Welcome to the Evolution of Medicine podcast! In this episode, James sits down with team members from Functional Medicine of Idaho, a private practice owned by a husband-and-wife team. After starting their first practice in Boise, they joined the Practice Accelerator program and scaled their business to open a second location. They’re now building their third location as they continue to bring functional medicine in an effective, clear way to their patients. Hearing their journey, from where it started to their vision for the future to how they use group visits to help scale their business, is truly inspiring. But not only that, it provides a road map for any practitioner who is ready to take their practice to the next level. It was a fascinating, fun interview, and I think anyone who is passionate about moving functional medicine forward will enjoy it immensely. Highlights include:
- One practice’s journey from one location to two thriving locations and counting
- How to scale functional medicine so that it is both effective and profitable
- How to create boundaries for specific roles within a practice
- How functional medicine is thriving across the globe and even in rural locations, not just in major cities
- How the Practice Accelerator program helps practitioners scale their care and help more patients, without burnout or high overhead costs
- Where you can learn more about the Practice Accelerator program and when open enrollment begins
- And so much more!
Resources mentioned in this episode:
goevomed.com/success-leaves-clues-series
goevomed.com/accelerator
funmedidaho.com/
James Maskell: Hello and welcome to the podcast. This might be the podcast that I’m most excited about because it brings together so many amazing things that we’ve done on this podcast over the last five years. So for those of you who’ve been listening for a long time, you know we did a Success Leaves Clues series where we interviewed practitioners who have been in our Practice Accelerator about the growth of their practice.
And we’ve interviewed practitioners from small towns all across the country, all across the world, that have built their own private practice, started with a micro-practice and gone from there. What you’re going to hear today is the next level, which is a practitioner, a husband-and-wife partner who are not just starting with their really effective practice but joined the Accelerator and are now taking it massive where they have a second location. They’re building a third, and they are bringing functional medicine in a really effective, clear way to Boise, Idaho.
And on this podcast, you’re going to hear the journey that they’ve gone through. You’ll hear about the journey from starting and buying the practice to where they are now. You’ll hear about their vision for the future. You’ll hear about how they’ve used group visits to really scale it up. And we have an exciting guest that’s joining them. One of the best-known doctors in functional medicine has joined that clinic as a medical director.
I’ll wait for you to hear who that is, but it was a really, really awesome 40 minutes. I think that anyone who’s passionate about moving forward functional medicine and taking practices from single practices to more effective practices that can hit more people, this is the podcast for you. Enjoy.
James Maskell: So a warm welcome to the podcast, Functional Medicine Idaho. Welcome, gang.
Amber Warren: Hey, thanks.
Sam Warren: Yeah, thanks for having us.
Tamra Geryk: Hello.
James Maskell: I’m super excited to have you here all on the podcast for so many reasons. This is part of our Success Leaves Clues series, and historically that’s been about doctors starting their own micro-practice in towns and cities around the world, around the country, and bringing functional medicine to places where it’s never been before.
And I think we’re going to sort of continue on that theme. But in this podcast you’re going to hear a little bit about what’s happened in the last year since this team joined the practice accelerate, and everything that’s happening in Idaho. And I’m super excited for you to share.
So for listeners who don’t know anything about the practice and don’t follow you guys on Instagram, maybe we’ll just start with you. Sam, I know you’re like the business head of the business. And, Amber, PA-C, trained in functional medicine. You guys are sort of the original team here.
So why don’t we just start with sort of how Functional Medicine Idaho came about sort of the origin story of the practice.
Amber Warren: Yeah. So I’ll try and keep it short. So I was working about two years ago. We’re actually coming up on our two year anniversary of owning Functional Medicine of Idaho. At the time, I was working in a rheumatology clinic here in Boise. And I’ve always been really passionate about nutrition and I’ve always implemented it with my patients, but it was in the field of rheumatology with autoimmune disease that I saw really dramatic results the more I pushed nutrition.
And at the time, I wasn’t calling it an anti-inflammatory diet, but that’s essentially what I was doing. And I was just so impressed with the kind of results I was seeing. And I saw what I felt like was an epidemic of autoimmune disease and right in front of me saw the rising cost of chronic disease with all the really toxic, expensive biologics and immunomodulatory meds we were using.
