Interview with Dr. Jennifer Allen and Kimberly Lowe – 346
In today's episode, Dr. Jennifer Allen and Kimberly Lowe describe how they grew their Infusion Lounge business together.
Dr. Allen and Kim Lowe were both fed up with conventional approaches to patient care. And they found that they shared a vision for a more upbeat joyful atmosphere. They describe their innovative approach to healthcare delivery, combining facets of direct primary care (DPC) and integrative medicine. Together, they discuss the evolution of their Infusion Center, The Well, highlighting its diverse services, including IV infusions, hormone therapy, and aesthetic procedures.
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In only 2 weeks from today, the second annual Nonclinical Career Summit will be starting. It’s not entirely nonclinical in its scope, however. We have several presentations about starting and running a private practice free of insurance companies.
It's called Clinical Practice: Make It Great or Move On
And beyond building your cash-based practice, our speakers will show you how to create an asset that can be sold later. Other experts will discuss MedSpas, Infusion Lounges, and other cash-only businesses, using Real Estate to diversify your income and assets, and several nonclinical side gigs including Expert Witness and Medical-Legal Prelitigation Consulting, Medical Affairs Regulatory Consulting, and remote SSDI Application Reviewer.
To learn more check it out at nonclinicalcareersummit.com. Remember that there is NO cost to attend the live event. And if you can’t attend all or part of the Summit, you can purchase the All Access Pass videos for only $39.
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Dr. Jennifer Allen's Journey to Direct Primary Care
Dr. Jennifer Allen shares her unique career trajectory, from nurse to family physician and eventually transitioning to direct primary care (DPC). She recounts the challenges of traditional healthcare and the liberating experience of offering membership-based primary care outside the constraints of insurance.
In her candid discussion, Dr. Allen highlights the pivotal moments that led her to embrace DPC, emphasizing the benefits of alternative healthcare models for physicians and patients.
The Evolution of The Well: A Nurse-Physician Partnership
Kim and Jennifer discuss the inception and growth of The Well, an integrative health practice offering services like IV infusions, hormone therapy, and aesthetic procedures. They detail the journey from conception to expansion, reflecting on the challenges and rewards of their collaboration.
The duo shares insights into their holistic approach to healthcare delivery, emphasizing personalized care, patient education, and the impact of integrative medicine on their rural community.
Navigating Challenges in an Infusion Lounge
Our guests discuss the challenges they faced in establishing The Well, reflecting on legal considerations, business aspects, and the treatments available through integrative medicine. They share their strategies for fostering growth, emphasizing the importance of flexibility and focusing on patient-centered care.
Summary
Dr. Jennifer Allen and Kim Lowe shed light on their innovative approach to healthcare. For those intrigued by their integrative healthcare services, they direct readers to The Well's website. This platform showcases their range of offerings, including IV infusions, hormone therapy, and aesthetic procedures.
Additionally, for individuals seeking an example of a DPC practice, Dr. Allen points to New Freedom Family Medicine's website. Listeners are encouraged to reach out to 636-629-8444 for inquiries about The Well and 573-271-2927 for New Freedom Family Medicine.
NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode.
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Links for Today's Episode:
- The Well Infusion Lounge Website
- Dr. Allen's Practice Website
- The Well Infusion Lounge Facebook Page
- How to Start and Grow a Profitable Cash Based Medical Practice – 293
- Reserve Your Free Spot at the 2024 Nonclinical Career Summit
- Dr. Debra Blaine's Coaching Services
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Episode 346 Transcript
Why an Infusion Lounge May Be the Best New Thing
Interview with Dr. Jennifer Allen and Kim Lowe
JOHN: Today's guests have not been on the podcast before, but they are both speakers at the upcoming summit that I mentioned at the introduction of this episode today. And I thought it would be helpful to bring them on, introduce them to you and hear about what they're up to, give you a little groundwork for the summit. And especially I'm really happy to have them here because I've been fascinated by healthcare professionals who have found new ways to deliver care or deliver healthcare in new ways that does not involve insurance companies.
So there are different ways of doing that. We're going to learn a bit about that today. So with that, I would like to welcome Dr. Jennifer Allen and Ms. Kimberly Lowe. Welcome to the podcast.
DR. ALLEN: Hi, thanks for having us.
JOHN: This is going to be fun. I'm going to learn a lot because this is one area where I think I've had one guest that talked about DPC about two years ago and other associated sort of cash-based practices. So we're going to learn a lot today.
So the first thing I'll ask you both is to take turns and tell us about each of your backgrounds, your training, and maybe a little bit about your work history, and then we'll get into how you got together.
DR. ALLEN: Okay. Well, I'll go first. So I'm Jennifer Allen.
I'm a family physician board certified. I started as a nurse back in the early nineties. Life sort of intervened.
