In this episode, Timothy J. Hayes interviews Patrick Alonso, a healthcare advocate and pharmacist, who shares valuable healthcare advocacy tips to empower you to take control of your health. Patrick discusses his journey from traditional pharmacy practice to becoming a healthcare advocate, driven by his passion for helping individuals optimize their healthcare experience. He emphasizes the importance of patient advocacy, especially for those dealing with polypharmacy (taking five or more medications). Tune in to learn how you can become a more informed and empowered healthcare consumer.
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Patrick Alonso – Healthcare Advocate
Patrick Alonso is a catalyst for change in healthcare, driven by an unyielding commitment to progress. As the force behind Tampa Healthcare Advocate, he fearlessly advocates for his client’s health and well-being, leveraging his expertise as a licensed Florida pharmacist for health and wellness. Patrick loves to help others, and his passion for healthcare change shows in his work as a pharmacist advocate for his clients and the profession of pharmacy.
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Patrick, thank you for joining me. It’s delightful to see you face to face.
Timothy, it’s an honor to be here and I appreciate the work that you do for people with health and wellness, especially with mental health.
I’m hoping you could start us off by telling us a little bit about how you got into the work you do and what drives your passion for it.
I’m a Pharmacist by trade, went to pharmacy school, passed my boards, and did all that good stuff, but I left the world of what you would traditionally call a pharmacy practice where somebody might be in a hospital or in a big box retail store, things like that. I practiced in that setting for a little while. I have some prehistory with polypharmacy medication errors and things like that when dealing with my grandparents. I helped take care of them towards the later years of their life.
What I found was that a lot of people are very accepting of the medications they take and the healthcare that they’re receiving. For the most part, it’s probably pretty good, but some people need a little bit of extra help. I left traditional pharmacy practice to become a healthcare advocate with a pharmacy focus because the United States is one of the most prescribed countries in the world, if not the most prescribed country in the world, we have some of the highest rates of polypharmacy, which means taking five or more medications.
I wanted to hone in my practice on helping people. I like helping people one-on-one. I do like helping larger groups but changing the way people use their healthcare has been a real passion of mine. It stems from some issues that my grandparents had in the healthcare system. My grandfather, for a good example, was prescribed a beta blocker from his primary care and he was also prescribed one from his cardiologist. They did not have a communication system that worked, so he ended up on double beta-blocker therapy, which, if you don’t know, can be pretty debilitating.
He had a hospital stay. This was before pharmacy for me, so we were all confused. We didn’t know what was going on. Why are the medications that my grandfather’s been given to help his heart failure hurting him? This and other things were a driving force for me to go to pharmacy school. Once I got to pharmacy school and started practicing, I realized that my grandparents’ issues were not in isolation.
Many people had experienced medication errors and many people did not feel like they were getting the most out of their healthcare or getting the most of what they paid for. When I was in that practice, I realized I could help more people by starting a business where I could practice pharmacy the way I wanted to. I don’t dispense. Think of me as the pharmacist who tries to help you get off drugs or manage your drugs. That’s how I got into starting a healthcare advocacy company.
Can you describe for us what your role is like as a healthcare advocate? When you meet with somebody, what’s your part in the healthcare process?
That’s a great question. The main thing is, usually, when somebody comes to me, they’re not having the greatest situation, right? Like I’m probably going to have to fix a lot of problems from the get-go, which is fine. That’s why I started this business. I’m a problem solver. I like fixing things. Usually, when somebody comes to me, I’ll say that they’re somewhat disorganized with the healthcare system, the paperwork, and the doctors. Chances are they have three or more docs or prescribers.
That can cause some issues if they’re not in the same health system or communicating. Generally, they don’t remember the last time they had some lab work and don’t need procedures if they are a cardiology patient. They probably need an EKG at some point in time. A lot of these factors are all over the place and strewn about. It’s pretty much my responsibility when somebody retains me to help organize all of that healthcare information.