And that, starting to research more and more and dig into the literature of how I could continue to help my patients obviously led me down the path of gut health and started to dig into that. And I just knew I couldn’t hang anymore within the conventional space. So took a job with, at the time the clinic was called Functional and Integrative Medicine of Idaho. It was started by an MD here in town named Gail Eberharter, who really had a rocking and rolling functional and integrative clinic.
I worked with her, got trained under her. She was actually one of the original first classes of ISM. And about a year in, she kind of announced that she was going to head for early retirement. And that’s where Sam comes into this story.
Sam Warren: Yeah, I got to tell you, James. I didn’t love the fact that Amber was moving into functional medicine. We are extremely healthy, workout daily. But probably like a lot of the practitioners on this call are listening in, you just kind of take that nutrition level to just a…you just kind of crank up the dial about four or five notches.
So she got pretty strict on her diet and what we were putting in and what we were surrounding ourselves with, and I didn’t love that. However, my path, I struggled with years and years of trying to recover from TBIs. I’ve had about eight over the course of my life, and the last two are life-altering for me.
Deep depression, suicidal. So Amber, prior to her making this transition to Functional Integrative Medicine of Idaho, sent me to some friends of hers at a sports clinic here in town, and I just continually got worse. It was probably a three year just downward spiral for me. And it honestly, it was at the point where she took this move into functional medicine that that allowed me to make the turnaround.
I was seen by Dr. Gail Eberharter, and I owe a lot of gratitude to her and the practice that she initially started. She got me on a concussion protocol, and within a couple of weeks I was starting to feel well. Miraculously, I felt. But looking back on it, gosh, it was just taking out everything that was inflaming like my body and brain.
And so I was a believer. Before that, I had struggled with it, not going to lie, but I was a believer in what they were doing. Also had a lot of friends who were seen for a number of different things. But they all got well.
And my background, I’m not clinical, I’m the business finance guy. My background, I’ve got a business formal education, a master’s in business, and I’ve ran a business for about 15 years prior to this. And Gail, Dr. Eberharter, who is the owner, knew that. And so she came to both Amber and I saying, Hey, I know you’ve got a business background, Amber’s clearly practicing here, do you have any interest in acquiring my practice?
And Amber looked at me and said, “Hey, I don’t want anything to do with it, but if you want to run the practice, then I’m in.” So I was in because of the mission at the end of the day. I also was seen from the integrative practitioner here in town about five, six years ago. And he told me his story and it just stuck with me. It was very profound for me. He was an MD in town that moved into integrative and functional medicine.
And he said, you know, Sam, I moved from the conventional space into the functional space. Because in the conventional, I was able to save lives. But in functional medicine, I’m able to change lives. And that is so powerful. That’s what we are ultimately able to do. And that’s, I think at the end of the day, that’s why we do what we do.
Certainly that’s why we bought the practice, because it changed my life, and probably saved my life, to be frank. So what an amazing adventure it’s been.
So we bought the practice March, 2018 and it’s been a wild journey. We’re all about growing and trying to meet the demand for functional medicine. So it’s been a neat journey for us, from my perspective as a business guy.
James Maskell: Well I know there’s a ton of demand for functional medicine everywhere, but I guess specifically in Boise, because all the Californians are moving there and they want it. Well yeah, so look, before we go a little bit further to talk about the practice accelerator, I guess I just wanted to touch on one thing, which is, a lot of the practices that I’ve seen, and we’ve talked about this a lot at the evolution of medicine, that have really stratospheric growth, they separate the role of the head clinician and the business owner and manager.
We’ve had interviews over the series where there is this other person that’s in charge of running the business. And ultimately, if we’re looking, for those people who are listening who are maybe looking to make the switch from micro-practice into growth, maybe both of you could just chat a little bit about your experience of separating those roles.
Because I know there’s a lot of people who are micro-practice owners, clinicians, entrepreneurs, and struggle with wearing both hats.
