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Success MP This is Sandra, I'm one of the nurse practitioners
here at the Success MP podcast and today we are joined by
Lauren Lewis. She obtained a degree in
exercise Physiology and biology and worked as a Wellness coach
and exercise specialist before determining that she wanted to
pursue a second degree in nursing.
She worked at Duke University Hospital where she saw the
benefits of collaborating between the modern medicine
system and a holistic approach. She worked as a nurse until she
completed her master's degree and became a certified nurse
practitioner. She has been working in a
variety of fields but is most recently landed at the
Functional Health Center in Fort Mill, SC.
At the Functional Health Center where she offers affordable
primary care and aesthetic treatments to people in the Fort
Mills area and the surrounding area at the direct primary care
office. So she works there and she
provides primary care to the patients at that facility that
she owns, which is pretty cool. So I'm super excited to have her
on today. Welcome, Lauren to the podcast.
I'm so excited to dive into what you're doing.
I kind of introduced your story about you becoming a nurse
practitioner and then you opening your own practice.
Like, tell us a little bit about that journey from your own lens.
Yeah, so I mean, I everything I feel like completely happened by
accident. Like all these little happy
lucky accidents, I guess my God lost.
But yeah, I was working as a nurse practitioner in aesthetics
at the time and felt like I was doing a skills based job.
It's great. You get to talk to a lot of
women, so you get to learn about other Women's Health problems
other than just their skin and their face.
I was speaking with a former colleague of mine who owns the
Functional Health Center, the Carolinas.
He's a chiropractor by trade, but functional medicine
specialist. And he said there's this thing
called direct primary care that I'm really interested in having
at my clinic, but I need a nurse practitioner to do it.
Do you know anybody that'd be interested?
And I was like, I could do it. My whole thought process was I
would go into this and hire somebody to do it and I would
manage it. When I started the DPC to join
his functional medicine, I fell in love with it.
I fell in love with the amount of time I get to spend with
patients, what I get to do for them, how I get to care from
them, how I get to now implement functional medicine into that
work. I have not hired anybody.
I'm still the provider there because I truly have found the
practice that I love. OK, so let's talk about that
transition because I'd love to hear that you have found
something that lights you up. A lot of nurse practitioners are
in jobs that they feel stuck, that they feel like there's not
a lot of options. And so transitioning from that
traditional healthcare system to being on your own, tell me about
that process. I know that's not easy.
Well, luckily for me, I had not really worked in any field that
was insurance based, so I don't have much to compare it to other
than when I was a nurse in the hospital.
I remember getting out of nursing school and being like, I
need to be in the trenches and I need to be in the hardest floor
on the hospital. And I was.
And that, you know, then as you get older and life happens,
you're like, I really want something that just fits better
into my life. And I did find myself in two
different clinics that were cash based and didn't deal with
insurance at all. That part for me was a pretty
easy transition. I don't think you have to be a
provider to know that insurance makes insurance companies rich
and many times is not really for the benefit of the patient.
You have to jump through a lot of hoops as a provider to even
get insurance to approve their medications and things like
that. So you're having to constantly
jump through hoops and do this, that and the other.
This has been an easy transition for me as a cash based business,
just being able to sit in front of my patient as long as I want
to. They can contact me or see me as
many times as they want and I don't have to worry about how
I'm going to build them or if insurance will let them come
back or what I have to build this appointment as.
So that's been a breath of fresh air for I know the people that
work with me and our patients as well.
For listeners that don't know what direct primary care is,
that might be a nice refresher to explain what that system
looks like. I hear what you're saying.
You've never had the insurance world to deal with, so it wasn't
much of A transition for you. Maybe describe what it is a
little bit so that a nurse practitioner that doesn't know,
that's even something that we could be involved in if we're
only shown in school that we can only work in these other
systems. So it's a kind of a disadvantage
to nurse practitioners that never see this other this other
option. 100% I went to a conference a couple weeks here
that was saying how do we get more practitioners and P as
involved in direct primary care not thinking that they have to
be an insurance based world. Direct primary care basically is
taking out the middleman. It's taking out insurance.
It is a membership based practice.
It does not mean it has to be concierge and high price.
It just means easy access. So if you pay a membership fee
for our clinic, it's one fourty, seven a month.
With that fee, you get all of your lab work, comprehensive
labs, typically what you get at your primary care provider.
But I usually do a couple other things like vitamin D, vitamin
B, insulin, full thyroid panels, really depending on the patient
in front of me, all of that's included.
So you pay that fee, you've got the labs included, you've got
all your appointments with me included.
