16W Media Group Presents The Branding Highway Podcast
Bringing Together Local Businesses & Neighbors.
16W Media Group Presents The Branding Highway Podcast
Firas Alzaiem & Wanda Khalil: Revolutionizing Primary Care - From Direct Primary Care Models to Family-Centric Health Services and Gourmet Culinary Inspirations in Wesley Chapel
Ever wondered how healthcare could be personal, accessible, and insurance-free? Tune in as we chat with Firas Alzaiem and Wanda Khalil, the masterminds behind Elite Health Wesley Chapel. Discover how their Direct Primary Care (DPC) model revolutionizes the patient experience by offering unparalleled transparency and accessibility. Firas and Wanda break down their innovative two-tier pricing system, the Premier and Elite plans, and shed light on the extensive array of services they provide, from unlimited office visits and telehealth to home visits and annual blood work. They contrast their personalized approach with the often rushed and impersonal nature of traditional healthcare.
Thinking about the future of primary care? We delve into Firas and Wanda's ambitious plans to expand their practice by adding more specialized doctors, such as a pediatrician, to offer comprehensive care for families. Firas shares his inspiring journey from being a hospitalist to establishing a DPC practice aimed at filling the gaps in our healthcare system. We emphasize the importance of maintaining a manageable patient panel for more personalized care and the vital role of building strong doctor-patient relationships.
And if you're a foodie, this episode has a delicious twist! We bond over our love for good food, from savoring local dishes at Acropolis on Bruce B Downs to perfecting smash burgers and sourdough at home. Balancing indulgence with health, we discuss the importance of moderation, patient education, and the fine balance between professional advice and customer satisfaction. We also share personal stories about advocating for loved ones in the healthcare system and highlight how Elite Health Wesley Chapel's family-oriented approach makes healthcare more compassionate and patient-centric. Don't miss out on this enlightening episode!
We are dedicated to providing exceptional primary care services, personalized to meet your individual needs, all within our exclusive membership program. Additionally, we offer physician-supervised Weight Loss programs, Urgent Care services, Telemedicine, rejuvenating IV Therapy, and Sclerotherapy. At Elite Health, we understand the frustrations of navigating a system that often prioritizes bureaucracy over patient well-being. That's why we've revolutionized the traditional healthcare model. By eliminating the barriers imposed by insurance companies and embracing a membership-based approach, we've restored the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship.
Gone are the days of long waits, rushed appointments, and impersonal care. Here, your needs are our top priority. Whether you're insured or not, our doors are open to all who seek personalized, comprehensive care. Our philosophy is simple yet profound: to tailor our services to meet your individual needs and aspirations. By seamlessly integrating traditional primary care with personalized concierge medicine, we're setting a new standard for excellence in healthcare.
www.elitehealthwc.com
(813)213-4263
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Mike Zededa.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast presented by 16W Media Group. Today's episode, we have the pleasure of being joined by the owners of Elite Health Wesley Chapel, and I want to make sure I don't mess up the names, because my name is Mike. It's easy to pronounce. I mess up everybody's name, so it's Firas Alzheim and Wanda Khalil.
Speaker 3:Yes, sir, you got it oh.
Speaker 2:God Bonus for me. All right, so that's it and thank you for being on the Good Neighbor podcast. We're finished. So just so you guys know what the Good Neighbor podcast is and why we do what we do and how we got started. The Good Neighbor podcast began in 2020 during COVID, when you couldn't see patients in the office. Everybody had to be socially distant as a way for local businesses and local charity groups to kind of get into the community what they're doing. And over the last four plus years, the Good Neighbor podcast has developed into a national brand. We have Good Neighbor podcasts from Philadelphia to Denver, atlanta, everywhere in between. I'm lucky enough to be the person here in Tampa that gets to speak to business owners and professionals like you guys. So, with that said, first and foremost, tell us what is Elite Health and what do you guys do?
Speaker 4:Well, first, thanks for having us. We really appreciate that. And what do you guys do? Well, first, thanks for having us, we really appreciate that. So Elite Health we're a new primary care practice.
