Let's talk about Dr. Kat Lindley, who you've probably seen on one of our webinars as well.
But Dr. Lindley is Croatian born, American trained, a board certified family physician
with a direct primary care practice in Brock, Texas.
She became a family physician out of love for the idea of taking care of the whole family
and seeing the family grow.
She's involved with many medical organizations, including the Global COVID Summit and the
Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.
And in 2023, she co-founded the Global Health Project and now serves as its president.
The CHP, as it's commonly known, is a coalition of organizations, experts, and advocates dedicated
to improving and protecting health and the future of all humans through education, advocacy,
programs, and communication and initiatives.
Now we have Dr. Salibi, who we hope will get here.
He's probably looking for the signs to where we are.
You need a PhD in order to find this place, but that was another thing.
I think you know him.
He is a marvelous practitioner, and he is, for almost two decades, he pursued a career
in emergency medicine and held posts in occupational medicine, urgent care, and family medicine,
retiring from the traditional mainstream in 2013, and he currently practices integrative
and functional medicine in Carolina Holistic Medicine.
He has done wonderful videos for us, which you can see, because I announce them every
Wednesday when there's a new one that is out.
So hopefully he will get here, but if not, we have two terrific doctors right on the
stage now.
Joe is going to basically run this show, and the question we all want to know, people
who are here, is how can they get doctors like you?
Excellent.
Thank you, Betsy.
Isn't she amazing?
Yeah.
She is.
I mean, you know, I just watch the webinars just to watch her, but don't tell anyone.
And my wife is here, so she knows that I'm legit, so it's done under wife supervision.
That's okay.
In any case, I mean, the biggest question, and we were asked to talk about how to get
you to find an aligned health care profession.
Every time I hear about alignment, I think about my car, you know, I think about wheels
and I think about what in the world are we talking about?
And that's one of the things that I was talking to Kat yesterday, is like, what is alignment?
I mean, how do I know that somebody's aligned with my thought process?
One of my friends, Dr. Mary Bowden, which many of you are familiar with, she has a website
on her website.
She has a list of practitioners that are like-minded.
And you know, you look at the different persons and stuff like that.
And my biggest question, and we were discussing that, is how do you know that these people
are truly aligned with what you want to do for the patient?
I mean, the fact that you may or may not hate vaccines, is that a true indicator of alignment?
Or is alignment something that has to do more with patient care, specifically, who is the
best doctor or health care professional for this particular individual?
And I mean, we know that our current system is broken.
We know that that system has really ended a lot of lives, unfortunately, for a variety
of reasons.
Number one, no homogenous message is out there.
Everybody knows whatever the hell they want, and there is really no control.
So the first thing that you need to do before you even consider having an aligned health
care provider is to have a system that allows you to do so.
And you know, the world expert on parallel systems is Kat.
And Kat will be talking to us about what is a parallel health care system, actually, which
is, last night, we said that we're going to be writing a book on this.
So Kat, tell me what about this.
And by the way, we don't do this little thing that questions are at the end and all that
nonsense now.
But we are recording this for audio, and if you have a question, you need to stand up
to the mic.
Please.
Otherwise, it'll be lost, and we won't hear it.
If not, I will have to repeat the question, and I'm too lazy.
So please do it for me, okay?
Okay, so what is a parallel health care system?
I know we had a lecture on that yesterday, but we have our own way in which we believe
a parallel health care system works.
So I got dissolution with medicine long before COVID.
I was a medical director for a very large hospital system for all of their outpatient
clinics, and I started with one nurse practitioner.
I ended up with seven when I ended, and I was going into the first of all, I'm very
temperamental.
I'm from Mediterranean.
So as long as you don't make me mad, we're good.
But I had this feeling the night before, and I'm going into this meeting where we're negotiating
my salary.
I know I'm going to get a big raise.
I was making a lot of money for this clinic, and my duty kind of evolved.
But I had this feeling I'm going to resign.
So I wrote the letter of resignation just in case you never know, right?
And while this was happening in the background, I had friends trying to convince me to do
direct primary care, and I never wanted to be my own boss.
I actually hated the idea of having to be in charge of things.
I kind of liked the idea of going into the office, doing my thing, going home to my kids,
and being done with it.
So anyway, so I go into this meeting, and the new CFO says, you know, and when you work
in the rural health care system, a medical director, everyone works under you.
So even like the cleaning people, everything is really under the license of this medical
director.
And I didn't like the idea that they were making decisions on my behalf, and I didn't
really know what they are.
But I was getting, you know, you get paid good salaries, so you don't ask questions.
But I'm not that type of a person, I do ask questions.
So I kind of said, you know, I know I don't have much say into things, but I still want
to know what's going on.
And his answer to me was, your job is just to supervise nurse practitioners and sign
the charts.
And I kind of look at him, and I said, thank you so much for this opportunity, and I gave
him my letter of resignation.
And then I opened my own practice.
I had $5,000.
I had my doctor's back from medical school.
You know, my blood pressure cuff, my stethoscope, my otoscope, that was it.
I got a table on Craiglist.
I did find a little office that I liked, and it was cheap.
I didn't want to do it for my home.
And I opened Direct Primary Care.
So what is Direct Primary Care?
Direct Primary Care is a membership-based practice.
And some of you know it, some of you have Direct Primary Care doctors.