I see some patients once a year, I talk to some patients twice a
week and that's just the name of the game.
But all of that to say is based on that fee.
They pay this 147 fee. You guys determine this is the
fee for patients depending on what these labs are that you're
ordering. And then this is the cost to get
all those lab work done, the cost to see you and then your
eyes are able to still make a profit because I mean, it's a
business. And then so how does it differ
from other benefits that you're noticing for patients because of
that price that you just said? That's an immediate benefit over
what I pay for health insurance. I don't know what it is for a
family to join your practice, and I don't know if you see
children, but that's an immediate savings just to have
basic, you know, access to care. Yeah.
What if you're noticing is a benefit to patients as far as
quality of care, cost access. What are patients saying?
The first thing patients say is how convenient it is to sit
there and, you know, just text you when I need something,
right? Because we have that access.
We have a patient portal that I check it comes to my phone like
a text message. I check it when I wake up, I
check it before I go to bed. And and that is really
convenient. 8:00 at night, you're nauseous, you're going on
a trip the next day. You don't have to wait to go to
MinuteClinic or urgent care. Your trips not ruin.
You get to talk directly to me. The second thing that people say
is cost. I think people see they pay for
their insurance and then they're like, oh, I can't do 147 a
month. What a lot of our patients are
doing are switching and they're having a higher deductible,
lower monthly premium. I promise I will do the math.
That will save you thousands of dollars a year.
I mean, my insurance on its own is $340 a month for me.
I don't use it for anything. And then if I go to CVS,
MinuteClinic or urgent care, I still have a bill.
I just went to my gynecology. I got a bill.
Six weeks later, you still are paying.
Everybody says what am I paying for with my insurance?
At least you know what you're paying for.
You're paying for convenience, access, less hassle, better
relationship, and you're getting more out of your healthcare.
Yeah, like that. You've cut out this middle man
and you can go right up to the provider and get the care you
need. It's always inconvenient when
you need to go. It's always the day right before
a major holiday. They're like, right, they're
never going to get me in. I call my primary.
It takes me weeks to get into my.
Primary care. Provider And then, of course,
then there's something with the kids.
I can't go when you're a busy mom and you're working and
trying to do all the things, having to schedule doctor's
appointments on top. Of it, I do feel like a lot of
moms are just saying that this is the most convenient thing to
do. I mean, we're in a society now
where people don't want to come in for everything.
Like if you have a UTI and this is your do, you haven't had a
UTI very frequently. You've got burning, you've got
frequency, you've got all the symptoms.
I don't need to culture it and wait three days to get you
symptom relief. I can send something in.
Same thing for a chronic sinus infections.
If it's been over 2 weeks and you're hacking or you've been
around somebody with the flu, we can talk, we can have a
conversation and I can get you the medication really quickly.
That's really, really convenient.
Well, how do you manage the patient care without the
involvement in the insurance companies there?
Who do you say that you have to push meds through certain
medications you have to bill through the insurance?
So are you doing a level of the insurance work?
Do you hire someone to do that or are you do that work on top
of it? There are a lot of DPC clinics
that do hybrid so they'll do some insurance and some not, and
that's usually so they can take Medicare.
But we don't do insurance at all.
The only thing patients use their insurance for is when they
go to their pharmacy, they'll present their insurance card and
they still pay for it. The only thing I ever really
deal with insurance is if I have to do a prior authorization if a
medication isn't covered. That's all I deal with with
injuries. Gotcha.
All right. So what does your typical day
look like at your practice? Like what time do you start?
Do you have a remote wing to your job?
I heard you say you've got some messages coming in.
What are some of that? What does a day in the life of a
of a DPC nurse practitioner look like in practice?
It's pretty nice. I do you have the flexibility.
I'm not having patients call 3 weeks in advance to book me.
Patients just kind of pop up on my schedule as the day goes on.
So I usually start around 8:30 in the morning.
I'm usually finished around 5:00.
I wake up and kind of we usually look at my patient portal and
see if anybody has a pressing question they can't, they need
to ask me. I feel like by this point a lot
of my patients and I have a great relationship where they'll
just share something with me and like it's like a texting your
friend in the morning and then I go into work.
It really depends. I'd say about 70% of my day is
patients and off office. Some phone calls throughout the
day, some people will call in a message and I'll message them
back, but it's not. I know my other friends that
work in a traditional primary care setting, it's not like that
at all where you're seeing patients every 20 minutes,
you're in, you're out, you're not really getting to talk to
them, not really getting to the bottom of their issues.