I was going to wash you with the idea of going to medical school, and I sort of had a midlife crisis at 20 and was like, no, I don't want to do that. So I left school for a year, did a few things. When I was ready to come back, I just, I graduated with my degree and I didn't know what I wanted to do.
So I did medical research. Then I was cooling my heels and was bored and still didn't want to go to medical school at that time. So I became a nurse and that was great.
I was a nurse for about nine years and then I became a nurse practitioner. I did that for nine years. And then an amazing thing happened that would be a topic, I guess, for another time.
I was given a gift to go to medical school. And so a patient of mine really wanted me to be a doctor. And she said, if I would go back, she would pay for it.
So, so I did. And, and then I did my residency at Mercy Family Medicine in St. Louis and went back into hospital-based practice after that. I hated it.
I just, I could, I love my patients, but I couldn't deal with the mess that that is. And so I had learned about direct primary care along the way, which is, membership-based practice. We don't bill any insurance.
Our patients join our practice as members and pay a monthly membership fee and get basically all the primary care I can give them. Kind of like Netflix, you know, you pay your bill, you rent movies and, you know, you don't have to pay at the time of service. So that experience got me out of the system.
There's a lot of healthcare knowledge that we are not exposed to when we are in the box of traditional Western healthcare that is controlled by the powers that be. And so in that knowledge gathering, I, I learned about other things like IV nutrition and hormone therapy and things like that. And then I met Kim and we had some similar ideas.
And so we joined a partnership and that's where the well came from.
KIM LOWE: So mine's not nearly as exciting. I was a nurse. I've been an RN now for, I guess, oh, going on 16 years.
I graduated first with my associate's degree in nursing, went straight into the workforce at the hospital. I started out in labor and delivery, newborn care, had worked at some big hospitals. I worked at smaller hospitals.
I decided to go back and get my bachelor's degree in nursing in 2015. I too, like I said, have the whole experience, the hospital experience. I love my job.
I love my patients, but the bureaucracy of it all is just a little too much. So I ended up going to work for an integrative medical physician down in St. Louis. And it was a fantastic time in my life because I learned so much.
And he also, he wasn't necessarily direct primary care but he had the same fashion of ideas of how we do things here. So we do the IVs and the hormones and also the direct primary care portion of it, where you come in for regular clinical visits. So I learned a lot there and just, you know, it's an hour commute back and forth.
And I got tired of that life. I did, during COVID, work for a very short amount of time just prior to COVID, I should say, starting. I worked for the insurance company as a case manager because I thought that would be a great way to work at home and to help raise my kids and things as they got older.
Not ideal. So the company was great. I mean, they cared for me as an employee, the benefits were great, but it was just very difficult with the position that I was put in, knowing the things that I knew with integrative care and there was a different world out there.
I started seeing Dr. Allen, I think it was actually in COVID, probably 2020, as a patient of hers. And I wanted to get out of the world of doing insurance and case management and all of that stuff. And I came to her with this idea and I said, hey, I have all this unused, untapped potential and skill.
How would you feel about opening up an infusion lounge? Let's do IVs. Let's do some things.
Let's, you know, get this kind of show on the road for this side, which has been great. I mean, we've gotten some major expansion, I think here, and we've just grown together kind of as business partners, like learning new things. I help her out in the clinic sometimes when she needs, she helps over here.
Like we just kind of scratch each other's back. So it works really well for us all, but that's my background. Not as exciting, but it's just a lot.
JOHN: No, it's good. I mean, it's, you know, we all have different stories. And so, so you were both, you know, working in different ways.
And so it sounds like, Kim, you kind of were the one that said, well, maybe we could do something together where we can expand and both benefit from that. So what was it, was it complicated creating this at the beginning, even from just a legal standpoint? I assume, you know, that your partners in this, in a business sense, as well as in, you know, just socially and so forth.
DR. ALLEN: Yeah. So we actually, I was looking into IV infusion. One of my nurses in our Herman location was talking about doing some IV infusions in our Herman office, and I knew it was a great idea, but I didn't have the, the free time, essentially, to be able to build that by myself.
And it wasn't, I mean, it was literally like a month later, Kim came to me and I was like, you know, we've been considering this. So, so she really was the physical energy that was able to come in and, you know, put the paperwork together and, you know, the literal physical plant, if you will, of it. We just formed an LLC 50-50 partnership and pretty easy, opened our doors.
KIM LOWE: So the moon, the sun, and the stars aligned like all at the right time for this to happen, because it just, it was meant to be, it just was a meant to be practice and things just worked out how they were supposed to.
JOHN: All right. Well, one of the questions, you know, I, I'm kind of, when we were talking and, and even in the summit, you know, I keep throwing this term around, you know, infusion lounge, infusion center. And I understand that you're, the well does a lot of different things and maybe even shouldn't be pigeonholed.
And I understand things like, you know, aesthetic services and med spa type services. I mean, a lot of these clinics have different mixes of what they do. So tell us like what you do, what the technical definition of an infusion lounge is and anything else you want to tell me about the actual business and how, how you take care of people.