But the difference between us and what I call BIP and concierge type medicine is we really
charge affordable prices.
Some others charge, you know, they call themselves DPC, but they'll charge $300, $500 a month.
In my opinion, that's a VIP practice because a family of, I have five kids, a family of
seven cannot afford $500 a month per person, you know.
I wish I could, but I can't.
So I charge anywhere from 35 to 110 depending on age.
And that is affordable for a family.
And what they get is 24-7 access to me.
And when I say 24-7, it's really truly, though I have my cell phone number, they can
call me anytime, text me anytime.
My only requirement is to say who they are because sometimes I'll get a whole story
and I have to say, what's your name?
You know, it's kind of like, oops.
And the way kind of this works is the trust that we built over time.
So lots of times I'll get this message, I have a sinus infection because in Texas everyone
wants a Z-PAC and a steroid, right?
Steroid shot is like the favorite thing.
So and then my first question to them is, when did it start?
And they're like, well, it started yesterday and it's really bad.
And then, you know, they already know my spiel, but I'm like, well, it's really viral, give
it five days and then, you know, text me again and we'll talk about it.
So they know, but they trust me and that's how this is built.
But what is important to know is when people talk about parallel systems, you can create
one in a vacuum.
I respect a lot of my colleagues and I actually think the only way to restore trust in medicine
is free market medicine because if Joe and I compete for you, then we're going to be
better.
Our prices are going to go down because we're competing for the same person, but our quality
will go up.
Some really firm believer in free market medicine and what that means is that there are many
different ways of practicing and we need to be innovative.
But you have to realize you cannot practice in the vacuum.
You still have to maintain your medical license.
You still have to be aware of the laws within your state, the insurance laws and different
things.
And it's very important to create this system that's going along, but keeps toes in the
water as I like to say.
Because many of you do have insurance and while you might pay for the membership to
be part of the practice, you do want to use your insurance for radiology, for x-rays,
for your medicine.
So your doctor has to maintain that professional relationship in the system.
If they don't, it becomes very hard and many cumbersome on the patient.
And that's one of the things that many of us didn't know.
I mean, to be honest with you, all my life I was an intensivist or I had a private practice
which was doing amazing.
And then I heard this concept of direct primary care, I said, what in the world is that?
And as things started to get bad during the pandemic, after the pandemic, where hospitals
started to shut down, I said, why don't I go from treating the active illness to preventing
the active treatment?
And for that you need truly, regardless of what specialty you have, to be a direct primary
care clinician.
So the one thing in finding your aligned healthcare provider is that every single one of those
excellent healthcare providers that you're going to be finding, those aligned healthcare
providers, have to do some kind of direct primary care in addition to their ultimate
specialty.
If not, they are not aligned.
Simple as that.
If they don't understand this basic concept that prevention is more important than treatment,
then you are finding the wrong aligned healthcare provider.
So I have a thousand patients that's actually not very common in DPC.
People tend to keep their panels 300, 600 kind of max.
The reason it works for me because what I do is I don't want to see you in my office.
If I don't see you in my office, actually, that means you're doing really good and you
don't need to see me either.
It's kind of counterintuitive because in medicine, for doctors to get paid, you have to come
to the office.
So sometimes when you call the nurse in someone's, you know, in the office and you'll say, I
have this and that, they actually already know whether you have to come in or not, but
they will only get paid if you come in.
So even if they think it's nothing wrong with you, it's a little viral thing.
They'll say, come in, see the doctor because doctor will only get paid if they see you.
In my case, the way it works, my patients text me directly and, you know, we'll discuss
it and I'll decide whether they need to be seen or not or what I need to do.
But the incentive is actually to keep you out of the office and you like it because you
know that my interest is your health and your wellness, not the sickness.
Medicine has become a world of sickness and not world of wellness.
So I would say when you're looking for someone to be your doctor, it's almost kind of like
when your son or daughter brings, you know, a person, they're dating into the family and
you have to kind of start mixing and becoming a family.
The doctor is supposed to become a member of your family.
And if they're not, ask why because I can tell you, you know, I travel a lot, I go different
places, I'm going to Ireland tonight and my patients, like usually I'll post up on Facebook
and my patients know, you know, that I'm going and they'll send me a message and they look
out for me while I'm gone.
It's really like, it's such a wonderful relationship and that's kind of what you have to do.
Not only do they have to understand what you want from them, but they do have to share
the same values and if they don't, it becomes a difficult relationship, I would say.
As a, you know, Facebook prisoner of the year, I'm the king of Facebook.
You should become his friend on Facebook just to see the size of the pancake he had for breakfast
yesterday.
He had hair, so let's be clear about that, okay?
And she's the first one that cut into the pancake, so let's be clear.
Well having said that, you know, I think that you have said something very important and
again alignment, patient alignment, first thing for physician alignment will be get yourself
a direct primary care, if you can.
And the question to you is, how do we do that?
Who do we call?
Is there a 1800 number?
Are you fine the right one?
Yes.
But, you know, and how do you know that he's as nice as cat is, as funny as we are, I mean,
you need somebody, but you need to have somebody that you feel comfortable with, somebody that
you want them, like you said, they become your family.
Although by the way, in the state of Texas, healthcare providers cannot attend events of
their family, of their patients and stuff like that because it's a boundary violation
and all sorts of things.
Not if you're in direct primary care.