We're able to really look at root calls, which is what
functional medicine does as well and get to the bottom of these.
And I think for the most part, our patients stay well because
of that. With functional medicine, the
intake is a long process to take you on and then once you're in,
you can manage the issues conservatively.
You manage with supplements. It's not just clear cut, you
know, antibiotics don't look at what's going on beneath the
surface. And now you're talking about
your relationship with your patients and how that's changed
over time. What else have you noticed in
this space offering more personalized care?
What have you noticed for your career that has changed?
I was going to hire somebody to do this and just manage it from
afar. You mean like a nurse
practitioner you were going to find?
It I just love the problem solving that comes along with
it. The amount of time that I do
have to problem solve, the accessibility that I have to my
functional medicine provider. She's a nurse practitioner,
Chelsea Leveling. She's so smart.
She's so involved in patient care.
She really wants to get to the root of things, whether it's
their gut issues or hormonal issues.
I've learned so much from her and from Doctor Riser, who was
my past colleague and the owner of the functional health
practice. They do a really good job of not
just saying, here's the medication, see us again in six
weeks. It's like, why is your blood
sugar high? What can we do about that?
Why do you have Hashimoto's? What can we do about that?
And that has really changed me as a practitioner.
I'm much more hesitant to just give somebody medication, ask
why a lot more. And that's I think pivotal part
of the scientific method is the asking why we've really gotten
away from that as providers. We've gotten way more focused in
on plug and play. Problem fixed, problem solved.
We are so less focused on why aren't we?
Well, I can just imagine as a patient feeling like not only am
I saving probably a ton on health insurance, but also just
getting better care because right now the current model is
not fit to really give providers time with their patients and to
explain things like, you know, you have Hashimoto's
thyroiditis, you just had a baby.
Especially postpartum for moms, we're just thrown out there,
right? There's 16 week appointment
after a baby and then we never see the doctors again.
Figure it out. It doesn't surprise me that
women have increased rates of depression and all these
different things afterwards. Their guts are a mess.
They just had a baby and nobody spends any time with them.
And I feel like the functional medicine approach to really get
into how are you doing postpartum?
You know, how is your thyroid look, all the different things
for individualized care and asking the right questions.
I think I've noticed a lot in primary care.
It's just lacking. I'm not saying they all feel
this way, but I feel like a lot of them kind of just turn and
burn. OK, All right, you're fine.
OK, go. Absolutely, Yeah.
It's awful. And then women, I feel like, are
made to feel like they're supposed to feel tired.
Of course you got to be. Of course you're supposed to
feel tired. You're that's right.
That's normal. The amount of times I've heard
women come in with labs and they say their provider said this was
normal. Like this is not normal.
You don't have to feel like this.
You don't have to walk around feeling like this.
And you know it's a catch 22 for the turn and burn.
Providers of insurance doesn't allow them to spend that amount
of time with their patient. Do they have to see a patient
every 20 minutes? It's not a patient based
healthcare system anymore. Yes, I would agree that is a
pivotal thing to land on is that the healthcare system is not.
Sometimes I feel like it's a little more outcome focused, but
I don't really even think that we're meeting outcomes for
people because I don't think, I don't know what these in target
outcomes are because people along the way aren't feeling
better. So it's like, I don't know if
this outcome is really the thing that we should be shooting for.
We need to be shooting for this target, hemoglobin A1C.
But it's like, yeah, but like, that's still not normal.
Like having to keep a glow is T less than 7 still means, like,
you're sick. You should have a glow with
anyone. See really.
Underneath 5. That's really where you go with
anyone. She should be.
But you don't even teach you the things that you need to do to be
well to have a hemoglobin A1C of 5.
We just tell you the goal of seven, here's some drugs to get
you there. And as long as you're there,
you're fine. And when you start to really go
down the rabbit hole and you start to read you're like,
damage is happening when you're when your blood sugars are above
120. So we don't talk about those
things. Those are only things that you,
if you're really interested, you find out about diabetes.
And so I go down those rabbit holes and I'm like, I did not
know the stuff that I knew now because of the experience that I
had. How do you deal with difficult
situations with describing cost to patients and addressing
concerns about this model to people that are like, I don't
know if I believe in that. What do you say to those people?
I found that instead of really talking about the calls,
patients respond better to the access.
They respond better to knowing that no matter what they need
from me, they're going to get it.
There's no extra fees, no extra billing.
I, I do think patients for the most part want somebody they can
trust, not just a doc in the box that they go to.