Find out what they need and don’t need, advocate for their health first and foremost, and for them as a patient. start working on if they’re on medications that they don’t necessarily need, if they’re on too many, if they’re not on the right therapy, if they’re being charged a bunch of money for one drug that a different drug is on their formulary for their insurance that would be a lot cheaper but offers them the same relief or benefit. Those are the kinds of things. I go through someone’s entire healthcare.
I try to save them money. I try to save them time, stress, and all of the above. When you have somebody looking over your shoulder and helping streamline the process, you realize that a lot of my clients are already sick and tired. They’re tired more so than anything. Getting them to a point where they don’t feel as tired with all the extra that goes on, they can actually focus on their health. They focus on eating better. They focus on their exercise. They’re not so exhausted from all these visits, text messages, and notifications coming to them because I’m helping them handle it.
Is it a process of having them sign a bunch of release forms so you can start interfacing with their other healthcare providers, or is there another way you can go about that?
I do both and it depends on how comfortable the client feels. A lot of times, I go to the doctor’s appointment with them. I establish the relationship, “I’m the healthcare advocate. If we need a HIPAA release, we can sign it. I have those at my office.” I’ve noticed that a lot of times, when I’m more involved and engaged, then their providers are a lot more involved and engaged with us. There’s a lot more communication that goes on, which can be helpful for a patient. Let’s say they don’t need maybe a full visit, but they’re having a question about something that’s going on. We have a line of communication open.
It goes any route that the patient feels comfortable with. A lot of my clients like me to go to their doctor’s appointments with them. Some of my clients don’t live in the state of Florida. I have some in different states and I’m like Spacely Sprockets at that point. If you remember the Jetsons where they’ll put me on their phone and I’m there at the visit with them. That gives me the ability to be more hands-on with their providers, establish that, “There’s a pharmacist looking after their medications.” Someone continuously monitors them, and I can communicate with them pretty openly if something isn’t right or if we have a question about what to do next.
The first thought I had when you said when you’re there in the room with a patient as an advocate, their other providers are more engaged. The first thought I had was, isn’t that a shame?
Yeah. I’ll say it’s like this. Most of my clients come to me and they say, “I go to this doctor. I think they’re a pretty good doctor, but they’re on their computer the entire time whenever they talk to me.” It’s like they’re typing away, the patient’s over here, let’s say, pointing to my right now. I’m facing my computer and they’re typing away and they’re asking questions. The patient is feeding information into their ear, but we’ve lost some of the direct eye contact like you and I are doing virtually.
It’s called engagement, being engaged.
I feel like a lot of people get treated, and healthcare is very segmented. You have neurology, cardiology, and pulmonology, like all the different specialties, which are great because having intelligent people hyper-focused on something, they can get a lot done. If it’s one appointment and another appointment and another, every doctor isn’t paying attention or they’re not engaging. Looking at them, and asking thoughtful questions, it’s like, “Let’s check the boxes and get out of here.” I’m not saying that that’s what doctors want, but insurance, unfortunately, puts a lot of providers under constraints that they don’t like being under.
They like spending time with their patients. They like helping. Anyone who went to some healthcare professional school or program did it to probably help people. You get out in the real world and now there’s all these confinements on how you’re going to practice and it sucks for a lot of them. By me being there, I’m able to answer questions, I’m able to break a little bit of that computer listening, and we get a little bit more engaged in the conversation.
I would imagine that you also ask questions that the patients may not think to ask.
Absolutely. There have been many instances where how many people know, have as broad of a knowledge of disease states and different issues as a healthcare provider, pharmacist, or somebody else? They don’t maybe have that type of knowledge. When they get a new diagnosis or feel like something isn’t right, maybe they don’t know how to ask the questions or speak the language that we healthcare providers are speaking. It’s my opportunity to intervene there, positive intervention, and open up the door for my patients to get some answers that they need.
