Season 3 of Deep: The Health Marketing Podcast opens with a voice health marketers rarely hear from directly: a patient. Host Jen Werther met Joe O'Connor at Digipharma Connect, where he told a room of industry professionals that he hadn't seen a primary care doctor since his pediatrician. A high blood pressure reading and a family history of heart disease led him to a concierge doctor. That relationship changed how he manages his health, and how he responds to the health messages competing for his attention.
Later in the episode, Jen talks with Joe's wife, Sarah Adamowski of Worldwide Business Research, who was the one who brought patients onstage at the conference. Sarah describes what it was like to watch Joe's turnaround, and where she thinks pharma and health systems should focus next to bring personalized care to more patients. The full transcript below has been edited for clarity.
Jen Werther: Welcome to Deep: The Health Marketing Podcast. I'm Jen Werther, and we're kicking off season three. I'm so excited to be here.
This past March at Digipharma Connect, I sat in on a panel I haven't been able to shake. A patient was sharing his experience with concierge medicine. Healthcare is personal, and his story rang true. What stuck with me is that he didn't trust doctors at all. He hadn't been to a doctor since his pediatrician and avoided them at all costs.
As I sat there, it hit close to home. My husband feels the same way. He has heart disease and he's not a fan of doctors. He does see a cardiologist, but he doesn't have a primary care physician.
So today we're starting a little differently: we're bringing the patient to the podcast. Joe was the one on stage at Digipharma, and after his panel I ran up to him and said, "We have to talk." I wanted to bring him on the podcast, and I wanted to learn more about his experience with concierge medicine: how it's changed the way he thinks about his health, how his health is managed today, and what proactive care can actually look like.
Joe O'Connor, thanks so much for joining the podcast. As you'll recall, I was that crazy lady who came up to you after your panel and said, "Your story resonated so much. My husband doesn't trust the healthcare system. He hates going to the doctor. He's got heart disease." I'm thrilled to have you here.
Joe O'Connor: Thank you so much for having me. Getting off the stage in Nashville and having someone come up and say my story resonated with them meant a lot. I got a kick out of it. I think my experience is similar to a lot of people's relationship with the healthcare system, so it was great to see that it mattered to someone.
JW: It totally mattered. I still think about it and talk about it with my husband all the time. Since you don't come from healthcare marketing like your wife does, let's get to know Joe. Tell me a little about yourself.
JO: Sure. I'm 39. I own and operate a fractional CFO services firm based in the Capital Region of upstate New York. I'm married to my wife, Sarah, and I'm the proud parent of two kids: Ella is five and Danny is about a year and a half.
JW: Wow. So you're in the thick of it.
JO: Yes, we're going through it.
JW: My two girls are seven and almost 10, and I feel like we're still in the thick of it, just a different thick.
JO: I hear the problems get more expensive.
JW: They do. Little kids, little problems; big kids, big problems. In a couple of years you're going to say, "Jen, I totally get it."
So what made you decide to go to a concierge doctor? It's fairly new. You don't hear about concierge doctors all the time. What led you to this practice?
JO: For most of my adult life, my healthcare has been very transactional. The line I use is that I didn't have a primary care doctor from my pediatrician until about a year ago.
I provide fractional CFO services for small and medium-sized businesses. I had a business relationship with someone who was starting a concierge practice, and we were bartering: she'd give me an IV, and I'd help her get her books organized. To get an IV, you have to get your blood pressure taken. The first or second time I went in, my blood pressure was running pretty high. I came back a month later and it was even higher.
I've got my own business, young kids, a lot going on, and I never thought much about my own health. Seeing my blood pressure climb started a more involved dialogue with her, and that's how it began.
My experience has been great. I meet with her once a month. We've established baselines and talked a lot about my life as well as my health. The goal is to be forward-looking rather than reactive. Historically, I'd get sick, and either I'd get through it or I'd go to a walk-in clinic, get a Z-Pak and keep moving without ever looking under the hood. This has been a real change for me, and I think it's setting me up for long-term success.
JW: In the past, when you never went to doctors, was it because you were scared? Did you have a bad experience? Where did that come from?
