Converge Cast | Bridging the Gap, Personalized Virtual Care and the Future of Healthcare: Dr. Patrick Carroll
Dr. Patrick Carroll, Chief Medical Officer and Board Member at Hims & Hers, has spent his career reimagining how care is delivered —especially to underserved...
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Dr. Patrick Carroll, Chief Medical Officer and Board Member at Hims & Hers, has spent his career reimagining how care is delivered —especially to underserved populations. From his early days serving the Navajo Nation to Walgreens and now Hims & Hers, his focus has always been clear: make personalized care more accessible, affordable, and scalable.
In this episode of Converge Cast, Dr. Carroll joins hosts Lisa Casper and Shelly Carolan to share how his work in population health and primary care fuels his passion for expanding access through innovation.
He offers an inside look at Hims & Hers’ fully integrated, direct-to-consumer model—and how it’s opening doors with asynchronous care, specialty compounding, and AI-powered tools like MedMatch.
From chronic illness management to everyday wellness, Dr. Carroll explains how smarter, more accessible care is becoming a reality—and what it means for the future of healthcare.
Whether you’re a health system leader, digital health innovator, or clinician seeking new ways to make care more effective, this episode offers thoughtful insights and valuable takeaways on where the industry is headed— helping you think differently about what’s possible.
(Full transcript available below)
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Lisa Casper: Hello, everyone, and welcome to our next Converge Cast. As is typical with our Converge podcast series we have two co-hosts today. I’m Lisa Casper, managing director here at WittKieffer. I specialize in consumer health and wellness, additionally in digital health and emerging products and services. My co-host today is Shelly Carolyn, managing partner and practice leader of the investor, backed healthcare team which serves companies backed by private institutional corporate or public capital.
We’re honored and delighted to welcome our guest, Dr. Patrick Carroll, chief medical officer and board members at Hims & Hers. This consumer platform has removed barriers and provided access to modern personalized affordable health and wellness services by connecting patients with licensed providers, Hims & Hers empowers individuals to take charge of their health from the comfort of their own home through offerings, mental health, sexual wellness, dermatology, weight management, and much more.
Dr. Carroll oversees the provision of care, clinical outcomes, patient safety and strategic initiatives to enhance the Hims & Hers care model. He’s also played a vital role in building relationships with health systems and developing new clinical programs.
Previously Dr. Carroll served as chief medical officer at Walgreens managing retail clinics and healthcare strategy. His previous role as chief medical officer for Integrated Care Partners at Hartford Healthcare showcased his experience in large scale patient programs and value-based care. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the College of Holy Cross, and a medical degree from Dartmouth Medical School and he completed his family Practice Residency at Middlesex Hospital. Dr. Carroll has been key in expanding telehealth services through his commitment to innovation and patient empowerment.
Today, we will discuss the intersection of technology healthcare and the impact of telemedicine and the future of health and wellness. Dr. Carroll, welcome. We are so honored to have you with us today.
Patrick Carroll: Yeah, great to be here, Lisa. I’m looking forward to the discussion.
Lisa Casper: Yeah, so to kick it off, you’ve had such a unique career journey. Starting out as a practicing physician, and you know, working through retail health and now in telemedicine, that’s transforming the way consumers and patients can actually access care. I’d love to hear a little bit about your career journey, and you know what experiences have shaped you in the executive position you’re at now.
Patrick Carroll: Great, so I’ll kind of walk you through how I got here today. From a personal, but also, more importantly, just kind of the medical standpoint. So, I’m a primary care physician by training and practice. I was trained in family medicine, and I got subspecialty certification in adolescent medicine. In primary care, I was seeing patients from, you know, I’d say ‘nursery to nursing home’ a full panel of patients in my 28 years in practice in Concord, New Hampshire. So essentially, you’d see 25 to 30 patients per day. You had office hours. You’d round in the hospital to see your patients in the hospital. On weekends, and after hours, you know, we had answering services, but we’d hope that our customers or patients would not contact us, but if they did, we were available. And it was very traditional primary care practice, and I really enjoyed it. It was fun, it was challenging, but what I saw was that that model is really challenged. As we have fewer and fewer primary care physicians. Today, the latest data that I’ve seen is we’re about 50,000 primary care providers short. And as more chronic disease comes into play.
