GLP-1 Medications in Telehealth | E. 88

The use of telehealth soared during the pandemic and remains a vital tool in patient care. Justin Schreiber explains what makes LifeMD successful, and outlines his vision for GLP-1 medication to Jim Cagliostro. 

 

Episode Introduction 

Justin shares the lightbulb moment that led to a change in his focus, the three keys to LifeMD’s success, and how compliance and mentality can improve the patient experience. He also explains why he believes GLP-1 is a once-in-a-century life-changing drug, the power of AI to lower healthcare costs, and why hiring the right people ‘’makes magic happen.’’

 

Show Topics

 

• Three key elements for success in telehealth 

• How technology affects the patient experience

• Marketing expertise raises the profile of telehealth

• Maintaining a ‘’patient-first’’ focus

• GLP-1 could be a once-in-a-century miracle drug

• The future of AI in healthcare

• Leadership tip: hire the right people

 

07:02 Three key elements for success in telehealth

Justin explained what makes LifeMD stand out in a crowded market. 

‘’There are three big things that I think a direct to patient telehealth company needs to be successful. The first is amazing providers. LifeMD is one of the few telehealth companies that has an affiliated medical group of mostly full-time providers. So we've had to hire some 1099 providers that still work for us 20 or 30 hours a week. But the vast majority of the doctors and nurse practitioners that provide treatment to LifeMD's patients across all 50 states, this is their full-time job and they love it. They're super passionate about it. They work together, they train together. It results in an incredible patient experience. Most other telehealth companies out there are using an army of 1099 contractors. They're trying to make a couple bucks on the side. Oftentimes the incentives are to get off the call as quickly as possible. We have a team of doctors that really cares about building the brand and really cares about providing comprehensive care.’’

 

08:03 How technology affects the patient experience 

Justin said tech is the second big piece in LifeMD’s success. 

‘’And then, I mean, the second big piece is tech. The technology behind what we do is really complex. I think this is probably the most underappreciated thing in LifeMD. We've had 50 to 100 engineers in the US and we have a dev team in Ukraine as well that have been working now on just our primary care platform for the last three years. We've put tens of millions of dollars into that. It's proven at scale. I mean, so we run a business where we have 750 to 1,000 new patients coming on the platform on any given day. We have thousands and thousands of patients that are on various subscription for different prescription products for our lifestyle telehealth business. It's just a super complex business, especially on the compliance side to comply across 50 different states. And so the technology is really important and that has a big impact on patient experience.’’

 

09:02 Marketing expertise raises the profile of telehealth

Justin said performance marketing expertise enhances LifeMD’s success. 

‘’And then the third thing I would say is just this legacy-like performance marketing expertise. There have been a number of telehealth companies that have great technology and have probably really awesome medical groups, I'm sure not as good as LifeMD's. But, look, our ability to go out there and actually run an ad and get somebody through a flow and convert that prospect into a customer, it's really special. I mean, we spend $40 or $50 million a year on media, LifeMD on every channel imaginable. We do almost all of it internally. And I think that that ability to control our own destiny and actually go out there and build these businesses through direct marketing within telehealth is really special.’’

 

12:04 Maintaining a ‘’patient-first’’ focus

Justin said compliance and ‘’mentality’’ lead to a great patient experience. 

‘’I think the first thing is compliance. It's making sure that you have the right compliance infrastructure in place at the top to ensure that everybody in the organization, from doctors to nurses, to medical assistants, to even all of the various patient care reps in our patient care center, making sure they're all doing the same thing. A lot of that just comes down to policies and procedures and audits and having a great compliance infrastructure in place, which I feel really good about what we have at LifeMD in that area. Secondly, I think it's just mentality, right? I mean, I think we spend a fortune on our medical group... It hurts. I mean, hiring full-time providers and doctors and nurse practitioners and all the licensing that goes into this. I mean, it's one of our biggest line items at LifeMD on the expense side. And there's not a week that goes by where people are like, "Hey, can't we do all this async? Why do patients need to actually see the doctor? Can't they just fill out a form and we treat them? We could do 50 times as much volume with the same resources. So I think it's just the mentality. For us, a great patient experience, I believe, and great care results in us building brand equity and it results in good retention.’’

 

16:11 GLP-1 could be a once-a-century miracle drug

Justin said GLP-1 drugs are offering additional benefits to people with diabetes. 

