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TJM Labs and Pharmacists in Politics | TWIRx · Pharmacy Podcast Network

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Speaker 1: You are listening to the global network of podcasters dedicated
0:09
Speaker 1: to the pharmacy profession. Welcome to the Pharmacy podcast Network.
0:39
Speaker 2: And welcome back to this Week in Pharmacy. I have
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Speaker 2: two very special guests that really I want to dive
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Speaker 2: into the impact that artificial intelligence is having on our
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Speaker 2: pharmacy operations, profitability, marketing strategy.
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Speaker 3: That's all we're hearing about.
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Speaker 2: We are so excited about a returning guest who's been
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Speaker 2: on twerks several times. CEO of TJM Labs, Jonathan Adley,
1:07
Speaker 2: Welcome back, Jonathan.
1:09
Speaker 4: Thanks Todd.
1:12
Speaker 5: Hey.
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Speaker 2: I also want to welcome our featured special guest, doctor
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Speaker 2: Bavesh Patel. He's the chief executive officer at Carepoint Pharmacy. Bavesh,
1:22
Speaker 2: thank you so much for being on twerks.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, it's pleasure.
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Speaker 6: I'm glad I was able to make time for this
1:29
Speaker 6: and doctors too formal.
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Speaker 4: I know technically we earn our.
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Speaker 6: Doctorate, but it's kind of unusual to hear the word doctor.
1:37
Speaker 4: Thank you so much.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, there's many tours that I'm taking to pharmacy schools
1:43
Speaker 2: over the years, and when I introduced myself, I shake
1:46
Speaker 2: their hand and I say, I would always introduce yourself
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Speaker 2: in the future as doctor whoever Smith.
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Speaker 3: But just call me Todd.
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Speaker 2: And their reason is is we see a lot of
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Speaker 2: hospital interactions with people not understanding that their pharmacist is
2:03
Speaker 2: could could in fact be a farm D.
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Speaker 3: And I think it. I think it's prevalent.
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Speaker 2: And and it brings brings positive attention to the pharmacy industry.
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Speaker 4: I appreciate that.
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Speaker 2: Well, I'm excited to talk with you both. I have
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Speaker 2: been so curious. We met up with the t JM
2:24
Speaker 2: Labs team at a profit summit event dedicated to independent
2:29
Speaker 2: community pharmacy. We've talked with Jonathan about the specialty pharmacy industry.
2:37
Speaker 2: We just finished up with a SMBIA. So let's jump
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Speaker 2: into this conversation. Because from an executive perspective, Bavesh, introduce
2:49
Speaker 2: yourself to the listeners so they understand who you are
2:53
Speaker 2: as well as your background with Scriptley and in care Point.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, so thank thanks for the introduction. Name. My name
3:03
Speaker 4: is Spoish Fateel.
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Speaker 6: I'm a you know, pharmacist by training, but entrepreneur at heart.
3:11
Speaker 6: Graduated in ninety eight from University of Illinois in Chicago
3:15
Speaker 6: with farm D worked my way from you know, retail store.
3:21
Speaker 6: Got my experience in retail as a pharmacy technician. Then
3:26
Speaker 6: was an emerging leader program at Walgreens. From there, I
3:31
Speaker 6: was there for seven years. I moved on to you know,
3:34
Speaker 6: CBS Mayloader Pharmacy. Learned a lot about mayloader business at
3:40
Speaker 6: that time wasn't really that exciting because of the desk job,
3:43
Speaker 6: and I'm I'm now one of those that sits at
3:45
Speaker 6: a desk kind of thing. So moved on from there,
3:49
Speaker 6: was recruited actually by a recruiter for a new company
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Speaker 6: called over Senior Pharmaceuticals to this point a multi billion
4:02
Speaker 6: dollar company. So the owner, Tony Orsini, wanted to start
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Speaker 6: a pharmacy. You already had, you know, you already had
4:11
Speaker 6: nursing agency DM ME, he had a staffing agency and
4:16
Speaker 6: in home health, but he was missing a home infusion pharmacy,
4:21
Speaker 6: so he started pharmacy.
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Speaker 4: He hired me as the director VP of operations.
4:27
Speaker 6: This was two thousand and five, two thousand and three
4:30
Speaker 6: or five somewhere between that, and you know, we grew
4:34
Speaker 6: that business. We added rare disease and got a lot
4:38
Speaker 6: of experience in infusion side. But there was this you
4:42
Speaker 6: know there was this hunger as growing up in India,
4:48
Speaker 6: always wanted to be an entrepreneur. In twenty eleven, finally
4:53
Speaker 6: decided that, you know, it's time to move on from
4:57
Speaker 6: Orsini and sit out the one year nine not compete
5:00
Speaker 6: that I had with them, and in twenty twelve I
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Speaker 6: open Carepoint Pharmacy, which now fourteen years later, you know,
5:08
Speaker 6: we service hundreds of thousands of patients. We've got license
5:11
Speaker 6: in of fifty states and held me a lot of
5:15
Speaker 6: contract with most of the PBMs. So that's a little
5:17
Speaker 6: bit about my history. How did Scriptley come about? In
5:23
Speaker 6: As we were building the pharmacy. As we were growing,
5:26
Speaker 6: there were a lot of pain points with our former
5:28
Speaker 6: software RX thirty. It's a good software, but it's meant
5:32
Speaker 6: for a small, bomb and pop pharmacy.
5:34
Speaker 4: It's not really meant to handle huge volumes.
5:38
Speaker 6: It's not meant to handle different programs if there's no customization.
5:42
Speaker 4: So we were filling the pinch of growth.
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Speaker 6: We wanted to accept a new pharma program, but couldn't
5:51
Speaker 6: do it in the way that RX thirty was set up.
5:55
Speaker 6: So internally we decided to build our own software. It
5:58
Speaker 6: took us about eighteen months, close to two years in
6:01
Speaker 6: the height of COVID. Not sure what we were thinking,
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Speaker 6: but we invested money in building out Scriptley the way
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Speaker 6: we wanted to build the way our mail order pharmacy
6:15
Speaker 6: was built out, you know. So launched on April first,
6:20
Speaker 6: twenty twenty one.
6:21
Speaker 4: It was our a.
6:22
Speaker 6: Proposed choke and it was it was really not a
6:26
Speaker 6: good It was really really not good launch. We were
6:31
Speaker 6: down for almost a week because we had to work
6:33
Speaker 6: through all the years it was creating. But finally when
6:37
Speaker 6: it actually started working a week later, you know, we
6:41
Speaker 6: started seeing efficiencies and all of that stuff. You fast
6:45
Speaker 6: forward from twenty one to twenty six. In twenty twenty one,
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Speaker 6: we had about one hundred and fifty employees working full time,
6:55
Speaker 6: doing one third.
6:56
Speaker 4: Of the volume that we're doing now.