Sam Warren: Yeah I can take this. Yeah I know. That’s a huge point. I think it’s been dramatically beneficial for Amber and I. Honestly, as you know, I think it was announced, we are married. But we’ve got solid boundaries in that clearly I’m not clinical, Amber is. I am strictly the business finance and culture guy.
So for us, we knew right out of the gate for us to be successful, we had to have firm boundaries around what we do. Because, at the end of the day, it takes both, right? It takes that clinical expertise and it also takes that business mind. And I am personally all about developing culture and hiring people who are leaders and want to lead and want to grow.
And so that, I mean, I couldn’t agree with you more. It’s really, for us, for us to hit our goals and our mission or vision of the practice to grow and grow throughout the Pacific Northwest, is to be intentional with our responsibilities within the organization.
We do DISC assessments, personality assessments. I know, James, you guys talk about this as well. There’s a number of different assessments out there, but we went with DISC. At the end of the day, for me personally, I am…DISC stands for decisive, integrated, stabilizing and cautious. So I’m a high D, high I.
My strengths, and that’s where this conversation comes into play, we have to know our strengths and our weaknesses. My strength is getting stuff done. I can tend to steamroll people in that process, and so I got to be very cognizant of that. As well as miss detail. So I know on my team, our team, we have to have, I certainly have to have people that complement me, and specifically within my weaknesses.
So again, don’t want to belabor the topic, but it’s just so important to really to bring on those individuals that are going to complement where you’re potentially weak.
James Maskell: Absolutely. I think that’s a great way of sharing it. And I think there’s a lot of practitioners probably listening to this who wish they had someone who was good at getting stuff done on their team. Because we hear that all the time from practitioners.
I’m going to introduce another member of the team here, Tamra Geryk, who is an RN and director of clinical operations. Tamra Geryk, it was you and I that first spoke, I think back in December, 2018 when we were sort of relaunching the accelerator for 2019. And you thought that maybe it would be good timing for the clinic to be part of it.
Where was the clinic at the end of 2018? And what had you heard or what of your experience of the accelerator been that you thought it would be a good place to play?
Tamra Geryk: So that’s a great question. My first bullet to talk about was that we were small, but I would say more of a micro-practice, like you mentioned earlier. I feel like 2018 was really a deep dive into both the clinical and business aspects of functional medicine.
As Amber and Sam had mentioned, we did…I joined the practice after Sam and Amber had acquired the practice. But it was a pretty thriving practice. It was well set up, the patients, but we were kind of all talking a lot about growth and vision and mission. And so that deep dive that happened, I think, unveiled a lot and brought us to where we are today.
Also through 2018, our mission and vision was getting more clear. Sam and Amber were really clear from the beginning. But I think the team that we started to build, and as we got into the practice and started just working on a lot of the different business components and clinical and how do we match and what does our team look like, that really, again, the vision and mission started to really take more form.
We were finding the balance between business, clinical growth. Part of that was identifying gaps in practice, and also staying true to our mission and vision. Which, all those things in that last sentence are really difficult to balance, and having that right team is so important.
I think when we connected, I had just completed most of the modules through IFM and had listened in on a lot of the business forums that they do towards the end and was feeling like, gosh, I feel like we’re at a really great point, but we need a little bit more.
And I had been following you, and just through the functional medicine world your name had come up in conversations with other providers or colleagues and we connected. And I think that really took us … Right around that point is when we took a thriving practice and really redefined what thriving was and where we wanted to go.
James Maskell: Yeah, that’s a lovely way to share it. And one of the things that’s been wonderful in this year has been for me to follow you guys and follow the practice through conversations in the accelerator initially, and then through social media and through ongoing connection.
And I mean, I would say of all the clinics that I’ve seen in 2019, you guys have really stepped it up. So maybe, Amber, do you want to share just sort of a little bit? Or Sam, some of the growth in 2019 and what you guys have been able to do with this information, plus obviously building this incredible team here?