So, I started with that career in primary care. Lots of experience doing projects with our hospital and with one of the payers in the state, Tufts Health Plan was in the state, I had a kind of a broad background. But right in my mid-career I made a shift, and I shifted to go back to the Indian Health Service. I did four years with the Indian Health Service in the Navajo area coming right out of residency. It informed the rest of my career.
What I mean by that is, I saw a population that was struggling with many chronic conditions, many chronic diseases with limited financial resources. You know, the per capita spend from the federal government to the average Native American was quite low compared to other areas in this country. And then I also saw the issue of access to care, so that really gave me a view of health care that I have today.
I was actually doing population health, and we were doing population health in my first four years in the Indian Health Service before that term was even coined. So, we were trying to manage a population of patients with multiple chronic conditions, with limited resources. So really challenged, but really kind of set me off in my career and gave me focus in everything I did, moving forward.
So, I went from the Indian Health service to my 25,26 years as a primary care physician in Concord, New Hampshire. And then I went back to the Indian Health Service in 2009 to 2011. I did a population health project for them, set up school-based health clinics. And so that was kind of my second stint working on the Navajo Reservation. It was a great experience. Coming out of that 2-year project, I actually got recruited to be a Chief Medical Officer at Atrius Health, and in the Boston area. I loved Atrius Health in the respect that they took risk, significant risk, particularly around Medicare patients and the Medicare advantage program. And so, they were really focused on delivering high quality care that was affordable, at lower cost, and then really drive savings by focusing on value.
From Atrius Health, I got recruited to a new type of role which is the Chief Medical Officer of Integrated Care Partners, which was a clinical integration model at Hartford Healthcare. Again, that was a great experience for me, because it’s the first time that I actually moved out of, you know, managing a large multi-specialty group or moved out of from doing primary care alone to an integrated delivery network. So, you had the hospitals, you had the physician groups, you had the behavioral health entity. Really the full scope of an integrated delivery network, and I really enjoyed my two years there. Out of the blue I got recruited to Walgreens. Initially at Walgreens I was recruited to grow their retail clinic presence. At the time they had 500 retail clinics. But times were changing in terms of retail health. Rather than expanding to, you know, let’s say, a thousand retail clinics. We made the decision at Walgreens to really partner closely with health systems where they would run the retail clinics, and then I got a lot more involved with the healthcare strategy at Walgreens in terms of what we did in virtual care. Should we expand primary care from just retail clinics to actually full blown, primary care practices with their model with VillageMD. And so, I learned a lot about consumer-facing care at Walgreens. I can remember one of my first executive meetings there. They were talking about things called
Patrick Carroll: NPIs, that was something totally new to me. You know what the net promoter score was. It was a new phenomena for me. And so, essentially, they were really dialed in with the customer and consumer. How they experienced the Walgreens store, but also our healthcare entities. So that really sharpened my focus on consumer health care. And so, it was a really natural transition after five years at Walgreens to join Hims & Hers in 2019.
What I saw at Hims & Hers was a unique direct to consumer model that actually related very well to its customers. Provided them with content and information about specific verticals or healthcare conditions, where they could connect virtually with large provider groups, eventually into 50 states, and deliver care in a very customer, consumer friendly manner.
So, in a way, all of my experience, both from working with the Indian Health Service, providing access to high quality care, to overseeing a multi-specialty group at Atrius Health, to being involved with an integrated delivery network at Hartford Healthcare, right through the Walgreens experience around retail clinics and digital health and innovation, and finally at Hims & Hers. They all connected. It all kind of all made sense. And so, it’s been a great journey, and learning more every day about healthcare, and how we can do better in this four trillion-dollar section of our economy, that is, that is really challenged in the model today.