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Speaker 6: It's just because because you know, the time it took
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Speaker 6: to process of script for so long. You fast forward
7:05
Speaker 6: five years with Scriptley, we're half the staff that we
7:08
Speaker 6: had and we're doing three times the volume.
7:11
Speaker 4: You know.
7:13
Speaker 6: But also as we grew, you know, labor market, shortage
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Speaker 6: of skilled labor market number one number two, a lot
7:24
Speaker 6: of mail order pharmacy poppying up, offering work from home
7:27
Speaker 6: and flexibility, so we were having hard time not just
7:31
Speaker 6: recruiting but also holding on to good talent. And I
7:36
Speaker 6: think this is where about a year ago or so,
7:38
Speaker 6: this is where we were introduced.
7:40
Speaker 4: To TJM Labs.
7:43
Speaker 6: And we got on a call, we saw the demo
7:47
Speaker 6: and it's been a iteening, So I'll stop there, but
7:51
Speaker 6: that's that's.
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Speaker 4: Where, you know, how care one came, this.
7:55
Speaker 6: Is how Scriptley came, and that's how we started partnering
7:58
Speaker 6: with TJMP.
8:00
Speaker 4: If there's any questions.
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Speaker 2: Jonathan understands as a pharmacist and someone that's been in
8:07
Speaker 2: the business for a while, that AI maturity application connection
8:14
Speaker 2: could not happen at a better time with the distress
8:18
Speaker 2: that the pharmacy industry is under. Jonathan, the current state
8:22
Speaker 2: of pharmacy operations, where do you see some of the
8:26
Speaker 2: major frictions of where TGAM Labs is identified and now
8:31
Speaker 2: created strategy around getting these obstacles out of the way.
8:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, great question, Dot.
8:42
Speaker 5: So you know, as Pavich Kona said that the average
8:44
Speaker 5: pharmacy today is running on a twenty twenty five year
8:48
Speaker 5: old old infrastructure of pharmacy management systems and the prescription
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Speaker 5: data entry as well as so many other things not
8:57
Speaker 5: just the data entry is very much manual. You have
9:01
Speaker 5: a tick that sits there, it reads the facts, it
9:04
Speaker 5: types it into the pharmacy management system, one field at
9:07
Speaker 5: a time. Imagine this at a high volume, right, You're
9:10
Speaker 5: talking about four hundred or more scripts a day. It's
9:13
Speaker 5: very repetitive, very error prawn and it's very very expensive, right.
9:19
Speaker 5: And that's the friction point that we keep seeing. And
9:21
Speaker 5: that's exactly what but Fris mentioned is that pharmacies that
9:24
Speaker 5: are growing, you know, if you grow and your reimbursement
9:27
Speaker 5: are compressing, because if the BBM and the labor market
9:30
Speaker 5: is brutal, the mess just doesn't work, right, You cannot
9:34
Speaker 5: uprate a pharmacy in this old way. That's when you
9:38
Speaker 5: kind of layer in modern software. That's when you layer
9:40
Speaker 5: in AI tools and ideas. You know, if you want
9:44
Speaker 5: if you want to if you want to double your volume,
9:46
Speaker 5: you want to double your volume without adding any additional headcount,
9:49
Speaker 5: that's the way to do it.
9:51
Speaker 6: You're absolutely right Downathan. I think you know, people think
9:55
Speaker 6: pharmacy is a high margin.
9:57
Speaker 4: It's actually not. It's a very very low go digit
10:00
Speaker 4: margin gross margin. Right.
10:02
Speaker 6: PBMs are squeezing us, you know, us as a maiload
10:07
Speaker 6: of pharmacy. We are on a mail order contract which
10:10
Speaker 6: is absolutely sorry, it's it's a garbage basically. You know,
10:16
Speaker 6: if you're a retail story, the reimbursements are decent, but
10:19
Speaker 6: as a mail order of pharmacy, it's really really horrible.
10:22
Speaker 6: So for us, we have to manage every penny that
10:25
Speaker 6: we received from PBM. And like Jonathan mentioned, in the
10:30
Speaker 6: labor market, there's such a shortage of skill.
10:34
Speaker 4: Talented people. You know, you can find people or are just.
10:39
Speaker 6: They're just not talented, and in order to retain them,
10:42
Speaker 6: you have to pay them high salary, benefits, all of
10:45
Speaker 6: that stuff. So we are at a point where, you know,
10:49
Speaker 6: you you pay, it squeezes our margin. But something's got
10:53
Speaker 6: to give. And this is where I guess TJM and
10:55
Speaker 6: the AI comes in. Uh and it It's been like
11:00
Speaker 6: I said, it's been an eye opening for us since
11:04
Speaker 6: we implemented AI last year. I think we've we're on
11:07
Speaker 6: we're on track to probably stay over a million dollars
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Speaker 6: in operating expenses. We haven't hired a single new text
11:15
Speaker 6: since last September.
11:18
Speaker 4: And the efficiencies we've.
11:19
Speaker 6: Gained, you know, we are able to move some of
11:22
Speaker 6: these folks from from processing to doing something else that
11:26
Speaker 6: generate revenue. You know, it's been great so far, and
11:31
Speaker 6: we haven't even scaled yet. I think the more volume
11:34
Speaker 6: we do, the more r I will get with TJM Labs.
11:41
Speaker 2: Jonathan, why is that when you think of this as
11:43
Speaker 2: a scientist, why is it that implementing AI in a
11:49
Speaker 2: specific sector of the business, how is it making that
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Speaker 2: big of a difference of a million dollar savings for
11:56
Speaker 2: for care point?
11:56
Speaker 3: That's amazing?
11:58
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I mean, look, so the LM layer, that's
12:03
Speaker 5: where we do the AI layer. It's really the best
12:06
Speaker 5: way to think of it. It's a surgical procedure where
12:11
Speaker 5: the variance between things that are happening is too high
12:16
Speaker 5: for rules, right, but stable enough where you don't have
12:22
Speaker 5: like a million things that you have to address, right.
12:27
Speaker 5: So for example, the most common example that we see
12:30
Speaker 5: is like when you calculate the day supply, there's rules
12:34
Speaker 5: how you calculate the day surprise, But if you look
12:36
Speaker 5: at all the different scenarios that cream, the eye drops,
12:40
Speaker 5: the insulins, all of the stuff, the rules are not enough.
12:43
Speaker 5: And this is where kind of LM come in, and
12:45
Speaker 5: this is where it makes things so much easier when
12:48
Speaker 5: you try to match a vision profile when there's like duplicates, right, again,
12:52
Speaker 5: you need some reasoning, but not a lot of reasoning.
12:59
Speaker 5: And and that's I guess this is where TGM maps
13:02
Speaker 5: comes in. When we kind of work with pharmacy. You
13:04
Speaker 5: understand their workflows, we understand how did you train your technicians?
13:09
Speaker 5: And we say, okay, great. The way that you train
13:11
Speaker 5: a technician is the way you train these spots and
13:14
Speaker 5: if it needs to stop and sink, then it will
13:17
Speaker 5: stop on sink and reason and make a decision based
13:21
Speaker 5: on that.