JO: It wasn't so much fear of the healthcare system. It felt really disjointed. And I was a guy in my 20s and 30s without any clear red flags. I've put on some weight over the last few years, but nothing was clearly wrong in how I operated day to day. I lift five to six days a week. I probably don't do as much cardio as I should, but I've been active. My thinking was: control your eating, keep going to the gym, nothing's wrong on the surface, you're good to go.
JW: Right. Why go looking for something?
JO: Exactly.
JW: Funny enough, I went to get health insurance and my blood pressure was up. I had no idea. My husband said, "You'd better start checking your blood pressure." I checked it that weekend and it was still high, and I'd been getting headaches. So I also have high blood pressure, and with little ones at home, the weight gain is inevitable.
Tell me about that first interaction with the concierge doctor. You'd been to walk-ins for a Z-Pak, and to a pediatrician long ago. What felt so different about concierge care versus a regular primary care physician?
JO: First and foremost, the amount of time I spent with my new primary care doctor. We talked about my health, but also my life and all the factors that could be affecting my health. I had recently started a business, I have two young kids and I'm very busy, so I live what could be considered a high-stress life. She took that into account instead of saying, "Get on the scale, here's your BMI," and disregarding the fact that I'm in the gym five or six days a week and a pretty built guy.
That full-picture approach resonated with me, along with her saying, "This is the first of many conversations." It gave me comfort that we were building a game plan, not a one-time thing, and that we'd work through it over an extended period.
I'm 39 now. My parents are getting older and have had their own health issues come up. On the other end, my kids are healthy, but young kids get sick all the time. It hit me that I needed to be proactive and stay on top of my health, because I have to take care of people on both ends of the spectrum. My health needs to be in order so I can support everyone else.
JW: You're looking back at genetics, but you're also looking forward, for yourself and your kids.
JO: Yes.
JW: When we spoke before, I mentioned that my husband's brother died of a massive heart attack three weeks shy of 45. He has three kids. Your story resonated when I think about genetics and how scary it is. I believe your dad had a heart scare, which led Sarah, who we'll talk to later in the episode, to say, "Now's the time to take a look at this." I'm sure this story will resonate with a lot of people, not just me.
When you think about managing your care and planning for the future and for your kids, what data do you look at? There are wearables. I have an Apple Watch and track my steps, and I use apps to track food. These concierge doctors aren't trying to get you in and out. You have regular touch bases, you're building a game plan, and she understands your life, which looks different in your late 30s with two little kids than it would single in your 20s. What data do you bring to the table, or does she ask for regularly?
JO: When we first got going, it started with a physical and baseline numbers: height, weight, all of that. Getting my blood pressure checked regularly has been big. I also got a baseline blood panel and then an advanced blood panel. From those baseline numbers, we made some decisions about medication. I've since dropped 42 pounds over the last four months, which has been great progress. It's the end of April now, and we'll retest my blood work in June, about six weeks from now, to track progress.
For me, it's having a plan: we're going to check my blood work regularly, and I'm not doing it on my own. I have someone more than qualified to discern what's going on based on that information.
Beyond that, we've started a plan around tracking macros for meal planning. I've been on this weight-loss journey for four months, and it's been challenging to stay on top of while eating at a calorie deficit. But I see what we're building now as the bones of something long-term: this is what you need to eat, and this is how many steps you need to get in. Those things will last even when I'm not actively trying to lose weight.
JW: That's awesome. It's a personalized menu of things you can check off on a weekly, monthly and annual basis.
JO: Definitely. And it helps me sleep at night, not having to worry about the unknown because we're staying on top of it. Knowing I'll get blood work every six months, probably for the rest of my life, is comforting. If something pops up, we'll catch it as it's happening, rather than five or 10 years down the road when something has already developed and I'm back in that reactive mindset.
JW: On the panel, you mentioned a couple of things I wanted to hit on. One was that you'd gone to a specialist who told you to come back in five years. Let's start there.
JO: I'll put it all out there. My cholesterol was running high. My concierge doctor said, "There are studies now showing that early use of a statin would be beneficial long-term for someone with your profile." So we got right on it.