Well, you know, the Texas Medical Board has this stupid rule that if one of my patients
invites me to the wedding of their kid, I shouldn't be going to the wedding, no, because
I would, you know, it's a different relationship than the one that I would have with somebody
else.
That's the Texas Medical Board, you know.
I'm their favorite person.
He's here.
Oh, not this one.
Oh, JP.
We have one.
Come on.
I already announced.
So everything we said about JP, please, disregarded, he doesn't know that we were talking about
him, okay?
So I'll just answer his question and then we'll hear your question.
But if you're looking specifically for direct primary care, you can go to dpcfrontier.com.
Yeah, dpc.
GPT.
Frontier.
Okay.
D-like dog.
D-like fall.
D-like cat.
D is in dog.
P is in Patrick.
C is in Charlie.
Right?
There you go.
Okay.
So it's my accent.
I just can't help that.
My accent doesn't help either, so.
But you can find direct primary care physicians around the states, the ones that actually
put their name on the website.
If not, aapsonline.org will also have a list of direct primary care physicians.
And you can always actually reach me on my website, email me, and I'll, if I have someone
I recommend in your area, I'll tell you the name.
Can I follow on the heels of that?
Sure.
I don't know what I missed, but sorry, I got swarmed by people.
Everything important.
Okay.
So on my slide deck, which will be posted in the FLCC communities, and also I understand
from Kelly that they're going to provide everyone a PDF of our slide decks.
I talk about, at the very last slide is how you get a hold of DPC practices.
So DPC Mapper is one, ILADS, I L A D S, F L C C C, of course, they have a great section
that gives you direct links to DPC practices.
IFM, Institute of Functional Medicine, however, caveat is they still are promoting the vaccine.
Almost caused me to quit that organization, but I felt I have to be a voice of reason
in that organization.
I think they're slowly coming around.
The LDN Research Trust out of the UK, Freedom Health Care.
So Google Freedom Health Care, of course, the body, A.B. Jackson, if you were in the
other session, IndieDocs.com, and of course, React 19, and you know, Carolina Holistic
Medicine, that's why I put myself last.
If you're in desperate need, we serve all 50 states, Canadians and Australians as well.
And follow my sub-stack because I post stuff that will interest you all.
So just look JP Salibi in the sub-stack and follow me.
First question, you wanted to ask a question.
Yes.
So I myself belong to a concierge medicine person, but I can't afford that.
So she sees me as just a, you know, call her up.
The problem is, it's two-fold.
How do you manage balance in your life for your patients and all the things that you do?
And what is the expected turnaround time?
Like the difficulty is you call up or you text and you can't actually get a hold of anybody.
And I mean, the only time I actually got somebody to call right away is like, I have
breast cancer, so, and I got a call right away.
So that's my question is like, how do you, how do you develop balance as a practitioner?
I'm also asking because my daughter's in medical school and she's worried about all of this.
Tell her not to do it.
Tell her to quit.
But the fact is that, let's be clear, we don't have balance.
I mean, whoever thinks that we have balance, we're wrong because we're constantly on the
phone, we're constantly answering.
I mean, I answer messages on Facebook, on regular texts, WhatsApp, Signal.
Just name it.
I mean, it's one after the other.
And patients do use that.
But one thing that I learned from Kat is that patients, maybe at the beginning they will
use you a lot, but eventually as this trust continues, they don't abuse the system.
So it's not like they're going to be calling you at three o'clock in the morning, you know,
I'm constipated or whatever.
And it's 100% correct.
Like I said, I have about 1000 patients.
I travel a lot, but I ran into my phone right away and I do tend to even when I'm on stage
and doing stuff, I'll just glance at it and see whose name is there and if it's something
I have to respond right away, I will.
But that comes with, you know, we're the ones that set the boundaries.
Some physicians will say after five o'clock, you know, if it's not an emergency, don't
reach out to me and they have different systems.
I find that patients do not abuse it.
If they need me after hours, they do need me.
So it's really not the problem.
I do turn off my ringer when I go to bed.
I go to bed really late.
I go to bed at midnight.
So, you know, if you really need me after midnight, I think you really need ER and not me at that
point.
But otherwise, you have to create this space, the trust space, because the way, you know,
they trust you, but you give them the trust back and they don't abuse it in my experience.
I have two comments, two things that any practitioner should have.
One is a patient handbook.
This has all the dos and don'ts and if people abuse it, we like one person, one patient emailed
one of my providers 24 times in one day.
So we had to terminate that relationship because they didn't adhere to our core values.
One is get a, develop a patient handbook and I'm willing to share mine with you.
I mean, I had legal look it over and I'm offering that.
Just email me and I'll give you a PDF copy and you can do it at what you want.
Number two, staff up.
We have 19 employees that are phenomenal.
Some of them are work from home and we don't have a problem with people not getting calls
back.
You know, some people say, well, I called three times, well, did you leave a message?
No.
But if they did, they got a call back from our staff and you have to, you know, show boundaries
and don't be afraid to terminate that patient-doctor relationship when it's abused because you
don't have time if you're busy practice to futz around with problematic people.
And establish some core values.
We have five.
Establish core values like trust and compassion and respect and integrity.
Those are some of ours.
And we uphold them for not only our staff, but any incoming new patient.
I just want to make a comment on that.
Dr. Salibi is very much structured.
I am totally untraditional and not structured.