Sam Warren: Yeah, I’ll touch on it, and I’ll pass it off to Amber as well. But again, to kind of move the needle with what Tamra was saying, our really goal was to improve on and recruit really solid people. So to build our foundation from improving our culture to our leadership team, and it’s been really, really neat just to see it like that. It’s been neat to see the number of incredible practitioners that see what we’re doing and want to get involved and get behind the mission that we’ve put in play through…
At the end of the day, it’s not about us. It’s about serving other people. That’s first and foremost. So again, building that foundation. I’ll let Amber talk. So that was kind of my initial initiative. Yes, business and improving on numbers and all of that, but at the end of the day we put our business plan in place. And Amber and Tamra Geryk and team ultimately executed on that. So I’ll turn some time over to her so she can discuss about the clinical growth that we’ve seen and what we’ve done to get there.
Amber Warren: Yeah. So with having some of our good foundation set and some of the good business that we were able to put in place, we started to really want to think about, okay, if we’re going to do this right, here’s what we feel like we needed. Those, I mean, most of your listeners are probably very aware of functional medicine and starting to take a deep dive. So those of us know that when we’re practicing functional medicine we really know that optimal wellness starts with mom, right? It starts with an optimal conception, healthy pregnancy, those first three years of life that we know are so imperative to setting the stage for the microbiome.
So to do that, we started to really dream and implement, bringing on people that can help us with that. So we brought on Mario Brus, he’s a functional pediatrician that started with us this past year, and also an OBGYN doc that deliver…so we deliver babies in our clinic. We have awesome prenatal care.
So that’s been huge as far as just helping us look at this continuum of life and really trying to change the lens with which what we’re working with. So that’s been really cool for us. And as we started to explode and bring on these other awesome practitioners, we did notice that there was still a huge need, or it became a huge need for a medical director.
I’ve been doing this kind of medicine for three years, but we really needed somebody that had the knowledge, that had the expertise. So without us really putting an ad out there and really trying to recruit, in comes Mark Holthouse. And he actually applied with us, and we somehow convinced him. We put ourselves in a really good place to convince him to come on as our medical director. So I’ll let him kind of take over and introduce himself.
James Maskell: Yeah, that’s a great moment. So this is an exciting development. I know you guys have a big vision of where you’re going, and having a medical director that could sort of facilitate that vision. So Dr. Mark Holthouse, some of you guys know because he’s been on the Forum a couple of times before.
And it’s kind of sort of a bittersweet moment for me because I live now in Sacramento, and it sounds like Mark is making the trip that many other Californians have made from California to Idaho for a new life. And Mark, really excited to hear that you were going to be involved with this project because I’m excited about the project, and obviously they couldn’t have chose anyone better in terms of experience with functional medicine. And yeah, I’d love to hear a little bit about your thoughts with sort of why you’re choosing this path and what you think is possible with this clinic.
Mark Holthouse: Absolutely. Thanks, James. Yeah. So as soon as you move out here, what’s with that? You know, here I go. But Sam and Amber made a pretty compelling week-long interview here recently. And I think I thoroughly tricked them into hiring me. It’s a wonderful situation.
So yeah, I have had, as a lot of you know, lots of speaking and educating opportunities within IFM and some of the curricular development at some of the med schools in functional medicine. The last 15 years have been private practice, functional medicine 101, on top of the 28 years I’ve been doing medicine. And the education, getting the information in my head was kind of the first goal. Then it evolved. It morphed into direct primary care, is it going to be concierge hybrid? Do we want to do micro? Do we want to do more of a macro?
I ended up the last six years doing more of a macro practice. And really what’s driven me towards this different direction is wanting to get this out viral, getting this to more people. The education of the providers is great, but I wanted my clinical practice to be on a broader scale. And what that has led to is kind of this last 12 months, this search. Contacting traditional hospital care delivery systems who are now interested in functional, integrative wellness and trying to flat out get hired in one of those types of environments and making functional medicine more scalable.
As I sat in my office and saw six to eight people a day, four days a week, it just became apparent to me that in my meaning in life, my reason for being here, my ikigai in Japan, I needed to be influencing more people.
I wanted to get this out to the masses. Coming full circle after spending a year talking to multiple hospital systems that were interested, they’re just really not there yet. They don’t get really what we’re trying to do. I think it’s going to come, but it’s going to be a few more years.