Lisa Casper: Yeah, that’s quite a journey. You’ve had quite a unique journey. And if you think back, you know, in your early days as a physician, how do you think that that experience has helped you advance into a leadership role? More of a consumer targeted telehealth platform.
Patrick Carroll: Absolutely. I am so glad I did those over 25 years of primary care, because I really saw the challenges of individual patients and customers around their healthcare conditions. I also was able to witness the prevalence and increase in prevalence of chronic conditions. You know, hypertension, cardiometabolic conditions, obesity, depression, how that and mental health, how that impacts patients’ lives. So really, being in the trenches gives you a much broader perspective about healthcare and where you can make a difference, where you can make an impact. But also, just as importantly, what are the guardrails? We can’t do everything in a digital virtual environment. There are certain things that are best left to the primary care provider. So, I saw the value of a primary care model. I saw the challenges of the primary care model in terms of scalability as my panel grew through the years, and there are less and less primary care physicians in our community to take care of those patients. And so, what I came out of that experience with is, yes, the traditional model worked well, but it was also going to be really challenged in the future just because of demographics, increased prevalence of chronic conditions, and a reduction in the labor force in terms of providers.
Lisa Casper: Yeah, right. And in terms of the challenges you’ve had, you know, developing into a leader at a, a more of a wellness-oriented on top of healthcare-oriented organization, having been a physician in the past, any, any kind of learnings there?
Patrick Carroll: Yeah. particularly in primary care, what you saw was the direct connection between folks who empowered themselves to do the preventive health thing, stay in shape, you know, limit alcohol intake, don’t start smoking, if you’re a smoker stops smoking. So really, all of those preventive measures that some of my patients and embraced and I would see longitudinally how they live longer and healthier lives. I also saw the burden of chronic disease, particularly much of it is, you know, from just habits, smoking, alcohol intake, sedentary lifestyle, eating the wrong foods.
So, primary care gives you unique visibility in terms of the genesis and origin of chronic conditions, how you can prevent them, and also how you intervene for those folks who have developed diabetes, for example. What kind of treatment and care do you provide them, while still emphasizing prevention is first and foremost, the most important aspect of what you can offer as a primary care provider.
Shelly Carolan: You mentioned some, you know, chronic illnesses, obesity, mental health, these obviously are both such a challenge here in the U.S. Your organization recently released the ‘Shape of America’ report on how weight loss can redefine our bodies, health, mood, confidence, spending decisions. Can you talk a little bit more about just your philosophy about educating patients and reaching patients and helping them better understand and manage their own wellness. Can you expand on that a little bit?
Patrick Carroll: Absolutely. You know, we’re really proud of the ‘Shape of America’ report. I think it was one of the first that actually went directly to consumers. The average person and said, “How do you feel about your weight? What are the issues that you see around obesity and the obesity epidemic in this country? How does actually weight and obesity, in fact, impact your life on a daily basis?” And some of the data that we gathered was not that surprising, but it was nonetheless, it was pretty eye-opening. You know, 85% of Americans feel it’s one major aspect of their lives that could be improved if they lost weight, it actually improved their mental health significantly. So definite tie in between obesity and mental health.
How important weight and staying in shape was in their everyday life. And that study actually goes through details of, you know, the consumer’s view of the weight that they have their challenges with obesity and the direct impact it has on their daily life, their mental health, as well as the development of chronic conditions because of obesity. And there’s such a strong link between obesity and some of the other cardiometabolic conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes, obviously. Really, every one of the chronic conditions can have some link back to obesity, particularly in the cardiometabolic space.
Shelly Carolan: There’s been so much news, you know, around GLP-1s and access to these medications to help manage obesity. I know at Hims & Hers one of the ways that you’re addressing that is, through specialty compounding medications and having access to that.
