Interview with Dr. Jennifer Clements – 471
In today's interview, Dr. Jennifer Clements walks us through the process of leaving an emergency medicine career and establishing an online practice and coaching service dedicated to promoting health for her clients and patients.
She covers the training path she took in integrative medicine, obesity medicine, and health coaching, and the business structure she built to support a fully virtual, cash-pay model across five states.
Today's Special Sponsor
I just discovered that an old friend of mine is selling his 15-year old nonclinical business. His business broker sent me a copy of the Offering Summary and it looks like an awesome opportunity.
It's currently a one-person online business, but it is scalable by the right physician buyer. My friend trains doctors looking for part-time nonclinical work to help lawyers manage personal injury cases for generous insurance settlements. So, if you want to get the report that I read, call my friend's broker Glen Cooper, at 303-919-2694.
Call him any time. And leave a message for a call-back.
If I were younger, I'd buy it myself! – John
CALL 303-919-2694 to learn more with no obligation.
From the ER to Preventive Medicine: The Training Path
Dr. Clements' frustration with emergency medicine was not with the work itself, it was with the ceiling. The same patients kept coming back with the same preventable conditions, and the system she worked in had no mechanism for addressing the root cause. Obesity was the thread she kept pulling on: a significant common denominator in chronic heart failure, hypertension, diabetes, and a long list of other conditions she was treating downstream.
The training path she took was not linear. She completed integrative medicine training through Dr. Weil's program in Arizona, became board certified in obesity medicine in 2021, ahead of the GLP-1 surge, and completed the Duke Health Coaching program while still working clinically. Board certification in integrative medicine followed in 2023.
Her advice for physicians considering a similar path:
…sub-specialize rather than trying to cover everything integrative medicine touches, and don't wait for the perfect sequence, the education can happen in parallel with clinical work, and the credentials build on each other over time.
Building the Business: Structure, Income Streams, and Lessons Learned
The first step was an LLC, the structure that allows all income streams, whether 1099 clinical work, coaching, or medical director roles, to run through a single business entity with appropriate tax treatment. Working with a healthcare attorney early to navigate Medicare opt-out requirements is something she strongly recommends. Malpractice insurance is required as soon as any prescribing is involved, and a good tax professional is non-negotiable.
Income comes from several parallel sources: a telehealth company focused on GLP-1 and lifestyle therapy, private health coaching under Living Well MD, a medical director role at a med spa, and medical writing. She found medical writing clients through the American Medical Writers Association directory and their annual conference. Her overall advice: identify not just what you are passionate about, but how you work best, the business model should fit both.
Summary
The business infrastructure is simple: one LLC, malpractice coverage, a healthcare attorney for the regulatory questions, and a tax professional.
NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode.
EXCLUSIVE: Get a regular dose of inspiration, information, and physician health news CLICKING HERE.
Links for Today's Episode:
- Dr. Jennifer Clements' LivingWellMD Website
- Introducing a Fearless Medical Entrepreneur
- Light Your Entrepreneurial Fire and Create Your Ideal Life
- How to Become a Health Advisor With No Physician Patient Relationship – 286
- American Medical Writers Association
- Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicince
- Duke Health Coaching Program
- American Board of Obesity Medicine
Download This Episode:
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How to Shift from Crisis Management to Promoting Health
PNC Podcast Episode 471 with Dr. Jennifer Clements
John: Welcome back, nonclinical nation. Today I'm presenting my interview with Dr. Jennifer Clements, an emergency medicine physician who experienced the frustration of years of treating the same patients over and over again. So after some soul searching, additional training, and much planning, she completely redesigned her way of practicing medicine.
Dr. Clements graduated from the University of Kansas School of Medicine and completed an emergency medicine residency at the University of Kansas Truman Medical Center. She also holds degrees and certifications in exercise physiology, psychology, and integrative medicine.
Before I go any further though, I have an important message, so listen up! I just discovered that an old friend of mine is selling his fifteen-year-old non-clinical business. His business broker sent me a copy of the offering summary, and it looks like an awesome opportunity. It's currently a one-person online business, but is certainly scalable by the right physician buyer. My friend trains doctors looking for part-time non-clinical work to help lawyers manage personal injury cases for generous insurance settlements. So if you want to get the report that I read, call my friend's broker, Glenn Cooper, at 303-919-2694. Call him anytime, and if you have to leave a message for a callback, tell you the truth, if I were younger, I'd buy it myself.