In prepping for this interview, this one question kept coming to me. I wonder if you, Patrick, have some fundamental questions or techniques you could give our audience to say, “Look, start with this, make sure you ask this. Here’s a pattern of information that’s usually not disclosed. It’s important for you to know.” Are there some tips or tricks that you could mention for people to help them at least increase their awareness that they might need an advocate or help them advocate for themselves if they’re not in a position to hire an advocate?
Tim, that’s a great question. I’m happy to provide some tips and tricks for your audience. 1) Be organized, and show up on time. That can be very difficult for people for various reasons. Transportation, communication, feeling overwhelmed. That’s number one. It probably seems obvious, but it’s one of the things that I deal with the most. 2) Keep an updated list of your medications, and this is the pharmacist in me coming out. Keep an updated list of your medications on board for any of your doctor’s visits. Edit it.
If you switch something out, all that. Make sure that the name of the medication that you take is on there, the dosage form, and how many times a day you take it. That’s great for every provider to have and something that comes up all the time when I’m newly retained for a case is if somebody generally has three or more providers, I will go to every single one of those appointments or I will fax them a new medication list or request a medication list to check it. Chances are one of the three will not have an updated list of those medications or the most recent list.
Sometimes, all three don’t have an updated list. If I’m talking to the client or the patient and they have all their medications and supplements in front of me, it might not be updated from what I see. I go through and update everything. Keep your medications updated. That will probably save a lot of people a lot of time and hassle trying to track all those down. It puts you in a much safer place because your providers know what they can and cannot prescribe based on what you’re already taking.
I would keep at least your two most recent bloodwork at least somewhere accessible. That way, you can see your progress. Is your A1C going down? Is your A1C going up? That gives you a good place to be able to track health information as well. Those are the big three right off the top who show up on time and ready to go. Having an updated list of medications and updated lab work, that’s a great start. Any additional health information that you can provide a doctor greatly helps their ability to interact with you and give you the right diagnosis and the right treatment.
Have you had a situation where someone you’re advocating for or with a patient who is well organized and has a nice history outlined and they get the feeling from their provider that the provider’s not even reading what they’ve given them?
Absolutely. I actually was hired recently for something similar. It was strange because we went to the appointment and had a health discussion. It was to a cardiologist and we left and I thought that wasn’t that bad. Like, “I had a pretty good appointment. We got our information across. They asked thoughtful questions. They were very engaged.” When we were in the elevator going back to our cars, the client said, “They’ve never been this nice to me before. They’ve never been this engaging with me before.” As I said before, they’re typing on the computer. I didn’t do a whole lot of talking.
I didn’t do a whole lot of interacting, but sometimes having someone there is helpful. I’m a professional. It doesn’t have to be. It doesn’t have to be a professional. It can be a family member or a friend, someone that you feel comfortable with, that you feel like can be a rock for you there in that doctor’s appointment is so important because then you have a support system in place and it doesn’t feel so much like you versus the doctor or me versus the doctor. It’s you and your friend or family member or professional, the physician, and everybody’s common goal is the patient.
I say I wish it didn’t have to come to me hiring somebody or bringing somebody else in for my provider to tune in and engage with me. If that’s what is happening a lot these days, and as you mentioned, a lot of it’s because of the pressure that providers are under from the complexities of the system, the insurance, and all the paperwork.
It’s good to have an advocate there, as you say, whether it’s another family member or a professional, to help get things a little bit more engaged, a little bit more actively monitored. The next thing is, what’s your understanding of, or how difficult is it to get a provider to help you de-escalate the process of increasing the number of prescriptions? How do you help get people or providers on board by winnowing down the number of prescriptions a person is on?
I think anybody can do this. There’s a special skill and technique that a pharmacist would have. The first thing I would do is to go through the list of medications very thoughtfully. As a pharmacist, I would ask, “When would you prescribe this? What doctor prescribed this? What were you prescribed this for?” Sometimes, you can go through the list and sometimes, they’re appropriate. The patient needs them. You look at the lab work.
