We had the good fortune of connecting with Andrea Wadley and we’ve shared our conversation below.
Hi Andrea, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
As I transitioned from hospital medicine to outpatient pediatric medicine, I scanned the horizon and realized that there were not many options available to parents for convenient, evidence based pediatric care in our area of town. My desire for starting 127 Pediatrics was in response to that realization. I wanted to provide great quality pediatric medical care to a small number of families in Tarrant county that easily fit into a busy family’s lifestyle. My training in medicine and extended training in breastfeeding medicine and lactation set the stage for welcoming families with new babies into my practice. As a new mom, the last thing that you want to do is sit in the waiting room of a pediatrician’s office. My practice is positioned to provide care in this niche of medicine in such a unique way. Home visit care is a way to provide for the needs of these families without them having to step foot into an office with their new babies. This form of practice has proven especially useful during this time of global pandemic. Through my practice, I am able to provide safe and efficient pediatric care without causing unnecessary additional exposure to this novel respiratory virus. My ability to provide care and answer questions over text message and through telemedicine has added to the list of convenience that my practice provides to families. As the sole doctor and owner of the practice, I am able to direct the practice in a way that provides great care to kids as well as have the space to take care of the needs of my own family. My impetus for starting my own business was to greatly decrease outside influence and provide myself control over my schedule and the kind of top notch medicine that I desire to practice.
Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
127 Pediatrics is a direct primary care pediatric and lactation practice through which I provide medical care to kids in the comfort of their own homes. My practice is unique in that I have a direct relationship with each parent and each child in my practice. Since the family pays me directly, I am not constrained by many of the limitations of time that can occur in a traditional medical practice. It also affords me the luxury to provide the kind of medical care for kids that I have come to expect for my own family. This practice had some difficulties in starting up because it is just such a different and unique way of providing medical care. It hearkens back to the older days of medicine when decisions were shared between the patient and the doctor. In our current system, families are not used to paying out of pocket for their kids’ healthcare. Understandably, they want to use the health insurance that they pay such a hefty premium for. But in the direct primary care world, we have a saying that health insurance does not mean health care. Just because insurance pays for a certain amount of visits for “free” does not mean that families are receiving the quality care that their kids deserve. As families have grown to understand this and as I have proven that this model works, more families are catching on and desiring this kind of care for their kids.
Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My shout out belongs to my husband, Ron Wadley. When I contemplated leaving my stable long term job in order to start my own business, he was the first one to encourage me to do so. He had started his own business 3 years prior to me leaving my job and we had relied on my income during that time. As we contemplated what that would look like, to live on less income for a while, his answer was resoundingly positive. When I stepped out in faith and had anxiety about all of the unknowns, he was the one who talked me down from my feelings and helped me to move forward in the process. I learned so much about running my own business from his mentor ship. He had traveled the hard road of starting a business from scratch and by learning from his decisions, I was able to start further along on the starting line. In the two years since I walked away from my corporate job, we have built something as a couple and as a family that we can be proud of. We have also been able to prioritize our daughters in our decision making and have grown closer together as a family. I can say with some amount of certainty that I would not have been able to walk this road without him.
Website: https://127pediatrics.com
Instagram: @onetwentysevenpediatrics
Linkedin: Andrea Wadley, MD, IBCLC
Facebook: @127Pediatrics
Youtube: 127 Pediatrics