KIM LOWE: So I think it's, it's kind of sprouted more from the initial idea was of course the IVs, right? And so as time went on, you know, you start getting to know more things, you see more things, you research more things. Integrative medicine is one of those things that's forever expanding and there's always new things out there that's better and more healthier.
And we actually after, I would say, probably a year of doing IVs and things like that, we were approached by a rep for hormone therapy replacement. And at first we weren't necessarily cool on the idea. I'm like, I don't know, this is somewhat new.
I had heard of it before. I'd never actually done the pellets myself, but at the integrated medical center where I worked, they did those. And I really kind of pushed.
I was like, I think we should, you know, maybe look at this, right? So we got some books, we got ideas. They offered to do pellets for us and give us the information and send us to all these locations to go to watch these things and talk to the actual patients that have gotten them placed before.
And the more we knew about it, the more research we ended up landing on, it probably took, I don't know, three or four months before we were really like, yeah, let's do this.
DR. ALLEN: And so go ahead. Sorry. That's okay.
I mean, again, I, in my separate journey as the DPC doctor, I was looking for new ways to help my patients be healthier. I'm not a box checker. I don't, I don't like a lot of big pharma kind of medications.
And so I was coming on this information on my own in my other practice with nutrition and hormone replacement therapy. And so I was already learning about it. And literally the rep came in the door one day and was like, Hey, what do you think about pellets?
And so the, you know, you either love pellets or you don't, there's a, we live in a very, um, delineated, you know, culture and hormones are not bad. And, but unfortunately the last generation of us as healthcare providers have been educated that they are bad because of bad science and bad research. And that, that stuff gets perpetuated.
And until you delve in on your own and start learning about these things, we just don't know, you know, we're, we have these preconceived notions. And so I was gaining this knowledge. And again, Marla walked through the door and I was like, you know, let me look at this because it's, it's just a different vehicle for the same kind of hormone replacement as patches, creams, and pills that everybody is okay with.
So once, once I realized that it was just a different vehicle and it's not scary and there is a lot of good science behind it. Um, I was like, yeah, let's try this.
KIM LOWE: And so I would say it's, it's probably a different topic for another day, but, and maybe even in the summit, we can talk about this, but hormones are one of those things that I think are absolutely life changing for people. I mean, it is, it literally been a life changing thing in our practice. And, you know, just to see people come in and actually tell you that they feel better.
We're able to get people off of medications that they've been on for years for anxiety and statins and all of these things that have all these eroding side effects to your body later on in life, all in place of a bio-identical hormone pellet. And so to me, it gives you some really warm and fuzzy feelings that we're actually doing good for people out there.
JOHN: Can you give me a one example, just a type of person, client, patient, if you call them in terms of with the implants that what would be like their, the problem that they have, you identify it, how do you identify it? And then, um, what was the impact of, you know, using the implants?
DR. ALLEN: Well, so for a lot of women who are going through menopause, I see it as a continuum. You'll have people who have symptoms early on with the, the loss of testosterone that, that starts actually in our early thirties, women have testosterone. That's the first thing.
Oh, really? Yes. Women have testosterone and it's a very important hormone for us.
And when, when you're coming into your forties, you start to, you start to get the brain fog, you start to get anxiety, you start to get depression and, you know, nobody has a, um, venlafaxine deficiency. Nobody has a Prozac deficiency, right? So, um, when you start looking at those things and how people are interacting in their interpersonal relationships, they're tired, they have no libido, sex doesn't feel good anymore, things like that.
That patient, if you could get somebody to open up, they come in and they just say, I don't feel well. And so you have to sort of peel off the layers and figure out what's going on. And then you approach the subject of hormone replacement.
And I've had women tell me, you gave me my life back and tears streaming down their face. So it's so rewarding to see that.
JOHN: All right. Well, the next question is just kind of a follow-up on sort of the business aspects and just the lifestyle. It's just, you've been doing this, I think three or four years.
And so just kind of, other than that story, which is a very positive one, like, just give me a, what your sense is you're feeling about how it's been going. And do you really think looking back now that it's definitely been something that you're glad you got into?
KIM LOWE: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think we laugh now because we were at another location last year, roughly about this time, and it was an 800 square foot clinic. It was tiny.
We were on top of each other. The amount of people that we were seeing was steadily climbing, you know, every day we were seeing more and more. And so we had expanded now to our new location, which is fantastic.
It's 3000 square feet. The regenerative medicine side, the well side is on one side. And then we have the primary clinic on the other side with a conjoined waiting room.
So our patients feel like they have access to both places. The amount of awareness I think has really skyrocketed. And to be honest, you know, the best way that we get patients is word of mouth.
People are really happy with our services. We're a small town, I would say we're rural still. We're not a big town.
We're, you know, we have, we don't have a Chick-fil-A if that tells you anything. So we're not that big. We would still have a rural population and our Hermann office is very rural.
