Reimagining Primary Care with Agentic AI - Lumeris

Our latest episode features Dr. David Carmouche, Chief Medical Officer at Lumeris, a physician-turned-healthcare-executive whose career spans traditional clinical practice, value-based care leadership at Ochsner Health, and a pivotal role overseeing healthcare delivery at Walmart.

A key lesson from his time at Walmart reframed his entire philosophy: while health systems celebrated rare, heroic interventions, Walmart focused on the everyday struggles of patients, like an elderly woman keeping her thermostat at 63 degrees to afford her medications. That contrast crystallized what healthcare needs to fix most.

At Lumeris, Dr. Carmouche is tackling the primary care shortage head-on with an agentic AI platform called Tom, named in honor of co-founder Tom Doerr. Tom functions as a longitudinal, 24/7 care team member, proactively scheduling preventative screenings, conducting symptom assessments, preparing physicians before appointments, and surfacing clinical decision support powered by Wolters Kluwer's UpToDate. The result: doctors walk into visits already prepared, and complex chronic conditions get managed without reflexive specialist referrals.

The results are striking. Patients as old as 92 are having free-flowing conversations with the AI, and physicians are asking for gated rollouts simply because the volume of actionable insights is so high. Dr. Carmouche predicts that within five years, a single primary care physician will confidently manage a panel of 5,000 patients. The biggest barrier is not the technology; it's the fee-for-service payment model, a challenge he is now addressing as a newly appointed member of an 18-member HHS and CMS advisory panel.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the future of primary care, agentic AI in clinical workflows, or the policy reforms needed to make it all possible.