Two Pharmacists Who Want You On Fewer Drugs

Meet Kevin and Donna: the pharmacists making the case for less medicine, not more

I sat down with Dr. Kevin Walker and Dr. Donna Bartlett on The Med List.

Kevin and Donna are both pharmacists.

Donna’s focus is deprescribing: getting people off medications that are hurting them more than helping. Kevin digs deeper on the digital health and systems side of things. They both see the consequences of good and bad health policy first hand, day in and day out. Perfect setting for a chat.

We started with some background. How I began my career as an infectious disease epidemiologist with dreams of going to Africa, wearing a space suit, and quarantining towns. How, when I got to South Sudan, I figured out I didn’t have the diplomacy skills for negotiating with warlords. And how when I came home, Capitol Hill sucked me in. All of it led me, somehow, to the White House. When I finally got out of DC, I couldn’t bear going out to shill for industry, so I decided to use my health care chops to build health plans so I could sleep at night.

Then we got into the good stuff I’ve learned through it all:

→ Why your fee-for-service doctor needs their patient panel to be sick
→ What you find underneath a health plan once you unbundle it and the conflicts of interest are finally visible
→ Why our health plans run on one nurse who knows your name instead of a call center
→ And why they incorporate direct primary care which is expensive, but not as expensive as unmanaged chronic illness.

And the most important thing, even if you don’t care about health policy at all:

Washington isn’t coming to save you. Neither is your insurance plan. And especially not the white coats at the hospital.

Nobody cares about your health more than you. Nobody is more of an expert in your body than you are. YOU are your primary care provider.

We break it all down in this episode.