But I would say our, our clientele is just continually going uphill because people are so happy with the services. They come out, they feel better. They don't feel like every time they walk in here, they're just wrote another prescription.
JOHN: Now you've expanded the services even beyond what you've mentioned so far, right? I mean, it seems like there's new things. They probably aren't maybe, you know, 30% of your activities, but what, what other things are you doing besides what we've already talked about?
DR. ALLEN: So we have some radio frequency devices. We do aesthetic procedures like wrinkle reduction, skin tightening, body contouring. We have a cryotherapy machine.
Stress incontinence. That's huge for women.
JOHN: So now if I think about like what would be checking my boxes, it'd be something that, you know, I enjoy doing making a decent income. My patients are happy and I don't, I might be busy, but I'm, you know, I'm happy to do the work because it's, it's part of a mission. So that's what I'm kind of hearing from you that it's kind of checking all those boxes.
DR. ALLEN: Yeah. From, from my point of view, because I have both responsibilities, I mean, I, I work more than the average person who's probably watching this podcast would like to work, but from on the well side of it, it's not something that I have to do on Saturdays and Sundays or at night. And, and that's really, you know, that's really nice.
Now on the direct primary care side, I work a lot, but some of that is me. I'm kind of a workaholic, but I am getting better at boundaries. And if you just teach people, you know, Hey, I am a human being and I deserve my Saturday and Sunday, then they're okay with that.
And if they're not, then they can find somebody else. So.
JOHN: Yeah. And that reminds me when we, when we're finished and when I post this, I'll put links to everything, you know, about the well as of course, but then I'll also put links about your practice, you know, just, you never know. It might be some physicians that maybe don't even live too far from you that might want to look at, you know, what you're doing and maybe call with a few questions or send some patients over.
But, uh, you know, I, I, I've found that even physicians who are busy, if they're doing things, they love, they actually don't have burnout. I mean, they might be tired, but they're not fried the way, you know, it was back in, you know, the corporate style of medicine that most of us physicians and nurses at least learned in our training and, and dealt with. So it sounds like you'd agree with that.
DR. ALLEN: Absolutely. Yeah. Everything about it is different.
KIM LOWE: Yeah.
DR. ALLEN: The documentation is different. The requirements, the environment's just different.
KIM LOWE: The interaction with patients. I mean, just the, the doctor nurse, everything about it is completely different than an intense setting where you feel like you're constantly under a pressure cooker to do more, excel more, be better, take more patients, like all of these things where you don't, you don't have time to actually sit and talk and get to know your patient and build a rapport with your patient. And in the end, that's how you start to peel back the layers is to, to have them feel comfortable enough to talk to you because they are feeling better.
Then you really start getting to the core of a lot of the problems. Right.
JOHN: And the model that you're using with a, you know, a partnership between a physician and nurse that seems to be working out well also. Right. Because a lot of the delivery requires, you know, someone in nursing, obviously that really knows what they're doing and, you know, the physician can deal with the things that require that license.
But it makes sense to me that that would, that partnership would work out.
DR. ALLEN: Yeah, we do things. I mean, a lot of what she does in the clinic is delegated by protocol. You know, so there's established steps, but you know, she's a bachelor's prepared nurse with a lot of experience, so she can use her clinical judgment and problem solve.
And she knows her limitations and she calls me if she needs recommendations or advice.
JOHN: Yeah. Excellent. Well, go ahead and give us the links, the URL or the phone numbers, anything you want to share with anyone who might want to contact you about The Well.
KIM LOWE: So the website is thewelliv.com. And then our phone number is 636-629-8444. And we're responsive to either call or text, so we welcome either.
JOHN: All right. And so some of my listeners might want to see, you know, an example of direct primary care. So what's the website for your practice?
DR. ALLEN: It's newfreedomfamilymed.com. And our phone number is 573-271-2927.
JOHN: Okay, great. Well, we're going to get into a lot more detail during the summit. In fact, I've split this couple up for the summit, Tom Davis and I, because we want to get the perspective, you know, individually from the nurse and the physician, you know, but I think there's just so much interest in doing things like this that are novel and not your run of the mill type of practice.
And, you know, a lot of us are saying we need more individual, you know, family physicians and internists and others who are going into practice outside of the big corporate style of medicine and healthcare. So this is a really good example. So I'm really happy you were able to join me today as guests.
DR. ALLEN: Thank you. Well, thanks for having us. We, I'm very passionate about it.
And I really think that direct primary care could save our healthcare system and keep practicing physicians practicing instead of retiring early, you know, because they can't do it anymore.
JOHN: I think I have to, I might put you on the spot right now and tell you that I'm going to definitely invite you to come back and just talk about that topic sometime as someone who's been living it. And so I just throw that out there. So listeners keep that in mind.