You look at the past medical history. It looks like it fits. This is a lot of polypharmacy will be, “I was prescribed this medication,” then not realizing that there is a side effect associated with the medication. “I was prescribed this and I was experiencing this.” They thought it was maybe a new illness or new issue or disease. They go see another doctor and they’re like, “I’m feeling like this X, Y, Z.” They’ll say, “We’ll prescribe you this for it.” That’s how the polypharmacy can get started is that you’re prescribed one medication and then you’re prescribed another medication to treat the side effect. That medication can have a side effect and then they’re prescribed another medication for that side effect and it goes on and on.
Let me interrupt you there because you’re using a term that’s a side effect. My experience has been that that’s semantics because if I have an effect when I take a pill, it’s an effect of that pill. If somebody says, “I like this effect,” we’ll call it a main effect, and “I don’t like that effect,” so we’ll call it a side effect.” It’s semantics. What you’re saying is a lot of polypharmacy happens because I start to have unpleasant effects when I take a medication, and then a doctor or maybe a different doctor prescribes me medication for the effects to try and counterbalance the effects I have from the first medication. that can snowball.
It happens a lot. A side effect is semantic. The undesired effect of a medication would probably be a better term.
It’s an effect. It’s an effect I don’t like.
That’s a great way to find out which drugs were prescribed for side effects and which drugs you actually need. I mean, you can knock out some things there. Another thing is, this is where having your lab work and being on top of health information is. If you’re noticing that your A1C is dropping, let’s say you’ve made healthier lifestyle choices and things like that, and the A1C starts to go down. Like I’ll say last year, one of the first patients that I ever had here with this business started with an A1C above 7.8.
He’s creeping up on eight. We made a couple of lifestyle changes and his A1C started to go down safely. That’s when we lobbied for, “Can we reduce this dose? Can we get off this medication and see if the A1C stays?” We were able to get him off most of his medications. Being able to be on top of lifestyle, diet, and those kinds of things, as well as keeping track of that health information and tracking those numbers, is very important. Also determining if a medication was prescribed appropriately for an actual disease state or an undesired or side effect of a medication.
What percentage of people that you advocate for would you say are experiencing? I think you said five or more. You call it polypharmacy fits five medications or more. What percentage would you say that you’re dealing with have that?
One hundred percent.
One hundred percent of the people who ask you to advocate for them are on five or more medications.
Yes, that’s partly geared towards my specialty, which is pharmacy. I try to help people the most. I feel like that’s the most in my scope of practice is helping them with their medications and reduce unwanted effects or a hospital stay.
What do you have numbers on this about? How many of those are you actually able to assist in getting reductions in their medication or in their numbers of meds?
I would say that anybody who’s on about five or more. I hate to say this, but the more medication somebody’s on, probably the more I can help them, realistically, but five or more. Generally, we can reduce the dose on one, change up something to make it work a little bit better. We can alter it a little bit, or sometimes they’re unneeded medications. I’ll give you a couple of great examples, Digoxin is one. That’s fallen out of favor. If somebody has AFib, they’ve been on this for a long time, and their heart’s under regular rhythm, they might be able to get off that medication free and clear.
What’s the name of the medication again?
Digoxin. It’s a medication for AFib. With better anticoagulation, those medications have gotten much better, much more refined. The heart rhythm and heart rate medications are a lot better. Digoxin is a dirty drug. It can cause kidney issues, especially in our older population. If one of your listeners is on it, please don’t stop taking it, but talk to your cardiologist about your heart and see how your rate and rhythm have been over time.
They might be able to discontinue it because that medication has fallen out of favor. There are a lot of medications that have been on somebody’s list for a long time, and there might be a newer, better medication, or the old medication has fallen out of favor with the guidelines and it’s no longer needed as long as they’re meeting the certain criteria.