13:22
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, you know the nice thing, you know, I
13:26
Speaker 6: guess comparing humans to bots, like we are just prone
13:32
Speaker 6: to make mistakes. You know, we can teach you know,
13:37
Speaker 6: a technician, a really smart technician. Hey, here's here's the
13:40
Speaker 6: ten steps to process a prescription.
13:42
Speaker 4: But they will not go in order.
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Speaker 6: They'll do step number one, they'll skip to two, and
13:47
Speaker 6: they'll go to three and then eight, so.
13:49
Speaker 4: They're all over the place, you know, versus a boat.
13:51
Speaker 6: You teach them it'll be one, two, three, for five, six,
13:54
Speaker 6: you know, so the air rate for prescription, you know,
13:58
Speaker 6: a technician makes their accuracy is let's say ninety two percent.
14:03
Speaker 6: You know which we would say, wow, it's really really good,
14:06
Speaker 6: but in reality it's really.
14:09
Speaker 4: Not eight prescriptions that they make AerR on.
14:13
Speaker 6: They have to now be sent back, a pharmacist has
14:16
Speaker 6: to review, you know, somebody has to update, so go
14:19
Speaker 6: back and forth in the mail order pharmacy. Right it's
14:21
Speaker 6: it's diverted to different cues versus a bot has a
14:25
Speaker 6: ninety nine percent accuracy, you know, and the one percent
14:30
Speaker 6: errors that they may is because they haven't.
14:32
Speaker 4: Been taught that.
14:34
Speaker 6: But once you teach the bot how to do it,
14:36
Speaker 6: it's extremely rare to see them making the same mistakes
14:39
Speaker 6: over and over again. So you know, that's the efficiency
14:42
Speaker 6: we've seen. The prescription turnaround time is it's the lowest
14:47
Speaker 6: that it's ever been in my pharmacy. Patients get texts
14:51
Speaker 6: right away for payments and stuff versus waiting hours to
14:55
Speaker 6: get a text because the technician is tiping, you know, personally,
15:01
Speaker 6: in our pharmacy, we've seen a huge efficiency, huge cost savings.
15:05
Speaker 6: And this is a scalable model that we have.
15:11
Speaker 2: What examples can either of you give to our listeners,
15:16
Speaker 2: many of them pharmacy owners themselves.
15:19
Speaker 3: Where we know that if we take up.
15:24
Speaker 2: Processes, if we take up order entry aspects of repeating tasks,
15:31
Speaker 2: tedious things that these humans are doing. Now you're moving
15:35
Speaker 2: them to other ways of generating revenue for the organization
15:40
Speaker 2: that isn't tedious. It's not the order entry or it's
15:44
Speaker 2: not what TGM Labs is implementing. What examples are we
15:49
Speaker 2: now seeing our texts and even maybe some of our
15:52
Speaker 2: pharmacists leaning in towards that is helping us generate more revenue.
15:58
Speaker 5: Yes, I'll start there's actually is, and then bevish. Obviously
16:01
Speaker 5: he's in the front line so he has a much
16:04
Speaker 5: would say focused view on this. But I just learned
16:07
Speaker 5: about something one of our pharmacies was doing and it
16:11
Speaker 5: was it was genius, So I think it will be
16:13
Speaker 5: a good example. So in in in Pacific, like compliance
16:18
Speaker 5: packaging and long term care, there there's a pharmacist who
16:23
Speaker 5: conves the medication and last months mar medication administration summary
16:30
Speaker 5: and this month and if it's exactly the same, then
16:33
Speaker 5: it goes through the robot and the robot basically does
16:37
Speaker 5: the medication again.
16:38
Speaker 3: For the next months. This is like a group home
16:40
Speaker 3: or compliance packaging.
16:42
Speaker 5: If it's different, then they need to know like, okay,
16:44
Speaker 5: what's the different how are we going to change the
16:47
Speaker 5: robot to give this person their month's medication? And you
16:51
Speaker 5: literally had people thought printing a mar putting at their
16:57
Speaker 5: desk and going line by line seeing where there are changes,
17:02
Speaker 5: and there was no changes. This is the pharmacist doing this, right, Uh.
17:07
Speaker 5: And so we we had a bot that does this
17:10
Speaker 5: and I believe last time I had it does like
17:12
Speaker 5: forty of these in like four minutes, right, And it's
17:18
Speaker 5: obviously saved pharmacist hours. It is so much more efficient
17:21
Speaker 5: and it's actually more accurate too, because I imagine if
17:23
Speaker 5: you're a pharmacist going through the sheet three hours in
17:26
Speaker 5: the day, your eyes are tired and then you're just
17:28
Speaker 5: missing stuff. So that's that's That's just the example. I
17:32
Speaker 5: just really got like last week, and I was like, oh,
17:34
Speaker 5: this school.
17:36
Speaker 6: Yeah, from you know, I'll tell you how I already
17:40
Speaker 6: already talked about how you know, AI has really improved
17:46
Speaker 6: our turnaround time, you know, and help with the efficiency.
17:52
Speaker 6: What I will what we've done with the labor that
17:55
Speaker 6: we say so obviously we're not we haven't hired anybody
17:58
Speaker 6: since last year, but the six or seven full time
18:02
Speaker 6: folks that are now like, hey, what do I do right,
18:06
Speaker 6: they have all these free times. So what we did
18:08
Speaker 6: is we moved them to our PA department or prior
18:11
Speaker 6: authorization department, which still is in manual process. There's still
18:16
Speaker 6: there are companies in AI that are coming up, but
18:18
Speaker 6: it's still not at a point where TGM LEB is
18:21
Speaker 6: for augentic AI right. So our number one customer besides
18:28
Speaker 6: the patient itself, is our farmer partners who actually want
18:33
Speaker 6: us to do PAS so that products get approved and
18:36
Speaker 6: covered by insurance. But it's a very very manual process.
18:40
Speaker 6: So we've taken those six or seven individuals that we
18:42
Speaker 6: saved in processing and put them in the PA department
18:47
Speaker 6: where we're seeing more approved claims for patient, which is
18:50
Speaker 6: good for patients, which is good for doctors, which is
18:54
Speaker 6: good for the farmer.
18:55
Speaker 4: Company that makes it.
18:57
Speaker 6: You know, patient gets it at lowest costs, it's covered,
19:00
Speaker 6: you're using their benefits and so forth. But that's why
19:02
Speaker 6: it's allowed us to do sort of reallocate our labor
19:07
Speaker 6: into other department that needs the help and has helped
19:12
Speaker 6: us basically improve our margins and keep our customers happening.
19:21
Speaker 2: That is exactly what I wanted. As examples of pharmacy
19:26
Speaker 2: operators who want understand are apprehensive. They're worried anything to
19:33
Speaker 2: be added in or be subtracted from a pharmacy operations
19:38
Speaker 2: that is running on in margins that wants to increase
19:43
Speaker 2: volume or services and do something that's nerve wracking. That's
19:49
Speaker 2: a question for Jonathan. You've experienced the introduction of AI
19:55
Speaker 2: for the very first time, like over my seventeen years.