I think the majority of people have an issue, an underlying
issue that's not been treated. We're just accustomed to living
in a body that's uncomfortable for one reason or the other, and
we've gotten used to it. I talked to patients about
Wellness and being proactive with Wellness instead of
reactive, avoiding sickness instead of having to treat it.
So we really focus on that. I feel like our, our center has
really morphed into that Wellness Center.
And so, yeah, I think the cost is it is something that most
people immediately say I have insurance.
I don't want to pay extra 147 a month.
But once they see kind of almost have to experience the benefit
of being able to text your provider in the morning or being
able to get whatever service it is that you need or questions
about your health answered, you know, within a couple of hours
from the person that takes care of you, I think it speaks for
itself. I know DPC practices are picking
up all over the place. Practitioners are being really
sick of not being able to practice medicine because of the
constraints were put under. I think that the more places
like this that are open, the more people will see it and
experience and be able to share that experience with other
patients. Yeah.
One of the things I was thinking as you were talking was your
access to other things. So I hear you say we offer labs.
I would say somebody needs an ultrasound or imaging.
You can order those where the patients in the mouth get the
imaging follow up and then refer out to specialists if they need
it. Absolutely.
Functioning primary care office, just that annual, that monthly
fee that's tagged on, but everything else is fully
functional. Right, right, right.
Care. Okay, yeah, absolutely.
There's nothing that our primary care office can do that we can't
do. Yeah.
And so we talked a little bit before the podcast about the
business side of things, right? So you're a nurse practitioner,
you understand all this stuff, how to take care of patients,
functional medicine, all that. But then you've got the business
part, right? And that's a whole different
bird. How do you manage kind of
budgeting, marketing, all that stuff on top of seeing patients
and taking care of them? Yeah, luckily my business
partner has taught me a lot about that.
He had a lot of experience. This functional Health Center
was open for about 7 years before I joined.
He was a guiding light for me for sure.
I actually listened to the nurse practitioner in Charleston that
does functional Wellness and direct primary care.
When he first approached me about this.
I got on her Facebook group and listened to a couple of her
talks. She said, you know, all you need
to do is get your LLC, get in a building and get your
stethoscope and it's just you and your personality and your
practice and that's all you need to start.
She was right. I didn't listen to her.
I bought all the bells and whistles, did everything, but
she was right. We recently opened our second
location in Charleston and I listened to her for that.
You know, you really just need yourself, your personality, your
attentiveness, your care, your follow up and the people will
come. Now marketing, he already had
marketing in place. We split that.
We've realized going into Charleston, marketing needs to
be a little bit different there. So we're looking at marketing
companies right now to help us with that.
I think good advice for people trying to do this is have
somebody else manage that for you because it's a lot to take
care of 250 patients and do the marketing and the business and
payroll and everything. Get support and delegate where
you can. One of the things you're
speaking to is freedom and time. Freedom, right?
There's only so much capacity that you have.
I think for business entrepreneurs, in the beginning,
you just think like, there's no money, so I've got to do it all.
And sometimes there's a matter of just being like, there's no
money, but I need to do what I'm good at and I need someone to do
this part. Even if that means you make a
little bit less for a little bit of time, it's worth it because
as that person that you hire does what they're supposed to
do, you're going to be making more money that begins to pay
for itself. You weren't stressed along the
way. It's taken me a while in the
podcast world and working in our digital business as well.
Like it's super tough to just be like, that's a lot of money to
walk out, like to wash, walk out the door, but realizing that
turns into more money later. So we've got to just let that go
because we can't do it all. There's only so much bandwidth.
So I think that's really good advice.
And I think the networking part that you were one of the things
I was thinking when you were talking to was like, how did you
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subscribe. Now let's get back to the
conversation. So the person that's your
business partner and owns a functional medicine practice,
like how did you find him? Were you networking?
Did you just have like you met him?
Because that's kind of a big deal to not have to start it
organically, to have someone that's kind of already done the
hard startup and you just get to walk into it.
And I'm not saying you just walked into it, but to be able
to just kind of step alongside and just go like, all right, I'm
going to handle this part. You keep doing that.
And then you're getting to kind of have some help with the other
things. Somebody to teach you.
That's a big deal. I'd probably I'd probably set up
to make less money if I knew that that was it's going to be a
huge benefit and kind of like lessen the learning curve for
me. Does that make?
Sense Yeah, absolutely. It was huge he and I just
happened to work together at a previous job and so we became
really good friends He was the one that had the idea and I
didn't even know what your primary care was.