That’s an excellent point that I don’t think a lot of people understand, and it is that there can be a standard recommendation for a medication. A number of years later, they might uncover that the longer we use this, the more we’re seeing problems with it. It’s no longer the primary recommendation, but if you’re not staying on top of it, your doctor may not catch it. This goes back to your original question: How do I help lobby people to reduce, discontinue, or change doses of medication? First of all, I don’t pull it out of thin air.
I usually go to certain guidelines. There are treatment guidelines that a lot of healthcare professionals use to determine the course of treatment. I use some databases here at my office, where we’ll go through typical treatment algorithms. We’ll also go through the most updated guidelines. We’ll use evidence and evidence-based techniques to determine if that medication is right for that person, if they’re no longer a candidate for it, or if there’s something better out there for them, assuming that they can afford it or need it.
There are a bunch of different ways that we can tackle these issues, but they’re all evidence-based, at least coming from me. I like to provide that resource for my clients. In case something happens, a new drug comes on, we’re aware of it, we’re on top of it. In using those techniques, we can also help mitigate side effects.
I don’t imagine I’ve asked you every question that you’d like to get out here. If you take a minute and get centered and think, here’s what we’ve talked about so far. What is it I haven’t even mentioned, or is it one of the things we’ve already talked about you want to go back and highlight for people?
I would like to talk about nutrient depletion. This is something that I’ve become more and more passionate about in the time I’ve owned this business because I’ve realized that it is much more of a common issue than the healthcare field, in general, gives it credit for. I’ll give you a perfect example. I had somebody very early on in my business contact me with rheumatoid arthritis and they were taking methotrexate. I’m not trying to call out any drugs or anything, but these are facts and stories.
They came in and they’re like, “I got diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. I was okay on the medication for three months and then I crashed and I felt like crap and I have not been able to do the things I like doing. My flare-ups aren’t as bad, but I feel like crap all the time. It’s like what’s worse, feeling like crap or having a bad flare-up.” That was their opinion, not mine. We started going through their supplements, what their diet and lifestyle were looking like.
You realize methotrexate is one of those drugs that absolutely destroys B12 stores and B complex stores in the body as one of the undesired effects. What we did was get her on a nice B12 sub or vitamin B complex supplement with some additional B12. It wasn’t super expensive. I think it was nine bucks on Amazon. We’re not getting reinventing the wheel or anything like that. Within two weeks, she felt better. It’s making sure that a lot of times, maybe one medication doesn’t completely deplete your vitamin stores like methotrexate does, but maybe a combination of drugs does.
A lot of the seizure medications will deplete folate. As you may know, folate has a correlation with mental health issues. A decreased amount of folate can increase depression or anxiety. Realizing that like, “I’m feeling like crap. I’m feeling depressed.” While you’re on X, Y, and Z seizure medication that depletes folate, let’s get you on a nice folate supplement. Giving people some additional nutritional support that they might not be able to get for whatever reason, or that is not in their diet or whatever.
Being able to give them that helps because now it’s helping the medication work while also mitigating the undesired effects that come from nutrient depletion or nutrient imbalances that medications or treatments cause. I have a great database that I use. It’s about natural medicines and things like that, but also about prescription medications. The focus is to determine if a cocktail of medications or a single medication is depleting somebody’s nutrient stores, which can make anybody feel like crap or lead to other diseases. Stopping that in its tracks and giving people a fair shake at good health and feeling better is something that my business is built around.
That’s something I still remember the first time I went to a doctor with my mother and they were prescribing an antibiotic. When I raised the issue of a probiotic or prebiotic or both, the doctor said, “Excellent. Here’s the one I would recommend.” I still remember the first. It was shocking because I was used to having to fight them because they would say, “There’s no reason for that. That’s a waste of your money. Don’t do that.”