Then I met with a cardiologist. He looked at the numbers, ran them through some AI tool and said, "Based on your profile, you have a 3% risk of a heart event over the next five to 10 years. At this point, I don't see a statin being beneficial. We can check back in five years."
And I thought, a lot has happened in the last five years. What's going to happen over the next five? Am I really not going to see a cardiologist for five more years, now that I've started this journey and I'm trying to be proactive?
There is a balancing act. How much information is too much? At what point are you looking for problems rather than getting ahead of things? I can understand where he was coming from. But when I brought that back to my concierge doctor, Jaxi, she said, "I might have to give this guy a call, because I've got studies to back this up." So right now we're going to wait, see what the blood work shows in June and reset the game plan from there.
It was great knowing I have somebody in my corner who can take the conversation I had with a specialist, help me discern what's true and keep planning going forward.
JW: It's like having an informed advocate. So many of us go to the doctor and take their word for it, or maybe get a second opinion depending on what it is, but it's hard to know. And now there's AI, where you can upload your results. But AI doesn't know you have a high-stress job, two little kids at home and work out five or six days a week, unless you tell it. I can only imagine how beneficial it is to have that personalized angle and an advocate in your corner.
JO: I talked about this on the panel in Nashville. When I first met with Jaxi, my blood pressure was high and we started talking about my stress levels. I immediately went to ChatGPT and asked how to reduce my cortisol and get my stress down. The first thing it said was to start taking ashwagandha. I'm sure that works for a lot of people, but in my case, if I had just gone with ChatGPT's recommendation, I wouldn't have seen any tangible results.
You can use AI, and it's great, but you have to know what to ask and what you're looking for. I'm a finance guy, not a medical professional. After every conversation with her, I go back and plug it into AI to see what it says. But nothing replaces having a qualified person who has seen it a million times with her patients and can guide me through the process.
JW: When you see health or pharma messaging, does it feel relevant to you?
JO: What's changed for me over the last year is, first and foremost, awareness. I always viewed pharmaceutical and medical ads as a time to check my phone. I think there's opportunity to reach people through different channels and media.
The pharma advertising that resonates with me thinks about things generationally. I'm at a stage where my parents have their own medical issues and my young children are healthy, but I pay more attention when certain buzzwords or conditions are relevant to my family. It's not just about me anymore. The messages that land are the ones that could apply to me directly or to the loved ones I'm responsible for.
JW: It's interesting how that changes through life. When you're young, your parents make a lot of the decisions. In midlife, you need to look after your parents and make sure they're managing their healthcare properly, and you have little ones at home, like I do, where every decision comes down to getting the right information. And most important, you have to take care of yourself.
Going back to what kept you from the doctor. You mentioned that in your 20s and early 30s nothing was really wrong, and if something was, you'd go to urgent care for a Z-Pak. What was the hesitation?
JO: It was twofold. First, by all outside indications I was a healthy person. I was a college athlete, and I had always toughed everything out. Nothing was a red flag telling me I needed to go to the doctor or look into something further.
Second, I've always viewed the healthcare system as transactional. I talked about this on the panel, too. When I lived in Boston, I went to a clinic, and I never saw the same doctor more than once, or for more than a couple of minutes. That turned me off from the healthcare system, because I never built a relationship with someone I could go to regularly.
When I moved home to upstate New York, where I'm from, I still had no outward sign that anything was going on under the hood, so I kept operating business as usual, and life gets in the way. When you're taking care of young children and starting a business, it's hard to think about taking care of number one.
JW: And knowing your wife, I'm sure she had a little something to do with it.
JO: She's the best resource I have.
JW: Joe, thanks so much for joining me. It's been a pleasure, and I appreciate you sharing your personal story.
JO: Thanks a lot for having me, Jen. I really appreciate it.
JW: To help unpack today's episode, I'm joined by Sarah Adamowski. I've known Sarah for a couple of years through her work at Worldwide Business Research, where she works closely with industry conferences. That's where we met. Through her work, she helps shape conversations around innovation, consumer engagement and the future of healthcare.