There are all these happy little accidents that happened along
the way and I'm just truly grateful for it.
The DPC community is extremely helpful.
If you want to do DPC, there is a network of providers that just
wholeheartedly believe in this. There are forums, there are
conferences that will help you get set up, and I really think
all it does is take reaching out.
You can reach out to me and Charlotte.
I just went to a meeting the other day and it is a very
successful DPC clinic. They are very big on supporting
other DPC practices that are up and coming.
There's a woman in Indian Land, South Carolina, which is close
to Fort Mill. She does functional medicine as
well as direct primary care and same thing.
It's like open door. We want to help people and we
only have the capacity to help because, and you think about it,
we don't have thousands of people at our clinic because I
spend a lot of time with my patients.
So there's a cap on how many people I can see personally and
more access we can get for patients, the better.
It's a supportive community of providers doing this.
So how many patients do you have in your list?
So I know like some patients will say, like I had a
physician, she worked as concierge medicine and she had a
cap. She's like, I only see 40
patients and if each patient paying me 150 a month and this
is my salary, it was very easy to see how much money she was
making and she was crushing it. She wasn't stressed.
Her phone was there. So when people called, she was
available to do whatever. But what is your cap?
I mean, do you like, I can see 400 or no, I've capped it like
50. Like what does that look like?
I'm around somewhere between 200 and 250 right now.
You have to think about it or not.
I think Chelsea and functional medicine, she sees people.
I mean, she's like doing some really big work, right?
And regulating people's thyroids with supplements and with
lifestyle changes. I'm more of the primary care.
See me when you need to see me of those 250 patients.
I don't see everybody every week.
Some people I see once a year. Some people just have me as that
safety net. If they need me, I might hear
from them when they need a refill or an annual visit.
Of those 250 people, I would say I probably talked to very
regularly, maybe 50 to 60 of them.
So I really don't know what my cap is.
I think that if I wasn't managing it, I could have a much
higher cap. I think trying to manage the two
offices, I'll probably cap out maybe around 300 or so because
you're not seeing those patients every single day.
To your point, it's not stressful for me to check my
phone as soon as I wake up at 6:00 in the morning or before I
go to bed. My cortisol is not high because
I don't have that heavy influx of back-to-back to back patients
everyday. One of the things I was
thinking, oh, the process when you have a new patient that
comes in, does the other nurse practitioner in functional
medicine see them first and then you follow them?
Like, all right, you got your initial functional medicine work
up and now I follow you for the primary care part.
Or are you guys working in conjunction?
Do patients bypass her and go straight to you?
How does that system flow? It depends.
If they come in just for primary care, they only see me.
We do have a lot of patients that say, hey, I'm more holistic
minded. I look to be treated
holistically, but I don't have any real issues right now.
This is just always the type of provider I've seen that they
will also see me. Let's say you've been on thyroid
medication your whole life, but you are just out of whack.
You're chronically fatigued, your labs look OK, but you don't
feel OK. Then you're going to go to
Chelsea and we're going to look at your hormones and your gut
and maybe see if there's something else going on.
Like do you have mold? Do you have heavy metals?
You know, there's just so many different things that are not
looked at at all in Western medicine.
It blows my mind. They'll see her now with her
care plans. What we usually do is have them
be a part of the primary care practice so they get access to
me if they need me for something like that, and our hope is that
when she finishes with them, they transition into primary
care, which most of them have. So is the functional medicine
part a separate charge or is it all included?
Yeah, it's separate. It's completely separate.
There's basically like two different departments in our
clinic, but we share a lot of the same patients.
That is so cool. But how you guys have structured
this is really neat. Like you're saying, they have
individualized care. You don't necessarily need to
see her always, but for that evaluation to get a really in
depth look, go see her. She'll do that and then kind of
ping pong back over here for your primary care.
Yeah, absolutely. It's not cheap because you're
not having to see a functional medicine specialist and then go
to your Western medicine primary care and say I'm on rubbery.
All these supplements that they do not know about.
I think the younger generation of doctors, providers, nurse
practitioners, PAS are starting to see the benefits of some
herbal supplements. L theanine is being widely used
with ADHD and anxiety, which is something we use very commonly.
But I think for the most part if you see an older generation of
practitioners, they're like, that doesn't work.
I don't know what that is because they haven't studied it.
No, not to be upset with them because they don't.