As a physician, how do you see the role of specialty compounding medications in modern healthcare and how they benefit patients? And you know, anything that you see is a risk, or caution that patients need to be aware of.
Patrick Carroll: So, the compounding is not a new phenomena. If you actually look in healthcare for many years, and even to this day. In dermatology, many of the products that are offered by dermatologists, either in large or smaller groups, are compounded products. So essentially, what you’re trying to do with compounding is offer a product that is safe, and safety and quality is table stakes, but it also allows you to personalize medications for patients for customers and to actually get better efficacy and as importantly, better adherence. You know, if you prescribe a medication, a generic medication, and it doesn’t really meet the needs, the personalized needs of the patients. There’s a good chance that they’re not going to take it. So, you know, before we even get into GLP-1s, we have been doing, and we continue to do today, a lot of compounding around dermatologic products, particularly around hair loss. And what we saw is this really valuable way to personalize in a safe, high-quality way both topicals as well as oral medications to prevent hair loss, and then also to promote hair regrowth. And so, we were very familiar, through our 503A pharmacies both in Arizona and Ohio, in terms of doing non-sterile compounding.
So, when we started looking at the whole issue of the epidemic of obesity in this country. We knew we had a place in solving that problem. And we wanted to do it in a safe and responsible way. Looking back over a year ago, when we first started some of these offerings, we were one of those slower, or last companies, to come into the market to offer compounded GLP-1s. We actually focused to start with on oral compounded medications. So, if you combine in various doses and various formulations: Metformin, Topiramate, Topramax, Naltrexone, Bupropion, these are medications that have been used historically by primary care physicians, but mainly weight loss experts, to treat obesity.
And we’ve had great results with that. Those are compounded medications, many of them. Some of them are generic. And what we’re seeing with that is that a significant amount of weight loss at a lower price than even a GLP-1. So, you can get to 70% weight loss, target weight loss, compared to a GLP-1 without the expensive GLP-1 costs. So, we can offer that for like $69 a month. So, we did that for several months, and what we saw was really pretty impressive uptake. Patients like the price, they like the efficacy. And so, we became very familiar with the weight management space before we even launched it. And we hired a national expert, Dr. Craig Primack, on obesity and weight management. He developed our oral formulations, and he also guided us in terms of guidelines. What to ask for, how we track side effects, how we can actually improve our offerings on the oral side before we even got into the GLP-1s.
Shelly Carolan: So, you mentioned patient access. And I think that’s one of the really interesting things about this model. Previously, we had chatted, and you had mentioned that Hims & Hers offers synchronous and asynchronous care in its model. And I think that that’s so interesting. Can you describe how each of these approaches work and how they complement each other? And you know how that’s given broader access to people and meeting consumers where they’re at?
Patrick Carroll: Absolutely. I think there’s a general misunderstanding of the difference between synchronous and asynchronous, and the quality that’s really embedded in both of those modalities.
So, the states actually set the regulation about whether you’re allowed to do asynchronous, which means really chat based care. You’re not face to face, but you have constant communication, informed communication, between the customer and the provider. That’s the asynchronous modality. For synchronous, you actually have a video visit with the patient. You’re collecting the same information. Some states require that we do synchronous, and we comply with that. Many more states say you are able to do an asynchronous modality. So, we’ve been, since the beginning of Hims & Hers, we can offer both of our platforms, both asynchronous and synchronous. What we have seen is the quality matches up very, very closely between asynchronous and synchronous. And why is that? Because the intake questions, these sometimes up to 100 questions, for example, for weight management that a customer has to answer, gives the provider a full view of the patient’s past medical history, medications they’re on, side effects that they’ve experienced in the past really being able to make an informed decision with the guidance of the customer around what medication they may qualify for, and which ones we need to avoid based on their past medical history. So, whether it’s an asynchronous modality or synchronous modality, the same questions get asked. The only thing missing on the asynchronous is, you don’t have a video encounter with that patient. So, we feel there’s a place for both modalities, and we can comply with whatever the state regulation is, but the asynchronous modality is quite honestly, and we’ve pulled our customers, they love asynchronous, they like the anonymity. They feel like their questions are getting answered and they’re very comfortable with asynchronous care.