Today's guest realized that her traditional medical education and work as a physician didn't fully align with her interest in promoting health and wellness. And it was having a negative impact on her life as well, so she made a dramatic shift that she'll be describing today, so I can't wait to hear from her. Dr. Jennifer Clements, welcome to the show.
Dr. Clements: Thank you, John, I really appreciate it. Glad to be here.
John: So just a little preview for the listeners, I guess I could think of other more dramatic changes, but anytime a physician changes from intense, long hours, you know, highly stressful to something a lot better and more comfortable and more flexible, whether it's from being a neurosurgeon or an ED doc or whatever to something else, I'm just really interested in hearing about that. So tell us about your background, your early career, what you were doing initially in your career, and then we'll get to the good stuff.
Dr. Clements: Yeah, absolutely. So I was born and raised in the Kansas City area, so I did all of my medical training there. When I went to college, I went to University of Notre Dame. I really didn't�I was so young, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I knew I was interested in the science, I was good at science, but my dad was a physician, and so I thought, I saw how many hours he worked, and he worked way back in the day when it was just really intense, and so I wasn't quite sure if that's what I wanted to do.
Fast forward a little bit, I just decided that medicine picked me, right? So just, I love to learn, my love of learning has always been there, and I just decided to go to medical school a few years after college, and then through medical school, residency. In medical school, they don't really�I'm always interested in wellness. I'll backtrack a little bit. I was a runner. I've always been interested in health and wellness, but I never felt like the medical training really promoted that very much. I can't even remember if we ever had a lecture in medical school on nutrition or physical activity or the importance of preventative care. It was always "Here's your Lipitor, here's your high blood pressure medicine." And I thought, "There's gotta be a better way," but I didn't get any of that exposure in medical school.
So I chose emergency medicine 'cause I loved everything, I just chose it mostly because I couldn't really pick what I liked the most, and about the ED you get to see a little bit of everything, and so I really enjoyed that aspect of it. So that is why I chose emergency medicine and went just to the residency at University of Missouri, Kansas City.
John: Got it. And then you were working as an emergency physician, how many different places did you end up working before finding out that things weren't just quite what you expected or wanted?
Dr. Clements: Sure. So after residency, I went to the Cleveland Clinic and worked there, and then for personal reasons, I left, went back home and worked a very short time in the community, but it wasn't very long. I was more interested in academic medicine, simply because of my love of learning and teaching, and felt like that was a better fit for me. So I went to Emory and I really enjoyed it there, actually it's a great place to work. I worked at Grady Hospital in downtown Atlanta, so it was definitely a learning experience and I learned a lot. But throughout that, and we'll probably get to this, I started to see things that really just I wanted to work on with medicine.
John: Did you have any exposure to people that were doing anything different? I don't know, direct primary care or prepaid or concierge medicine or anything like that?
Dr. Clements: Nothing, nothing. I was completely�okay, so my husband says I was institutionalized, right? So a lot of doctors think that this is the�my dad was this way, it's the only way to go, you've gotta be a hospital worker, working at a hospital, otherwise it's just�there's no other way to go. And what I've been learning through this process is luckily I have a husband who is in the business world, and he's like, "You are definitely institutionalized. There are so many opportunities out there, you just have to take the leap of faith."
John: So, yeah, I said, "You're not exposed to it, how are you going to know about it?" You know, so then some of us had to just take the bull by the horns and say, "There's gotta be something better out there," although even then, it's kinda, you flail around for a while. So was there something particular that triggered you to look and consider what you�
Dr. Clements: A little bit. I'd really actually enjoyed my job at Emory, but my husband lived in Savannah, so we actually did the distance thing for quite a long time. And I thought, there are no academic centers in Savannah. I really am�COVID hit, and I was, I finally realized I saw my last dead person. I just, it really does a number on you when you, you don't realize it in the moment, but for me it really did. I'm very sensitive and really care about my patients, and when people are just dying in front of you all the time, especially during COVID. And I thought, I told my husband I couldn't work in the setting anymore, so I had to really figure it out.
But in the meantime, I was doing some additional training in integrative medicine, as well as obesity medicine, and I did some separate training programs simply because when I worked in the ED I thought to myself, "Okay, we've got all of these patients that are coming in, take out the trauma patients, take out the infectious diseases, but we have all of these other patients coming in for their chronic heart failure or their chronic hypertension, and I'm thinking to myself. Okay, so we're just patching them up with medication, but isn't there another way? What is the common denominator?" And obesity is a significant common denominator. I have learned so much about the importance of weight management in your health and wellness, in preventing chronic diseases, and so I'm very passionate about that. Not to mention nutritional therapy now and physical activity and stress management, everything is just so important in our overall health and wellbeing.