It's something that they don't know about, but I do feel like
the younger generation is more aware of gut health, full
hormone health, etcetera. Yeah, I think that generation
did a good job at creating skeptics and the rest of us, I
mean, I was that kid that got told just get on birth control,
you'll be fine and just take it. You don't need to worry about
anything. And I just remember trusting and
now I have a chronic health condition from taking birth
control because these people were just like, don't worry
about it. You don't need to think about
it. Just turn your brain off.
And then place that's telling you to turn your brain off as a
patient is a problem. Like you don't need to go there.
What? Absolutely.
I'm just like pissed. I'm beyond pissed about it
because that's essentially what they do to women.
Yeah, I think they do that to girls.
There is a level of naivete that I had that my mom, you know,
kind of was just like the doctor or the doctor tells you to take
it, you take it. And so now I'm a 40, almost 40
year old female. That's just like, why was I
asleep at the wheel on my health?
And so I think that I get really passionate about this stuff
because it really aggravates me. You know, that generation just
has this flippancy of just like, trust me, because I went and got
an MD. I'm like, you don't know
everything and not all y'all made straight A's.
So just like calm down, explain it to me.
Spend the time to explain why I need this, what the goals are,
what the risk are and take that time in an appointment.
I remember talking to there's a practitioner who put me on birth
control and just being like, I'm kind of afraid of blood clots.
And she was just like, it's too much.
Take an anxiety pill, you're fine.
And I'm like, no girls were dropping dead of this.
They pulled it off the market. The first birth control I was
ever on. And I just remember being
innately afraid, but not knowing why, and then having somebody
completely write me off. And it was a nurse practitioner.
I think I was in nursing school when I was going to see her.
And so it's just very disappointing that healthcare
and medicine has moved that way. But it infuriates me that
physicians have used their positions and their knowledge
base to just kind of, I don't know what it is to describe what
it is that they're doing, but it just doesn't to just overwhelm
you to just go like it doesn't matter.
Just turn off your intuition. It's fine.
And I think that a lot of patients, especially in this
generation or just like, okay, listen dude, y'all have done a
bang up job. Like let us maybe take it from a
different angle because this is not working.
We've never been sicker and I think it's really neat to hear
that nurse, practice nurse could be a part of that movement.
We're patient centered and we can learn this and teach it to
patients so that they can take care of their own health.
And it's being proactive instead of reactive.
And it's your point. It is so frustrating for a
patient to be dismissed by somebody that is supposed to be
taking care of them. I told a patient this the other
day, I think they were seeing a specialist.
And specialist said, yeah, you don't need to take vitamin,
vitamins don't do anything. And I said, well, if you're not
getting the vitamins in your diet and you have a vitamin D
deficiency, that can screw up everything as a provider, to
pretend like you know everything and to not be curious and
inquisitive. We're constantly learning new
things every day, and you should be eager to learn that, to apply
that to the person sitting in front of you because that person
does trust you. And I don't want it to get to a
point where people don't trust healthcare anymore.
It's becoming that. Patients ask me, We do not push
anything on patients. My whole thing, when a patient
comes in, vaccination status is a huge controversial thing.
I will ask the patient if they're vaccinated.
I do not push it on them. It is the person sitting in
front of me. It is their body.
It is what they believe that they want to happen to them.
It's not my body. It's not my decision.
I can provide education if they ask for it.
But even pharmaceutical companies, they're still out
there practicing, seeing if things work.
It's probably smart, like you said, to be innately afraid of
some things. Probably smart to be innately
afraid of a vaccine that we see so many side effects and
consequences that have happened because it was rushed.
I really take into account that person's individual experience
and what they want out of their healthcare, and that's how we
treat them. Lauren, we're going down a path,
my friend, that I feel pretty strongly about.
We are being used to a certain extent.
And what you were saying is if you don't like insurance
companies, get on the least amount of insurance that you
need to protect yourself and go get a healthcare provider that's
going to listen to you. Don't just get a healthcare
provider that's not going to spend the time with you.
Go get one that you can text a message if you want.
It just kind of feels like what you're advocating for is
liberty. Like, I just want you to be able
to get the information in the care that you need and deserve.
Because as American people, we work our whole lives, We pay
into these insurance companies for our whole lives, and then we
get to the end of our lives. We're sick, we're tired, and we
can't enjoy what we've been spending our whole lives working
for. I agree with you.
When you see the stats on vaccines as well, it's very
concerning that we advocate for these vaccines.
Everybody needs them and then we realize like, oh wait, not
everybody needs them. There are actually other things
that you can do to boost your immune system from a functional
standpoint that can bring about sometimes even just as just as
great benefit as a quote UN quote vaccine.