Lisa Casper: How is Hims & Hers differentiating itself to stay competitive while ensuring high quality, care and maintaining customer trust? Anything else you can add about that?
Patrick Carroll: Absolutely. I think our model is unique. And it’s really unique even to what I did in primary care is that we are a fully, vertically integrated model. And what I mean by that, when I saw someone in my primary care practice, let’s say, with diabetes, I would prescribe a medication in many cases. I wasn’t sure when they left my office, and they had that prescription in hand, whether they would actually fill the prescription. I wasn’t sure of their adherence. I would see them back in three to six months, and if they weren’t improving, I’d ask, “Are you taking your medication?” No, Doc, I stopped taking it a few months ago because I was having such and such a side effect. So that, you know, that was the world I lived in, and you got used to it. But at Hims & Hers we are a fully vertical, integrated system. So, someone comes on our platform for care and one of the condition sets that we treat. They actually, many patients come on, many customers come on because they’ve read content that we put on the Internet around things like hair loss or sexual dysfunction or obesity. They read all of that content, and they say, “Well, I need some help with this.” So, 24/7 they can come on our platform and then they do an intake form. Again, very comprehensive, as I said, with weight loss as it is with all of our verticals. They answer these questions, and then they get connected with a provider in either the asynchronous or synchronous modality. There’s two-way communication. And then a decision is made between the customer and the provider, whether they qualify for medication. If they do qualify, that pharmacy fulfillment is actually done through our own pharmacies. You know, we have two large pharmacies, one in Ohio and one in Arizona, and now we have a 503B pharmacy in California for GLP-1s.
And that fulfillment comes from us. So, we’re not only able to see the patient from the patient’s past medical history, the challenges they’ve faced in the past, the provider interaction–which is all documented in our proprietary EMR–to pharmacy fulfillment, and then we do frequent follow up. That is usually asynchronous type follow up. We send out emails and notifications–”How are you doing? What are your side effects? What are your challenges?” And then from there we do regular follow-up when it’s time for renewal. And, depending on what medication they’re on, they may need to have a formal check-in visit at three months or six months. For example, for weight loss, in some states we’re required to do a every three month documented check-in visit which we can comply with. So essentially, we are the provider from the start to the end. And we’re able to get data on adherence, retention, side effects, which is really unique compared to traditional primary care practice. It’s also unique to a lot of digital health platforms, because many platforms don’t have the capability for pharmacy fulfillment.
So, imagine all of that data that we’re collecting, and the ability to use that data to improve care. You know, the one area that we’ve really customized and personalized our care is really around GLP-1s. We ask specifically what side effects they have when they take medications. And through our AI generated machine learning model called MedMatch, we’re able to identify which patients would benefit from which titration program. And then we have customized personalized titration programs where, for some patients that have a lot of GI side effects to meds, we tend to put them on a lower dose and scale up slower on the titration as opposed to someone that has not experienced side effects before. So, all of our dosing are customized and personalized, and we’re able to do that because we’re totally, vertically integrated. And we can see how they’re doing, what side effects they’re having, and follow them through their complete weight management journey.
Lisa Casper: So, how would you address patients that could be hesitant about telehealth and/or receiving compounding medications? This is all brand-new concepts to them. What’s your approach to that type of a patient?
Patrick Carroll: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think the most important thing is to double down on trust and safety. I read this really interesting study that came out just before Christmas from, it was a Gallup poll, and it was published in the Kaiser publication. Only 40% of Americans feel that they’re getting a safe or valuable healthcare experience. And so, they have questions about quality, but they also have questions about access. So that’s pretty low. People like their individual physicians, but when they look at their health care experience in general, they’re really concerned about quality, and they’re concerned about access.
