General Practice Philosophy and Approach
Personalized medicine, direct communication, and self-education are the principles of our practice. We approach every person considering the medical, family, and social histories. We are direct with our communication and our compassion comes through the pursuit of the most up to date medical information for our patients. We honor our patients' autonomy and our patients' decisions after we review the risks, benefits, and alternatives of each medical intervention or decision.
Patient have access to vast amounts of medical knowledge and pseudo-medical knowledge. We desire that patients self-educate and research. We seek to clarify poor sources of medical information from reputable sources of medical information such as mayoclinic.org, webmd.com and pharmaceutical websites. Our duty is to help patients interpret medical data, give the expert information, and deliver the evidence-based recommendations to our patients.
We utilize the premier electronic record system (AdvancedMD) and communicate with our patients through telephone and electronically through our portal. Our patients are leaders in the community, leaders in the family, and leaders of businesses. We respect our patients' time and bring patients into a traditional face-to-face visit only when absolutely necessary. We now offer the cutting-edge in telemedicine and save our patients hours of lost work time.
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Our approach to chronic medical conditions such as heart attacks, strokes, high blood pressure, diabetes, bad cholesterol is initial risk reduction for mortality (early death) and then treating the cause of these diseases (usually unhealthy weight). Specific approaches to chronic medical diseases are addressed here.
Policies
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1. Immunizations
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Immunizations save lives. We always review the risk, benefits, alternatives for immunizations. We follow the US Preventative Task Force and the American College of Physicians recommendations on vaccines.
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2. Antibiotics and Corticosteroids
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We are careful in our use of antibiotics and potent anti-inflammatories known as corticosteroids. Often times, urgent care clinicians prescribe these two powerful classes of medications for patient satisfaction scores rather than medical indications. Much like any other medication, antibiotics have the greatest benefits when treating the appropriate bacterial diseases. However, just like most other medications antibiotics do carry risks and can have side-effects that can harm patients or lead to early death. We do not prescribe antibiotics nor corticosteroids for common colds or other viral diseases. We care about our patients and want to reduce unnecessary risk with antibiotics and corticosteroids. Lastly, antibiotic resistance is rising because other medical professionals over-prescribe antibiotics.
3. Controlled Substances/Chronic Pain/ADHD
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We do not treat ADD/ADHD with controlled substances such as but not limited to amphetamines. We do not treat chronic pain or anxiety disorders with controlled substances such as but not limited to opiates, benzodiazepines, or synthetic opiates.