And they don't talk about the fact that exercise works just as
well to boost your immunity as some of these vaccines.
We don't talk about that. I tell my patients in practice
now, go for a walk. Going for a walk will do more
for your immune system than this pill or that pill.
A lot of patients are starting to push back.
There is a movement and I think that nurse practitioners have a
unique opportunity to be on the forefront of this because we we
have our pulse on the patient way more than other practices
because we spend the time with them from our nursing
background. What training would a nurse
practitioner that's like, listen, I kind of want to buck
the system from the get like what training do I need before I
get into this? Because you know, you can work
at a primary care office, but the functional medicine parts
pretty specific. Did you do a functional medicine
course? Did you just spend time with the
functional medicine doctors? I just.
Spent a lot of time with Doctor Riser and now with Chelsea
Learning. I still learn new things
everyday. A lot of the testing sites
though, like Dutch testing which is good for hormones, oats which
is organic acids which can pretty much show you every
everything that you have in your body.
Those diagnostic testing sites, websites have a lot of
information as well. I know that our functional
medicine providers are functional medicine certified,
so there is a certification that goes along with that.
They love what they do, love the courses, love the learning.
I also just went to a conference.
We work a lot with compounding pharmacies.
Making specific for genetics. Not a one-size-fits-all because
everybody is so different. To your point about the
vaccines, everybody's body is different and it's going to
respond to that differently. We work a lot with the
compounding pharmacies and they just allowed me to go to a
conference on hormone replacement therapy that really
talks about everything from bioidentical hormones to
exercise and nutrition and things that we can do to just
keep ourselves on the right track.
That, you know, doesn't make the pharmaceutical companies
millions of dollars would cost us very little.
Join a gym or go on a walk or eat the right amount of
vegetables in a day. I'm just as passionate about it
as you are. I think there is a shift and we
really can be on the forefront of that shift.
We, we are more bedside, you know, appropriate by nature.
I feel like we just have a different outlook typically on
patient care than our predecessors did.
Yeah, I agree. I think that the world is moving
in that way and I think that's how direct primary care can be
on the forefront of that. We can disrupt the insurance
companies. Somebody's getting rich
somewhere, and unfortunately it's not the people.
Somebody's getting rich somewhere.
And it's not, I mean, look at United Healthcare, they made $8
billion and 8% of that went to providers.
So 8% of your $8 billion goes to the people that take care of
you. It's why when people are paying
hundreds and thousands of dollars a month, not using it
and still getting billed, because insurance is like, yeah,
don't need to cover that. Yeah, I still what I spend per
month and then I still have co-pays.
I don't even understand. Shouldn't this be included if
I'm just going for this little thing or I'm going to get my
skin checked or I'm going, I don't understand why they're
just absolutely nickel and diming us.
And I think I do understand why there is a system that needs to
be fed. We need to disrupt it and starve
it a little bit. Intermittent fasting, I've been
told is good. So I think that direct primary
care can really work to disrupt that system.
And again, I know that you're enjoying owning your practice,
being your own boss and taking care of your patients well.
And how much more of a rewarding career that is in the turn and
burn of working in the hospital setting, barely taking time for
your patients, dealing with all the other bureaucracy and not
providing optimal care. I struggle with that in my
practice, the care for patients. And I'm like, I don't really
feel like I'm providing you good care when I see how obese you
are. And I'm just telling you that
this is going to fix all your problems.
I know that the care I'm providing is suboptimal.
It does require a silencing of your conscience, right?
Just get through the visit. And I've just gotten to the
point now where every patient leaves with books.
I'm like, I can't lie to you. Go read this like Benjamin big
man, why we get sick and some of the patients their wives were
called. So what did you tell Mister?
There was on about 3 different books that he's reading and I'm
like, perfect. Yes, I took care of this medical
me that you know from the FDA was approved.
But then also I was like, let me arm you with knowledge because
that's the only thing I can do to ameliorate my conscience.
I don't have to do that, but it just makes me feel good about
doing my role as a provider at my current job.
Tell me your own words what it means for you to have this role
as a nurse practitioner and the empowerment you feel with owning
your own business. I think that's what we got into
this field for. No one goes into nursing and
then the MP world because we don't like people.
We don't want to care for them to the fullest.
It really is a caregiver role. I want to help everybody.
It feels like I just want to do this for everyone.
I want to get everybody out of this assembly line medicine.
I want everybody to be able to let us take care of their health
so they can worry about their jobs and their children's and
their families and really live that.
Live their fullest and their best life.
Every day is not perfect. Some things are hard.