And so, we’ve really doubled down around quality, and being very transparent in terms of what we offer, side effects of medications that we offer. So, both the customer and the provider are comfortable with prescribing it. And then, talking about our quality processes with them in an open way. This whole concept of a 9-point certificate of analysis that every patient can have, it’s very reassuring to them. And we hear that from customers, “I like the fact that I know it’s in my medication.”
So, you know this narrative that’s out there that is not true, that the compounded medications that we prescribe are not as safe as the branded. We’ve actually, you know, shown both our internal data, and we did a large white paper on looking at our customers who take the compounded GLP-1s. And all of the data that we’ve collected and the information we share to customers, I think, is very reassuring to them.
Table stakes is quality, but they also want information about the care that they’re receiving. And they also want support through their entire journey. Just the number of outreaches that we do, I think, is very comforting for our customers. I never did that amount of outreach in my primary care practice. Again, it was, see you in three months, and occasionally they may call my answering service because they’re having a side effect or get hold of me for more serious side effects. But I really lost touch with them for a three to six month, and sometimes 12-month period. So, it is a different model. It’s definitely more consumer centric, I would say.
Shelly Carolan: Yeah, it’s interesting, some of the ways that your organization is helping to address some of the disparities in healthcare access and the different modalities in which to reach patients, communicate with them, and help them through their journeys. What challenges still remain out there? Not just for your organization, but for everybody. What are some of the hurdles that still have yet to be overcome through innovation, technology or otherwise?
Patrick Carroll: You know, the pandemic was an interesting time. We’ll put it that way. It was a time of rapid adoption of virtual care. I just call it healthcare, but it was virtual because we had to do it, you know? Essentially the brick-and-mortars face to face care took a hiatus for, you know, two to six months. And so, I think it got two groups over that ‘trust hump’ which is providers, but also patients or customers, and so it gave us an opportunity to really accelerate the discussion about virtual care and the benefit of it. And so, it’s not that everybody coming out of the pandemic, when the brick-and-mortars opened up entirely, it’s not like we dropped that whole in-person model. But I think what we saw is a generalized, more acceptance of virtual care. As long as you do it in a safe and effective manner. You can’t just willy-nilly offer virtual care in verticals that we don’t feel comfortable with. For example, we’re not managing folks with, you know, active angina. Or, you know, end stage renal disease in a virtual environment. We know the swim lanes we need to stay with. And when we choose an offering, we actually measure, and we want to document, that we can offer the same high-quality experience in a virtual environment as you could get in a brick-and-mortar environment. So, I think that’s a good rule of thumb.
The other advantage that I think we have as a kind of an innovative company is, we really look at leveraging innovation. But innovation with responsibility, innovation with quality baked in. So, technology in all enables you to really to do a scalable personalized care, while still maintaining that customer trust. So, that whole MedMatch program that allows us to identify the specific concerns and needs for each customer and then choosing a personalized dosage scheme or titration process for them.
It’s a great example of using technology, smart technology to direct better care in a personalized fashion that’s pretty unique in healthcare. And that’s one thing we’re really proud of at Hims & Hers. I think it’s why we have such high retention, not only for our customers, but also from our providers.
Shelly Carolan: Yeah. One of the things that we’re always thinking about is this series is called, Converge or Convergence. And all of these factors, this convergence of health care, wellness, technology, consumerism, and other things that are driving today’s organizations that are in the healthcare ecosystem. We’re always looking at how that environment is impacting leaders and leaders of the future. And so would love to hear your input on, you know, especially regarding clinical leaders, what is important qualifications of today’s leaders and leaders of the future in this space? How is that changing and evolving compared to just 10 years ago?