This is my assistant and my only employee.
Excellent.
Next question, please.
How does it work if one of your patients goes to the hospital?
For me and in Texas, most of us, except for Joe, but most family physicians, we don't
keep hospital privileges because of the hospitalist.
But it is important to create relationship with the hospital or at least the hospital
service so that you get good reports back.
And my patients are very good at kind of texting me and letting me know what's happening
so that we can make sure that the transition from the hospital back into the practice is
easy.
And I cannot emphasize that more, but you have to be very careful where you're sending
your patient to.
There are some big hospital systems, for example, in the Houston metropolitan area, there is
a Methodist hospital, there are a couple of other places.
You send your patient to the emergency department.
They get admitted to some hospitalist group.
Next thing you know, you don't know anything else about that patient ever.
The patient never comes back to you.
So that's extremely important.
This relationship with whoever you are going to send the patient to, that alignment.
And that for me is more important than whether they believe in vaccines or they don't believe
in vaccines.
I want to see that patient back.
I want to be able to continue to participate in the care of the patient.
And we used to call it, you know, they're stealing our patients, but it's so common.
Next question, please.
Can I comment, Joe?
Yes, you may.
So, yeah, you have to be careful who you tell your, direct your patients to.
Not only hospitals, but other specialties, like cardiology, neurology, rheumatology.
A sterling, shining example of a community hospital that went south, went out of business.
They had to get rid of all their employees.
Is in DeSoto Memorial Hospital.
Write this down.
DeSoto Memorial Hospital in Arcadia, Florida.
That is a hospital that's flipped and is doing well.
They hired all the employees that were let go and increased their salaries and gave them
better benefits.
And now there's a waiting list of people that want to go in for surgeries like knee replacement,
hip replacement at a fraction of the price.
They are divorced from insurance, so it's a cash only.
But figure this, you get 20,000 for a total hip versus 120,000 in mainstream medicine.
In better care because the employees are happy and they're not burnt out.
So that's a shining example, one example, and there's many to follow.
Trust me, the current system is imploding at a breakneck speed, and we need to flip
more little community hospitals to take care of our patients.
And interestingly, that hospital, the person who did most of the work to do that is Dr.
Lee Gross, who is a direct primary physician like I am.
And we are both part of the DPC action.
We did a lot of legislative work to make sure that things like that can happen.
And in this hospital in particular, people will actually come from all over the states,
from different states to do surgeries because their prices are so good and they have excellent
care.
Excellent.
Next question, please.
Yes.
Moving more into a membership model where patients opt in and they sign a membership agreement.
Do you think there's less of a need for occupational licensing, like to have, say, an MD degree
or another qualification?
So I'm a firm believer that creating a system, you have, and these are different thoughts.
I know you're going to think that you're going to probably say differently because of body.
But I believe to give the best service to the population, who is actually, a lot of them
still are within insurance system and things like that, the doctors, and because this is
still a country of rules and regulations, as we should be, in my opinion, you should
try to create this system parallely, but keep your toes in the water and create a bridge.
Because I get that trust was lost.
I get that we failed at our job.
There are many multifactorial reasons for that from the physician's standpoint.
But medicine still works.
I get a lot of people say, I will never go to the hospital, never go see a doctor again.
Well, I really hope you go see a doctor if you have right lower quadrant pain, you develop
fever and you kind of don't have an appetite and that pain is getting a whole lot worse.
You could have a appendicitis and I truly hope you go to the hospital because I can't
help you.
So I think it's becoming a physician's to start working on restoring their trust.
But we should not be abandoning the system completely.
It's broken, but it's not unsalvageable.
And I think medicine is really, it's a noble profession and we should remain a noble profession,
but we shouldn't just abandon and turn our backs to it.
We need to get more of our, what we should do is return back to private practice of medicine.
Because that's what keeps everyone honest.
And that's an important, an important point that you're saying.
I mean, we have to understand that we have to, you know, the pendulum has swung way too,
too much on the, you know, these gigantic hospitals that own all these physicians practices
in which you don't come in as Mr. Smith, you come in as all the patient with pancreatic
cancer or whatever.
I mean, we, we have lost that.
And FLCC has been really working hard in trying to restore the trust indeed.
That's the thing for our, for our, for this symposium.
I mean, that's what we need to, to understand.
Yes.
Next question, please.
If the premise is if preventative medicine positions and providers, your job is to make
your patients very healthy.
So in a perfect world, you're driving yourself out of business in a way, with your current
patients.
So do you find in this environment with everything that's happened, you find that you have to,
from a business perspective, do you have to do anything to find, to bring in new patients,
to keep, or is it self-perpetuating, is it all word of mouth at this point?
Let me address that.
So when I was in the emergency room and then opened up my first DPC practice in Savannah,
Georgia, there was a drug rep that used to come in, he was promoting a particular antibiotic.
And his father was a physician, and he would brag that his father saw 50 patients a day,
and then would round on the ones inpatient, because there were no hospitalists back then.
And I thought about that, I was like, 50 patients a day, and I'm seeing like six.
So how is he, you know, how is he distributing good care?
He's not.
He's walking in with a prescription pad and throwing a prescription at each patient.
And I'm thinking he probably spends less than three minutes per patient to get through
his day.
I don't, during that period of time, three to five minutes, I'm just getting to know
my patient and where their favorite fishing hole is.