Speaker 4:Actually, we follow a direct primary care model. We don't accept health insurance. We're kind of going back to the basics of how health care was back in the day before. Kind of insurance companies have gone into it. So we contract directly with patients and we kind of eliminate the middleman. The health insurance companies have gone into it, so we contract directly with patients and we kind of eliminate the middleman the health insurance companies out of that.
Speaker 4:So in a sense we operate on a monthly membership fee from the patient directly and that fee basically gives the patient access to meet a physician and my wife she's actually the nurse and the office manager, she kind of plays all the roles. But basically that fee that we contact with the patient gives them direct access to us. They get unlimited office visits, telehealth, urgent care visits, pretty much anything you would get with your regular primary care physician and urgent care services, without any co-pays or other hidden fees. So we wanted a primary care practice that's very transparent when it comes to pricing, because that is a big problem in health care. We feel so in our sense. All of our prices are pretty transparent. They're all on our websites. They're available for any patient that asks upfront.
Speaker 4:So there's, nothing hidden for them to find out about.
Speaker 2:So you don't have to say it, I will say it Before. Health insurance ruined the medicine field. It is so difficult, with the insurance system that we have in place, to get that kind of service. So would you guys classify this as sort of concierge service for your clients?
Speaker 3:Right, Exactly, Concierge, but without the price tag, because if you think about true concierge, you know they can charge ridiculous amounts of money. And who wants that when they just want to get good primary care and feel like they're heard of the doctor's office, so feel like they're important because they doctor's office, so feel like they're important because they are important as a patient. They're not just a number. You know see like 30, 40 patients a day. We will be seeing a lot less patients, giving everybody extended visits. They'll get up to an hour If more they need. We got them and they're going to be kind of like family. We're going to work on their health goals. We're going to be there for them on the weekends, extended hours, late, whatever they need. They can call, text us. You don't hear of that with a regular primary care doctor anymore. That doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:There's like a four minute or a six minute window of hey, you're in my PA or my, you know, my RN runs you through, takes your vitals and, hey, how's it going? What's your meds? You need a refill. That's kind of what the healthcare model, sadly, has become, Do you? So let me ask you guys this. Then a couple of questions off of that Number one pricing. If we go to your website, is there different tiers of pricing and service? Okay, so people can kind of pick what works for their budget.
Speaker 4:Correct. Correct. We try to simplify things as much as possible. As you said, insurance companies ruin health care. They did ruin health care. I'm 100% with you on that one. There's a lot of convoluted plans and everyone has their own plans with different companies. We wanted to make it as simple as possible. We made it into two tiers a premier tier and an elite tier. A premier tier will give you the access you know the things that we just told you about in terms of unlimited visits and urgent care, primary care and then the elite tier, which gives you all these services. In addition to that, you get four free home visits a year and you also get blood work included as well yearly blood work.
Speaker 2:So do you find that the elite folks are more of your older demographic to have the home visit type stuff, or is it across the board?
Speaker 3:It's across the board, I would say, because the home visits really when you're feeling so sick and you need someone to come give you an IV therapy treatment in your home, come give you a checkup and you can't leave. That's who the um elite plan really caters to, so it could be anybody right.
Speaker 2:So where are you guys physically located? What? What part of town?
Speaker 4:so our office is in uh, was it chaplice on state road 54, right past curly on the right? Uh, it's, um, it's just so. There's a new plaza right there. That's actually, uh, pretty much almost fully ready right now, um, and so 54.
Speaker 2:If I'm going 54 from 75 to 54 before I get to curly on the right hand side there or the right past it on the right a right pass on right. So okay, as you get past through that light, there's like a, I think a a storage place or uh or a or an ev company.
Speaker 1:I know right where you're talking about. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:So, um, do you get patients that come from all over wesley chapel, like you're kind of up there in the northeast part of wesley chapel? Are you getting people coming from as far as zephyr Hills and Dade City down to see you guys in Wesley Chapel? Where do most of the people come from?
Speaker 4:So people have been enrolling and kind of jumped on board with us right now are from all over. I mean, I have people that are in Tampa that are signing up. The beauty of this and the reason I think that's happening is because, first of all, there's a huge shortage right now in terms of primary care. To get into an established primary care practice takes you months, to get in, mine doesn't even take any more patients.