Sometimes I don't do a good job and I regret it or I'd have to
go back and do more. For the most part, having the
autonomy to be able to practice the way I want to, not the way
someone else tells me I have to, has just been very fulfilling.
I could never go back working and that bureaucracy, I'm so
fulfilled. It makes my personal life more
fulfilled. It you're just as a great full
circle. I kind of struggled at finding
my identity after I received my masters and where I wanted to be
and what I wanted to do. This is it.
So it and and then the pride, the stress obviously with the
pride that comes with it being your own is really special.
Yeah, that's really cool. You kind of touched on it
briefly, but if you could go back and do one or two things
differently, if you could have said this lesson is something
that I learned that was huge for my career, what would you say is
something that you would leave us with?
Love this. I really thought I had to do the
hardest job possible. I made work harder than it had
to be. Whether it was the floor that I
picked in the hospital, I would come home with it.
I was grumpy. I'd work 13 hours and not feel
like I'd done anything, and I could feel myself just being so
negative. If your job is making you feel
negative and you're negative in other aspects of your life
because of your job, it's not the right place.
You're not giving the care that you were meant to give.
I worked a lot of jobs where I was not happy and didn't feel
like I was doing the right thing or doing enough.
If you feel like that, there are other places you can go.
The opportunities are absolutely endless for what you can do.
I love what you've come on and shared about because I had never
heard of this. I've heard of it, but I didn't
even know it conceptually. When you don't hear someone's
journey, you don't see the physical person in front of you,
when you don't feel the energy that they're giving you, it just
all seems very abstract and otherworldly.
But then whenever you chat with someone that's looking you down
in your face and being like, this is what I do, I'm living
proof. Like I'm not making it up.
It's not some concept. It's not this far reaching
thing. It's right here, right now.
You know someone who's doing it. It changes the atmosphere around
something and it makes you feel like it's doable.
Like why don't I consider this? Why haven't I thought about
this? Why am I afraid of this when
somebody else is doing it? So I think it is great that you
came on today and shared everything that you're doing and
you're so transparent. I love what I do and it's
changed how I look at life overall because your work is a
big part of what you do. So if you don't like it, you've
got to change it and you've got the perfect degree to do
something else. You don't just have a plug and
play now you've got a mirror out of options and I love that
you've showcased that today. Thank you so much, Lauren, for
coming on. I.
Want to thank you and thanks for your energy and passion too.
It's great to see other people in the field that feel the same
way. So tell people where they can
find you, Lauren. So you can find us our website
isshccarolinas.com and that is our same Instagram tag as well.
Chelsea and I do a really good job up there of giving little
tidbits of information during allergy season or flu season,
just little bits of information that are fun to browse through.
I'm sure there's something that pertains to you.
And then we also Functional Health Center the Carolinas is
also on Facebook. We are located in Fort Mill, SC
and Charleston, specifically Mount Pleasant, SC as well.
Very good. And for the success, I'll put
put all her stuff in the show notes so you can find her if you
want to reach out to her. The success MP quote for today
is coming together as a beginning.
Keeping together as progress and working together is success.
They're all about success here. What does your career look like?
What is success look like for you as an earth practitioner?
It looks different for all of us.
It's not the same. And so the author of that quote
is Edward Hale. I have to remember we have to do
rapid fire. Lauren, Are you ready for rapid
fire? I'll do my best.
You had to pick an actress to play you on TV.
What would it be? Who would she be?
Who? Or he awfully.
We're not. We're not doing that.
We're keeping the genders. Who would she be?
OK. Kristen Bell.
I totally see that. Yeah.
And then you have to give a book to somebody.
This book, this for you is what you would give to anybody that
needed a book. What book would you get?
Change your life. Let's talk.
Change your life. I don't read a lot of
nonfiction. Atlas Shrugged book that's like
this thick. It's old, but it's, I don't
know, it's pretty. It's pretty political, but it
examines all sides of politics and I like it.
Love that. And for the last one, what was
your very first job ever you ever done?
I worked in a chiropractor's office when I was 16.
My dad was going to see a chiropractor and I worked in his
office doing SOAP notes. Thank you for your time today.
Thanks for hanging out guys. Thanks for hanging out on the
Success and P podcast. Enjoy your week.
Thank you. Thanks for tuning into another
episode of Success and P. We hope today's discussion has
shed some light on the diverse career options or taught you how
to improve your clinical practice as a nurse
practitioner. Remember, whether you're
considering a specialization, pursuing advanced
certifications, or exploring non traditional roles, there's a
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