ALTERNATIVE AND COMPLEMENTARY MEDICINE (CAM) FOR PHYSICIANS
PHYSICIANS' PAGES
INFO FOR PHYSICIANS CURIOUS ABOUT CAM
--If you're tired of the way your practice is being dictated by outsiders like third party payers, pharmaceutical compamies, malpractice liabilities, HMOs and insurance companies...
--If you want to learn to markedly increase your clinic's profits, without increasing your workload...
--If you want to be able to spend more time with each individual patient, improving quality of care and patient satisfaction AND be able to get home at a decent hour...
--If you're still idealistic enough to want to see your patients actually improve...
THEN YOU'RE READY TO LEARN MORE ABOUT CAM !
OUR PATIENTS:
tend to have chronic illnesses (that do improve)
often come to us after having been seen by multiple specialists and have suffered through several unsatisfactory treatments ; therefore,
after having been 'run through the system', are more appreciative of our approach to them and their disorders
are more highly motivated to complete their therapy , more compliant, enthusiastic,and love to generate more patients for the clinic
typically require multiple return visits for the various therapies (usually administrated by techs/nurses); visits are usually 1 to 3 times a week
tend to pay with cash,often well in advance of treatments
are extremely unlikely to initiate malpractice suits--I have never known of a
doctor getting sued using our approach to health care . As a reflection of this, malpractice premiums are amazingly low.
WHY CHOOSE TO DEVELOP YOUR CLINIC ALONG COMPLEMENTARY LINES ?
It's fun! Patients reading this section may think this a strange reason to practice any form of medicine,but if you're a doctor,you know exactly what I mean. There's not many things more gratifying (fun) than watching patients experience dramatic improvements in their chronic problems. Your patients actually get excited over their improved health, and their exhuberance rubs off on you!
The practice is more relaxed,the staff enjoy their work more and everyone's less stressed. This is in large part due to the patients who return for their thirty or so treatments. These folks already know that they're going to be there for 3-4 hours,and come prepared. They get to know the staff and each other, feel safe,cared for, and so are less demanding. It's pretty amazing to walk into a treatment room of a dozen or so people sitting around in recliners,napping, swapping recipes, health tips, telling jokes and the like. If it wasn't for the IV tubing,you wouldn't know you were in a clinic!
The clinic population grows much more rapidly than the physician's workload. After the inital visit,and except for occasional followup appointments, your staff will perform almost all the patient care.With a competent staff and manager, your actual workload should decrease while the business continues to grow. Due to the nature of the practice, income sources increase from one or two as in a typical mainstream clinic, to five to ten.
You get to know your patients better,with the focus more on helping and teaching the patients to take care of themselves rather than them being dependent on you to 'take care of' them. With this added independence and confidence we often see a little bit of role reversal in that patients want to 'help us out',bringing in articles, vegetables from their gardens,and aggressively defending us and our therapies against anyone the least bit critical. My mentor never bothered to carry malpractice insurance, or had any good reason to.
Although alternative therapies are often equated with old timey and 'ancient cures' most of what we use (when we aren't just using mainstream therapies,which we still do, of course) is in truth, cutting edge medicine. What we use now will be mainstream in 20-30 years just as many of mainstream's 'new and exciting' treatments/innovations are old hat to the older 'alternative' practioners. A few examples-- (see if anything here rings a bell) heliobacter pylori, probiotics, homocystine, heavy metals and cardiovascular dz, free radical pathology, mycoplasma and autoimmune dz, trans fats, good vs bad cholesterol, omega 3 and 6 fatty acids, and on and on and on...
I guess there's 3 or 4 criteria I use when evaluating a therapy :
*strong evidence that it works
* a very low (or no) toxicity, or at least be the least toxic choice
*must be inexpensive,or at least highly cost effective
*must have a low addiction potental I consider something addictive if you find that you have to keep taking it-- most pharmaceuticals fail this requirement .
*the therapy has to make sense; not only do I have to feel comfortable with it on a gut level, but I have to have at least a little understanding of the mechanisms of action (and potental dangers) using my science background and medical training. There are quite a few accepted practices in mainstream medicine that would flunk this category!
So,when you tire of trying to select which poisons you think your patients might tolerate, you might start looking at alternatives-- there's a lot of good ones out there.
more soon..
.
PRACTICE DEVELOPMEMT and TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES
A note from our director:
Hi-- I'm a physician (MD) specializing in what's being called Integrative or Complementary medicine-
a mix of mainstream and alternative approaches.
I'm interested in working with other physicians, to train them in
a variety of alternative approaches to treating patients, and helping them develop their practice, clinic and staff to handle the increased patient loads.
Although I've set up my services as a commercial venture, I'm also quite interested in working with nonprofit and missionary organizations/physicians. The therapies I teach are more effective, safer and much less expensive than conventional drug protocols; most patient education is oriented toward self care, lessening patients' dependence on future medical intervention.
This is a unique approach in a new (but quickly growing) field; as such, I am accustomed to being flexible to a variety of work/teaching arrangements, and would be happy to work one-on-one with you at your site.
A few areas involved in our practice development consultations/partnerships include:
ALTERNATIVE THERAPIES
CLINIC DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH
TECHNICIAN TRAINING, SELECTION
EQUIPMENT SELECTION
PHARMACY DEVELOPMENT
AUXILIARY RETAIL INVENTORY
PATIENT EDUCATION RESOURCES
STAFF CME
MINIMIZING PEER RESISTANCE
REFERRAL NETWORKS/ ADVERTISING
A partial list of alternative therapies we offer :
NUTRITIONAL & VITAMIN THERAPIES ( the backbone of our approach)
LIFESTYLE MODIFICATIONS
MIND/ BODY/ SPIRIT INTERRELATIONSHIPS
CHELATION
OXIDATIVE THERAPIES
OZONE THERAPIES
ANTIOXIDANT/ FREE RADICAL MANIPULATIONS
IMMUNE SYSTEM STIMULATION/ MODULATION
HERBAL ADJUNCTS
HORMONE REPLACEMENT THERAPIES
AUTOGENOUS VACCINES
INTRANEURAL THERAPY
PROLOTHERAPY
ANTIMICROBIAL/ ANTIPARASITIC APPROACHES TO CHRONIC,
AUTOIMMUNE, & OTHER REFRACTORY DISORDERS
Thanks, Timothy Simmons MD
etim@mail.com
.Email us for information, to request a more complete CV or to set up a time for a phone call.
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