Speaker 2:I mean, they're capped out because they have a huge roster of clients Maybe half of them they don't even see, but they're capped out and they they're still doing that four to six minute trucking them through a turnstile 100%, and the fact that we're also a primary care practice, that have flexibility, that we're not bound by insurance companies.
Speaker 4:my hours can be my hours, whatever hours I want it to be. So if my patient works 6 to 6 and they can't see a doctor until 7 pm, I'll see them later. So it's not really a big deal in terms of that, and the accessibility that they have, you know, is it through messaging, through calling, through telemedicine that definitely gives them a lot more flexibility. So even if they have to drive a little, these patients are finding value in that.
Speaker 2:So, bringing that up, you bring up a great point. So my question you guys are married, you have kids, you have this practice that you're. How long have you guys been there?
Speaker 4:So we're a new practice. Actually, we just started enrolling patients this month.
Speaker 2:Oh, perfect, we're getting here early. We're gonna have to have a follow up podcast in six months after you guys open your second location. But where I was going with that is you, yes, have the flexibility to make your schedule, but what if you guys want to take the kids on vacation? Do you have another doc that you partner with and you guys can kind of work, because that's a huge part of it. You need to have people that have access.
Speaker 4:Yep, actually that's a great point you brought up. We do have that. We do have another physician that we work with. Actually, there's multiple physicians that I work with. They have actually similar practices. They're not that far off from this area. So the goal is for me to cover them when they're on vacation and I'll be their coverage when they go on vacation kind of reciprocate in terms of that and they also operate the same model as well, because that's what I need. I don't want someone who's going to be the traditional model trying to operate into this.
Speaker 2:Well, listen, seeing Wanda on this call and seeing that she wears many hats, the one hat you've essentially eliminated from your practice is that person who sits on the phone with insurance companies from the time they walk in the door until the time they leave, either checking coverages or fighting coverages. I mean, that's a whole whole. Usually it's one or two people in a practice that are doing that all day long.
Speaker 4:So, uh, thankfully wanda doesn't have to wear that hat and and honestly that that is a big, big, it's the biggest it's a big problem and I didn't want to deal with that with going to the regular model.
Speaker 4:I I can never see myself working on insurance-based model, because not just it's cumbersome for the patient and the staff, also for the physicians. I mean, you're doing prior authorizations for ridiculous things that you shouldn't be doing. You're on the phone trying to collect payments six months from now that they might not be paying you. So at the end I felt like it's not good for the patient, it's not good for the doctor, and it's just. It's not good for the patient, it's not good for the doctor, and it's just. It's not really heading in the right direction right now, where it's going.
Speaker 2:So let me ask you this question, then. It's kind of a two part question. The other component, besides what you guys do in this concierge service versus we'll call it the insurance model, the other big thing that kills health care costs for a lot of Americans is medication. So is there something through your tiers or through your practice or a way to actually I don't want to use the term subsidize, but make it effective for patients to get medication or, like you, just send them to a Canadian pharmacy? Is that basically it? I mean, or do people have insurance just to cover the medication Because that gets pricey?
Speaker 4:It definitely gets pricey. It's a really good point. So one of the ways we found a way around it. Believe it or not, even as a physician, I didn't know that you can even do a lot of this stuff until I kind of got into this whole world. You can actually contract with distributors and I have. So any generic medication I truly can get for pennies, right Again, as as a physician, I was just surprised by how cheap generic medications can be, and when I say cheap, I truly mean it.
Speaker 4:So I have that hookup and, uh, we were able to contract with the, with a few distributors around the country, to actually we can get medications. So the goal is, uh, we actually have a dispensing license, we can dispense oh that's great medications in office, and for the goal is not to really try to. We're not going to try to make money off those medications. For me, I want my. You know we make our money on our membership fee, so we would love for our patients to get those perks. Which medication is one of them? So everything from regular blood pressure medications, cholesterol medications, insulin, even antibiotics, so we can have them on hand. When a patient comes in, before they leave, they'll have their medication in hand.