And so in my job hunt and loving the outdoors, we found this beautiful spot in Idaho, and it’s not far from where my kids are in school in Logan, Utah. And so this conversation which started off as kind of humoring my wife to be thorough in my search, within, oh, I’d say five minutes of talking to Sam and Amber and having a meeting interview, we were booking plane tickets within a half hour to come out there.
And I was so impressed with the culture that they have established, the direction that they’re going, the growth and the reaching of multiple lives within this space. I want to spend the rest of my career working with people who want this, and not necessarily having to sell it.
And we need both, and I chose this. And so I’m really honored and I’m very excited to be joining them to help share what I’ve learned over the last decade and a half of this in this state.
James Maskell: Yeah, absolutely. Look, you can see one of the themes here is that at the beginning you have to kind of do everything because you’re a solo entrepreneur, and then as the thing grows, there’s more opportunity for people to really…to get into what they’re great at.
And I’m super excited for you, Mark, to have an opportunity where you can really flex those muscles as a medical director. I want to talk a little bit for a minute. I know there’s all kinds of successes with a second location and all these doctors that you’ve hired into the practice, and obviously, Mark being a perfect example of that.
But I want to talk about group visits, because obviously I’ve been obsessed with it for the last year. If you’re listening to this podcast, you know it’s all I’ve talked about for a year.
I truly believe that group visits is the way that functional medicine makes it to everyone. And I want to start with you, Tamra, because I follow you guys on Instagram. And it’s been one of the most exciting things about this year for me, has seen the way that the clinic has really jumped into group visits and all the different things you do.
So can you give us sort of a lay of the land of what you guys are doing with groups right now? And then you know, Mark, I’d love to get your sort of feedback on what role group visits can play in scaling this kind of care out in your estimation.
Tamra Geryk: Sure.
Mark Holthouse: Absolutely.
Tamra Geryk: I’m an educator at heart. I was adjunct professor when I was in graduate school, and it’s just always been something really important to me. And also, as a registered nurse I was really excited to be able to kind of expand that collaborative care team and take education and bring clinical into a different lens and try to connect with our patients in a different way.
And I think over the past two years we’ve come a long way. We’ve done some group visits, we do kind of just the one-on-one group visits, or the one-off, the Wednesday night that people come to. We have a series now that we do, and we started combining them. So sometimes it’s one or two groups. We combine it with a health coaching appointment and a nutrition appointment to improve kind of compliance and offer that support for patients.
We also do intensives, which are our five-week programs. Those are probably my favorite. We track our patients for five weeks. It includes individual appointments with our health coach, with the nutrition, and it includes larger group visits as well.
And then we just implemented small classes, like the three to seven size. And for me, I’m excited to work with Mark Holthouse to enhance our group visit platform that we have now. But I feel like it’s been a really great asset, not only to the practice in terms of encouraging more collaboration, but to our patients.
Some of the outcomes that we have seen, it’s just been, it’s been amazing. We use the medical symptoms questionnaires that IFM has provided us, and the decrease in symptoms that we see that are reported by patients are so significant. Patients love it. They love it for the accountability. They love it. It improves their compliance. I mean, I could share so many success stories that our patients have had.
I also think the transformation that happens in a group is so different than the one-on-one appointments, whether it’s with a provider or a health coach or nutritionist. So kind of that combination is where we’ve taken the group setting. But we do it all. I think. Yeah, it’s been transformational, and our patients come back. We were doing an intensive right now, and we have 30 participants. And I think we have a little bit of a wait list for that one.
James Maskell: Amazing. Yeah, super excited to hear that. And I know this is like a question that I already know the answer to, but I’m going to ask it anyway. Mark, last summer when we had dinner together, I know that you felt like group visits was something that was in your future. To what degree was this clinic executing at this level part of your decision to make this trip?
Mark Holthouse: Right. So part of my journey this last year around June, July when we spoke, I was just really getting relationships with Tawny Jones and I know Dr. Saxena very well. Some of the…Jeff Geller, some of these champions that have been doing this for years. And I was really slow to the party in having done this for 15 years and just starting it last summer.