Patrick Carroll: So, from a high level, we’re not there to totally change the healthcare system, or how healthcare is delivered in inpatient setting or displace the primary care physician. We see a role in all of those entities. And I’ve worked at every level of the healthcare ecosystem, you know, from being a primary care physician to health system, to Walgreens retail clinics. We see a role for all of those players. For example, we have many health system relationships, because we know there’s a percentage of our patients that are too complex who come on our platform that really need inpatient care or specialty follow-up. And so, we give the patients options to get connected to a health system that’s in the area that we have a relationship with. So, we’re not trying to displace health systems. We’re not going to be an inpatient healthcare facility. Nor are we trying to displace primary care physicians. Every patient that comes on our platform, we encourage them to share the information with their primary care providers.
So, we want to, first of all reassure the status quo that we’re not there to totally disrupt. But we’re actually there to supplement what’s happening in healthcare today, and to bring a level of innovation that sometimes is slow to be received by traditional healthcare. So, when I speak to healthcare leaders, I say, ”There’s a role for everyone.” You know, there’s a huge shortage of physicians, particularly primary care physicians. We need to think creatively about how we’re going to really advance healthcare with limited resources. And when I talk about limited resources, it’s the spend, the financial, limited financial resources, but really also the limited personnel resources, you know, even with nurse practitioners, advanced practitioners and primary care providers and specialists. There’s just not enough to go around.
So, I encourage health system leaders and executives to think outside the box, and many of them do. Is look, okay, I have a health system, but is there a new front door to healthcare? Certainly, there is at Hims & Hers, and that’s why many health systems have embraced us, and we form these collaboration agreements. They see the value of what we offer in terms of providing access to care and then utilizing their resources when they’re needed.
So, I there’s a lot of great collaboration that we do today. And I think that’s only going to grow in the future. So, I think my lesson, or if I was going to, you know, and I do sometimes speak in front of health system leaders, is that they need to really focus in on innovation, not be afraid of that, but also do it with responsibility, with an eye towards quality as table stakes. And then also be willing to look outside the box. You know, when I talk to some health system leaders, and I talk about asynchronous care. They look at me like I have three eyes, for example, it’s like, what is asynchronous care? How can you deliver high quality care in an asynchronous environment? And I can sit down with them and show them the data, the internal data that we have and studies that have been done about the value of asynchronous care. It’s very efficient, high quality. And for many conditions. It’s perfectly, perfectly, you know, amenable to delivering efficient high-quality care with fewer full-time equivalents needed, just because of its efficiency. But, in order to do that, you really have to have a great quality structure in place which we do at Hims & Hers to track those visits, to make sure that patients are receiving the same high-quality, care that they would, as a synchronous visit, or even a brick-and-mortar visit. So, that’s my message to leaders – be innovative. You know, your true north is always quality. Think outside the box in terms of other ways that care can be delivered. And also think about what customers are struggling with, which is access to care, but also cost of care.
Lisa Casper: So, you’ve answered a lot of great questions. It’s always, it’s always fascinating catching up with you, Dr. Carroll. Love to turn a question to you to just ask, what else have we not covered today that maybe you’d like our listeners to take away from this podcast? Any additional insights that are top of mind for you?
Patrick Carroll: I’m like a system, population health person. And again, that harkens back to my days with the Indian Health Service, spending six years as a primary care physician on Navajo Reservation and seeing all the challenges that are a part of that. And so, I really think that we need to look at how we’re going to deliver care to larger populations in a limited resource pool.
But, I don’t accept that we can go forward with the same traditional healthcare model and get where we want to be. We need to think really in an innovative manner. Keeping quality in mind but, be willing to look at alternative avenues to deliver care. Again, asynchronous care, virtual care –I don’t call it virtual anymore, I just call it healthcare–and be open to those ideas to move beyond the traditional brick-and-mortar.
Shelly Carolan: Wonderful. That’s a great parting comment there, Dr. Carroll, on behalf of Lisa and myself we just want to thank you for joining the Converge Cast. It’s been a fantastic conversation, learned a lot, and thank you so much.
Patrick Carroll: Yeah, really appreciate it, folks.
