insights

John Neely, MD, has been practicing functional medicine for over 20 years and was part of the inaugural cohort of IFM certified practitioners. Over the years, Dr. Neely has practiced in a variety of care settings: from a children’s hospital to an academic and research setting and now in a collaborative consultation practice. He shares his experience with finding a business model that best fits his practice.

As functional medicine becomes more widely practiced, many practitioners are faced with constantly growing patient demand and the challenge of maintaining high quality visits with increased volume. As Dr. Neely notes, a lot of his new patients are word-of-mouth recommendations and often have to be placed on a waitlist. He explains, “We need to limit who we can see, because we want to spend the time that we can with a given patient and maintain a quality functional medicine practice.” When seeing new patients, Dr. Neely’s consult consists of a series of three initial visits where he works up the patient’s timeline and matrix and gets them started on small lifestyle changes, such as following a food plan or addressing stress management.

Establishing a therapeutic partnership with patients and taking the time to listen to each patient’s story is a critical step in the functional medicine diagnostic workup. The three-visit model allows the clinician to go in-depth into the patient’s health history and understand how their life experiences inform their current health concerns. Getting patients started on their healing journey may also include specialized care from a nutritionist, health coach, or psychologist. For solo practitioners, building a network of other care providers in your community allows you to leverage different types of expertise and provide a more comprehensive treatment strategy for patients.

In the following video, Dr. Neely discusses how he arrived at a practice model that was fulfilling for him and how he sets patients up for success using a three-visit model, including consultation with a nutritionist or health coach/psychologist.

Dr. Neely became board certified by the American Board of Integrative and Holistic Medicine after a lengthy career as the chief of pediatric hematology/oncology at Penn State Hershey Medical Center. Now working as a functional medicine consultant in a collaborative care office, he specializes in women’s health and autoimmune and GI issues. Dr. Neely stays current with emerging research on the gut microbiome, particularly how changes in the gut can affect health during illness treatments such as an antibiotics course or chemotherapy.