But I came to a realization that functional medicine, to get to the next level, is not about just educating an army of practitioners, but making it scalable, making a leverageable way in order to dispense this information. And Tawny Jones really at Cleveland, she and I spent many hours on the phone discussing how it actually works. And we started implementing, I started implementing it late last summer, and the response was just as Tamra mentioned. And it tended to be those that were even more resistant upfront to joining a group. What do you mean I’m going to talk about things in front of other people? This is craziness.
And it was often these very same patients who preferred meeting in the group after they’d experienced it. So the power of it was unbelievable. It was so much more superior than the one-on-one visits in so many of these broad stroke topics. And the efficiency comes with making it scalable to where you’re seeing more patients without seeing more patients, if you know what I mean.
It takes a lot of the pressure off seeing double digits, especially if you’re using insurance as your primary source of reimbursement. And so I’m totally convinced, as are you it sounds like James, that this is the delivery system for the new model of medicine. And I’m really stoked to institute this with these guys.
And when I talked to them and found out that they were doing it already and that they wanted some more help with it in what I’ve learned in the last six months, it was a huge influencer on me joining their practice.
James Maskell: Absolutely. Well, look, I mean I’m super excited to hear that, and I knew what the answer was already. But I had to ask, because ultimately, there’s a lot of clinics out there that are looking for that next step. There’s a lot of clinics out there that have got really good at reversing the chronic illness of the very rich, the very sick, and the very green.
And ultimately, I think we want to all go beyond that. And if this is to become the standard of care, we need to find ways to make it accessible and move in that direction. Sam, maybe I just come back to you. What are the financial implications of the group visit structure for your practice, as far as like how it compares to one-on-one visits for that side?
And then for all of you, I’d just love to share, towards the end here, a little bit of the vision moving forward for what you guys think is going to be possible, let’s say in this next decade, with the infrastructure and the foundation that you’ve already built.
Sam Warren: Yeah, no. So financial implications are significant. As we look at seeing six to 12 patients who are upwards of 20 patients within any given hour. Billing out 99231s, 99241s is one time…It’s 12-fold, right? Or 20-fold. It is significant from financial implications.
I mean there’s no questioning whether it makes business sense, it 100% does. And just, more importantly, it makes clinical sense and clinical outcomes and patient improvements and accountability and everything else that Tamra and Mark mentioned. But it’s a no-brainer from a financial perspective.
Amber Warren: And from a practitioner perspective as well, everyone’s talking about the topic of provider burnout, and it’s real in functional medicine because of the time we give our patients and the time we spend digging into the literature and studying and researching.
So it allows us, and this is a good example of where we kind of come together and make these decisions within our clinic, it allows us to really not have to say the same thing day after day after day and teach on these topics. And Tamra and I taught one last week, and it’s just fun.
The adrenaline gets going. To be a good practitioner, you have to be a good educator. And so it’s a chance for us to really just implement this in a group setting. And when you’ve got people that are making these changes in a community setting, everyone’s on fire, everyone’s pumped. And it’s just creating a really good feel.
James Maskell: And I’m sure sending the message about your two clinics out into the community in a powerful way too. Because this is a, you know, Seth Godin always used to talk about creating a remarkable experience, right? Creating an experience so good that people would talk about it.
It’s a remarkable experience to sit in a group and to have the kind of transformational potential of something like a 12-step program or an alcoholics anonymous kind of change in your life but within a structure of reversing chronic illness. And I think that for any practice that’s looking to really create dozens and dozens of people out in the community talking about how great your clinic is, which is basically everyone would want that, this is a sort of a shorter way to get there.
So you guys have, you’ve built the culture, you’ve started with this sort of micro structure, and now you’re building things out. What’s the vision here? I mean, you sort of alluded to it a little bit earlier, that it’s not just serving people in Boise. What do you guys think that you could do in the next 10 years with this foundation?
Sam Warren: Oh yeah. I mean, we have big aspirations. But before I even touch on that, there’s a gentleman by the name of Simon Sinek, and I’m sure a lot of listeners out there have heard of them, or if you haven’t, definitely look him up. He’s a great business coach. But one of his quotes I love so much. He states that people don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it.
