As healthcare becomes more complicated, complex, and expensive, some providers are getting frustrated and fed up. Others are finding opportunity in the challenges and creating new ways of delivering care, providing benefits, and making sense of the industry for those who are stuck paying the premiums. Whether it’s through holistic health and wellness programs or sophisticated consulting firms, the business of healthcare is booming for free-thinking alternative healthcare entrepreneurs in Baton Rouge.

Philippe Pucheu – cutting out the middle man in prescription drugs

Philippe Pucheu is president and CEO of PBM Solutions, a Baton Rouge based consulting firm that helps companies reduce the cost of their pharmacy benefits and teaches them how to use their benefit plans in the most cost efficient way possible.

With prescription drug costs increasing some 40% over the past decade, helping employers figure out a more efficient way to provide pharmacy benefits to their employees is no small accomplishment. PBM Solutions attacks the problem in several different ways – by designing customized benefits plans, managing plan utilization, auditing pharmacy claim history, and optimizing the overall use of pharmacy benefits.

Philippe knows the industry well. Besides being a benefits consultant and entrepreneur, he is a pharmacist himself with a doctor of pharmacy degree and his own independent pharmacy in Towne Centre, Apothecare, that specializes in patient care and customer service.

Dr. Lalitha Chalasani – combining Western medicine with Aryuveda and other time-tested Eastern wellness methods

Dr. Lalitha Chalasani is founder of Aathma Wellness, a wellness studio that provides classes, services, and experiences to teach and maintain a healthy lifestyle for the whole self – Mind, Body & Soul. Aathma offers mindfulness-based stress reduction programs including meditation, yoga, reiki, Aryuveda, and healthful cooking classes.

Lalitha, a native of India, moved to the U.S. in 1990s and opened her practice in Baton Rouge as an internal medicine doctor in 1998.  She founded Aathma Wellness in 2017 with the mission of bringing greater awareness to people about the wellbeing of their  Mind, Body and Soul and teaching them the power of healing using alternative methods.

Dr Lalitha Chalasani, Phillippe Pucheu, Stephanie Riegel

Photos by Jill Lafleur. There’s more lunchtime conversation about Baton Rouge healthcare here.