Not even diving into their medical, you know, their chief complaint.
So that's what somebody else had said.
He was a chief operating office of a competitor, a hormone.
They did mostly pellet hormone therapy, which is a procedure.
That's how they made their money.
And he asked me, well, if you get all your patients well, aren't you putting yourself
out of business?
Well, you know, give me those 50 patients that that guy saw in one day.
And in a year, I will have them all well where they don't need to depend on the system.
I will train them and educate them on how to take care of themselves.
In China, they have little wood and apothecary chests in every household, it's like their
first aid station.
You think they go running into the emergency room with a hangnail?
No, they try to treat themselves at home first.
You have to educate your patients.
So I'm very pro-education.
I educate my nurse practitioners and I educate my patients to be self-care, like how to take
care of yourself so you don't burden the system.
So you know, you can see your 50 patients a day for three minutes, but you're not going
to fix them.
I fix my patients, and I think everyone else here does.
That's very important.
That reminds me.
A few years ago, I was lecturing at Shiba University Hospital in Japan, and you know, they are
showing me the hospital.
The hospital is 2,000 beds.
Yes, good size hospital.
And then they take me to the emergency room.
And the emergency room has four rooms.
Four rooms, you know.
I come from a hospital that at the time had 26-year rooms, I said, how can this be possible?
How can you have a 2,000-bed hospital with four beds in the year?
And that's exactly what you were saying.
To educate your patients, as to when do they really need to go, like I was saying, if you
have a right lower quadrant pain, and you know, you're burning in fever, you're probably
having bad appendicitis, and these people get educated.
No more going to the ER.
I mean, I run an ER in Houston for five years, and trust me, all those chronic back pains,
the simplest things, like why are you here?
Oh, I've had this pain.
And how long have you had this pain?
Oh, for about 20 years.
Sounds like an emergency to me.
And that's why our health care expenses are through the roof, because anybody that comes
in with a chronic headache from health gets a CT, gets an MRI, gets a whatever.
That's what we have done.
We have created this.
Yes.
I just want to make a comment.
So I used to feel, when I started doing my practice, it was really funny.
I had a few patients that signed up right away, but I would go to the office from like,
you know, A to five, and I was like, by myself doing nothing, and because like, you know,
I didn't have anyone scheduled, and I kind of got myself out of that.
And then as I, you know, my patient population grew, there's something like I haven't seen
in like forever.
And I used to feel like really guilty, and then I would text them, I'm like, so how
are you doing?
Do you need anything?
You know, but that's kind of what it is.
Not only it's a good thing for me.
And the reason we do this membership thing is because it allows us to have an income
that's steady and we know what it is.
But then for the patient themselves, they know if they need any of us, we're there.
And they know, you know, our, yes, our goal is to keep you out of the office, because
our really essential goal is for you to be healthy and not to require the medicines and
things like that.
But if you do need them, we're always there.
And that's important, especially as we go into the alignment part.
If I am a clinician, and I'm going to refer to you, I mean, as I told you when we first
started, I don't care if you are a pro vaccine or anti vaccine clinician that I'm going to
refer to.
What I care is that you can see my patient, if I call you and I said, can you see this
patient tomorrow?
And you will see, you will see the patient and not tell me I don't have any openings
until August of this year.
That for me is important.
That's the alignment that I need.
I need alignment that's going to allow me to have my patients cared for.
That is what I need.
You know, we can discuss semantics as to some of the other things.
Does he believe in this?
Does he believe in that?
What I care about is that if your hip is broken, somebody's going to come and fix it.
And in order that you have to wait, you know, God knows how long.
Can I just intercede?
So my practice, for example, started in 2013, we were accepting insurance.
I crunched the numbers, found out in a few months that I would be out of business.
So terminated all my managed care contracts, opted out of Medicare, have everyone sign
a CMS waiver, opt out waiver, that's law.
You do that so you don't get in trouble with your older patients.
And we started a membership model.
It was hybrid in the beginning where we had, you know, cash for care, and you could sign
up for a membership.
And then on fateful day in 2014, we decided we were going to go full-on membership.
Well, that didn't work out because we were specialty care and we were doing not just
DPC, but we would be doing Lyme patients, toxicities.
So we had to rethink that strategy because not everyone wanted to do a membership.
But the way it goes is you get two, the first two visits, no membership required.
After that, we determined if you need one of the two different membership models, one
for, you know, health maintenance and the other for restoration, different price points,
different number of visits.
But that turns out to be the best way for what we do since we, not only do we do primary care,
but we do some kind of esoteric, you know, Lyme and COVID stuff.
Okay, next question.
Can you hear me?
Okay, there we go.
I've been receiving primary care from a private practice for about 15 years.
Well, they were a private practice.
They were taken over subsequently by a very, very, very large hospital system.
In general, I like my doctors.
I feel company, I like them.
I don't trust the system.
I suspect my doctors don't either.
How do I, first off, if I stay in the situation, how do I broach that topic with the doctor?
If I'm staying in the system also, okay, I can see some kind of risks I'm taking because
of the system, but I've got Medicare and in many ways it's rather convenient.
So that's one question.
Second question is if I were to go out and look for an independent practitioner of some
kind, what's one question you should ask to try to establish whether this is right
for you?
Let me answer the first question, which is, how do you approach it with your healthcare
provider?
And I think that honesty is the best way.
