Dr. Amy Nett: No. We actually don’t have any sort of application that “weeds patients out” and I’m not sure exactly what perspective you’re looking at it from, if you’re thinking like medical complexity or otherwise, if there are some other characteristics that you’re looking out for that are concerning to you.
In terms of weeding people out, I’m going to assume you’re thinking maybe it’s like medical complexity. So our clinic I think, CCFM, one of our niches is working with patients who haven’t had success with the 10, 20 or so physicians that they have seen previously, and I think that’s one of the things we want to provide to patients as we can be sort of that last-stop option.
So we’ve never really weeded anyone out, but I can also understand that going through the ADAPT program and if this is your core functional medicine training, you’ll be able to treat probably 80 to 90 percent of the patients that come to you. But there may be 10 percent that are at a level of complexity that you’re uncomfortable with and maybe don’t feel like you have the resources for, and I think that would be fair to let people know your limitations. It is hard to say. I don’t know if that conversation should be part of the initial consult, but again, we haven’t really turned people away.
I’m just trying to think if anything’s come up. We have had one patient maybe who didn’t like that we were such an electronic-based system and so she chose not to go forward with CCFM, but otherwise no, we really don’t weed people out. But again if it’s just an issue of medical complexity and you having a concern of whether it’s a good fit for that, I think that would be a reasonable approach, and if you’re looking at it from another perspective that I’m missing, then just go ahead and submit that and clarify.