And that’s really at the core of what we’re doing. And at the core of our mission. You see, we really want to meet the demand for functional medicine. And that’s a significant, as we know, that’s a huge need in our communities today. So we’re building a new functional medicine wellness center, which we’re very, very excited on. In fact, I’d like Tamra and Amber to expand on that. But we’re going to add a clinic up in Hailey this year, and then our vision goals are to add a clinic across the Pacific Northwest one every year.
So we’re looking at other areas, doing some market research. I anticipate us having eight to 10 clinics within a seven-year period. And so we’ve got, again, very aggressive explosive growth goals. But in order for us to achieve that, we’ve got to have good team, got to have good culture.
And it just makes me so proud of the group that we have with Dr. Holthouse and Tamra, and Amber, and I can name everybody on our team. It is just that. And I will tell you this, we don’t allow the word employee within our organization. We feel that employee refers to a wheel in a cog. So we really talk about team, team, team. Because at the end of the day, those people, our administrative people up front, are just as important as our practitioners.
So that’s what gets me fired up is like wow, we can make a tremendous difference with, not only in our communities but also within our team, each individual that’s working with us, as well as with our patients. And so it’s just been a really…it’s a neat mission, and now’s the time. We’re seeing a lot of growth, a lot of people that want to get well and they’re tired of the conventional system.
So clearly there’s a time and place for it. But for what we’re doing, we’re excited to be where we’re at today and have the people on board that we have.
James Maskell: Well, absolutely. Well, look, it’s great. Thank you for sharing that, and thank you all for being on here. I mean just to summarize some things, I mean this podcast series is called Success Leaves Clues. And I think there will be so much great information in this podcast.
When we get started out, just separating out the roles, and having sauced on the business management part is a huge value add to a clinic as far as being able to have the kind of aspirations that you have. Starting small, building out the team. There’s so much to see there. Having systems, the group visits, we’ll be talking about that this whole year. And I hope that clinics who are listening to this, whether you’re just getting started or whether you’re looking to really grow and accelerate the practice, you see the potential, the transformative potential of group visits to make the care more accessible and also more profitable.
It’s sort of a unique unicorn business model where you can be both more accessible and more profitable. And that is the opportunity in front of all of us. I’m sure we’re going to be following this story in 2020 and for the next few years.
And just for me, I would say that when we came up with the idea for the Accelerator in 2016, the goal was really to help clinics achieve these kinds of outcomes, like scale up, serve a wider population. And we’ve been talking about this for the last four or five years, and it’s wonderful to see so many practices, but specifically your practice, go after this in such a successful way.
I would encourage everyone to follow these guys on Instagram and just see what they’re up to because I think there’s a lot to learn as far as like building a brand and sharing that out into the community. And also, implement these ideas. And we’re relaunching the accelerator next week. Twice a year we’re bringing practitioners in.
So if you want to be part of the most interesting, exciting community in functional medicine, we’d love have you to be part of it. During the month of February, we’ll be speaking with practitioners and connecting in.
But thank you, all of you, for one, for being on this podcast, and two, for just doing it. Ultimately, in my role, I can’t really do any more than I can to help practices like you guys. And it takes people executing on the front lines to make this happen. And I have no doubt that that clinic vision that you have will come true, and it will probably be even more than you think. Because we are also slipstreaming into a whole functional medicine movement with the Cleveland Clinic, and JAMA, and functioning for life, and all these things that are happening that I think will dramatically continue to increase the demand for functional medicine.
And like you said, if you really think about how can we meet the demand for functional medicine in this community, you think a lot bigger. You start doing groups, and you start moving the whole thing forward.
So thanks so much for being here on the podcast. We’ve been with the team from Functional Medicine Idaho. The team is growing. You’ll be hearing more about it. I’m sure we’ll get you guys on a Functional Forum at some point in 2020.
But from me, this is James Maskell, and this is the Evolution of Medicine podcast. This is our Success Leaves Clues series. If you’ve never heard one of these podcasts before, I highly recommend going back to it. We’ll have a link in the show notes where you can go back to all of the other Success Leaves Clues podcasts where we’ve been interviewing people from the Practice Accelerator in their vision to transform their own practices and bring functional medicine to the masses. Thanks so much for listening in. I’m your host James Maskell, and we’ll see you next time.
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