You know what?
I don't trust the ex-hospital system.
I don't trust it.
Just say it as it is because that healthcare provider may be in line with what you think
or they may even have alternatives for you.
Or he may not be the real person that you want to and says, oh, because you don't trust
it, I don't want to see you anymore and we terminate our relationship, which may be the
best thing that can happen to you in that sense.
And you already have a relationship with him or her because you've been with them for a
long time.
So I think just having a frank conversation and also raise your concerns.
What are they specifically?
And asking what would you do in this scenario?
What would I have to do in this scenario?
And I think that will open a conversation to know.
As far as how do you find a doctor, you have to find what your issue is.
Is it the vaccine, for example, is it statins?
Is it how they manage certain illnesses?
And then ask them the question, what would you do in this scenario?
I think that's kind of the most honest way of doing it.
And then I always tell people, you know, if you want to, it's kind of like, how do you
find a mechanic?
You ask your friends and family and you hear what they have to say.
Now, if you're going to ask your friends and family and they say, you know, Dr. JP or Joe
or me, for example, ask why?
Because that's why I see a lot of people will say, like, who you like and they'll give a
name.
They're like, okay, I'll call that person.
Well, ask why do they like that person?
Because you know, we like different people for different reasons.
So shop around.
That's kind of what I say.
You're not supposed to, like, if you have your HMO or PPO card, go with the doctor that
you're assigned.
If you still have the option to say, I don't like that person, I'm going to go with someone
else and do it.
Yeah, my question to you would be, do you like your doctor?
Do you like the care that you're getting?
If the answer is yes, maybe have a frank discussion with your physician and say, you know, the
world of medicine is changing and I'd hate for you to be sidelined and I don't want to
be sidelined.
So I'm looking to change systems and I would like you to go to a conference and educate
yourself.
I'm uneducated.
No.
I happen to know one.
Well, no, actually, that's how I got involved with Lyme disease.
I had a pestering patient.
He would not let me alone until I became Lyme literate and so I became super Lyme literate
because of him.
And they come with like 10 papers and they go, I just read this and you said, oh my gosh.
Yeah.
Some of them are good, but others just say, oh my gosh.
I wanted this guy to go away until one day he came in and said, I will pay for you to
go to Eyelab's conference.
I said, I get it dude.
I'm going and then the rest is history.
But so have him or her go and get educated.
They may see the light and change and that way you can keep a doctor you want when they
shift systems.
If not, if he's not providing the proper care, move on.
I have to answer this too because I'm not a medical professional at all, but a year
and a half ago because my husband has Parkinson's and he's not here because he chooses to stay
home and compose music, which is what he does, but okay.
We moved into a continuing care retirement community down near Princeton, New Jersey.
That's where you see me from on Wednesday nights.
Anyway, so it's very interesting.
One of the beauties of this community is they have a clinic.
They have doctors that come in on site.
They're all connected with Penn Medicine, a big deal, right?
And so here I am doing what I do every Wednesday night, right?
And I figured somebody could see me, right?
And so I just went in and I told them all.
Oh, and I also told the executive director of the community who hired a new person in
charge of the medical group in the community.
I told them exactly what I did and they've all said, right on, quietly.
Now they didn't come out publicly, and yes, the people from some pharmacy come in and
they all offer those dots there, but they have the best absolute now informed consent
which lists everything you could possibly get if you got these vaccines in this community.
Whole lot of people not getting them anymore.
I just said to the doctors, okay, this is what I know.
I'll be happy to send you information and they're getting it.
They're listening to things.
I send them videos and they're all like really cool with it and they don't give me arguments.
They say, it's fine.
This is good.
The one who's trying to get me on statins, the cardiologist, isn't quite there yet,
but boy do I have data for her.
So it's been a good relationship and they seem to respect me for it and who knows.
But that's actually excellent that you're saying this because you guys came here trying
to find out how to get an aligned healthcare professional.
Well, you guys are part of the solution because you may be able to get your healthcare provider
aligned by helping them mediate themselves.
Just like JP's patient came in and almost pushed him to go to that blind disease conference.
One thing I want to mention on the heels of all this is when you're looking for a practice
that's more aligned with your worldview, a couple of things to do.
If you go to any of the mentioned websites to help you find one or a physician finder,
make sure you look at the reviews on social media.
Now if somebody has 50 five-star reviews, well they bought those.
So dig a little deeper.
Don't go for the five-star stellar reviews because it's probably not legit.
Also talk to the staff.
So the biggest complaint doctors' offices get is that, I love you doctor.
You're great, but your staff sucks.
So talk to the staff and if you don't get a warm fuzzy feeling, maybe that's not the
practice for you.
And I audit every complaint that comes in and I will terminate after I investigate.
I will either terminate my staff member who is not doing their job or I'll terminate the
patient for lying about it.
I don't fool around.
And the other thing is use caution and do your due diligence.
Talk to neighbors, friends.
If you hear a doctor's name come up three times in a week at the grocery store, the gas
station at the gas pump and down the hallway, then that might be a sign, okay?
And I don't mean to be contrary, but I am all the time.
I don't like the reviews.
I think those things are the worst thing ever.
Those doctor reviews, if for some reason I didn't give you an antibiotic, you really
want it.
Even if I explain myself why not and you were having a bad day, I'm going to get the bad
review and it goes snowballs from there.