Speaker 2:So it fascinates me and I'm not putting these on the same level, but I will tell you, owning an ad agency, I work with a lot of different brands. One of my clients for a long time was a car wash and the model, the business model, is truly the same concierge that you guys offer. With them and I'm getting to the question, but with them, they knew that if they got to member X, whatever that member was, that's when they knew they could grow their next business and their next business and their next business. So for you guys and I don't get into the specifics of the number, you know whatever but do you have it in your head like, ok, we're in month one, by month, by year one, we should have X number of clients. By year three, we should have Y number of clients, and then we expand to open another shop, or do you guys say you know what we want to keep this as a family shop and wait till the kids get out of medical school and pass it along to them.
Speaker 2:Why did you laugh very hard at that?
Speaker 4:I don't know if that's. We'll get back into that in a minute, oh gosh. So in terms of goals that we have, yes, we do have goals. We picked a bigger office, actually a lot bigger than we need, in hopes of expanding within the office itself. Good, we definitely have, I would say, two times or three times the capacity for, you know, so, two or three other doctors maybe in the office that our office can house. The goal is hopefully, once we reach our number of patients that we like, is to hire on a pediatrician. I'm an internal medicine board certified walker. I cannot see anyone under the age of 18, but my first goal right now because I've been asked this many, many times by a lot of the patients that we have right now is can my kids come to you? So for me, I would love to have a pediatrician in house so that way the family can come in for me and for the pediatrician.
Speaker 2:So I think one-stop shop. The goal is to make it a one-stop shop for the family and still have the same model as well which I think for pediatrics would be phenomenal. But we can sorry, go ahead no go ahead what are we gonna say?
Speaker 3:I was gonna say, like for us, um, with direct primary care, we have a certain amount of patients we'll have on our panel. We're not gonna go crazy and have a thousand, five hundred patients and then you can't see them. You can't. That's. It goes against what the whole DPC model is. You have a certain number and you make sure that you're able to get them in for appointments, same or next day medication refills or whatever it is that they need, without having just to see all these extra patients because insurance makes you see them so that you can get paid.
Speaker 2:Well, let's be honest, the whole lure of this model is the patient who wants to spend that extra time and feel comfortable with their Listen. We have gotten away from the family doctor that knows the family, that we've gotten away from that in medicine. This model caters back to that person who wants to go to their doctor and feel comfortable talking. You know, the, the man who's in his forties, it's talking about needing a blue pill. Doesn't feel weird talking to his doctor? Or the, the teenager who's going through puberty or whatever, where she feels comfortable with that pediatrician and have that conversation. There is that connection that we've lost that this model brings back to 100%, 100%.
Speaker 4:I mean the goal is and I can even test this right now every appointment we have on our schedule is set for an hour, right In a regular private or in a regular insurance space. It's 15 to 20 minutes. That's what you get for a lot of you, but the expectation is you see three to four patients in one hour and, as you can see, I mean that includes your review on the patient's chart, ordering labs, examining, talking, educating and documentation and billing. So it's really impossible. You're either running behind or you're spending two minutes with your patients.
Speaker 2:So let me ask you this question, then. Firas is, as a doctor, you went to medical school and this model was in place. Tell us a little bit of your personal story, how you go from. Hey, I'm in medical school, I graduate, I see what this model is in front of me. How do we get to elite health, wesley Chapel, where we are now? What was your journey through the process in internal medicine to say you know what, I don't want this, I want something different.
Speaker 4:Sure, yeah, I can tell you. I mean, for the past several years I've been working as a hospitalist. Actually, I work with much sicker patients that are actually hospitalized and what I've noticed a trend and and sadly it's just getting worse is a lot of these patients that are hospitalized they're ending up in the hospital because they can't get into, they're seeing their doctors early on or don't even have doctors to begin with so there's, a lot of preventable illnesses.
Speaker 4:I mean from heart failure to COPD, to asthma, to diabetes, high blood pressure. Those are pretty common things, but those I mean they account for 70%, 80% of what I see. And so when I say they're really preventable, they are very preventable. I mean, if you come into the hospital you have blood pressure over 200, and you've never been on a medication because you can't see your doctor. I mean, to me that's a really easy fix. I know it's not simple, but it is really an easy fix.