19:58
Speaker 2: How many people have that I've never podcasted before. Well,
20:02
Speaker 2: here's a first. Well, Jonathan, you're the godfather of AI
20:06
Speaker 2: and pharmacy and you've seen this happen. So talk to
20:10
Speaker 2: us about that apprehension and maybe some of our listeners
20:13
Speaker 2: to try to demistify this.
20:16
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean the first I think a lot of
20:18
Speaker 5: the question when we get when people get introduced to
20:21
Speaker 5: this is like does implementing AI require us to change anything?
20:27
Speaker 5: And it is a very deliberate choice from us that
20:30
Speaker 5: the answer is no, you do not have to change anything.
20:34
Speaker 5: The bot sits on top whatever you're already using and
20:38
Speaker 5: does whatever your technicians that are already using. Right, there's no
20:41
Speaker 5: ribbon replaced process. You keep your pharmacy management system, you
20:45
Speaker 5: keep your workflow, you keep your staff. The bot literally
20:48
Speaker 5: just handles the bar that nobody wants to do, which
20:51
Speaker 5: is today is just sitting in there and reading facts
20:55
Speaker 5: and putting in the information in there. We're not trying
20:58
Speaker 5: to eliminate the pharmacists. We're not even touching the clinical layer.
21:04
Speaker 5: We're trying to eliminate the clerical and administrative layer, so
21:09
Speaker 5: humans in the pharmacy can do what actually requires a license, right.
21:14
Speaker 5: I think just like the economics of pharmacy is that
21:17
Speaker 5: everybody in the pharmacy, because they're touching lives, they're expensive,
21:22
Speaker 5: as they should be, right, So we wanted to add
21:25
Speaker 5: a lot of value on the stuff that they're doing.
21:27
Speaker 5: And if it's just moving data around or clicking buttons,
21:31
Speaker 5: then that's something that the bad should do.
21:33
Speaker 4: So no, I agree with Jonathan.
21:37
Speaker 6: I think you know, the model they I bought works
21:42
Speaker 6: in our mail order scenario. I would love to see
21:45
Speaker 6: this work in a retail pharmacy because I came from.
21:49
Speaker 4: Retail and.
21:54
Speaker 6: Those folks that work there have the least amount of
21:58
Speaker 6: time to spend with patents, and they asked to do
22:01
Speaker 6: the most amount of things with the you know, with
22:06
Speaker 6: the resources that they have. So if there's a way
22:09
Speaker 6: to integrate this into retail stores. I think they would
22:13
Speaker 6: pay a huge dividend, whether it's well doing CBS or
22:17
Speaker 6: any of the big.
22:18
Speaker 4: Box corner chain that we're talking about.
22:20
Speaker 6: You know, that's that's the next uh r I huge
22:26
Speaker 6: r O.
22:26
Speaker 5: I Yeah for us, we uh we just I think
22:30
Speaker 5: started to scale these one hundred plus store grocery.
22:36
Speaker 3: Chains and yeah, it's it's it's a different world.
22:41
Speaker 5: And obviously you end up getting any prescription under the
22:45
Speaker 5: suns or is more challenging, is there. But the impact
22:49
Speaker 5: is a lot higher because again, these a lot of
22:52
Speaker 5: these pharmacies operate at a loss today in the grocery segment.
22:56
Speaker 3: They literally just exist.
22:57
Speaker 5: So vision comes in, pick the prescription, and then shop
23:00
Speaker 5: for their groceries. So having the swamp bot flips of
23:04
Speaker 5: pharmacy from loss making to profit ability, it just looks amazing.
23:09
Speaker 6: Yeah, you're absolutely correct, it's not a it's not that's
23:13
Speaker 6: you know, log Ris didn't built at every corner.
23:16
Speaker 4: Because of pharmacy business.
23:17
Speaker 6: It was the front end store business that they were
23:20
Speaker 6: trying to grow, right, So I agree with Jonathan there.
23:25
Speaker 2: Well, I'm excited to understand how this will continue to evolve.
23:29
Speaker 2: And I think that the the advantage that our pharmacy
23:36
Speaker 2: owners and operators have and working with TGAM labs is
23:40
Speaker 2: that they have soaked in certain sectors of pharmacy knowing
23:44
Speaker 2: how AI is amplifying and duplicating and creating scalability in specialty,
23:54
Speaker 2: long term care pharmacy, our retail community, mixed compounding. Each
24:00
Speaker 2: of those are different, and you can't have the design
24:05
Speaker 2: of something on top of PMS infrastructure where your pharmacy
24:10
Speaker 2: management system is kind of like the quarterback, and then
24:13
Speaker 2: adding AI to something that doesn't fold into this sissivity
24:18
Speaker 2: of the operations. So, Jonathan, what other sectors are expanding.
24:24
Speaker 3: With AI that are very unique?
24:26
Speaker 2: As an example, we just got back from the Super
24:28
Speaker 2: Bowl of a sembia of specialty pharmacy, and that's a
24:33
Speaker 2: very different beast than say our retail communities, our long
24:38
Speaker 2: term care.
24:40
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I just I actually just I was reading
24:43
Speaker 5: one of these reports that bankers do. It is so
24:48
Speaker 5: interesting that they're so focused because that's what pharma always
24:52
Speaker 5: wants and prior us and like benefit verification, right, and
24:57
Speaker 5: what people I think, like a someone who's been in
25:00
Speaker 5: the industry for like almost twenty years now, that is
25:03
Speaker 5: probably a very very complex thing. To do and to
25:06
Speaker 5: do it well and to do it at scale. And
25:09
Speaker 5: in pharmacy, we don't know. Want fifty seventy percent successful
25:13
Speaker 5: is probably not good enough, I do think, obviously, because
25:17
Speaker 5: there's so much money and there's so much push to
25:20
Speaker 5: get into there, that would be the next thing My
25:25
Speaker 5: uproach open and obviously this could change, is like we
25:27
Speaker 5: want AI to do the mundane hammer nailing stuff and
25:35
Speaker 5: leave the complexity to the professionals. But maybe one day
25:41
Speaker 5: there I will be able to do everything prior us
25:44
Speaker 5: benefit vacation. But if that that's the case, and that's
25:47
Speaker 5: the other problem too, is friar us. It's an intentional
25:49
Speaker 5: friction to slow down the process. So if you fix it,
25:53
Speaker 5: they'll just come up with something else to slow down
25:56
Speaker 5: the process. Right, But yeah, that's what it seems like
26:00
Speaker 5: everybody wants to do so well.