So I personally, and you will actually see they've done some studies on those reviews.
They're very biased and you have to take it with a grain of salt.
That's why I say ask your neighbor, ask your friend, have a coffee with them and say, what
do you really think about the doctor?
And I do feel like those are a little bit more honest because the person has to look
you in the eyes and tell you what they're thinking about a person.
So I'm not huge on the reviews myself just because I find they're very biased at times
and sometimes they heard the doctor, they didn't do anything wrong.
They're biased and just like JP said, there can be bots.
I mean, simple as that.
And even if you don't buy it, you just sell 10 of your friends, eh, you know what, somebody
wrote a bad review of me.
Do you mind writing a good review and everybody says, oh, this person walks on water and stuff
like that.
Next question.
And I'm sorry, just one thing.
I'm so sorry, ma'am.
For you and the driver's seat, we're not.
You are.
You drive the market.
You drive the healthcare that you want and you deserve.
Always remember that.
You have the upper hand.
We don't.
Go ahead.
So I really appreciate all the work you guys are doing, you know, a parallel system.
I think, unfortunately, we're all, even if we see someone like you, we're still participating
in the other system by our tax dollars.
And I don't see that Medicare Medicaid is a sustainable model.
There's no accountability, patient side or doctor side.
Do you see any possibility for reform?
I mean, the other thing that I hate to see is this younger generation that's paying
for this and they're never going to benefit from it because I don't think it's going to
be available to them.
So is there work towards that end and what are you doing or what suggestions do you have
to maybe help reform the current system?
So I actually love legislative work and I do a lot of it.
One of the things that works really well with direct primary care practices, cash pay practices
and things like that are HSA accounts for those who can afford it.
We are trying to introduce legislation where we also have like Medicare type of savings
accounts where you can put your Medicare money and decide how is that money spent.
The system, the insurance system is broken.
It will not get, I'm not going to say it's not going to get better.
It could get better, but it will not go away.
That's something that people have to realize.
The insurance lobby industry is as strong as ever.
Probably one of the strongest hospital and insurance industries are very strong.
So you have to learn how to work with them.
I think what I recommend for a lot of families, if you don't get healthcare through your jobs,
so for example my husband, he gets healthcare through his job, but put the whole family
on the plane would have cost a lot of money.
And what we did is we went with the sharing ministry.
I chose Ion Healthcare just because I looked at different plans and stuff and they have
Christian ones that have the ones that are not, if you don't want to go with the Christian
sharing ministries or whatever.
And then kind of direct primary care practice with that and it works really well for kind
of younger families.
Another thing for young people that works well is DPC style practice and then maybe the
catastrophic insurance, I do think that you have to have a plan and if you don't want
to do anything like that, maybe have your own savings account, kind of healthcare savings
account where you put the money in if you do end up in a hospital.
And also you have to realize if you do end up in a hospital and you have something major
happen to you, hospital wants to get paid.
Oh my gosh, they want to get paid.
So they don't necessarily care because they'll be like $800 for an ibuprofen pill, right?
You can negotiate that bill at the end of the, so if you go to, and this has happened
to one of my patients who was in Children's Hospital in ICU and the community raised money
for the patient and we came up with, you know, a good amount of money but nothing close to
what they were asking and we just said like, okay, do you want to get payments for the
rest of your lives like whatever it was a month or do you want to get this cash directly?
And they just accepted cash and forgot the rest of the bill.
So you have to realize that these prices in the hospital are very hyperinflated and you
can negotiate and come up with the plans because there are good people in the system as well.
You just have to navigate it and sometimes reach out to your legislators or other people
for help.
I had a nurse, when I was working at ER, I had one of my ER nurses having her second
child and she went and delivered at the hospital she worked at and she knew the ropes.
So she had a box that she took in that had Tylenol, chuck pads, feminine napkins, you
know, cans of soda, whatever, to sustain herself and then afterwards she looked at the itemized
list and found errors.
My wife and I have suffered that insult where we've been billed wrongfully so make sure
you look at your EOB and your itemized list, demand an itemized list from the hospital
because you'll be surprised what they try to sneak in there.
But I encourage all my patients to carry affordable catastrophic insurance for that car accident
or that MI or something like that that can bankrupt you and then put some money in a
health savings account.
It's tax deferred so there's benefits to that.
Talk to your finance person.
But yeah, so sometimes hospitals are unavoidable but be careful, review all your stuff before
you pay a bill and often times if you delay payment, they'll negotiate down and save you
20, 25, 30% off your bill.
Next question.
Yes, I was thinking along the lines of Dr. Salibi when you talked about the patient about
you all just got to mean thinking about educating your doctors, right?
Having been in this movement for a while earlier in COVID, I've identified the doctors
that I want to go to through some of the means that you all suggested.
But for those doctors that you know that are passionate and kind and they're good hearted
and they have integrity and they just for whatever reason have not broken that barrier
that we all know and they've not understood why we need an alternate system, all of that.
They're not doctors that I want to go to but obviously you had Dr. Salibi a patient that
was so passionate about line because you get passionate, we don't have time to just go
educate doctors, right?
You had a patient that was like, I need you to know about this until you finally knew
about it, right?
And for us, like COVID may not be what it was, right, in terms of sickness, but where
would you, if we knew of a doctor that we felt had all the qualities of a good doctor
but had not crossed that line and we wanted to, other than suggest they come to the FLCCC
conference, which is a big commitment, right?