Speaker 4:And I'm seeing this one after another and each patient saying, well, I can't see my doctor for three to four months, and even for, even if you're established, you can't see him for weeks. Well, I mean, being sick doesn't wait, you need to be seen now. You need to be seen now, at least the next day or at least within a week. So I've noticed that's a huge trend. And then you try to schedule these patients with a doctor when they leave the hospital, and then they can't get them for a month or two and I'm like, well, these patients are going to end up coming back to the hospital and they do. So you start seeing patients, you become their primary care doctor while they're in the hospital, which to me is a crazy, crazy idea. So we thought, well, this is, I mean, there's definitely a need here, and Wesleyan Chapel, as you know, I mean it's an area that's expanding.
Speaker 4:You're about to have three hospitals within a stone's throw. That's actually barely enough. I can tell you right now Listen, I get it.
Speaker 2:Although I will tell you because I work with all three of them. Some have a higher capacity than others, but yeah, you're going to have three hospitals within six miles of one another and within six miles of your location and you don't have enough.
Speaker 4:You don't have more primary care doctors and you're not going to have more. I mean primary care. Unfortunately, it's a I don't want to say it's a dying specialty, but a lot of doctors don't want to go into it because of the way the file is and uh, they're just, you know, you, they're just sick of how the structure is.
Speaker 4:So. So all these things to come into account, well, this is not how I see myself. I don't see myself making a difference for these patients, because I can't prevent a lot of these illnesses. We can. If someone comes in with, you know, has a blood pressure of 200, I can see them in the office early on, I can take care of, get them on medications they need to be on. We can prevent these illnesses. We can prevent the diabetic complications that are happening, that are keeping people in the hospital. So that's where I came up with.
Speaker 4:This whole thing is like well, we can make this difference. We live in this community, this is where this is our home, it's where our families live. So we can establish something that we that's not the norm, which is again the insurance based model, and we can. I think we can truly make a difference with this. We can make a difference and we can. I think we can truly make a difference with this. We can make a difference and we can make it affordable for patients as well I mean forget, forget the people that can't get in with their primary doctor.
Speaker 2:That stuff gets missed. There's also a whole group of those people that go to see their doctor but because they're in that turn style never get like listen, and I'm guilty of it myself. I make a list. So this is how anal retentive I am as far as documentation I have on my my next doctor's appointment inside that calendar note on my phone. Every time something I my back hurts, my shoulder hurts, my whatever I make a note in that calendar because when I get in there I know I have to go like boom, boom, boom right down the line and make sure I don't forget anything. So when doctors are going through that turnstile with those patients, there's a lot of stuff that gets missed. That's preventable. Forget not even getting into see them when you're going there 100%.
Speaker 4:Also, don't forget a lot of practices now only make you only let you address one or two things on your list. Right yeah, address everything on your list. It's crazy the time constraint and the way the insurance paying system is right now the way it is. I don't have those restrictions. I can do whatever I want, and that's kind of the beauty of this model.
Speaker 3:And also, if you wanted to text like, let's say, you had back pain, right, you didn't want to wait for your appointment, with this model, you could text the doctor and be like, hey, this is what I'm experiencing. Is this normal, do I need to come in and be seen? And you can get that triage without even having to leave your home.
Speaker 2:So I have a couple questions on that, but I'll kind of table that for a second. What is one of the biggest? Because this model I'm not saying it's new, because I've met a lot of folks that do it something, a version of it. What's the biggest misconception? That when someone contacts you, that you guys are educating them on the model or your practice or whatever.
Speaker 4:So I would say the biggest misconception is that this being expensive and it's going to cost more I it's actually far from the truth. I think this is overall, when you look at the grand scheme of things. I think it's pretty affordable in terms of pricing because of all the perks that you get with it. And I'll give you a quick example right now. Like I said, we're very transparent when it comes to our pricing. It's on our website. So we charge $150 a month for our membership and it's a it's a month to month fee. So if patients there's no contract in the sense you're not locked in for a year or anything.