26:04
Speaker 2: I have really enjoyed the several appearances Jonathan, and the
26:10
Speaker 2: intelligence that you bring and the examples that you bring
26:14
Speaker 2: to the Pharmacy podcast network, and this Week in Pharmacy
26:19
Speaker 2: really tries to drive what's happening right now today and
26:25
Speaker 2: leavesh and closing, I want to thank you for your
26:28
Speaker 2: time today in leading care point and giving us these examples. Bavesh,
26:33
Speaker 2: what are you looking for as someone who understands the
26:37
Speaker 2: growth and the complexity of the business of pharmacy When
26:42
Speaker 2: you look to the future, what would you like to
26:43
Speaker 2: see AI be able to either enhance or even take over?
26:48
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, as I mentioned, would love to see
26:53
Speaker 6: I solve some of the other problems right like prioritization.
26:58
Speaker 6: It's a huge friction between PBM pharmacy, huge labor drain
27:03
Speaker 6: and company. So I love to see something come out there.
27:07
Speaker 6: I know there are some companies working on there, but
27:09
Speaker 6: it's it's not there yet. The other is, uh, you know,
27:14
Speaker 6: conversational AI. We get our pharmacy alone gets about eight
27:20
Speaker 6: on calls a day, and I want AI to be
27:25
Speaker 6: able to handle all sorts of scenarios, not just you know,
27:28
Speaker 6: easiest one refill, but how troubleshoot, insurance, you know, plame, adjudication,
27:34
Speaker 6: all of that stuff.
27:35
Speaker 4: So hopefully in the next few years, those two.
27:37
Speaker 6: Things alone would help out pharmacy a lot.
27:45
Speaker 3: Jonathan.
27:47
Speaker 2: The crushing schedule of going to conferences is still upon us.
27:55
Speaker 2: God bless Ross who's out there as a road warrior
27:58
Speaker 2: right now meeting up with people but I'm hoping to
28:02
Speaker 2: run into you again with the comment the small but
28:07
Speaker 2: what are you most excited about? You're the one, You're
28:09
Speaker 2: the one's that has the actionable imagination around artificial intelligence.
28:15
Speaker 2: What do you think could come next to really help
28:17
Speaker 2: us improve the business of pharmacy?
28:21
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, look, I think there is We're doing
28:24
Speaker 5: lots of job and I would say AI that saves
28:27
Speaker 5: you money? Right, I think the next bucket is AI
28:31
Speaker 5: that makes you money. And if you think about how
28:36
Speaker 5: pharmacy there is limited channels of how you truly scale,
28:41
Speaker 5: like the Tilly Health partnership for the compounders, the former
28:44
Speaker 5: relationships for the mill order of pharmacies, and how if
28:48
Speaker 5: we can come up with a different channel where it's
28:51
Speaker 5: essentially you as a pharmacy sign up with one partner
28:55
Speaker 5: and that brings you two thousand, three thousand, four thousand
28:58
Speaker 5: prescriptions a day.
28:59
Speaker 3: I think that would be a great one.
29:01
Speaker 5: We'll just have to put our creative head on and
29:05
Speaker 5: figure out where that next channel is going to come from.
29:07
Speaker 2: So I love it You've been listening to This Week
29:13
Speaker 2: in Pharmacy with our special guests from TJM Labs, Jonathan
29:17
Speaker 2: Adley and our featured guest, the CEO of Carepoint Pharmacy.
29:24
Speaker 2: You can find more about them at Carepoint dot pharmacy.
29:28
Speaker 2: That's Carepoint dot Pharmacy. And then reach out to the
29:32
Speaker 2: TJM labs go to tjmlabs dot com and ask specific
29:38
Speaker 2: questions about your pharmacies operations and how AI could impact
29:44
Speaker 2: the operations, and then ask for references and ask for
29:48
Speaker 2: success stories, and if you're worried or if you're curious,
29:53
Speaker 2: talk with another pharmacy owner that went through what you're
29:55
Speaker 2: thinking about doing right now in implementing AI into your business.
30:00
Speaker 2: But it's a must. It's no longer something that you
30:03
Speaker 2: could say, I'm just going to put it off, put
30:05
Speaker 2: it off. It's time to implement in some way. Blavesh,
30:09
Speaker 2: this has been very special. Promise that you're going to
30:12
Speaker 2: come back to twrqus.
30:13
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, for sure, love it great you thank you.
30:17
Speaker 3: Thanksv, thank you, Jonathan, thank you, thanks to Hey. We'll
30:22
Speaker 3: be right back with more tworks.
30:27
Speaker 7: Feeling lost with the complexities of pharmacy accounting and.
30:30
Speaker 8: In pharmacy today, there's so many different variables and issues
30:35
Speaker 8: that impact the pharmacy, books, records, accounting, the profitabilities, so
30:39
Speaker 8: so forth. There's different components of pharmacy that have its
30:42
Speaker 8: own nuances from an accounting standpoint, and so it's it's tricky,
30:46
Speaker 8: there's no doubt about it.
30:47
Speaker 7: Ready to take your pharmacy to the next level, but
30:50
Speaker 7: don't know where to start. PSYCHX and Company is here
30:53
Speaker 7: to help, introducing the RX Assessment. With the RX Assessment
30:57
Speaker 7: the pharmacy CPAs and advisors at Psykes, we'll do a
31:01
Speaker 7: deep dive into your accounting and tax situation and give
31:04
Speaker 7: you the action steps you need to take to take
31:06
Speaker 7: your pharmacy to the next level.
31:08
Speaker 8: If you're interested in, you know, working with a team
31:12
Speaker 8: who understands the industry and how the accounting and tax
31:15
Speaker 8: should really be in a pharmacy, this is this is
31:18
Speaker 8: your chance to get an under the hood check of
31:21
Speaker 8: what's going on and getting the feedback of any issues
31:24
Speaker 8: or concerns or again things we think are doing really
31:26
Speaker 8: well with.
31:27
Speaker 7: Get the financial check up your pharmacy needs and head
31:29
Speaker 7: over to Pykes HYPHENCPA dot com or call two five
31:33
Speaker 7: to two four eight two seven six four four.
31:49
Speaker 3: Ay in this week in pharmacy.
31:51
Speaker 2: I am am excited when we know through the years
31:54
Speaker 2: that we've we've taken a lot of time to put
31:57
Speaker 2: out more information about pharmacists and politics. Shane Reeves and
32:03
Speaker 2: Buddy Carter. Having these people represent policy and building and
32:11
Speaker 2: changing PBM reform.
32:12
Speaker 3: For goodness sakes, this is important.
32:15
Speaker 2: Introduce yourself to the Twerks listeners and tell us about
32:20
Speaker 2: your special campaign that's happening right now.
32:23
Speaker 1: Hello to all the Turks listeners. My name is doctor
32:27
Speaker 1: Dda Maco Bark. I am a pharmacist and I come
32:31
Speaker 1: to you from the great state of New Mexico, which
32:34
Speaker 1: is known as the Southwest Gym in the United States.
32:38
Speaker 1: I have been practicing pharmacy for a number of years,
32:41
Speaker 1: but I am so glad that you have me today
32:43
Speaker 1: on your podcast.
