OR_Sempre Health_Eric Beaumont: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
Hey everyone! Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney, your host for Outcomes Rocket Pharma Podcast. Today I have the pleasure of interviewing Eric Beaumont. Eric is a co-founder of Charity Rx and in 2020 he founded this company and set out on the colossal mission to make medicine more affordable and accessible for millions of Americans, while also giving back to charities and communities across the globe. To highlight some of the impact that Charity Rx has had, in the less than two years of company existence, they have donated to over 40 charities, volunteered 1708 hours of service, donated over 95,000 meals, and doing this all while saving Americans over $63 Million on their prescription drugs. That’s a lot in just two years. Well, welcome, Eric, to the show.
Eric Beaumont:
Thanks, Kyle.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
So maybe to kick things off, I’d love to hear what inspires your work in healthcare?
Eric Beaumont:
I think one of the things that really intrigued me about healthcare is the advancement of it, that it’s moving. It’s always, there’s always progression, and it doesn’t matter what you’re doing in pharma or in any type of division of healthcare, it’s always progressing. And so that always intrigued me, and that’s really what got me kind of excited about it, is that there’s progression. It’s not like a plateau, it’s not a product, it’s, there’s what’s next. So it’s kind of an awesome industry to be in.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
I absolutely love that, and I think especially in the last two decades, the progression has gotten even more steep and kind of faster pace. I’d love to hear how Charity Rx is really moving and pushing the boundaries of progression in healthcare and how it’s positioned to add value to that ecosystem.
Eric Beaumont:
Yeah, I think if you look at us, on a very basic scale is, we provide discounts to a wide swath of medications across 75,000 pharmacies. So one of the biggest problems in healthcare, in general, is pharmacy pricing. And so we stand to put a good place for us to be in is to solve that problem and try and solve that problem. So we’ve done that to the best of our ability, but that’s kind of where we stand as a company, is trying to make the medication more affordable, because it’s prescriptions that they need, just can’t afford them. So we’re just trying to get that down.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
And so how do you do that? Maybe explain it to the audience of, how does it actually work that you get discounts on these prescription drugs?
Eric Beaumont:
Yeah, so I mean, it’s a very complex formulary that creates these pricings across all these pharmacy chains, but at the end of the day, it’s really parlayed with your insurance companies. So they want to have a better price for their patients to be able to provide better patient outcomes and provide a better place for their customers, and so they negotiate pricing in these pharmacy chains. They like to help people as well, and so they provide better pricing across the board for these major PBMs that are out there and they give them a good price on their medication. We just kind of parlay on that. We ride the coattails of better pricing that is built into contracts that are kind of existing across the industry.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
Awesome, and are there certain types of drugs or types of disease states that Charity Rx is best positioned to support, or is it across the board?
Eric Beaumont:
It is 100% across-the-board. What’s awesome is that we’re different than a lot of programs out there where they’re really narrow, they’re focused, they get great pricing on specific things, but we’re really broad. I mean, we cover things just like nebulizers, or you would think that what is there a discount on that? How do you get a discount? So essentially the rule is if you can get a script for it, we can save some money on it. So there has to be a valid prescription, but if you can get a script for it, we have a discount.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
That’s fantastic. So compared to other programs out there, I’m sure there’s other types of companies, it’s really the breadth and the reach that you guys have that makes you different. Is that right?
Eric Beaumont:
Yeah, it makes it unique because we get often like into pharmacy salespeople, right? So where they’re selling a specific thing, they’re selling flu shot or whatever it may be, and that’s what they do, they’re focused on it and they sell hundreds of thousands of those things, but when you really open up the entire formulary for pharma, I mean, you can be creative there and create a lot of discounts across the entire board. And that’s what makes us a little bit different on that side versus other people within the healthcare industry. Now, that’s common amongst the discount card space, but across the industry of healthcare, we really have that swath that covers everything.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
That’s awesome. So I’d love to hear what has Charity Rx done or maybe some of the kind of outcomes of, or impact that Charity Rx has driven across your customers?