Speaker 4:Our goal is to patient doesn't want to see me anymore. This is not working out. I want him to be able to say you know what I want to leave, and that's completely their right and that's how we have it set up. But they get perks of, like I said, the generic medications being at a very affordable price, blood work at a very affordable price. So we have contrast. We actually have wholesale contracts with the two major uh uh labs and we um I can I can give you an example here. We can get whole entire yearly blood work for less than 30 dollars, the whole extra like quest and lab corp exactly I can send it right now.
Speaker 4:We have the contract with them, so we get the bill. You don't have to worry about that. You pay us directly, so you're not getting a surprise bill. Now, right, affordability and access uh, also, the quality is significantly much, much better on this. So I, I think, I think affordability and uh, pricing, I think that's a big thing, because most people think it's concierge, yeah, and they're gonna like, oh man, 20 000 a year, yeah, that's not what we're doing so all right.
Speaker 2:So we've talked for 20 plus minutes here about your practice, about what you guys do we touched on before we jumped on the podcast. You guys have children. You're married. What do you guys do for fun when you're not, like when you do get that off time, are you guys go to Disney? Do you like to take the kids and throw them in the ocean, at the beach? What do you guys like to do for fun?
Speaker 3:We definitely have a pool that we try to get the kids in there as much as we can. We have um a blackstone and a grill, so we're always trying to feed our neighbors and having like potlucks and gatherings. We love to go out and eat like we are big foodies all right, so stop right there.
Speaker 2:Wait, wanda, stop. As soon as I hear that. Now I need to know you're in westly chapel. Yeah, where is the last place you went to eat? What did you have?
Speaker 3:and give me a food review okay, so the last place I went to eat was Acropolis on Bruce B Downs it's right where I live okay, perfect, and I had there. I think it was called Athenian salad. It was so delicious all right.
Speaker 2:so, guys, you've heard it here first Elite Health, wesley Chapel, eats at Acropolis and loved it. So we'll give a little plug to Acropolis in there as well. I love when I talk to people and I hear that because, especially with professionals Okay, so I'll tell you, I interview a lot of attorneys, a lot of realtors, a lot of doctors on the podcast and they're in, you know, they do marketing with me. Everybody has this impression that because you have letters after your name, that you're kind of like a little stuffy, a little boring. You know, like when I ask what your hobbies are, you're like well, I play orchestra. Piano for fun is my side thing. So I like hearing that you go to local restaurants. You have that bug for being a foodie, but you did say you like to feed your neighbors on your Blackstone. What is your go-to dish? I mean, which one of you is the griller out of the two?
Speaker 4:Well, really, I just stand on the grill and I pretend to know what I'm doing stuff around.
Speaker 2:You just move a little stuff around, so what is your go to dish? Cooking on the grill?
Speaker 3:Oh my God. Right now it's smash burgers with onions. I think it's called Oklahoma style or something. I don't know. It is delicious.
Speaker 2:Well, I will tell you, I grew up in northern New Jersey and you could look it up and I'll put the link in this podcast. We'll talk about it. There's a place called white manna, m a N a. It was at the world's fair in like 1934.
Speaker 2:And it is essentially the original smash burger. There's sliders, and have you ever seen an episode of Seinfeld, the soup Nazi, where he yells at everybody? So you walk in this place, white manor, it's on a busy street, okay, you have to park. It's the size of my office. It's like a 10 by 13 restaurant. And you stand there and I said what do you have and what do you want, what do you need? And you order right there. They cook right in front of you, but it is a slider drenched in onions. It is amazing. So I tell you all that because I want you to go to the website to learn how to make it. When you're going to make it, let me know. I'll come up and have a few of your homemade white manna sliders.
Speaker 3:And then you also have to try my sourdough. I got into baking sourdough and I am obsessed. I make a killer. Jalapeno and cheddar sourdough that is phenomenal.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's great. So I mean, how are you? I mean for us you're in good shape.
Speaker 4:I'm in good shape. Listen, I'm having to try very hard here.