It’s good to know there are people like you that are coming out and saying, “Look, there’s actual very powerful impacts from these medications.” A lot of them are not the ones we’d like to have. These are the undesirable effects of these medications. Yet the desirable effects might be important for people, like you say, with rheumatoid arthritis. Maybe you’re having a lot less flare-ups, but what if I have no energy? If you can supply some supplements or boost their intake of different high-quality foods, that’s delightful to hear that you’re focusing on that as one of your primary areas.
I actually had somebody tell me the other day. They came in, and I offered a one-hour free consult to anyone who came to my office, wanted to Zoom me, or anything like that because I don’t feel right charging somebody if I cannot help them. That’s important to me. Being able to help somebody first of all, so I give everybody a one-hour free consult, you tell me what’s going on, I say, “I can or cannot help you, and here’s probably some areas that I can help in.” That’s one of the great benefits of it, but also is that usually, I can bring up with my training and experience, I can bring up other places in someone’s health that they weren’t even thinking that I could be a benefit of.
That’s part of me advocating for the profession of pharmacy. I think that we’re way too skilled and have way too many benefits to our education and training, and a lot of it’s being left in a big box store. The pharmacists at those stores, I have many friends that do that. They’re great people. Believe me, they want to help. The problem is it’s like providers with insurance. Corporate metrics are suppressing their ability to be able to spend as much time as they want with their patients, saying, “You have to do this many vaccines in a day, you have to get this many drugs off the shelf in a day, you have to do this many orders and all this stuff.”
As far as I know, it could have changed, but when I talk to my buddies in those retail pharmacy spaces, there’s not a metric that says, how many patients did I help today? How many patients did I counsel? If there was more of that, I probably wouldn’t have a place for me, but if there was more of that, I would be able to say, “Can I talk to you for a few minutes?” Any pharmacist will. Some people don’t want to wait. They don’t want to wait the hour, wait to get to talk to the pharmacist or come back or whatever the case is.
It can be difficult to get an accessible healthcare professional. I say as an advocate of the profession of pharmacy, generally, pharmacists are the most readily available healthcare professionals you can get. You can walk into a pharmacy. Hopefully, it’s not super busy, and you can talk to a pharmacist pretty quick. At least you can get some questions answered. They might be mad at me for saying this, but it’s also relatively free. You can go up and say, “I pick up my drugs here. I have a question about this medication.” They’ll answer it for you. It’s a good tool to utilize that a lot of people, I think, don’t know about.
I agree. I have for a long time recommended that my patients go ask their pharmacist because they have a much harder time getting back to the psychiatrist or getting a response from their primary care physician’s office. It usually is a time-sensitive issue with the medication. If you would do that one more time, take a breath, think about everything we’ve asked you, and you’ve talked about, and decide if you want to go back and highlight something or throw something new out on the table before we wrap this up.
I have one more thing that I think is important. This goes for everybody. I’ll start. Something that is very important to me in this career and in the profession of pharmacy and I’m working in two different worlds, something that’s important to me, and I see this in almost everybody I’m working with or dealing with is that chronic disease and these issues debilitate people in ways that we cannot imagine. What I’m saying is that generally, they’re very sick to some degree, which is not your typical flu-like symptoms.
Like, “I have a fever.” They’re exhausted. I would say that our healthcare system is fantastic. There’s new drugs, there’s new treatments. There are a lot of new, very innovative, very helpful things. Let’s take cost out of the question. Let’s pretend that cost isn’t a barrier. We have some awesome stuff. Awesome modalities. The problem is that sometimes to access these modalities, it takes a lot of work to be able to just, you got to shovel through crap for lack of a better term, and you sometimes have to shovel through a lot of it.
When people are sick and tired, shoveling is even more difficult to degrees than we cannot imagine. Having a little bit of a boost, so this goes anybody who has a sick family member or a friend or something like that, and you’re sitting there rooting for them and you’re like, “Why aren’t you doing this for yourself? Why aren’t you doing this?” It’s because they’re exhausted. A lot of my clients are exhausted and I try to give them new life and I try to give them that energy back. I shovel the crap.