32:45
Speaker 4: D D.
32:45
Speaker 2: I'm so proud of you already. We're going to do
32:48
Speaker 2: everything we can to get your name out there and support.
32:51
Speaker 2: We're going to also do a follow up with you.
32:52
Speaker 2: I'd love to dig into policy today. As you see
32:55
Speaker 2: on your screen if you're watching us on YouTube, if
32:57
Speaker 2: you're watching us stream on LinkedIn. For Congress, it was
33:03
Speaker 2: a program that you put on in April seventeenth. But
33:06
Speaker 2: talk to us right out of the gate, Why are
33:09
Speaker 2: you running for United States Congress?
33:12
Speaker 9: Yeah, right out of the gate. I guess the answers
33:14
Speaker 9: to that question is why not.
33:16
Speaker 1: You know, we are the people that need to be
33:18
Speaker 1: a part of the change that we want to see
33:20
Speaker 1: in our nation. And if we don't stand up for
33:23
Speaker 1: what we think is right for our industry, for the
33:25
Speaker 1: practice of pharmacy, then it slowly slips away. We have
33:28
Speaker 1: to be in control of the narrative that's being told
33:31
Speaker 1: about our industry. And so that's why I have a
33:33
Speaker 1: passion to do what I do.
33:35
Speaker 2: There's something special to pharmacists showing up and helping to
33:39
Speaker 2: build policy that now impacts Medicaid and CMS and Medicare
33:43
Speaker 2: party and long term care versus specialty. And so you
33:47
Speaker 2: understand that as a pharmacist. What other benefits do you
33:50
Speaker 2: think you bring to the table to be in Congress
33:54
Speaker 2: but also be a care provider and be a pharmacist.
33:57
Speaker 2: What benefits do you think that the constituous will get
34:01
Speaker 2: from that?
34:02
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean there are a lot of benefits.
34:03
Speaker 1: First of all, I am a graduate of the University
34:06
Speaker 1: of New Mexico College of Pharmacy. Since two thousand and eight,
34:09
Speaker 1: I've been practicing pharmacy. That's almost twenty years, you know,
34:13
Speaker 1: almost twenty years, I've been serving my community. I've been
34:16
Speaker 1: an advocate for healthcare to make it affordable and accessible,
34:20
Speaker 1: and also for pharmaceutical care. In twenty seventeen, I started
34:24
Speaker 1: my own pharmacy. I called it Olive Tree Compounding Pharmacy
34:27
Speaker 1: right here in New Mexico. I literally took a space
34:30
Speaker 1: that was completely empty, it was in a gray shell.
34:33
Speaker 1: I got a seven a loan from the bank, and
34:38
Speaker 1: I built a pharmacy and I started a brand new practice.
34:41
Speaker 1: And at that time, it was something that was fairly
34:44
Speaker 1: new in my area to have a compounding only, cash
34:47
Speaker 1: only pharmacy. It wasn't as well known as a retail pharmacy,
34:54
Speaker 1: so this was something that was new.
34:56
Speaker 3: I heard it all.
34:57
Speaker 1: I heard, you know, that maybe my business wouldn't survive.
35:00
Speaker 1: But here I am, you know, in twenty twenty six
35:02
Speaker 1: and we're still here. But back then, you know, not
35:06
Speaker 1: accepting any insurance contracts, cash only, being fully transparent, right,
35:10
Speaker 1: So like really I had to step out there and
35:13
Speaker 1: build a relationship, build rapport with the clients that I
35:16
Speaker 1: was serving. And that's something that I had found was
35:19
Speaker 1: a little bit more difficult when I practiced pharmacy under
35:22
Speaker 1: you know, big pharma. So coming out and being forward
35:26
Speaker 1: facing and providing care to the community, that was something
35:30
Speaker 1: that I had to build from the ground up. But
35:33
Speaker 1: what can I offer as a compounder. Obviously I'm an
35:37
Speaker 1: advocate for compounding pharmacy, but I really do think that
35:40
Speaker 1: compounding pharmacy has come under much scrutiny.
35:44
Speaker 9: I would say for the past five years.
35:46
Speaker 1: You know, we don't make things in our garage or
35:49
Speaker 1: in our kitchen. It's a highly regulated industry and I
35:53
Speaker 1: think that that is something that really needs to be
35:56
Speaker 1: respected and it needs to be held in high esteem.
36:00
Speaker 1: That like I said, we need to be in charge
36:02
Speaker 1: of controlling the narrative what's being told about compounding pharmacy,
36:07
Speaker 1: and I think having a voice on Capitol Hill will
36:10
Speaker 1: help our industry to.
36:11
Speaker 9: Do that, you know.
36:12
Speaker 1: So I'm really looking for support on the campaign side
36:14
Speaker 1: as well.
36:15
Speaker 3: It's wonderful.
36:16
Speaker 2: What if we back up what made it you want
36:19
Speaker 2: to want to become a pharmacist in the first place?
36:22
Speaker 9: Well, I didn't.
36:23
Speaker 1: I didn't want to be an pharmacist ever since I
36:26
Speaker 1: was a little girl.
36:27
Speaker 9: I've always been, you know, like an artist. I'm a performer.
36:31
Speaker 1: I like a drama, I like theater, like singing and
36:34
Speaker 1: dancing and all these things. But I am a first
36:37
Speaker 1: generation Nigerian American, and a lot of times in our
36:40
Speaker 1: culture those things are not acceptable, right, especially if our
36:45
Speaker 1: parents left our countries to come to America and seek
36:48
Speaker 1: of the American dream. The last thing you want is
36:51
Speaker 1: your child struggling.
36:53
Speaker 9: To get on Broadway.
36:54
Speaker 1: You know, you want your child to be a doctor,
36:57
Speaker 1: an engineer, or a lawyer. You know, something solid and
37:00
Speaker 1: something promising. So I had an uncle who convinced me
37:03
Speaker 1: to go to pharmacy school. And at that time, I
37:07
Speaker 1: just happened to have the prerequisites to apply. So I
37:10
Speaker 1: applied to pharmacy school, and to my surprise, I actually
37:13
Speaker 1: got in. I was like, oh, okay, I guess I
37:15
Speaker 1: will be a pharmacist. And I did pharmacy and it
37:18
Speaker 1: turns out that I actually liked it. You know, I
37:21
Speaker 1: liked the science and the math, and you know, just
37:24
Speaker 1: just pharmacy in general. I liked it, and so I
37:28
Speaker 1: invested in it. And now I've been there for twenty years.
37:31
Speaker 2: You know, well, as a business owner, deity being creative
37:35
Speaker 2: and being someone that has been on stage and put
37:39
Speaker 2: yourself out there, I think that there's a benefit to
37:42
Speaker 2: that in comparison to some of our more introverted pharmacists
37:46
Speaker 2: who are super nerdy and very scientific. And it's like
37:50
Speaker 2: you kind of like blend that. And I'm going to
37:52
Speaker 2: ask a favor. I'm going to maybe send you the
37:55
Speaker 2: mobile phone of my daughter, who is all in on theater.
