insights

Kristine Burke, MD, IFMCP, a Functional Medicine family clinician in El Dorado Hills, CA, believes that the best medical care requires time, a trusting relationship, and a collaborative approach to achieve the most successful personal outcomes: good health, longevity, and superior quality of life. In an effort to achieve this type of patient-clinician relationship, Dr. Burke shifted from a practice model based on health insurance to a membership model. This type of practice offers an alternative for clinicians wanting to spend less time on paperwork and more time with patients.

To guide her through the process, Dr. Burke completed the course “My Practice Plan” through the Kalish Institute – an online training program dedicated to building Functional Medicine practices. In the following video, she talks about some of the tools she found particularly useful during this transition.

Transcript:

Kristine Burke: In the Kalish [practice implementation] program, one of the things that I found really useful was the marketing section. Our practice is pretty busy and pretty full, but nonetheless, this [provided me with] the tools to help prospective clients really evaluate where they were on their health and healing journey and what it was that they wanted to accomplish with their Functional Medicine provider. That really helped us to start to fine-tune what type of membership or what type of program would be appropriate for that patient. And then also to manage their expectations and set up appropriate expectations for what they could expect to accomplish in the amount of time they were planning to work with us.