Top 3 Benefits of an Integrated Approach to Primary Care
At Madsen Medical Direct Care, we practice a style of medicine often referred to as integrative or holistic. The question we usually get is what does that mean, and how is it beneficial compared to traditional medicine?
In simplest terms, it means that we care for the whole patient, considering one's physical, mental, intellectual, spiritual, and social needs. We utilize the same evidence-based medicine that traditional practices implement, but we expand on it. We thoroughly review a patient's health and consider how the body systems integrate to achieve total wellness. Our goal is to improve symptoms and help patients manage complex multi-system disorders. Our direct care membership-based practice allows us to have more extended visits, we don't contract with insurance companies that dictate care, and patients have 24/7 access to providers. Another notable difference is that integrated or holistic-style medicine encourages active participation from our patients. Together, we make treatment decisions that typically include wellness-oriented lifestyle choices.
In contrast, many traditional or standard care practices are limited in their ability to care comprehensively for their patients. Generally speaking, traditional medicine pressures you to be dependent on your provider. These providers operate under strict time limitations because they are incentivized by the number of patients they see rather than the accurate resolution of health issues based on comprehensive care. Prescribing a pill for every complaint is routine because it's faster and simpler than exploring the body systems at play. Have hypertension? Take this pill. Are you feeling anxious? Take this pill. Do you have chronic pain? Take this pill.
In our 30-plus years of practice, we have seen that God has designed us in a most amazing way, with bodies made up of intricately connected systems. Unfortunately, when one system is not working correctly, it can upset the whole system. If you think of primary healthcare as a ten-layer cake (because we believe in healthy nutrition, but we also believe in balance and enjoying life), standard care cuts into the top five layers. At Madsen Medical, we dig into the bottom five layers to thoroughly explore a diagnosis by considering all of those interconnected systems. We do this by ordering lab work and tests that other providers do not consider and using treatment and wellness plans to teach patients how to take control of their health and their lives, keeping them off unnecessary medications and holistically improving their quality of life.
Some of those considerations are standard within all types of care: nutrition and movement. Others are much more out-of-the-box:
Hormone health
Gut health
Thyroid (beyond standard testing)
Adrenals
Musculoskeletal manipulation
Supplements
Vitamins
Sleep
Stress management
Are you curious about a specific example? Here is one. A patient schedules an appointment because they have been experiencing chronic pain. What could this be? Let's look at how a standard primary care practice may handle this versus how we handle it at Madsen Medical.
Can you see how the integrative approach can provide more clarity? We do not prescribe a pill for every problem but seek to find out how the problem may be connected to an unbalanced body system and find a way to fix it using an integrated and holistic approach.
So, to sum it up, we believe that an integrated approach to primary care is the more beneficial for our patients. In addition to the longer visits and unlimited access to providers we find that our patients experience these top three benefits of an integrative approach to primary care:
They are in control of their life and their health
They experience independence in their health through coaching with a board certified provider who knows and understand them.
They have a clear treatment plan that is dictated by their actual health and not by an insurance company that doesn’t know them.
Are you ready to experience this kind of primary care? Give us a call at (740) 200-3860 and set up your initial consultation with Dr. Madsen!