38:00
Speaker 2: She's in eighth grade. She's been the lead of her
38:03
Speaker 2: high school play twice, which is crazy for an eighth grader.
38:06
Speaker 2: And I'm like begging her to look into pharmacy. So
38:10
Speaker 2: I'm like, maybe if Deity doctor Dade could talk to her.
38:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I think the practice of pharmacy has definitely shifted, right,
38:19
Speaker 1: So not only do I not look like the typical pharmacist,
38:22
Speaker 1: I also don't provide care in that typical manner, which
38:26
Speaker 1: is behind this very high counter you could barely see
38:29
Speaker 1: my face. Bright lights everywhere, phones going off, you know,
38:33
Speaker 1: drugs flying off the shelves. And no, we practice pharmacy
38:36
Speaker 1: differently here at Olive Tree Compounding Pharmacy. And it's funny
38:40
Speaker 1: because I'll have clients come into the pharmacy and ask
38:43
Speaker 1: to speak with the pharmacist and I'll say, okay, yeah, sure,
38:45
Speaker 1: what's your question?
38:46
Speaker 9: And they're like, Oh, it's you. I'm like, yeah, it's me.
38:48
Speaker 1: You know. And they will say I've never been this
38:52
Speaker 1: close to a pharmacist before, Like I've never had this
38:55
Speaker 1: much contact with the pharmacist. But that's the shift that
38:58
Speaker 1: I recognize NITA to happen when I started my practice.
39:01
Speaker 9: The pharmacist needs to be accessible, you know.
39:04
Speaker 1: The pharmacist needs to be right up front and center
39:07
Speaker 1: and close to the patient, you know.
39:09
Speaker 9: And so that's what we've done.
39:11
Speaker 1: And yeah, I've brought you know that that drama aspect
39:15
Speaker 1: and that fun aspect to.
39:16
Speaker 9: Pharmacy, because pharmacy is it shouldn't be boring. It's not boring,
39:20
Speaker 9: you know. It should be fun.
39:21
Speaker 1: It should be innovative and creative and spunky, and you know,
39:26
Speaker 1: it should we should draw people to us. We are
39:29
Speaker 1: highly knowledgeable, right, so don't we want people to have
39:32
Speaker 1: access to that knowledge. But we can't do that if
39:34
Speaker 1: we're just monotone and boring, you know. So it's been fun,
39:39
Speaker 1: it's been fun over the years.
39:41
Speaker 2: The website that I'd like people to remember is d
39:44
Speaker 2: D for Congress dot com, d I d I for
39:48
Speaker 2: Congress dot com. So let's shift gears to the political
39:53
Speaker 2: side of your future, and so you really have to
39:58
Speaker 2: be known in your community. You have to understand the
40:01
Speaker 2: issues that's happening. There's such a broad there's much a
40:06
Speaker 2: broad range of things that you'll be plugging into. You're
40:10
Speaker 2: going to be heavy healthcare side, which I think is
40:12
Speaker 2: one of the most important places to be heavy in
40:16
Speaker 2: my opinion of our Like I've looked at some of
40:18
Speaker 2: my congress people in Pennsylvania are state representatives, great people,
40:23
Speaker 2: they work hard, but when healthcare comes up, they're always like,
40:28
Speaker 2: I'm not quite sure how to answer that. And whereas
40:31
Speaker 2: healthcare affects one hundred percent of your constituents versus maybe
40:35
Speaker 2: one other issue might only affect you know, veterans or
40:39
Speaker 2: might affect something else. So talk to me about about
40:42
Speaker 2: the concept of serving your community and why you're moving
40:48
Speaker 2: forward with this and and how you feel prepared for it.
40:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, healthcare in New Mexico is very special.
40:55
Speaker 9: You know.
40:55
Speaker 1: If anyone doesn't know, let me just give you some
40:58
Speaker 1: some very raw data about healthcare in New Mexico. We're
41:01
Speaker 1: the only state since twenty nineteen that's actually been losing
41:05
Speaker 1: healthcare providers. We're super rural, a lot of our population
41:08
Speaker 1: lives in the rural communities. They need to have access
41:11
Speaker 1: to affordable health care. That's a huge problem here in
41:14
Speaker 1: New Mexico. We don't even have doctors, right It could
41:17
Speaker 1: take six months before you get to see a specialist
41:19
Speaker 1: in New Mexico, whereas in some of our neighboring states
41:22
Speaker 1: like Texas, Arizona, maybe three weeks, four weeks, you know.
41:26
Speaker 1: So we're facing a lot of challenges, and a lot
41:29
Speaker 1: of the challenges are at the state level. And I
41:31
Speaker 1: know I'm running for a federal position, but at the
41:33
Speaker 1: state level, there is a lot to be done, and
41:35
Speaker 1: I think that there's room for collaboration between the federal
41:38
Speaker 1: and the state representatives to make sure that healthcare in
41:41
Speaker 1: New Mexico is reshaped so that it is accessible and
41:44
Speaker 1: it is affordable to everyone. Now, on a federal level,
41:48
Speaker 1: what I like to start with first is the population
41:51
Speaker 1: of the US. It has exploded, you know, over the
41:55
Speaker 1: last few years. And when we look at that explosion,
41:59
Speaker 1: to me, that's really at the bottom of why we
42:03
Speaker 1: can't afford healthcare for the people that need it rightfully.
42:08
Speaker 1: So in our country, right so, there are a lot
42:10
Speaker 1: of people who are on our healthcare system. They're highly
42:13
Speaker 1: dependent on our system. That shouldn't be right. So, like
42:16
Speaker 1: we as a taxpayer, how much money is going to
42:19
Speaker 1: funding healthcare for people who are not Americans, who are
42:22
Speaker 1: not in our country.
42:23
Speaker 9: That's really number one.
42:24
Speaker 1: And I guess they see that as a business owner
42:26
Speaker 1: from that business standpoint, you know, like, if something costs
42:30
Speaker 1: X amount of dollars, well, is it something that we need?
42:32
Speaker 1: Is it something that the business is gonna is going
42:34
Speaker 1: to profit from? If the answer is no, then why
42:37
Speaker 1: are we purchasing that? Why do we Why are we
42:40
Speaker 1: putting that, you know into our business?
42:42
Speaker 9: Why are we investing in that?
42:43
Speaker 1: So that's really number one. But then number two, you know,
42:46
Speaker 1: the cost of healthcare in the United States, that's something
42:49
Speaker 1: that we really have to tackle.
42:51
Speaker 8: You know.
42:52
Speaker 1: It shouldn't cost a dollar and seventy three cents to
42:54
Speaker 1: get an X ray in Turkey, you know, and it
42:58
Speaker 1: costs five hundred dollars here.
42:59
Speaker 9: They use a different machine. Are we getting different images?