Speaker 2:You've got to put in some. You've got to set aside some time to train a little bit to keep the weight off if she's cooking all the food we do a lot of eating at home.
Speaker 4:I can tell you this right now she loves to cook.
Speaker 3:Okay, so it's a good time to plug in that we actually do weight loss medications as well.
Speaker 2:So you can come eat a smash burger and then take your Ozempics, your Glycine your Terzepatide. So, listen, that could be a conflict of interest. You start sending all your neighbors to the house and hey, listen, we do tersepatide at the office.
Speaker 4:Now you can come in and we'll get you that sometimes it's really hard to please the patients, like, hey, you're gonna eat this, but listen, life is short and I get that.
Speaker 1:Everything in moderation is gonna be goal right, we're not gonna be those.
Speaker 4:You know I'm gonna be the doctor. I said well, don't ever do this. You can't realistically do that. You know you got to enjoy life and I get that because we are it's work. We do it too. We love to eat out.
Speaker 2:Well, there's that fine line of educating your patient on. Listen, you know you can have that steak with the garlic butter or whatever, but you can't eat that every day. You know. There's just, you know having that. And then, honestly, honestly, it's the same thing like with the dentist. I hate the dentist.
Speaker 2:Okay, if I go to the dentist and he starts ripping into me that I floss, I brush my teeth, I do all the stuff I'm supposed to do, no matter how much of it I do, I still feel like I'm going to the principal's office to get reprimanded. Once that happens with me, I'm like, yeah, tap it out, I'm going to the next one, I'll go to the next one and let him start yelling at me in a week or two. But you kind of have to tread that line. You want to educate your patient, you want to help them out, but you also have to it's still a business you want to make sure that they're happy with your. Your whole business model is predicated on good service. I can relate to that. But yeah, that's great. So let me ask you this, One of the questions I always love to find out from people when I interview them throughout your career when has there been a time when you've run into an obstacle or a hardship where you said you know what?
Speaker 2:I don't know if we're going to get this going. It could have been starting this practice, or while you were in med school or whatever. How did you get through it and then to come out the other side?
Speaker 4:where you know you made, you know, uh, lemonade out of sour lemons.
Speaker 1:I mean, I can, that's a good question.
Speaker 4:I can speak more personally. I can tell you right now my father, you know, gone through a lot of health issues and to say it's a challenge and we almost lost them, you know, especially during covid and everything else, even being a doctor trying to navigate this healthcare system.
Speaker 4:It was just a I mean, even for me as a physician, I'm like this is difficult. I don't know how the average person does it. So you know, and thankfully he's doing much better right now. We, you know, he had to get a liver, I mean a kidney transplant, and he went kidney failure. So he saw a lot of complications, a lot of medical issues. But for me the challenge was actually trying to go through this whole thing with him and trying to help him navigate through this and even something as simple but something as getting a kidney transplant. It was very, very difficult. And trying to go to the doctor's appointments and just have him be heard and listened to and a lot of times and most times, I don't tell people I'm a doctor.
Speaker 4:I just kind of sit there and try to see yeah, let them kind of give a rope to hang themselves, just to try to see the reaction they give and the way they talk to him and how he gets brushed off for a lot of these things. And then the minute that I say I'm a physician, things change. Now we're friends. So for me to see that going through that challenge really gave me a whole new appreciation for medicine and for patients and what they go through.
Speaker 2:Well, I will tell you. So I took care of both my parents before they passed away, and being an advocate for myself hey, that's easy. Hey, look, this hurts or that hurts. But that exact scenario you're talking about, I went through it with both my parents. My mom had lung cancer. She passed away about a year after her surgery. My dad had dementia and was in a wheelchair. My dad had dementia. He would say something one minute like I would bring my dad to see you and on the whole way there he'd go my leg hurts, my back hurts, this hurts, that hurts. We'd get in to see somebody and having that conversation. It's more difficult to do it for them than having to do it for you.
Speaker 4:I feel like a lot of the caregivers and the families are always afraid of like offending the doctor by asking questions, even in the hospital. You know, I'm so sorry. I need to ask you.
Speaker 1:I'm like this is your right to ask questions.
