An Interview With Jake Frankel
Culture: Healthcare workers shouldn’t be burned out and patients shouldn’t be afraid of bills. The culture of healthcare in the U.S. is toxic for both patients and providers. Doctors and nurses are overworked, underpaid (relative to workload), and burnt out. Meanwhile, patients delay or avoid care due to fear of medical debt. A shift in culture is needed to prioritize well-being over profit margins.
As a part of our interview series “5 Things We Must Do To Improve the US Healthcare System,” I had the pleasure to interview Pete Lomas.
Pete Lomas is a Type 1 diabetic with a long career stint in healthcare who’s always been more focused on solutions than setbacks. Now, he’s channeling his entrepreneurial passion into his business Not Just a Patch, and making CGM patches because why should blood sugar be left out of the tech boom? With a combination of savvy know-how and a healthy dose of realism, Lomas is proving that even healthcare can have a rebellious edge.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into our interview, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
Well, first of all, I have Type 1 Diabetes and I was having to make my own patches to keep my Continuous Glucose Monitor secure. I soon realized that if I could create a reliable solution for myself, I might be able to help others facing the same challenges. That realization led me to leave a long career in healthcare and sparked my entrepreneurial drive to develop innovative CGM patches that truly make a difference, resulting in Not Just a Patch, the world’s leading CGM patch brand for Freestyle Libre and Dexcom as well as all the other CGM’s and Pumps on the market.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
Being the sole brand in over 5,000 Walgreens stores has resulted in many stories. When the initial order came in, my son had just been born, and finding the resources to successfully deliver and meet all of Walgreen’s requirements is a period of my life that I’ll never forget. But, most of all, it’s the daily influx of happy customers that we hear from that I find most interesting since I started Not Just a Patch.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
They’re all “funny” in a not-so-funny way. The predominant mistakes have been “eye for detail” related, so I’ve made plenty of mistakes with product design and also with managing contracts with distributors. The lesson I learned from all that was to slow down, think it through, get good advice, and use technology.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Here are 2 that really say the same thing to me:
“Action is the foundational key to all success.” — Pablo Picasso
“There are things known and things unknown, and in between are the doors.” — Jim Morrison
How would you define an “excellent healthcare provider”?
Head over to the Not Just a Patch blog, where you’ll find examples of our interviews with healthcare professionals who look after us T1Ds. The common theme is a human-centered, patient-before-profit approach, and someone who sees the person behind the condition. They listen, they empathize, and they advocate for their patients, making sure care is personalized, not just standardized.
What are your favorite books, podcasts, or resources that inspire you to be a better healthcare leader? Can you explain why you like them?
Well, of course, the Not Just a Patch podcast is high on the list.
Lately, I’ve been getting back into Yoga Nidra guided meditations because I love finding that hypnagogic state. It’s that strange, liminal space between wakefulness and sleep where reality bends, thoughts drift like smoke, and logic takes a backseat to surreal imagery. It’s the mental twilight zone where your brain serves up bizarre, fleeting visions, random auditory hallucinations, and sometimes even the sensation of falling.
Marc Maron, Sam Harris, and David McWilliams make my top podcast list, and a big shout out to Ben Lee and Ione Skye on the Weirder Together podcast.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
Yes, I seem to have an ever-growing list of new ventures associated with the diabetes space, all of which get sidelined when Not Just a Patch keeps calling (and paying the mortgage). But who knows, I’ll let those projects hover until the universe helps me to find the way forward.
According to this study cited by Newsweek, the US healthcare system is ranked as the worst among high-income nations. This seems shocking. Can you share with us a few reasons why you think the US is ranked so poorly?
My pre-NJaP jam was healthcare benchmarking. This is a sweet spot unless you’re a U.S. citizen, in which case, it’s more like a cavity.
To put it simply, profit-driven healthcare and efficiency/quality aren’t great mates. The U.S. leads in medical innovation, thanks to big money incentives, and emergency care can be lightning-fast — if you can afford it. But the cracks in the system are glaring:
- U.S. healthcare spending is $12,555 per person per year — twice the average of other wealthy nations.
- Life expectancy? 77 years, near the bottom among developed countries.
- Infant mortality? 33rd out of 38 OECD countries.
- 27.5 million citizens are uninsured.
In short: America spends the most and gets the least. The system is cooked.
The solution? Look across the developed world. A single-payer, government-funded healthcare system, like those thriving elsewhere, would address many of these issues. Bernie Sanders has been making this case for years — and he’s right.
As a “healthcare insider”, if you had the power to make a change, can you share 5 changes that need to be made to improve the overall US healthcare system? Please share a story or example for each.
1. Leadership: Prioritize people over profits. Eliminate the profit-driven model, crack down on insurance corruption, and ensure that policy decisions prioritize public health over corporate interests.
2. Culture: Healthcare workers shouldn’t be burned out and patients shouldn’t be afraid of bills. The culture of healthcare in the U.S. is toxic for both patients and providers. Doctors and nurses are overworked, underpaid (relative to workload), and burnt out. Meanwhile, patients delay or avoid care due to fear of medical debt. A shift in culture is needed to prioritize well-being over profit margins.
3. Access: Stop tying healthcare to employment. The U.S. is the only wealthy country where losing your job means losing your health insurance. Healthcare should not be tied to employment — it should be guaranteed for all.
4. Cost Control: Take on big pharma and insurance middlemen. The same drug can cost 10 times more in the U.S. than in other countries. A cancer patient in the U.S. might pay $150,000 for chemotherapy drugs that would cost $10,000 in France. The U.S. government should negotiate drug prices, just like every other high-income nation does.
5. Prevention: Invest in keeping people healthy, not just treating them when they’re sick. Japan offers free annual health checkups to its citizens, catching diseases early and keeping medical costs lower. The U.S., on the other hand, waits until people end up in the ER with a preventable crisis — which is the most expensive and inefficient way to handle healthcare.
What concrete steps would have to be done to actually manifest these changes?
At an individual level, people should vote for leaders who support universal healthcare, support policy initiatives and advocacy groups, and take preventative health measures. At a corporate level, corporations should stop tying healthcare to employment, support health and wellness programs, and back policy changes that reduce costs. At a community level, they should push for state-level healthcare reforms, as well as educate and mobilize others around the issue. Leaders also have a responsibility, and they should regulate drug prices and end insurance monopoly power, expand public healthcare options, reform medical billing and administrative waste, and shift the focus to prevention.
How do you think we can address the problem of physician shortages?
- Train and educate more
- Decrease education costs
- Improve Work Conditions & Reduce Burnout
- Make It Easier for Foreign-Trained Doctors to Practice
- Expand Telemedicine & AI-Driven Healthcare Support
How do you think we can address the issue of physician and nurse burnout?
Reduce admin burden, have shorter shifts, Improve pay and benefits, particularly for nurses and allied health, and provide mental health support.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
The issue is systemic and cultural and that can only be changed by electing leaders who care, and have the gumption to implement more socially responsible and less profit-driven changes.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Head over to the Not Just a Patch blog or our YouTube channel to get a bit more information and insights into what we do and where my work goes from here.
Thank you so much for these insights! This was very inspirational and we wish you continued success in your great work.
Pete Lomas Of Not Just a Patch On 5 Things We Must Do To Improve the US Healthcare System was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.