Concierge Integrative Medicine

with Alexis Anvekar MD ABIHM

Is Concierge Medicine Right For You? We may be biased, but we think it is.

We've lost ourselves. Hippocrates had it right when he said, "Let food be thy medicine and let medicine be thy food." Today, we obtain most of our food from boxes and bags, which take up about 75% of the space in most grocery stores. More and more research articles are showing that our brains are shrinking, our hearts are getting clogged up, and we are developing more cancer due to our poor lifestyle choices.

Enter Integrative Medicine. Some call it a movement. We call it the right way to practice medicine. Integrative Medicine combines holistic and conventional medicine therapies. It cherry-picks supplements, educates you on how to reverse disease with diet and exercise, and even treats you based on your DNA results to optimize your health on the cellular level. It's truly the best of both worlds. The National Institute of Health agrees.

Dr. Alexis Anvekar, double board-certified with the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine and the National Board of Physicians and Surgeons, can help you navigate through the maze of options with a whole-person approach to your care. You're going to love this.This type of medicine takes time. And there you go. That's the cornerstone of our practice--time. Dr. Anvekar spends triple the national average with you at each visit. Our team spends time long after your visit to coordinate your care with your pharmacy, insurance company, and other health care providers.

And when something comes up on a Friday night? No problem. Just call your doctor. She is available 24/7.You may even notice that your emergency room and hospital visits decrease because Dr. Anvekar treated you as soon as your symptoms arose, or that your visits to specialists decreased because she spent the time needed to figure out the problem in the first place. We know you're going to love this. We sure do.

Let's go over some details:

Dr. Anvekar is available by text, email, and phone 24/7, even when she is on vacation. She strongly believes that, if your health doesn't run on bank hours, your doctor shouldn't. This easy access is a unique part of our practice and will keep you healthier as you can get your medical issues treated as they arise so you can quickly get back to work, school, and your family.
We're open for business. Need to come in? We will get you an appointment within a couple of business days, and when you get here we do our best to keep you off of those waiting room chairs.
We've got time for you and do our very best to take the hassle out of your health care experience. Our time slots are more than three times the national average. Dr. Anvekar takes the time she needs to learn about you personally, which helps to optimize your health. Then, long after you've left our office, she takes more time to coordinate your care with your specialists and pharmacies.
How do we do this? Two ways: we maintain a small practice size (about 1/5 of a traditional practice), and collect a monthly fee of $499. This monthly fee is in addition to any co-pays or deductible you may have, and it serves to supplement your insurance company payments so Dr. Anvekar can take her sweet time keeping you healthy in a 30-minute visit slot instead of booking patients every 5-7 minutes like her colleagues. Seeing a patient every 5-7 minutes all day may be the national average, but it just sounds crazy to us. We wish insurance companies would start to notice that it takes time to get your diagnosis and treatment right the first time, which saves them money in the long run, but until that happens, we need to collect this monthly fee from you.
If you are underinsured, uninsured, or have an insurance plan of which we are not providers (HMO, Cigna, or MediCal), we collect a flat fee per visit in addition to the monthly fee.
We cannot invite patients into our concierge practice who are insured with Kaiser due to the logistics of managing care outside of the Kaiser

A Letter to my Patients

Since finishing training almost 25 years ago, I have had the rare privilege of practicing medicine in a thorough, unhurried fashion thanks to you.

Over the years, you have joined with me in prioritizing this "village doctor" concierge practice model where we take the time needed to optimize your health, no matter what is happening around us in our country's broken health care system. It is this dedication that allows both of us to feel good at the end of the day, knowing that important issues have been addressed early and thoroughly, preventing more serious problems. And many years ago when you came to me with questions about supplements and holistic treatments, I began the journey to answer them, leading to board certification in the exciting field of Integrative Holistic Medicine which allows me to combine conventional medicine with the best evidence-based practices of holistic medicine. This is, without a doubt, the best way to practice medicine. Thank you for opening my eyes.

As we both know, spending time together is critical to getting to the right diagnosis the first time. And when I have the time to call your specialists and pharmacist to coordinate your health care long after you leave my office, we are both the better for it. I truly wish every doctor and patient could have this luxury of unhurried delivery of health care.

Personally, it is such a pleasure to be a part of your life and to ride along on your journey through graduations, weddings, pregnancies, career changes, and raising children.

And I feel you alongside me as I journey through my milestones. I have learned so much from you, and continue to do so every day.

So my friend, here's to you: May you live and love with joy in good health. May you stop and relish the sweetness in life's simple moments. And may you take them--the simple moments--and breathe them in and slow life down for just that long. It only takes a moment to smile. You remind me of that every day.
--your doc, Alexis