When we work with a patient, we have a process that we go through so that we can make sure that:
1. We are the right provider to be able to help you. I mean maybe you really do need a "fireman." Right?
2. We understand what you need in order to achieve your health goals.
This process is very different than a typical visit to your local doctor, where he/she may be in and out of your consultation room in 5-10 minutes after asking you a couple of questions, only to write you a prescription for some drug that you can’t pronounce and just hope and pray that it will help you.
Our process takes time, and we ask a lot of questions, and we want to get to the root cause of your health problem. We need to know more than just what your symptoms are because we are not simply prescribing a drug that will suppress your symptoms or replace a chemical that your body should be making.
Step 1: Free Discovery Call. We like to do a free discovery call with people for a couple of reasons. First, we understand that Functional Medicine is new to most people and if you just found us on the internet or something random like that it can be intimidating. We want to remove any major barriers to you receiving the care that you deserve. Second, not everyone is a candidate for the care that we provide and a simple, short phone call is an easy way to sort that out. To be honest, if we can't help you, we don't want to waste our time or your time and money.
Step 2: Initial Consultation. The initial Consultation usually takes about a half hour to complete. Prior to the Initial Consultation, the patient will need to fill out a health and lifestyle questionnaire that may take some time to complete. It is important that do your best to fill it out completely and accurately.
The doctor will review your questionnaire looking for possible answers to your health problems and we will ask you questions about the things that we learn about you from the questionnaire.
Step 3: Lab Work (usually. If needed). Based on the information that we learn; we will decide whether lab work would be beneficial to helping you get better. If we decide to go ahead with lab testing, we will order the lab work and schedule another time to meet and go over the results of your lab work and to make recommendations on how to move forward getting you back to feeling and functioning better. For most of our lab work, we will have you go to a Lab Corp. site to have your blood drawn. Some of our tests are done from the comfort of your home and don't require blood to be drawn.
Step 4: Recommendations. On this visit, the doctor will take all the information that he/she has learned about you from your consultation and lab work and make recommendations to help get you to your health goals.
The recommendations that we give you will be based on a set of priorities that are determined by the data that we collected in the first two steps of the process.
For instance, it is very common that gut reconditioning, liver function and blood sugar regulation are high priority items, so we create a program of care to address the highest priority items first and then work our way down.
One of the main reasons that we operate this way is that we have found that if we can “clear out” higher priority issues, many times lower priority issues take care of themselves.
What we don’t want to do is start chasing our tail if you will.
If we started out by using lab testing procedures, then we will want to re-test (usually in about 3 months) to see if we “moved the needle” on lab markers that were of concern.
To be clear about this: we only work with people who are within a “health window” that suggests that they will benefit from our care.
The stark reality is that your health can deteriorate to a point where the interventions that we deploy will no longer be effective in helping you and your only course of action would be to utilize drug therapy or surgery for your problem.
That is a big reason that we advocate for people to use our services as early as possible. So that we can help to get you and keep you healthy and vibrant.
If you are looking for a safe and natural solution to any health problems that you are dealing with, click the button below and let's have a discussion to see if we can help you.
If's free to you and there is no obligation to move forward.
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