Eric Beaumont:
So yeah, across our customers, so we have impact across a few different, I guess, avenues, if you can call them, but customers are one of them. It’s one that we really don’t see that much. It’s kind of one of those things that you give it and it’s awesome you know that it’s helping people, right? Because we see the discounts of 60, I think we’re a little bit over $64 Million in savings now. So that’s a lot of money, and you think about how that dollar travels around in that community or into that family. Sometimes these drugs, I mean, you think about it, Kyle, one out of every three drugs, one out of every three actually is not picked up because of this problem of price. It’s not like these, there’s an elusive number of is this, is there one out of three drugs that could be taken? No, these are prescribed. The doctor prescribed this medication and they didn’t pick it up. I can’t imagine that. It’s like that’s such a huge number, considering that there’s 4 billion that will be picked up this year. So it’s a big problem, but when you take that dollar and you circulate it in that family’s home and you circulate it throughout that community, we don’t see that impact on the consumer side. We know that it saved that person 20 bucks and they were able to now get that formula or you save that person sometimes $300, and now they’re able to pay their rent. It just depends, but we just get the reviews on occasion that come back say, hey, this really helped my family. We see a lot of impact in another avenue where that is not something with our consumers, with the many, many hundreds of thousands of people that use us. Those people come back to us on occasion, but where our impact is really felt and seen is amongst the charities. It’s where the cause, what we do every day is we get to see that because we’re there within those charities. We get to see the kids, we get a hand out the food, we get to do things for these charities that we’re present for. It’s tangible for us. So there’s some impact there that we feel and that we get to see, and there’s stuff, even in that is like, wow, where does that end? We don’t know, but there’s a lot of good that’s being done because of this small company that just started two years ago.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
That’s awesome. So tell me more about the impact on charities. I mean, I think it’s a great concept, right? Customers can save on their drugs and also support others who are struggling with, whether it’s, whatever the topic of the charity is. I’d love to learn more.
Eric Beaumont:
Yeah, so the concept of Charity Rx is really to give back. It’s a part of our core belief. It’s, we are not a charitable, we’re not a charity. We are a for-profit company, but we give back all the time. So every single month there’s a new charity that is chosen and it takes I mean, it just takes some time. And we spend so many hours figuring out how to execute a new charity to run and to, we have a team just set up for just giving, right? It’s a cool job. I mean, can you imagine just sitting there and like, who are we going to give to next and how are we going to help out this charity? But some of the impact that we’ve done, I actually am just amazed. When you look back when we started in January 1st, 2020, COVID hit, a couple of months after that, shut down everything that we did and has slowed down that process because we are very, we’re face to face, and that model changed a lot over the last two years. So it slowed us down a lot, but in general, you think about the impact that we’ve done in two years. We just, we take a list of the charities that we’ve helped out and we go over it and it’s just like, wow, I mean, that in two years, can you imagine what’s going to be like a decade from now? But some of the things that I’ve been really passionate about is kids. I actually, I have four kids. I have two that are foster children, and I’ve been passionate about kids because of that impact. How far does it go? You know, if you want to talk about like impact, where does this ripple effect and change a kid’s life? That will definitely have an impact for a long period of time. And so a lot of our stuff is geared in that direction. A lot of our charities, not always, but we just, for example, we have a lot of people throughout the country right now handing out foster care packs, which people don’t know is a problem, but these kids literally come into foster care in America and they show up with garbage bags full of clothes, and that’s what they take from home to home to home. It’s kind of a difficult thing for us to really think about, but they don’t even have a piece of luggage, so we gave them. You can see some stuff happening on our social media and other platforms there, when it comes to our foster care packs. But we’re doing that right now, we’ve done a lot, we’ve done 90,000 meals and provided to families. A lot of those have been provided right here in Las Vegas, but we did just 50,000 more out in the Dominican Republic, which was just in December. That was an awesome, we took 40 people out there to Dominican and provided to them. We went to a boys and a girls orphanage out there, about 40 kids in each orphanage out there, and provided Christmas to them. So it was fun, we brought Santa Claus. My dad had a Santa suit, we packed that thing up and we had all those, we brought Christmas to them, we brought Christmas trees. And just so, so fulfilling the things that our team comes up with to help out these people and these charities. It really is quite fun. Some things that are coming up though, that is literally on my mind right now because the last few days we’ve been working on getting these things ready is, I was brought up in a situation that was awesome. I had two parents, I had a family of eight brothers and sisters and we have deep connections, that love each other, and I always have somebody who has my back, and I have a buddy here in Las Vegas, he coaches a basketball team here, and he told us that he has kids that show up and they don’t even have somebody sign a parent release form. They’re homeless or registered homeless right here, they’re 17 years old and I just couldn’t fathom that. So we’re connecting with a charity right now that is giving to homeless teenagers. And that’s happening in July, we’re doing a big event on August 3rd, but that’s some of the impact that’s going on right now. I could, literally there’s 83 right now, 83 different charities that have received aid and funds from Charity Rx in the last two years, but it’s growing because we are always doing something new.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
Eric, I’ve got to commend you for the impact that you have, not just on patients out of pockets, right, but also on others. You’ve built this very nice integrative business model that kind of does good as it grows and scales. I guess I’d love to hear from your perspective maybe over the last two and a half years as you’ve been building this business, but what was one of the biggest setbacks that you experienced, and what was the key to learning from that?