‘’…most people out there in the medical and scientific world and in the financial world look at this class of drugs as what could potentially be a once a century miracle drug. The class of drugs is called GLP-1s or glucagon-like peptide 1 agonists. There's four kind of big drugs in this class right now that are approved by the FDA. Three of them are approved by the FDA for diabetes. There's Ozempic and Rybelsus, they're both semaglutides. Wegovy is also a semaglutide, which is approved for obesity by the FDA. And those three drugs are owned by Novo Nordisk. And then the fourth big one is Mounjaro, which has been approved. That's a drug manufactured by Eli Lilly that's been approved for type two diabetes. All of these have been approved for type two diabetes, most of them for quite some time, some as many as two decades. The drugs are well understood, the safety of these drugs is well understood. But, look, what they realized as they were giving these drugs to patients for type two diabetes is that in addition to helping to regulate blood sugar, people were losing crazy amounts of weight. The early ones, people were losing five to 10% of their body weight, then came along Ozempic and some of the other semaglutides, and people started to lose 15 to 20% of their body weight. And now Mounjaro, which is Lilly's drug, which will likely be approved for obesity this quarter, the fourth quarter this year, a lot of people in the studies were losing 30 to 40% of their body weight.……One of the other side effects of these drugs is that people that have other addictions, whether it be nicotine or alcohol or any other addictive behaviors, when they're on these drugs, they're finding it easy to give up some of their other addictions as well.’’

 

26:27 The future of AI in healthcare

Justin said AI has the potential to lower the cost of healthcare over time. 

‘’Well, I think one of the best ways to maximize the effectiveness of virtual care offerings is through in-home care and in-home tools. Think about everything, all of the things now, and this is a whole area of healthcare that's exploding and it's going to continue to take off over the next five or 10 years. But if you think about all the tools we have just in an iPhone and certainly what can be connected to an iPhone now in the home to diagnose, I mean, look, now you can use your iPhone camera and take a picture of your face and within a second you can see your blood pressure. That's likely to be FDA approved this year. You now have pulse ox obviously on devices like your Apple Watch. I think all of your vitals are going to be easily accessible to a virtual care platform within the next couple of years, as long as... There obviously are going to be certain Americans that are going to be hesitant to share that information with anybody- If you're like me, and probably you, I'm going to be like, let's upload it to the cloud and analyze it for me every morning and certainly share it with my doctor. And then AI is going to be a big part of it. I mean, I think that AI will certainly lower the cost of healthcare over time. A lot of these common issues in primary care can probably be diagnosed and handled using AI down the road with some oversight obviously from a physician.’’

 

30:13 Leadership tip: hire the right people

Justin said finding the right people makes the magic happen. 

‘’I mean, look, I never ran a big company or had many employees prior to LifeMD. I always liked having two or three employees at the most. But I think the one thing that I've learned through LifeMD, it's the most important thing a leader can do, is recruiting people that are awesome underneath him or her. And that's what, if I think back on my trajectory with LifeMD and how the company evolved, the biggest catalyst... Look, we had a really awesome co-founder too, which were incredible, but co-founders are entrepreneurs, right? And they get a business so far and typically businesses outgrow them, right? And so what I've seen is as we've built out the C team and gotten the business to a level where we could actually attract really high-quality leaders out of other companies to come in and actually grow that part of the business, whether it be finance or marketing or technology, I mean, these were the hires that not only in a crazy way positively impacted my quality of life and how well I slept…. My strategy has just been find amazing people that you can trust that work really hard, that don't have egos and that are kind of proven and you make a bet on them. And when you get a full team of those like I think we have right now at LifeMD, that's where I think the magic happens.’’

 

 

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You’ll also hear: 

 

Justin’s ‘’light bulb’’ moment that ultimately led to LifeMD. ‘’… this whole telehealth thing and this idea of technology, virtual care, in-home healthcare … there is no bigger addressable market that I'll ever see in the rest of my life than this. Let's build a company and list it on the NASDAQ, raise a bunch of capital to do some awesome things. So, that's how we got to where we are today.’’

 

The crowded space of telehealth: ‘’… especially in the post-COVID years, during the pandemic, you had a crazy amount of venture capital flowing into startup telehealth companies. I'm sure there are hundreds and hundreds, if not 500 different types of telehealth companies out there that have been funded over the last five years.’’

 

How telehealth contributes to primary care: ‘’The big knock on telehealth is that it's not real comprehensive healthcare, and we put everything possible LifeMD to be the opposite of that….There's a real emphasis on wellness. I mean, there's a longitudinal relationship with the same doctor. All of these things contribute to comprehensive primary care.’’ 

 

LifeMD’s comprehensive weight loss offering: ‘’LifeMD is helping patients not only access these (GLP-1) drugs, but also there's a coaching element to what we do….trying to help them implement some lifestyle changes along with the drug.’’

 

 

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