If you want to learn about that, we'll get Dr. Allen back here sometime to talk about her practice in more detail. All right. Any last words of advice for our listeners who might be frustrated, upset, burned out, any of the above, and they're just thinking about maybe just leaving medicine completely or nursing for that matter.
Any advice?
KIM LOWE: I mean, I was there once. I mean, I thought for sure. I'm like, I'm going to go be a veterinarian or something.
But I was there. All I can say is I, I prayed on it. I thought about it.
I, I found somebody who I knew I could trust. I mean, I think, I mean, kind of the same thing. You just see the burnout was high enough.
We just, we wanted something different. We wanted more.
DR. ALLEN: I think you keep it simple. You think of an idea of something, you know, that makes sense to you and then just put one foot in front of the other and see if you can make it happen. It's scary when you keep it in here, right?
Down, look around other people.
KIM LOWE: I mean, we are more, I have people all the time that ask me, how do you do this? And I'm like, well, it's, it's simple. It's really not that hard, but if you ever want help by all means, let me know.
I don't mind giving you a hand up on something information you need to get started, or you have the idea, you have the practice, but you're looking to expand on stuff. And we do that quite a bit. I think we have a couple of practitioners that come to us and Hey, we're trying to start IVs.
Can you help us like figure out where we need to go and what we need to do? So, I mean, I just one physician, one nurse helping each other, I think is fantastic. It works out really well.
Just be willing to help.
JOHN: Yeah. I think when you're in it, you can't even see the light, you know, that there's an option. And then once you actually break through that and you start doing it, it's amazing.
It's not like easy. It's kind of simple in a sense, there's just steps you have to do and it takes work, but I think you're a good example of that making it work. Okay.
Well, thank you so much. I, with that, I am going to say goodbye and thanks again for being here.
DR. ALLEN: John, thanks for having us.
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Episode 346 Transcript
Why an Infusion Lounge May Be the Best New Thing
Interview with Dr. Jennifer Allen and Kim Lowe
JOHN: Today's guests have not been on the podcast before, but they are both speakers at the upcoming summit that I mentioned at the introduction of this episode today. And I thought it would be helpful to bring them on, introduce them to you and hear about what they're up to, give you a little groundwork for the summit. And especially I'm really happy to have them here because I've been fascinated by healthcare professionals who have found new ways to deliver care or deliver healthcare in new ways that does not involve insurance companies.
So there are different ways of doing that. We're going to learn a bit about that today. So with that, I would like to welcome Dr. Jennifer Allen and Ms. Kimberly Lowe. Welcome to the podcast.
DR. ALLEN: Hi, thanks for having us.
JOHN: This is going to be fun. I'm going to learn a lot because this is one area where I think I've had one guest that talked about DPC about two years ago and other associated sort of cash-based practices. So we're going to learn a lot today.
So the first thing I'll ask you both is to take turns and tell us about each of your backgrounds, your training, and maybe a little bit about your work history, and then we'll get into how you got together.
DR. ALLEN: Okay. Well, I'll go first. So I'm Jennifer Allen.
I'm a family physician board certified. I started as a nurse back in the early nineties. Life sort of intervened.
I was going to wash you with the idea of going to medical school, and I sort of had a midlife crisis at 20 and was like, no, I don't want to do that. So I left school for a year, did a few things. When I was ready to come back, I just, I graduated with my degree and I didn't know what I wanted to do.
So I did medical research. Then I was cooling my heels and was bored and still didn't want to go to medical school at that time. So I became a nurse and that was great.
I was a nurse for about nine years and then I became a nurse practitioner. I did that for nine years. And then an amazing thing happened that would be a topic, I guess, for another time.
I was given a gift to go to medical school. And so a patient of mine really wanted me to be a doctor. And she said, if I would go back, she would pay for it.
So, so I did. And, and then I did my residency at Mercy Family Medicine in St. Louis and went back into hospital-based practice after that. I hated it.
I just, I could, I love my patients, but I couldn't deal with the mess that that is. And so I had learned about direct primary care along the way, which is, membership-based practice. We don't bill any insurance.
Our patients join our practice as members and pay a monthly membership fee and get basically all the primary care I can give them. Kind of like Netflix, you know, you pay your bill, you rent movies and, you know, you don't have to pay at the time of service. So that experience got me out of the system.
There's a lot of healthcare knowledge that we are not exposed to when we are in the box of traditional Western healthcare that is controlled by the powers that be. And so in that knowledge gathering, I, I learned about other things like IV nutrition and hormone therapy and things like that. And then I met Kim and we had some similar ideas.
And so we joined a partnership and that's where the well came from.
KIM LOWE: So mine's not nearly as exciting. I was a nurse. I've been an RN now for, I guess, oh, going on 16 years.
I graduated first with my associate's degree in nursing, went straight into the workforce at the hospital. I started out in labor and delivery, newborn care, had worked at some big hospitals. I worked at smaller hospitals.
