WisBusiness: The Podcast with Dr. Tim Bartholow, chief medical officer for WEA Trust

This week’s episode of “WisBusiness: The Podcast” is with Dr. Tim Bartholow, chief medical officer for WEA Trust.

This Madison-based insurance company has a public employee member population of nearly 100,000 people. He explains that the health problems he’s trying to solve for those people “are problems that I couldn’t have solved patient-by-patient.”

“My job every day is to figure out how to match patient need with the skill sets that are available to take care of those individuals,” he said.

Bartholow discusses the company’s health management programs, which have successfully driven down rates of hospitalizations and opioid prescriptions.

“I hasten to say, there are people who actually need opiates, and we have to be careful to make sure that people get what they need,” he said. But he adds that opioid mitigation program had very few complaints and concerns.

WEA Trust has a partnership with another Madison-based company called Kiio, which has a platform for managing lower back pain with at-home exercises.

“We think — whether it’s back pain or diabetes, or a variety of other conditions — that patients need to able to be more in control,” he said.

Listen to the podcast, sponsored by UW-Madison: