First off, the kind of medical care I wish to provide is basically the kind of medical care I would personally like to receive. I vision my practice as more of an “old fashioned” medical practice, where I get to personally know all my patients, and they get to personally know me.
At my office, you will just find me and my one employee, my office manager Rachel. She’s been with me for many years. I don’t have any nurse practitioners or any physician assistants. I don’t have any medical assistants. It’s just Rachel and I. It’s truly a “mom and pop” type of business. Very human, and very personal. Together, we work hard to have as stress-free of a workplace as possible where we’re both happy and enjoy doing our jobs. Being in a good mood is surely healthy, and hopefully contagious to our patients.
Life is truly an adventure. Being a doctor and being able to connect with people as I do my best to work with them to help make their bodies more healthy is an honor. As all of us are image bearers of God, it is amazing for me and truly my great privilege to be able to bond with new people as I help them help themselves.
I offer a concierge medical practice with a yearly retainer so I can stay in business without “selling my soul.” Reimbursements from payers such Medicare and private medical insurance has been dropping year by year. At the same time, the costs of doing business with all the regulations is going up and up. To stay in business, a doctor can: 1) offer a concierge, retainer-based service (my choice); or 2) see 40-50+ patients per day (spending 5-10 minutes maximum with them, which of course would make it impossible to practice effective medicine); or 3) “sell your soul” by joining some large medical group or selling your own practice to a local hospital system. Regarding option #3, when a doctor does this, thereafter their patient decisions will obviously be influenced by their new employer, who sadly will be interested in profit margins above all else.
In terms of medical training, I have post-medical school training with board certifications in Internal Medicine (an adult medicine specialist, basically a pediatrician for adults), Clinical Lipidology (a non-invasive preventative cardiology field focused on atherosclerosis and associated cholesterol/triglyceride disorders) and Anti-Aging, Regenerative and Functional Medicine (a holistic, preventative medicine field focused on getting to the root of what causes human disease, and trying to promote body healing). Additionally, I have 18 months of training in Clinical and Anatomical Pathology, and served 12 months as Chief Medical Resident in my Internal Medicine residency.