Integrative
Primary Care

Should a medical need arise after normal business hours, members may call our on-call nurse service for advice on how to best address the issue until the clinic reopens. The nurse service will send a summary to our office the following morning, ensuring continuity of care with your established provider. Additionally, our providers rotate weekend and holiday patient portal coverage, periodically checking for urgent messages. Patients with emergent health issues should go to the Emergency Room after hours.

• Do you see pediatric patients (infants, children)?
  • Yes! We see patients of all ages.
• Will you deliver my baby?
  • We are unable to deliver babies; however, we do provide care to infants. We would recommend having a birth plan with an obstetrician or midwife.

• Do you require vaccination for pediatric patients?
  • We do not require vaccination to be a patient with our clinic. Our providers can work with you to determine the best approach for your needs and beliefs.
• What vaccines do/don’t you offer?
  • We offer Tdap, tetanus, and flu (while in season) vaccines. We are fortunate to have an excellent vaccine department at the local health department. They can provide all other vaccines.

What can you manage in-office? Does my condition require a referral?

• GI issues: Do you handle these?
  • Our providers can diagnose and manage GI issues and concerns. We offer specialty testing that can help diagnose some conditions. If there is something urgent/specialized that we are unable to help with we will refer you to a GI specialist (colonoscopies/EGDs).
• Hormones: How do you work with these issues? Do I need hormone testing?
  • All of our providers have comprehensive knowledge of hormone management. Generally, the provider will order a baseline hormone panel ($100) to determine your levels. Then your provider will collaborate with you to determine the next steps, including Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), if appropriate. Anyone receiving HRT will repeat the hormone panel periodically to ensure levels are appropriate. We do not work with hormone pellets or troches. We can use a bio-identical approach if requested.
  • We only suggest hormone testing if you are experiencing related symptoms or desiring to start bioidentical hormone therapy. Your health care provider will help you determine if testing your hormones would be helpful.
• Thyroid conditions: Can you work with these?
  • All of our providers have comprehensive knowledge of thyroid conditions like Hashimoto’s and Hyper/Hypothyroidism. We provide comprehensive lab panel tests to assess thyroid function.
• Cancer: Do you offer integrative/alternative/natural cancer care?
  • As a primary care clinic, we would help the patient navigate cancer treatment care alongside their oncology team. We can provide general lifestyle and nutrition support, guided by our medical staff, health coach, and nutritionist, but cancer-care is not something we manage directly.

We offer a range of gynecological care, including Paps, pelvic exams, discussion/testing for STIs, and IUD removal, though we do not place IUDs.

Most hospital medicine is now managed by hospitalist physicians that specialize in that field. We have a close relationship with the local hospitalists group, and can visit in the hospital if needed.

Appointments are required for urgent visits, and in most cases we can treat members for acute issues the same day or next business day. An urgent visit is appropriate for one acute issue, such as a sudden illness or injury that happened within one week of the appointment. Urgent care appointments may be scheduled with the first available provider on staff that day. All medical providers are highly trained to provide you with the best possible medical treatment. We can only address one concern in a 20-minute urgent care visit.

Our clinic performs many primary care procedures such as stitches, ear irrigations, cryosurgery and skin biopsies, all of which are offered at wholesale costs for our members. For any procedure not done in the clinic, such as mammograms or X-rays, our office will send a referral on your behalf and ensure you are set up with the appropriate appointment. If you have specific questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact our front office.

• The following lab work is considered routine and always offered at wholesale costs for our members:
  • Comprehensive Metabolic Panel
  • Complete Blood Count
  • Lipid Panel
  • Hemoglobin A1C
  • CRP (C-Reactive Protein)
  • Glucose
  • TSH
  • Urinalysis
  • Strep Test
• A screening panel is a set of labs we perform to better understand how your body is functioning. The panel includes tests for kidney function, liver enzymes, calcium, protein, and glucose levels. Your screening panel results will help highlight key areas of your health that may require attention and assist your provider in creating a plan of care tailored to fit your individual needs. The screening panel can often reveal the underlying cause of many symptoms you might be experiencing. *Fasting for eight hours prior to a screening panel is required for accurate results. The screening panel consists of the following lab work:
  • Comprehensive Metabolic Panel
  • Complete Blood Count
  • Lipid Panel
  • Vitamin D
• Specialty labs are outside the scope of routine primary care. We practice integrative primary care and designed our clinic to make this service available to more people. At our price point we cannot operate as “Functional Medicine Consultants.” Instead, we collaborate often with local practitioners who provide this specialized care.

  That said, certain conditions straddle the line between primary care and specialty care. These include hormone management, some thyroid concerns, and some GI concerns. It will be up to you and your provider to determine when we need to bring a specialist onto your care team.

  If we decide to begin a work-up for these conditions at our clinic, we may suggest a specialty lab panel. These labs may utilize blood, saliva, urine, or stool samples for testing. Examples of specialty labs include comprehensive GI panels and hormone evaluations. To account for the additional training and expense of offering specialty services, we charge an interpretation fee per specialty lab panel. This allows us to offer some of these services when needed and in a transparent way without having to raise the price for all of our members. We charge our cost for the panel + the interpretation fee at the time of picking up the kit from our clinic. If you bring specialty panels from other providers or panels that you have ordered on your own, we will require an interpretation fee for us to review them.

  Please understand that this policy allows us to make our level of care affordable to more people. We deliberately charge a fraction of what most integrative specialists require since it is a large part of our clinic mission to make integrative primary care accessible to more members of our community. For specific questions or concerns, please feel free to contact the office.

For specific questions or concerns, please contact our front office.

We offer classes and programs such as seasonal cleanses to support our patients’ lifestyle goals such as hormonal balancing, physical fitness, and much more. Check out our monthly newsletter or our online calendar for upcoming classes. Past classes have included:

• Introduction to Chinese Medicine
• Permaculture Design
• Yoga
• Meditation
• Qi Gong
• Tea Demonstration with Panther Moon Teas
• Natural Foot Health
• Natural Approaches to Insomnia

Targeted health programs will emphasize healthy lifestyle and dietary optimization. Stay tuned for details!

Provider panels are capped once they reach a capacity that allows them to maintain a minimal wait-time for appointments and respond to your messages in a timely manner. Providers who have been with us the longest tend to have full panels because so many members stay with us! In addition to our MDs, all of our PAs and FNPs are highly skilled and experienced, and they work in collaboration with the entire medical team.