At Digipharma Connect this year, I didn't know Joe was Sarah's husband. He didn't even tell me when I went up to him after his panel. It was Sarah who said afterward, "I heard you met my husband and related to his story." Sarah, thanks so much for joining us today.
Sarah Adamowski: Thank you so much for having me.
JW: At Digipharma Connect this year, you wanted to feature more of the patient experience. Where did that come from?
SA: The entire industry has been moving toward a more patient-centric model and trying to remember what we're doing this for and who we're here for. We're marketing to patients and HCPs, and both are people. A central theme in the industry over the last few years has been humanizing the industry and keeping people at our core. I thought there was nobody better to tell that story this year than patients themselves, which is how a couple of patients, including my husband, Joe, ended up on stage.
JW: I love that it was your husband and I had no idea when he was presenting. You've been alongside Joe through this journey. What stands out since it began?
SA: He was very apprehensive about anything in healthcare, especially big pharma, and he brushed it off for a while. He's a pretty typical healthy guy, so there wasn't much concern. But then a couple of things changed, and I was concerned.
Seeing him go in a different direction, find something that works for him and embrace it has been great for him. Watching it, he's become lighter. Instead of shying away and saying, "I'm fine, everything's okay," he's very involved in his own healthcare journey, and he actually gets excited about it. Knowing he feels comfortable enough to explore, ask questions and talk to a provider he trusts has been a real shift in his overall health and his mental state. Overall, it's made him a much lighter person.
JW: Tell me about his journey to the concierge doctor.
SA: In the seven or so years we've been together, he's had a few small injuries. He has a knee that acts up all the time, and he didn't want to see anybody for it. He'd take a few days off from the gym and wear a knee brace, and for whatever reason it worked out. Another time he hurt his back, took a week off from the gym and was fine.
But knowing he was turning 40 soon, and that that's the reality of aging, I was on his case a little. He appears healthy, but you never really know what's going on underneath, and I'd been pushing him for a while.
A couple of years ago, something got through to him. Unfortunately, it was that his dad had a heart attack on the eve of his 60th birthday, which is pretty young. He ended up okay. He's still around, we love him, and he has his own healthcare journey. But seeing his dad have his first heart attack so young opened Joe's eyes. There are also a couple of uncles in the family who had heart attacks before 60. Joe said, "I don't want this to happen to me. We have two young kids. We're in the middle of building our lives together."
He realized he needed to do something, but the standard approach wasn't working for him. Doctors told him, "You look great. You're healthy. You go to the gym five or six days a week." Nobody was going to say, "Let's dig into this."
When he met Jaxi and saw what she could offer through personalized healthcare and concierge medicine, he finally, reluctantly, decided to give healthcare one more shot. It's been life-changing for him and for our whole family.
JW: That's a powerful story. I told Joe that I went home and told my husband right away, and after talking to you, I'm going to keep nagging him.
SA: As a wife, you feel like a nag. You know you're being annoying, but there couldn't be a better reason to be annoying.
JW: Completely agree. I feel like a nag with my kids and with my husband. It's important to take care of your health. When something happens to your parents, it makes you look inward: I don't want that heart attack. I don't want to put my family through that. I want to be healthier. It's amazing that he got there, and it sounds like he's on a great path.
SA: It's onward and upward from here. Facing your own mortality is daunting, and none of us really want to do it. But with the direction healthcare is going, and opportunities like concierge medicine that let people take control of themselves and their future, I hope a lot more people will take advantage of that and take control of their own health.
JW: As I told Joe, I can relate because my husband is exactly the way Joe was. What's changed for Joe day to day, whether it's diet or exercise? What actual differences do you see?
SA: The biggest one is his diet. I love him dearly, but red meat and potatoes every day would be his dream diet. A lot of us would love that, but execution-wise, it's not the best idea. Now he focuses on being more well-rounded, which is great for me too, because I love meat and potatoes, but I also like all the other things we need to survive. Our household diet is a lot better. We're all eating more of the same foods, which is a win with a five-year-old and a one-and-a-half-year-old at home.
He's always been focused in the gym, but I've seen more variety in his workouts. He's incorporating more cardio. All of this came with the lifestyle change that started with finding a concierge doctor.
