Empowered Patient Podcast Expanding the Role of Pharmacists to Drive Drug Adherence and Whole-Person Care with Dr. Tony Willoughby Stellus Rx
Dr. Tony Willoughby is the CEO of Stellus Rx, which has created a model of collaboration for the physician, patient, and pharmacist to provide a more robust system to encourage medication adherence and lifestyle changes. While clinicians may prescribe a treatment plan, pharmacists are in a position to work with patients to address their specific concerns and monitor the patient for drug interactions and possible de-prescribing strategies.
Tony explains, "What our model does is it comes alongside the physician. In that moment of the last 90 seconds of the appointment. We actually have that physician connect that patient to a pharmacist that's embedded virtually in that clinic to expand the capacity of the physician. To pick up that conversation and give space to understand what the patient's belief systems are, what their questions are, how to coordinate or optimize the medication to fit the patient's belief system and the product design of their health plan or their pharmacy benefit plan."
"Anytime you increase volume, you increase complexity. Whether that's the volume of different medication types or volume of dosing, you have more complexity in that moment. And so, our targeted population is your multi-chronic condition patients. We work primarily with primary care physicians, so think about the disease states that stay aligned with their primary care physicians the longest and what disease states are dominant within the US healthcare system. So we take care of a lot of diabetic patients, multi-chronic diabetic patients, COPD, hypertension, mental health, all the things that walk in and out of a primary care practice that has a type of complexity that goes along with that patient's regimen."
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