Putting Medical Professionals in Charge of Their Care with Dr. Candace Walker of Flowing Life Direct Health

Healthcare Americana

Chris welcomes Dr. Candace Walker to his podcast, Healthcare Americana. Dr. Walker is a practicing direct primary care physician and owner of Flowing Life Direct Health in Atlanta, Georgia. She has been utilizing a business model to provide healthcare to her community. Christopher asked how the practice was going, to which Dr. Walker replied that it was going great. She is living her dream and is happy to wake up every day to her passion. Christopher concluded the conversation by emphasizing the importance of putting patients first and restoring trust in American healthcare.

This conversation focuses on the experience of a doctor who has adopted the direct primary care model. Through this model, Dr. Walker is able to practice medicine in a way that is more patient-centered and free from the restrictions of health systems. Although the doctor is still quite new to the model, she is learning the business side of it and has already seen the positive impact it has had on patient experience. Patients who come in to see the doctor are often those who have not been able to get the answers they need from prior experiences, but through the direct primary care model, the doctor is able to provide them with the understanding and empowerment they need for their health.

Chris and Candace discuss the importance of having control over one's own health, and how it is an important factor in the fulfillment of a doctor's work. When a doctor is able to help a patient attain their health goals, it is a very satisfying experience for both parties. Dr. Walker then goes on to discuss the art of doctoring, which is the intersection of art and science in the practice of medicine. She then talks about their experience in the last six months of practicing in their new Direct Primary Care (DPC) practice and how it has differed from their patient interactions before. The speaker mentions that they have had to learn the business side of health care quickly, and also have come to understand what they do and don't want in their practice. They have been able to tweak certain systems that were aggravating in the traditional healthcare system and help people understand the different model of health care that comes with DPC.

Dr. Candace Walker, a physician and owner of Flowing Life Direct Health, discussed the public perception of physicians and why the current healthcare system is not set up to support a caring, intelligent approach. She believes that 99% of doctors would like to spend more time with their patients, but due to time constraints and certain metrics, that is not always possible. Walker also encourages other physicians to remember the power of their training and to consider other models of practice that can fulfill their needs. She likens the current system to a 1984-style mindset where doctors are often commoditized and reduced to a list of names.

TIMESTAMPS

0:00:00 Dr. Candace Walker Discusses Her Journey to Success with Freedom Healthworks

0:02:57 Exploring the Benefits of Direct Primary Care

0:04:22 Benefits of Direct Primary Care (DPC)

0:06:46 Public Perception of Physicians

0:11:38 The Benefits of Primary Care and the Doctor-Patient Relationship

0:13:19 Direct Primary Care and Networking for Business Growth

0:17:38 Conversation on Networking and Sharing Professional Experiences

0:19:12 Direct Primary Care and Best Practices for Physicians

0:21:09 Physician and Owner of Flowing Life Direct Health

HIGHLIGHTS

Hello, I'm Dr. Candace Walker, creator and owner of Flowing Life Direct Health. I'm a board certified family physician, and I offer direct primary care to the community. We offer membership based services for all your primary care needs. We also offer some non member services like IV drip, therapies, and deep dive physicals for those who are wanting that personal life care but not quite ready for a membership.. We love to talk to you about what we could do for you and how it could fit into your current healthcare plans. And I usually just invite them to my website or go ahead and give them a number to reach me at.

Oh, all the time, people are genuinely interested in, hey, what other kind of healthcare options are out there? So when I approach that kind of conversation with, hey, I started a direct primary care clinic, flowing life, direct health and talk about that health care model. Honestly, I don't know what the right description is, but I want to say. Maybe it even made me feel more comfortable talking about what it is that I do.. Because I'm not just like, oh, yeah, I'm a physician. I'm a doctor, and that's fine to say. That all right.

How important networking is has probably been the biggest thing for me in medicine. I can talk about medicine all the time, but when it comes to promoting yourself, that was a big step for me. That was huge. It took some coaching from the folks I worked with at Freedom Health Works. When I first stepped into that whole world of networking before, like you mentioned before, I would just be a list of doctors on an insurance platform and that's how folks would find me. And I didn't have to worry about that.

1984 type of mindset where it's all overwhelming and everybody's wearing white lab coats had to have stethoscopes. And whenever I look at, like, hospitals or insurance companies and I look at an insurance page and it's just a list of doctors names and nothing else about them, I feel bad for the doctors because they're trying to be commoditized. And so many times, even in medical schools, family medicine and primary care is looked down upon when yeah. If you have five minutes with somebody, like, that's hard to be a generalist because your breadth of knowledge is vast.

Well, it's just important that people understand that our current health care system just isn't really set up to support a caring and intelligent approach to the practice of medicine. And whether it's intentional or not, unfortunately, right now, that's just where we are. This is a business, and people are trying to capitalize off of it, and it is what it is. Now, the way that I respond to that honestly, when I hear not only the public but even other healthcare professionals or on social media talking about physicians don't know anything, or physicians, they just throw medicine at me because I have a different perspective, and I really, truly embrace a root cause type of approach to medicine.

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