I decided to go back and get my bachelor's degree in nursing in 2015. I too, like I said, have the whole experience, the hospital experience. I love my job.
I love my patients, but the bureaucracy of it all is just a little too much. So I ended up going to work for an integrative medical physician down in St. Louis. And it was a fantastic time in my life because I learned so much.
And he also, he wasn't necessarily direct primary care but he had the same fashion of ideas of how we do things here. So we do the IVs and the hormones and also the direct primary care portion of it, where you come in for regular clinical visits. So I learned a lot there and just, you know, it's an hour commute back and forth.
And I got tired of that life. I did, during COVID, work for a very short amount of time just prior to COVID, I should say, starting. I worked for the insurance company as a case manager because I thought that would be a great way to work at home and to help raise my kids and things as they got older.
Not ideal. So the company was great. I mean, they cared for me as an employee, the benefits were great, but it was just very difficult with the position that I was put in, knowing the things that I knew with integrative care and there was a different world out there.
I started seeing Dr. Allen, I think it was actually in COVID, probably 2020, as a patient of hers. And I wanted to get out of the world of doing insurance and case management and all of that stuff. And I came to her with this idea and I said, hey, I have all this unused, untapped potential and skill.
How would you feel about opening up an infusion lounge? Let's do IVs. Let's do some things.
Let's, you know, get this kind of show on the road for this side, which has been great. I mean, we've gotten some major expansion, I think here, and we've just grown together kind of as business partners, like learning new things. I help her out in the clinic sometimes when she needs, she helps over here.
Like we just kind of scratch each other's back. So it works really well for us all, but that's my background. Not as exciting, but it's just a lot.
JOHN: No, it's good. I mean, it's, you know, we all have different stories. And so, so you were both, you know, working in different ways.
And so it sounds like, Kim, you kind of were the one that said, well, maybe we could do something together where we can expand and both benefit from that. So what was it, was it complicated creating this at the beginning, even from just a legal standpoint? I assume, you know, that your partners in this, in a business sense, as well as in, you know, just socially and so forth.
DR. ALLEN: Yeah. So we actually, I was looking into IV infusion. One of my nurses in our Herman location was talking about doing some IV infusions in our Herman office, and I knew it was a great idea, but I didn't have the, the free time, essentially, to be able to build that by myself.
And it wasn't, I mean, it was literally like a month later, Kim came to me and I was like, you know, we've been considering this. So, so she really was the physical energy that was able to come in and, you know, put the paperwork together and, you know, the literal physical plant, if you will, of it. We just formed an LLC 50-50 partnership and pretty easy, opened our doors.
KIM LOWE: So the moon, the sun, and the stars aligned like all at the right time for this to happen, because it just, it was meant to be, it just was a meant to be practice and things just worked out how they were supposed to.
JOHN: All right. Well, one of the questions, you know, I, I'm kind of, when we were talking and, and even in the summit, you know, I keep throwing this term around, you know, infusion lounge, infusion center. And I understand that you're, the well does a lot of different things and maybe even shouldn't be pigeonholed.
And I understand things like, you know, aesthetic services and med spa type services. I mean, a lot of these clinics have different mixes of what they do. So tell us like what you do, what the technical definition of an infusion lounge is and anything else you want to tell me about the actual business and how, how you take care of people.
KIM LOWE: So I think it's, it's kind of sprouted more from the initial idea was of course the IVs, right? And so as time went on, you know, you start getting to know more things, you see more things, you research more things. Integrative medicine is one of those things that's forever expanding and there's always new things out there that's better and more healthier.
And we actually after, I would say, probably a year of doing IVs and things like that, we were approached by a rep for hormone therapy replacement. And at first we weren't necessarily cool on the idea. I'm like, I don't know, this is somewhat new.
I had heard of it before. I'd never actually done the pellets myself, but at the integrated medical center where I worked, they did those. And I really kind of pushed.
I was like, I think we should, you know, maybe look at this, right? So we got some books, we got ideas. They offered to do pellets for us and give us the information and send us to all these locations to go to watch these things and talk to the actual patients that have gotten them placed before.
And the more we knew about it, the more research we ended up landing on, it probably took, I don't know, three or four months before we were really like, yeah, let's do this.
DR. ALLEN: And so go ahead. Sorry. That's okay.
I mean, again, I, in my separate journey as the DPC doctor, I was looking for new ways to help my patients be healthier. I'm not a box checker. I don't, I don't like a lot of big pharma kind of medications.
And so I was coming on this information on my own in my other practice with nutrition and hormone replacement therapy. And so I was already learning about it. And literally the rep came in the door one day and was like, Hey, what do you think about pellets?
And so the, you know, you either love pellets or you don't, there's a, we live in a very, um, delineated, you know, culture and hormones are not bad. And, but unfortunately the last generation of us as healthcare providers have been educated that they are bad because of bad science and bad research. And that, that stuff gets perpetuated.
