Typically, I like to separate the blog from any obvious tie-in the Admire Medical, lest it come off too much like marketing- usually not the time nor the place for that. However, this point I’d like to make requires about 750 words or so to completely explain, so please follow along.

Since our inception, we’ve had a tough time elegantly explaining what it is that we do at Admire. Angela is a Family Medicine certified Nurse Practitioner and I am board certified in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation. As if it isn’t already hard enough to explain what a PM&R doctor (“physiatrist”) does, I picked up extra training in hormonal treatments and obesity medicine. For obesity medicine, our board certification is pending receipt of a board certification exam. While not technically required to offer medical weight loss services, we want it to be clear that this specialty wasn’t simply a jump on the Ozempic bandwagon.

So where does that leave us in terms of our scope of practice?

•        Rehabilitation after stroke, spinal cord injury, major surgery, medical “debility”(weakness and muscle loss after a long medical illness)

•        Prehabilitation before major surgeries, cancer therapies, and pregnancy

•        Menopause and low testosterone therapy

•        Medical weight loss, including access to compounded medications like semaglutide (Ozempic/Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro/Zepbound)

•        Non-opioid pain management, including access to medical cannabis, creative use of medications like misoprostol (used to prevent ulcers), oxcarbazapine (approved for treating seizures and bipolar disorder), and other meds that offer less well known benefits for certain types of pain...

…etc.

Since we operate on a membership model, we’ve kicked around the idea of transitioning exclusively to a direct care model and doing away with taking insurance. This then leads to categorizing the practice. “Direct Primary Care” is a useful term, since it is better defined than “concierge medicine,” but we are distinctly not a primary care practice. “Direct Specialty Care” is about as murky as concierge medicine.

So while zoning out on a long drive, taking a shower, folding laundry, or one of those other flow states it hit us: Preventive and Preparatory Care (+/-the “Direct” designation if we ever cut insurance out of our lives forever, not today though). This covers the fact that we do a little bit of anything that needs to be done on the preventive medicine side, but we are not your go-to people for acute infections; pediatric care; acute neurologic, gastrointestinal, allergic, and pulmonary (asthma, COPD) complications; and wound-related issues. A lot of those should probably be seen in an urgent care or emergency department, anyway. This also factors in our prehabilitation expertise, as captured in the “preparatory care” detail.

We thrive when your health depends being in very close contact with a full medical team as they walk you through a detailed and dynamic weight loss plan, muscle/joint injury rehab plan, sleep optimization, basic depression/anxiety treatment, etc. We see patients more frequently and for longer than is feasible in standard primary care or even insurance-based specialty care- and for good reason! Our counseling is collaborative and recommendations require periodic adjustments, especially when we are reviewing lab test results, medication side effects, and other real life situations.

Ok, I think that covers our introspective, self-reflective moment. We are looking forward to establishing Preventive and Preparatory Care as amore commonly defined scope of practice and helping our patients create lasting, positive change in their health.

Be well!

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