JW: Concierge care is very different from what someone like me experiences with a primary care physician, where I see the doctor once a year, unless I'm sick, for seven or eight minutes on average. It sounds like it's been life-changing for Joe and your family. Where do you see concierge-style medicine going in the future?
SA: I want to answer that in two ways. The first is where I wish it were going: I wish it could be mainstream.
Like you, Jen, I see a doctor a couple of times a year. I have a standard healthcare plan and a standard primary care physician. I go a handful of times a year for a physical or if I'm sick. I just turned 32, so I'm not at the stage of needing more regular check-ins yet. But I'm also a mom. I had my son 18 months ago, and as a lot of women would say, things aren't the same. They don't feel like they've returned to what I'd consider normal. If I had a concierge doctor, I feel like I'd understand much better why that is and what's happening.
So when I think about concierge medicine and what it's done for my husband, how he has this transparent view of his own healthcare, I would wish that for the entire industry. I'd love to say that's where we'll eventually get, but right now it's not realistic.
The second answer is the reality: a lot of larger health systems and companies, maybe even pharma, are trying to build in elements of it. They're realizing that more transparency and better conversations with healthcare providers can help shape those plans. The bigger question is how we reach these people and start those conversations. That's a question of access, which does come into play in our industry. We know how to build in personalization and create more touchpoints, but now we need to get people on the line. We need people to trust us and want to work with us. The industry recognizes that it's now a matter of execution.
JW: I think it's also on the patient. In a world of AI and more personalized care, it's not just about age and gender. It's about your body, your genetics and all the lab tests tied to you as an individual, and taking that information and being more proactive.
Yes, it's on the health systems. I've seen a shift in a health system I work with toward sharing data between specialists and primary care, even for my daughters. I took one of them to a couple of different specialists, and I kept asking, "Can you make sure this information goes back to her pediatrician?" You want a holistic picture. I want her pediatrician to have all of that information so she has the full view. A lot of it comes down to us as people taking it into our own hands.
SA: I think you're right, and that makes a huge difference. I've worn an Oura Ring for about three years, and it removes some of the friction and uncertainty. I can go to my primary care physician and say, "My Oura Ring says my temperature has been down for 10 consecutive days. I haven't been feeling great. I know that test was negative, but something else is off." Holding ourselves accountable is a step in the right direction.
But I also think more broadly: What about access? What about equity? What about people who can't afford those kinds of things? There are ways to fast-track elements of personalization between pharma, healthcare and patients themselves. But there's still a lot of room for growth when it comes to who initiates the conversation, which is typically pharma, and how we can better present ourselves as people-forward and patient-first.
JW: Absolutely. Sarah, you mentioned the industry is taking steps toward more personalized medicine and concierge-style care. What needs to happen to make this a reality?
SA: One of the biggest things I've seen over the last couple of years, in all my conversations with big pharma, is the resurgence of telehealth. Telehealth got popular during COVID, as it needed to. As the world and doctors' offices reopened, it took a back seat. I can understand that from a provider's perspective it might not be their favorite way to see patients. But during COVID, patients were being seen and served who didn't have that access before.
In the last couple of years, the industry has started to recognize that telehealth opens a door for a lot of people who can't easily get to an office: people with mobility challenges, elderly people, people in remote areas. It fell off when things went back to normal, and now they're realizing it needs to be a priority.
I think that's one of the first steps the industry is taking. That access covers regular visits, but also follow-up visits, concerns and specialty visits. People can hop on a computer or even a phone for those calls. That's the first real building block. It's been a great step toward access and more equity, and it will eventually lead to more personalized healthcare plans, because there's more conversation happening between patients and their providers.
JW: Sarah, thanks so much for joining today's episode. I loved meeting you years ago, and I look forward to seeing you each year at the conference. Now that I've gotten to know Joe, it's a whole different story to tell. Thanks to you and Joe for joining us.
SA: Thank you so much for having me. This was a lot of fun, and I look forward to seeing you again soon, Jen.
JW: Well, there you have it. Healthcare is personal. Health marketing is tricky. Let's keep talking about it. See you next time.