And until you delve in on your own and start learning about these things, we just don't know, you know, we're, we have these preconceived notions. And so I was gaining this knowledge. And again, Marla walked through the door and I was like, you know, let me look at this because it's, it's just a different vehicle for the same kind of hormone replacement as patches, creams, and pills that everybody is okay with.
So once, once I realized that it was just a different vehicle and it's not scary and there is a lot of good science behind it. Um, I was like, yeah, let's try this.
KIM LOWE: And so I would say it's, it's probably a different topic for another day, but, and maybe even in the summit, we can talk about this, but hormones are one of those things that I think are absolutely life changing for people. I mean, it is, it literally been a life changing thing in our practice. And, you know, just to see people come in and actually tell you that they feel better.
We're able to get people off of medications that they've been on for years for anxiety and statins and all of these things that have all these eroding side effects to your body later on in life, all in place of a bio-identical hormone pellet. And so to me, it gives you some really warm and fuzzy feelings that we're actually doing good for people out there.
JOHN: Can you give me a one example, just a type of person, client, patient, if you call them in terms of with the implants that what would be like their, the problem that they have, you identify it, how do you identify it? And then, um, what was the impact of, you know, using the implants?
DR. ALLEN: Well, so for a lot of women who are going through menopause, I see it as a continuum. You'll have people who have symptoms early on with the, the loss of testosterone that, that starts actually in our early thirties, women have testosterone. That's the first thing.
Oh, really? Yes. Women have testosterone and it's a very important hormone for us.
And when, when you're coming into your forties, you start to, you start to get the brain fog, you start to get anxiety, you start to get depression and, you know, nobody has a, um, venlafaxine deficiency. Nobody has a Prozac deficiency, right? So, um, when you start looking at those things and how people are interacting in their interpersonal relationships, they're tired, they have no libido, sex doesn't feel good anymore, things like that.
That patient, if you could get somebody to open up, they come in and they just say, I don't feel well. And so you have to sort of peel off the layers and figure out what's going on. And then you approach the subject of hormone replacement.
And I've had women tell me, you gave me my life back and tears streaming down their face. So it's so rewarding to see that.
JOHN: All right. Well, the next question is just kind of a follow-up on sort of the business aspects and just the lifestyle. It's just, you've been doing this, I think three or four years.
And so just kind of, other than that story, which is a very positive one, like, just give me a, what your sense is you're feeling about how it's been going. And do you really think looking back now that it's definitely been something that you're glad you got into?
KIM LOWE: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think we laugh now because we were at another location last year, roughly about this time, and it was an 800 square foot clinic. It was tiny.
We were on top of each other. The amount of people that we were seeing was steadily climbing, you know, every day we were seeing more and more. And so we had expanded now to our new location, which is fantastic.
It's 3000 square feet. The regenerative medicine side, the well side is on one side. And then we have the primary clinic on the other side with a conjoined waiting room.
So our patients feel like they have access to both places. The amount of awareness I think has really skyrocketed. And to be honest, you know, the best way that we get patients is word of mouth.
People are really happy with our services. We're a small town, I would say we're rural still. We're not a big town.
We're, you know, we have, we don't have a Chick-fil-A if that tells you anything. So we're not that big. We would still have a rural population and our Hermann office is very rural.
But I would say our, our clientele is just continually going uphill because people are so happy with the services. They come out, they feel better. They don't feel like every time they walk in here, they're just wrote another prescription.
JOHN: Now you've expanded the services even beyond what you've mentioned so far, right? I mean, it seems like there's new things. They probably aren't maybe, you know, 30% of your activities, but what, what other things are you doing besides what we've already talked about?
DR. ALLEN: So we have some radio frequency devices. We do aesthetic procedures like wrinkle reduction, skin tightening, body contouring. We have a cryotherapy machine.
Stress incontinence. That's huge for women.
JOHN: So now if I think about like what would be checking my boxes, it'd be something that, you know, I enjoy doing making a decent income. My patients are happy and I don't, I might be busy, but I'm, you know, I'm happy to do the work because it's, it's part of a mission. So that's what I'm kind of hearing from you that it's kind of checking all those boxes.
DR. ALLEN: Yeah. From, from my point of view, because I have both responsibilities, I mean, I, I work more than the average person who's probably watching this podcast would like to work, but from on the well side of it, it's not something that I have to do on Saturdays and Sundays or at night. And, and that's really, you know, that's really nice.
Now on the direct primary care side, I work a lot, but some of that is me. I'm kind of a workaholic, but I am getting better at boundaries. And if you just teach people, you know, Hey, I am a human being and I deserve my Saturday and Sunday, then they're okay with that.
And if they're not, then they can find somebody else. So.
JOHN: Yeah. And that reminds me when we, when we're finished and when I post this, I'll put links to everything, you know, about the well as of course, but then I'll also put links about your practice, you know, just, you never know. It might be some physicians that maybe don't even live too far from you that might want to look at, you know, what you're doing and maybe call with a few questions or send some patients over.