Speaker 4:You ask the same questions. If you're buying anything, you're a consumer at the end of the day, and that's how the health care system is unfortunately Right. It's your right to ask questions. It's your right to advocate for your loved ones and for yourself as well. Don't ever feel like you have to hold back these things. I think it is definitely every patient's and caregiver's right to advocate for their loved ones, and I'm all for it. Again, I had to do it myself and I saw how sometimes it changes the perspective.
Speaker 2:It changes your perspective from the other side of the fence and I watched that too. My mom was a nurse growing up and she would never tell anybody she was did anything in medical and she would let the doctor kind of. And it wasn't really doctors, it was more like surgeons. No, I don't know if you have a lot of surgeon friends, but surgeon guys are usually like, hey, I want, I want to come in, I want to cut, I want to be out, and they are a little bit more arrogant than the average person and she would just kind of let them do this, and then she would ask a couple questions and not say I'm in medicine but I know a little more than the average person, so it is kind of fun to do that.
Speaker 2:So let me ask you this as we yeah, you watch the look on their face as it goes from like to like oh okay, gotcha. So what is the one thing people listening to this and watching it on our YouTube channel that they need to know about? Elite Health Wesley Chapel.
Speaker 3:It's a family. You know like once you come in, you're going to feel like you're part of the family. It's not going to be like, well, I'm the doctor, you need to listen to me. We do not do that at all.
Speaker 4:It's not our approach.
Speaker 3:It's not our approach. We can make recommendations, we can help you. Come up, you know, with solutions, get you healthy, but at the end of the day, you're the one in control. We are there to help you, but we're not there to tell you you have to do this, you have to do that. And yes, we do have a membership-based model, but we also see patients outside of the membership. We offer telehealth, we offer urgent care, iv therapy, weight loss, clear therapy all that to the whole community. So if they just want to come and get a taste of what Elite Health is, we can do that.
Speaker 2:So they can check you guys out before they sign up to be in your concierge service. So the million dollar question hopefully it's a million dollar question very soon for you guys is what's the best way for people to get a hold of you? Phone number, website, all that information, how do we find you?
Speaker 4:All right. So basically, our website is elitehealthwccom, so it was the chapel, so elitehealthwccom. Our phone number is 813-213-4263. They can call or text that phone number and Facebook.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, so Facebook and Instagram it's elitehealthwc those are the handle names and we actually also offer complimentary, zero obligation meet and greets, uh, with for us, with the for us, um, that patients can schedule to see for a good fit, because we want to make sure they're happy and that is something that would be good for them yeah, there's no commitment to any of this.
Speaker 4:I mean, I want patient to be comfortable with me, want to make sure we both, of what we our needs align, know. I want to make sure the patient is a good fit and I'm a good fit for them as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there has to be that connection because it's people's health, I mean. That's why the month-to-month thing is vitally important, because no one's going to want to pay for medical services If, for whatever reason listen, I've fired clients before. Sometimes our personalities just don't work well together, it happens.
Speaker 4:Yeah, 100%. I think people do more research sometimes on trying out things like on buying a TV or a cell phone than anything out there, but I feel like the doctor is really important. I think you need to get that and you do a meet and greet with that. Just make sure just a 5, 10, 15 minutes. Make sure your principles align, make sure that your rules align. I Make sure your principles align. Make sure that your rules align. I think that's very crucial.
Speaker 2:So, folks, if you're listening to this or watching it, we've had the pleasure of having Faras and Wanda from Elite Health Wesley Chapel on with us If you are looking for what I would refer to as a medical guide. They are guiding you through your medical journey and they're giving you a family atmosphere. They're giving you personal attention. They are going to handle you as a part of their family. They're going to bring you into the Elite Health Wesley Chapel family. Contact them at 813-213-4263, either call or text or EliteHealthWCcom, and those are their handles on social Guys. Thank you so much for being Good Neighbors. Thank you for being on the Good Neighbor podcast.
Speaker 4:Thank you so much, thanks so much for having me, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the Good Neighbor podcast Pasco. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNP Pasco dot com. That's GNP Pasco dot com, or call 813-922-3610.