Eric Beaumont:
Yeah, I mean, we came out guns blazing January 1, 2020. We were excited. You know, it takes a long time to get things rolling, contracts and things. And so we came out, we were finally live January 1st and we were going to we’re going to get to work. We went out, we got 50 people on board and we started hitting the pavement and just trying to get consumers to know about us. And we got just like everybody else in the sales space, we just got hit hard. We didn’t have an online presence. We didn’t have digital marketing at all. We didn’t have any of that stuff. So that really was our biggest setback, is shut down everybody that we just started and we were just getting excited, and so it was a huge, huge deal to our flame. But we learned a different way to do the business, something that I’d never done before, and we executed great on that for a period of about six months because that’s all we could do. Everything was shut down, so we did it that way. We did direct-to-consumer a little bit different than what I was used to, and it worked out. So we adapted much like anybody else, you know, it’s not the survival of the fittest. It’s not just about being the strongest, it’s the one that adapts the most. And that’s what kind of kept us in the game. Now we’re back to normal. We’re all running around without, you can see our smile on our faces. We can communicate a message well and talk about our charities and our causes with individuals, and it works out great, but it was a huge, huge setback, as for us as it is for pretty much every business on planet Earth was, it had to adjust.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
Absolutely, and maybe looking ahead the next 1 to 5 years, what trend or big theme are you most excited about?
Eric Beaumont:
In my space, I think the thing that’s going to be really exciting to see is the more digital consumption of healthcare. And it really accelerated, it jumped ten years and into the future over the last two. But you know, this has been a physical card for the most part, and it has been up to this point for the last 27 to 30 years, been handed out physically to consumers. There are some of our competitors that kind of got ahead of that game and put a lot of money into getting it out there digitally, and so we’re following suit. You know, we’re, that’s where we’re falling into line, as well as making sure our digital presence is as strong or stronger than our physical presence in the game.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
That’s great. I think all businesses are kind of going through that, especially on the heel end of COVID, right? And having to adjust and kind of getting more of a virtual presence there. I guess before we conclude, please share a closing thought and where listeners can get in touch with you.
Eric Beaumont:
Yeah, I mean, our main place is CharityRx.com. I mean, we’ve, we put a lot of time, energy, and effort into creating a platform that people can go to that actually is meaningful, it’s quick, it’s got a beautiful interface, and anything healthcare, you can find it there. So if you’re wondering about drug-to-drug interactions outside of just how to get a discount, Charity Rx is a great location for that. It really starts to break down everything within the pharma world right there inside of CharityRx.com, and so that’s an ideal place to really see what we do. You can also look at, if you’re interested in just following along the charitable cause, that’s a great place to do it as well. We have a blog on there that follows each charity each month and talks about the individual causes that we’re doing there. But I think at the end of the day, who we are and specifically like what I do every day is we help people. It’s an awesome job. I mean, I feel like I’ve been extremely blessed to be able to help people and we’ve turned a lot of things around for people. And specifically with our company, we have right around 150 people in the company that their families are taking care of. There’s people that are, they’re fulfilled. They wake up, they’re excited about their day. They enjoy what they do. They enjoy helping people and save money on their medications. They enjoy helping charities. So I’m just excited about what Charity Rx has started in the last two years, but even more excited about where it’s going. What, we’re just getting started. This is just the beginning for us and we’re grateful for our position, but we’re still hungry. We enjoy the climb here.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
I love it, Eric. Thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing all the important work that you do. Have a wonderful day.
Eric Beaumont:
Thanks, Kyle. Appreciate it, man.
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