But, uh, you know, I, I, I've found that even physicians who are busy, if they're doing things, they love, they actually don't have burnout. I mean, they might be tired, but they're not fried the way, you know, it was back in, you know, the corporate style of medicine that most of us physicians and nurses at least learned in our training and, and dealt with. So it sounds like you'd agree with that.
DR. ALLEN: Absolutely. Yeah. Everything about it is different.
KIM LOWE: Yeah.
DR. ALLEN: The documentation is different. The requirements, the environment's just different.
KIM LOWE: The interaction with patients. I mean, just the, the doctor nurse, everything about it is completely different than an intense setting where you feel like you're constantly under a pressure cooker to do more, excel more, be better, take more patients, like all of these things where you don't, you don't have time to actually sit and talk and get to know your patient and build a rapport with your patient. And in the end, that's how you start to peel back the layers is to, to have them feel comfortable enough to talk to you because they are feeling better.
Then you really start getting to the core of a lot of the problems. Right.
JOHN: And the model that you're using with a, you know, a partnership between a physician and nurse that seems to be working out well also. Right. Because a lot of the delivery requires, you know, someone in nursing, obviously that really knows what they're doing and, you know, the physician can deal with the things that require that license.
But it makes sense to me that that would, that partnership would work out.
DR. ALLEN: Yeah, we do things. I mean, a lot of what she does in the clinic is delegated by protocol. You know, so there's established steps, but you know, she's a bachelor's prepared nurse with a lot of experience, so she can use her clinical judgment and problem solve.
And she knows her limitations and she calls me if she needs recommendations or advice.
JOHN: Yeah. Excellent. Well, go ahead and give us the links, the URL or the phone numbers, anything you want to share with anyone who might want to contact you about The Well.
KIM LOWE: So the website is thewelliv.com. And then our phone number is 636-629-8444. And we're responsive to either call or text, so we welcome either.
JOHN: All right. And so some of my listeners might want to see, you know, an example of direct primary care. So what's the website for your practice?
DR. ALLEN: It's newfreedomfamilymed.com. And our phone number is 573-271-2927.
JOHN: Okay, great. Well, we're going to get into a lot more detail during the summit. In fact, I've split this couple up for the summit, Tom Davis and I, because we want to get the perspective, you know, individually from the nurse and the physician, you know, but I think there's just so much interest in doing things like this that are novel and not your run of the mill type of practice.
And, you know, a lot of us are saying we need more individual, you know, family physicians and internists and others who are going into practice outside of the big corporate style of medicine and healthcare. So this is a really good example. So I'm really happy you were able to join me today as guests.
DR. ALLEN: Thank you. Well, thanks for having us. We, I'm very passionate about it.
And I really think that direct primary care could save our healthcare system and keep practicing physicians practicing instead of retiring early, you know, because they can't do it anymore.
JOHN: I think I have to, I might put you on the spot right now and tell you that I'm going to definitely invite you to come back and just talk about that topic sometime as someone who's been living it. And so I just throw that out there. So listeners keep that in mind.
If you want to learn about that, we'll get Dr. Allen back here sometime to talk about her practice in more detail. All right. Any last words of advice for our listeners who might be frustrated, upset, burned out, any of the above, and they're just thinking about maybe just leaving medicine completely or nursing for that matter.
Any advice?
KIM LOWE: I mean, I was there once. I mean, I thought for sure. I'm like, I'm going to go be a veterinarian or something.
But I was there. All I can say is I, I prayed on it. I thought about it.
I, I found somebody who I knew I could trust. I mean, I think, I mean, kind of the same thing. You just see the burnout was high enough.
We just, we wanted something different. We wanted more.
DR. ALLEN: I think you keep it simple. You think of an idea of something, you know, that makes sense to you and then just put one foot in front of the other and see if you can make it happen. It's scary when you keep it in here, right?
Down, look around other people.
KIM LOWE: I mean, we are more, I have people all the time that ask me, how do you do this? And I'm like, well, it's, it's simple. It's really not that hard, but if you ever want help by all means, let me know.
I don't mind giving you a hand up on something information you need to get started, or you have the idea, you have the practice, but you're looking to expand on stuff. And we do that quite a bit. I think we have a couple of practitioners that come to us and Hey, we're trying to start IVs.
Can you help us like figure out where we need to go and what we need to do? So, I mean, I just one physician, one nurse helping each other, I think is fantastic. It works out really well.
Just be willing to help.
JOHN: Yeah. I think when you're in it, you can't even see the light, you know, that there's an option. And then once you actually break through that and you start doing it, it's amazing.
It's not like easy. It's kind of simple in a sense, there's just steps you have to do and it takes work, but I think you're a good example of that making it work. Okay.
Well, thank you so much. I, with that, I am going to say goodbye and thanks again for being here.
DR. ALLEN: John, thanks for having us.
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