Collaborating with Pharmacists Gives Physicians Freedom to Focus on Medicine

In this interview, Sarah Hurty, MD, owner of Take Back Your Practice, explains how collaboration between pharmacists and physicians allows physicians to focus on wellness-oriented medicine.

Transcript

Sarah Hurty, MD:

I had to adjust my understanding of what freedom meant for doctors. Freedom for doctors didn’t necessarily mean learning the leadership skills. It didn’t necessarily mean learning the management skills. It didn’t necessarily mean learning the business skills. Freedom for them more often is, “No, I want to be able to practice medicine apart from big systems and apart from administrations who do not value me for anything other than a cog and a wheel,” and that’s where I think the mutual respect of a pharmacist and a physician, even if the pharmacist is owning the practice, is a very different dynamic and can bring freedom to the physicians. So, that’s where pharmacists can leverage their skills, bound to what laws allow, in their state, or if they want to own them outside of their state—some states you can own and some states you can’t own physician practices. They should be able to leverage all their skills for the mutual benefit, and I think that will help transform medicine into wellness-oriented medicine, solving problems from the inside out and the problems at the source, rather than merely medicating, which sounds like it’s detrimental to pharmacists, but it’s not. They need to see where medicine is going and participate there and then monetize that.