If you have somebody in your life who could use a little bit of help, don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty, do some shoveling because it can change the trajectory of their health and the course of their life by giving them a hand. Again, it doesn’t have to be a professional. I’m a professional, but being there for your loved one or your sick family member, your friend, whatever the case is, helps them so much get through the difficult times in life.
While we might think like, “It’s a couple of pieces of paperwork,” it probably feels like a 1,000-page book they have to go to when it might only be 3 pages. Think about that. Be considerate of the people who are dealing with some of these chronic health issues. Lend a hand. You can always call a professional, but you have no idea when somebody is not feeling great or has chronic issues. Making them feel like 2% better, 3%, 4%, 5% better greatly impacts their life and health. Like a healthy person might think, I feel 5% better. It’s not that much. When someone is chronically ill and they feel 5% better, it’s huge.
I think it’s important for people to take a second and realize that helping somebody feel a little bit better, taking something off their plate when they’re struggling, is a massive benefit. Whether it’s sick, whether they’re going through a mental health issue or a family crisis or something, but if you have it in you to take a little bit off their plate and help them for a minute. It can have such a massive impact on their life. I think that this profession for me is so important because I get to do that almost every single day for people.
Watching the stress come off of them and watching them feel better is so important. That’s something I wanted to stand on because it’s not always the drugs. I clear up somebody’s medication list in a couple of days. We can get new prescriptions, we can do all this, but it’s that long-term me taking the stress off their plate so that they can focus on them. That’s the great personal return that I get out of this.
If people want to reach out to you, what’s the primary way you’d like to have people contact you?
You can give me a call. My phone number is (813) 534-0293. That goes directly to my phone. That’s my business line. If the phone is good, you can email me if you want to ask me some questions. If you hear about me on this show and you want to ask maybe about some questions, we can set up a Zoom call or you can email me and ask. I’m pretty available for that. I check my email a few times a day. That’s Patrick@TampaHealthAdvocate.com, and I’ll send that to Tim so you can put it in the description.
I thank you very much indeed for taking the time to be with us and thank you for the work you’re doing. It’s great to hear that people like you are out there.
Thank you, Tim. I think there is a growing community of us. I saw that there was a pharmacist, I think. She’s either in South Carolina or Georgia. I connected with her on LinkedIn. She took up a similar role in a similar circumstance that drove her to this. There are pockets of us where there are pharmacists or nurses, or I think there are even some doctors who are leaving their field and getting into advocacy and patient navigation because it’s so important.
If the bridges are broken, it’s tough to get anywhere. There are a lot of us doing it. I think it’s a new concept that’s coming up. There could be a hundred of me and there probably wouldn’t be enough, but the more, the better and I appreciate that people are out there realizing that there’s a space that needs to be filled and that they’re filling it.
Thank you so much. I appreciate what you’re doing, and it’s great to hear from you.
Thank you. Same to you. I cannot wait for this to come out, and I’ll definitely share it on social media.
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Patrick Alonso is a catalyst for change in healthcare, driven by an unyielding commitment to progress. As the force behind Tampa Healthcare Advocate, he fearlessly advocates for his client’s health and well-being, leveraging his expertise as a licensed Florida pharmacist for health and wellness. Patrick loves to help others, and his passion for healthcare change shows in his work as a pharmacist advocate for his clients and the profession of pharmacy.
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About Patrick Alonso
Patrick Alonso is a catalyst for change in healthcare, driven by an unyielding commitment to progress. As the force behind Your Tampa Healthcare Advocate, he fearlessly advocates for his client’s health and well-being, leveraging his expertise as a licensed Florida Pharmacist for health and wellness. Patrick loves to help others and his passion for healthcare change shows in his work as a pharmacist-advocate for his clients and the profession of pharmacy.
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