43:02
Speaker 9: Are they seeing you know, better things in your lungs?
43:05
Speaker 9: You know?
43:05
Speaker 1: Are they seeing more things than what you can see
43:07
Speaker 1: here in the US? No, then why is it costing
43:10
Speaker 1: us more to do the same procedure that you can
43:13
Speaker 1: get overseas for way less, you know. So those are
43:17
Speaker 1: the things that we really just have to be honest
43:19
Speaker 1: with ourselves about.
43:21
Speaker 9: We can't.
43:22
Speaker 1: We can no longer have these incentives, you know, to
43:26
Speaker 1: keep it expensive at the expense of the taxpayer here
43:30
Speaker 1: in America, you know. So those are some of the
43:32
Speaker 1: things the insight that I have that I'd like to
43:34
Speaker 1: bring to the table. Obviously, when it comes to pharmacy,
43:37
Speaker 1: we all know it's not a joke, it's not a
43:39
Speaker 1: secret anymore.
43:40
Speaker 9: We all know what PBMs have done.
43:42
Speaker 1: Even in the state of New Mexico, so many independent
43:44
Speaker 1: pharmacies have closed because they just can't even afford to
43:49
Speaker 1: keep their doors open because of what the PBMs have done.
43:53
Speaker 9: Take the middleman out. You know.
43:55
Speaker 1: I've talked about Mark Cuban before on other platforms, and
43:58
Speaker 1: I always tell people Number one is.
44:00
Speaker 9: Not a genius because we as.
44:02
Speaker 1: Pharmacists know what needed to be done. There needs to
44:05
Speaker 1: be full transparency. As a compounder, I know how much
44:08
Speaker 1: it costs to make drugs. I know how much it
44:10
Speaker 1: costs to procure the raw ingredients, what it takes, the
44:13
Speaker 1: time it takes, the supplies I have to use, the
44:16
Speaker 1: final cost of the product. I know all of those things, right,
44:19
Speaker 1: so why inflate the price to where it's so unaffordable
44:23
Speaker 1: to the clients who need them?
44:24
Speaker 6: You know.
44:26
Speaker 9: So that's just some of the insight that I hope
44:28
Speaker 9: to bring to the table.
44:29
Speaker 1: You know, it's not an easy thing, and I know
44:31
Speaker 1: there are a lot of special interests, but I can't
44:35
Speaker 1: be bought, you know. My goal really is to go
44:37
Speaker 1: there and tell the truth on Capitol Hill and represent
44:40
Speaker 1: my district as best as I can.
44:42
Speaker 3: That's going to be refreshing.
44:44
Speaker 2: There's people throughout the country that I've met, pharmacists, even
44:49
Speaker 2: technicians who have gotten into public service and they've I've
44:54
Speaker 2: met mayors of little cities and obviously state representatives. But
45:00
Speaker 2: what I'm frustrated about is the encouragement of the future
45:05
Speaker 2: of that Like, is there a missing opportunity to go
45:09
Speaker 2: to the schools and say, you ever consider going into politics,
45:12
Speaker 2: you ever go into public service from a policy driven
45:17
Speaker 2: And I don't know, are we giving the future of
45:20
Speaker 2: pharmacy and our pharmacist or we're giving them enough insight.
45:23
Speaker 2: That's why this podcast I'm gonna get it everywhere because
45:25
Speaker 2: I want our pharmacists to say Wow. Imagine me practicing
45:29
Speaker 2: pharmacy for five, eight, ten years and then going into policy.
45:33
Speaker 2: I think there's something powerful to that.
45:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean when you look at the people on
45:37
Speaker 1: Capitol Hill, there is nothing special about them. You know,
45:41
Speaker 1: maybe some of them just have a little bit more
45:42
Speaker 1: money than me, But as far as being able to
45:45
Speaker 1: think through critical issues that plague Oar Nation, like, there's
45:49
Speaker 1: nothing special, you know, with the people who are sitting
45:53
Speaker 1: in those seats right now, a lot of them are
45:55
Speaker 1: not making decisions that are in our best interests, you know,
45:59
Speaker 1: and that's really kind of know what inspired me to run.
46:01
Speaker 9: The person who's sitting in the seat right now that I.
46:03
Speaker 1: Hope to flip never talks about health care, never talks
46:08
Speaker 1: about health care for New Mexico, for a district one
46:11
Speaker 1: right here in New Mexico, And.
46:12
Speaker 9: That's our biggest issue. That is our biggest issue, you know.
46:18
Speaker 1: And so yeah, hopefully whoever sees this podcast would really
46:22
Speaker 1: feel inspired.
46:22
Speaker 9: There's nothing special about me. I don't have two heads.
46:25
Speaker 1: In Nigeria, we say, you know, the person who got
46:28
Speaker 1: straight a's, do they have two heads?
46:29
Speaker 9: The answer is no.
46:31
Speaker 1: You know, there's nothing special except for me looking up
46:35
Speaker 1: and paying attention and saying, you know what, if I
46:37
Speaker 1: don't tell the story about my industry, someone else will
46:40
Speaker 1: and they're gonna come after you, and they're gonna shut
46:42
Speaker 1: you down, and they're gonna take that food off of
46:44
Speaker 1: your table, and then you're really.
46:45
Speaker 9: Gonna cry about it, you know.
46:47
Speaker 1: So we just have to step up to the plate
46:49
Speaker 1: and be courageous and take the bull by the horns.
46:53
Speaker 2: Well, we're excited, so we're going to be supporting you.
46:55
Speaker 2: We're going to get your information on on social media.
46:57
Speaker 2: I see you on a different platform, which is wonderful.
47:01
Speaker 2: It's a really good way to communicate in to win
47:04
Speaker 2: a campaign. Yeah, I would like to have you back
47:07
Speaker 2: and talk about the details around PBM reform and maybe
47:13
Speaker 2: even you can even share some of the examples of
47:15
Speaker 2: what's happening in New Mexico. But Datie, this has been awesome.
47:19
Speaker 2: I want to thank you for being on twerks.
47:21
Speaker 9: Yeah, thank you, thank you.
47:23
Speaker 1: I appreciate your time and I hope to get some
47:25
Speaker 1: support on this campaign.
47:27
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
47:34
Speaker 2: Shout out to my little brother Logan Uri and here's
47:39
Speaker 2: new bride Emily. They are getting married today Friday, May first,
47:46
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six, and I'm about to party. I guess
47:50
Speaker 2: who's going to be there. Brady Uri, our producer. So
47:56
Speaker 2: get ready for a party.
47:57
Speaker 3: Hey, look Credentials.
48:00
Speaker 2: Or Access twenty six Ascembia twenty twenty six. Just want
48:05
Speaker 2: to say thank you Chris Benz and the Assembia organization.
48:10
Speaker 3: It was so much fun.
48:12
Speaker 2: We will be back for Access to Pharmacy twenty twenty
48:17
Speaker 2: seven in Vegas. Hey, have a great weekend.