little bit confused because they don't know how to properly inject or dose. Or they don't understand a titration schedule or they don't understand a titration schedule or there's just not enough education or materials that come with their package.

[00:06:57] And unfortunately, there's a lot of patients are harmed from that process or don't have the best experience. Or again, heaven forbid, they're going to the hospital for whatever reason or another. And I've known personally some friends that have been through that experience with through a provider or through that lack of education. And it's disheartening to see that. But I think that's something that we really strive. I'm going to throw a little strive in there.

[00:07:25] But we're striving to educate our patients and make sure that our providers have all the tools that they need so that we can avoid that risk. And we've spent a lot of time on that really in the last, probably the last quarter as far as creating material, like beautiful material that is going to help a patient from the moment they open their box until through their first, if they're doing GLP-1s, through their first injection or whatever that may be. Unfortunately, for a lot of our patients, I am the face of the video on the QR code.

[00:07:55] They're so lucky. They have to listen to me. I always like to chuckle on that. But I know a number of people have reached out to me, even employees, and they're like, I was nervous. I was scared. I didn't have the education. And I was able to watch the content that Strive provided and had great comfort and success. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. These medications, you need clear instructions. And oftentimes there's side effects. So did I do it right? The assurance is really important.

[00:08:23] How has the adoption of telehealth influenced patient adherence and satisfaction with personalized compounded therapies? It gives them access. So they have access to a provider. A lot of these telehealth providers also have great programs where they not only have access to the provider, but sometimes to a nurse on staff or to some other part of the telehealth staff. And then through Strive Pharmacy, we are able to support the telehealth company and also support the patients.

[00:08:52] We have customer service agents always available for those questions. We have pharmacists that are able to take any phone call. So we're, at Strive, we're able to provide a lot of benefit for both the provider and the patient. And I believe a lot of these telehealth companies have built a great foundation for their patients as well. That's great. Thank you for that. Yeah, it makes a big difference. You need that support. You can't just send people stuff and say, good luck. Yeah. Absolutely.

[00:09:21] I love how intentional your company and the people on your company have been to provide this support. The meetings theme is bold. And being bold to transform care is critical. I can see you guys have been bold in the approach. Can you share anything else that you want to share around how you've done it? Well, that's a loaded question. Yeah. Get ready. Okay. Okay. So let's go.

[00:09:46] But I think that's one of the things that, again, we love about Strive is that we are bold and we want to be disruptive in a way that's not very cliche, but it's just in a way that's allowing people to understand that there is a better way. There could be a better way about personalizing your approach to medicine. And I could personally even think about my background and my family's background and just some of the challenges we experienced.

[00:10:12] And I wish years ago that we had access to this information about compounding and that we knew that we could have been a little bit more proactive about some of the things that we experienced than even some of my older family members. And I just love that right now. One of the things that we want to do is continue to fight for compounding. Now, we are being a little bit more bold. I think maybe a year or two ago, we're just, we're a little bit, let's just say a little bit more timid about our approach.

[00:10:37] But I think one of the things we're going to do in 2025 is we're going to really come out speaking to, I'm going to say it, but there's a little bit of greed out there and there's competing forces for good out there that don't allow patients to really be educated or even providers be educated about functional medicine and really what Strive is all about. And we definitely are advocates for our patients. We're advocates for pharmacy. We're advocates for wellness. And we are bold. We make bold statements and we do it for the patient's good.

[00:11:06] We do it so they understand options, understand compounding pharmacy. There's a lot of questions behind it. Patients can be a little bit timid to move towards the compounding realm. But as Kaleo was saying, 2025, we're going to strive forward. We're going to move past some of the misinformation around compounding pharmacy and just prove the benefit that we will have for patients, for providers, just for the overall good of health care. I love that.

[00:11:33] Yeah, we had a podcast yesterday and the guy said, it's time to stop saying, oh, that's unfortunate and start saying that's unacceptable. And I think that's a bold decision you guys have made for this space. And I'm excited to see the progress that you guys have made and the vision for the future. If people listening want to learn more, where can they reach out to you? They can always reach out to strivepharmacy.com. And all the information to contact us is right there.

[00:12:02] A lot of the information about who we are, where we're going, where we've been. It's all there. I do have to say strive pharmacy does things responsibly while we're bold and while we're moving forward. We're very mindful and respectful. So I think that you have given us the opportunity to show our boldness, but to also show our compassion for health care. But strivepharmacy.com, that's where you'll find us. Love it. She's right. I love it.

[00:12:31] Well, I definitely appreciate the opportunity to connect with both of you. Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for tuning in to this awesome podcast with Andrea Daniels, director of clinical services, and Kaleo Allo, VP of business development at Strive Pharmacy. They've given us bold ideas to strive for a better future. Love it. And thank you guys for being on the show. Thank you for having us. Yeah. Thank you for your time.

[00:13:16] This podcast is produced by Outcomes Rocket. Your healthcare exclusive digital marketing agency. Outcomes Rocket exists to help healthcare organizations like yours to maximize their impact and accelerate growth. Visit outcomesrocket.com or text us at 312-224-9945.