I have found in COVID, it's been hard to go when someone goes, well, why do you believe
this?
It's like, well, go follow this, go watch this video, go do this, go do that.
It's kind of where do you start of that education thing?
And go ahead.
Yeah.
I mean, it's, it's difficult.
Yeah.
I mean, because a patient comes to me and starts telling me what to do, quote unquote, I mean,
I feel threatened.
Yeah.
I mean, it happens to us.
What healthcare providers, many of us believe that we are up here, which we're not.
So it's tough when a patient comes and tells me, hey, you should be doing this.
It's like, yep, that's because Dr. Google told you that or why?
Yeah.
Are you going against it?
42 years that I have been in medicine.
I mean, what's, which one of the two is it?
So it's very difficult.
And that's where you have that honest discussion that we talked at the, at the very beginning
where you have that, hey, I've read this or one of my friends had good results with this
or what are your thoughts about, about this and let them talk, let them talk and says,
and then I would do like yesterday when I was listening to the communications lecture.
I mean, I would probably say, what would make you change your mind?
I mean, what would you need to change your mind?
Those would be the thing.
Hey, you see, I did learn.
I pay attention to that lecture yesterday.
So here's a strategy.
First of all, you have to make sure the doctor can check his ego at the door when he comes
into the office.
And number two, what doctor doesn't like a free lunch?
So like drug reps, you know, they'll come in, they'll get an audience with the doctor
for 15 minutes to promote their latest antibiotic or whatever.
And they bring a lunch for the physician and the staff.
So if you really want to impact your doctor, make an appointment with the front staff to
bring lunch and demand 10 minutes of his time outside of when you're in there for a clinic
appointment and try to bring some literature from FLCCC and say, hey, I just want to promote
this organization.
Do it at what you want, but that might break the ice.
There goes our intermittent fasting, you know, I'm serious, I mean, you come to my office
every day our patients bring food in.
I love donuts.
Oh, gosh.
You don't get to have a buddy like mine without the donuts.
And just as a follow up, if there is an FLCCC video, if you all end up with a campaign
of how the public can educate their doctors and you come out video one, video two or things
that we could share with our doctors, you've got as a team, you have as a team, you have,
you know, 50 people on your team, but you've got thousands of followers and we will share
with our doctors.
If you say we should share, so I just thought I would put that off.
Thank you for your comments.
Next question is because we're getting close to the end of our session.
Okay.
Well, I'm from California, Stadley.
We're sorry to hear that.
I know.
The weather's nice.
So during COVID, unfortunately, a lot of people had to resort to telemed.
So my question is, I know there's been some issues with out of state prescribing and that
sort of thing.
Is anything coming down the pipe that we have to be worried about as far as telemed out
of state prescribing that type of thing?
Well, there's some really interesting workarounds.
So if you're in the last big session, Dr. Avery Jackson and I and a team are working on an
alternative method to practice medicine that will eventually not require state licenses
and there should not be any obstructions.
There's been something in effect since 2016 called the First Nation Medicine Board.
And you have to join a PMA, both you join and your patient joins as a member.
And then you can conduct healthcare as it should be in that forum and be protected.
So I see patients throughout the United States and some international patients and I feel
I have some protection with the First Nation.
And what Avery is doing is doing something a little with a little more layers of insulation
and protection.
So that's rolling out very soon.
Okay.
Great.
Okay.
Thank you.
Any other questions on Beshai?
Okay.
Talking about alignment, I also am from California.
So thank you for your condolences.
Yeah.
And I just looked at what you suggested.
Thank you so much for that.
I see that there's three in my area.
But my desire is to get myself to a kind of healthy homeostasis and talking with the other
folks.
They were talking about getting kind of a battery of general tests and then figuring out what
supplementation you really would be helpful, of course, above good diet and all of that.
So for example, a nutrient test, some kind of gut mapping or even genomic testing and
then help with interpreting that.
Do you have a suggestion for is it kind of these three people?
That's all I have for an offer and there wasn't a lot of information on them.
So in terms of alignment, how would I, what's the shortest way for me to interview them
and say, hey, this is what I'm looking for?
All right.
Personally, I'm a little bit biased, but make sure they're functional medicine trained
or certified or integrative or holistic and make sure they understand stealth infections.
It's a newer term.
So COVID would be one, Lyme, Bartonella, Babesia, Epstein Bar, CMV, HHV6, these are all stealth
infections.
You may not know you have it because some of the symptoms kind of overlap each other.
So make sure you find a doctor who understands those and also make sure that they're not
procedural driven or over test.
So what I call what I do is reform the functional medicine because I'm not enamored with IFM's
curriculum and modules because they kind of preach over testing.
You don't need an oak test.
You don't need the most expensive GI mapping test.
You can, if you use your brain and your two ears, you can make a diagnosis with an hour
session with your patient, probably 90% of the time.
The more experienced functional docs don't need to do too many tests.
It's the inexperienced ones that do.
They feel they have to lean on all that heavy testing or procedures.
So you don't need a hyperbaric chamber in your office.
You don't need to do EBU.
You don't have to do IVO zone necessarily.
You don't have to put pellets into people.
Those are all procedures that make the clinicians a lot of money.
You just be cautious when you find that that's all they're offering on their website.
Just be careful.