John: Yeah, I remember patients like that. I was in family medicine. And the obese patient on a CPAP machine and going into respiratory failure, and it's the guy didn't, he couldn't lose a pound, and the guy that was diabetic didn't take care of himself, and every three months he'd come in and I'd be like, "Do we have to take that shoe off? I think so," and I knew what would happen, he'd have to be in the hospital. But people like that will show up in your ED all the time, so, oh, it just becomes, yeah, it just doesn't give you a good feeling.
Integrative medicine, as at least from an educational standpoint, how do you figure out wellness, nutrition, integrative medicine, functional medicine, there's, I think, two or three other versions?
Dr. Clements: That is really a great question. I can't really answer that question directly. I just, I would say googling, reading over time, realizing that this is really the way I want to go. Again, this wasn't really something that was widely known when I was in medical school. I probably would have picked it, right? But I can't, I don't want to take my emergency medicine training back though, because I've learned so much in the ED that has helped my patients now, right? So I wouldn't trade it for anything, but at the same time, I'm just grateful that a lot of these training programs are coming about and education for doctors and other healthcare professionals because it just is amazing how much what you eat, what you do is just way more important than I think anybody ever realized.
John: For sure. Yeah. And exercise, right? That's the other thing that people think they can do without, and which is ridiculous. But so then you're in, you're into this, you're actually doing some extra training. So at what point did you decide to kind of formalize what it was you were going to do, how you were going to do it, without skipping to the end here, but you're doing most of it virtual, if not all of it. And so how did that whole thing coalesce?
Dr. Clements: Okay, so it's, it's convoluted, right? There's no�I think that if I can give any piece of advice to the listeners, is don't expect a straight path like you did in medicine. There's no graduation point. There's no, if I do this, then I'm going to graduate and then finish with this, and it's not that way. It's one day at a time, one step at a time, and eventually those little steps add up to bigger steps like my weight loss patients, right? So it's not, there's no straight line, but what I would say is I did the education and really got a solid confidence in what I knew, I knew what I was doing.
And so by that time I graduated from the obesity, I got board certified in obesity medicine in 2021, I believe. That was way before the GLP-1 craze, which was just crazy to me that it just exploded. I got lucky there, a lot of ways.
John: Good planning, good planning.
Dr. Clements: I know, I didn't plan it, but yes. And then integrative medicine I did a little bit before then. I graduated in 2021 as well, but I didn't get board certified until 2023. The training program is great, Dr. Weil's program is great in Arizona, which is the one that I did. The only thing that you have to think about with that is you really have to subspecialize a little bit. There's not, unless you want to just get completely overwhelmed with all of these different things, and eventually over time you can learn and grow and develop new skills, but I really wanted to focus a little bit more into the obesity side of things, which is why I did the training after that or concurrently for a while there.
John: Yeah. That was integrative, is that for physicians only or is that multidisciplinary or what's that like?
Dr. Clements: I think it's multidisciplinary. I think they do nurse practitioners and I think like nurse anesthetists. I think they do advanced practitioners.
John: Did that serve as a bit of a source for any kind of mentors or anything in there that, or you could talk to people that were maybe already implementing? Or were they all pretty much still in the planning phase and getting the education?
Dr. Clements: I did, and they give you some really good business education as well. But I, to be honest with you, I was kind of overwhelmed and thought, I don't know what I'm doing. You just get so caught up with seeing patients and going home, seeing patients and going home and getting a paycheck, that you don't know what you don't know. And now looking back, I think I would have�yeah, I don't know, I think it's really truly about stumbling your way through, at least for me it was.
John: But at some point you came up with a plan and, 'cause I know what you're doing now and you're seeing clients, patients and taking care of people, so it's a separate business, I'm assuming everyone normally gets an LLC or does something to say, "Okay, this is a real thing." So how did, take us through those steps a little bit at a high level.
Dr. Clements: Sure. Luckily I had my husband to guide me a bit. He just barely touched anything that I did. I started my own LLC, that's the first step. It's really easy, you just file through the state that you want to start your business in. And then the cool thing is you can be an independent contractor. So there are so many companies out there that want to hire part time 1099s, and you can stay very busy and earn a very good income just doing part time jobs and run it through your business. And the cool thing is then you can have business tax implications or benefits. So there's a benefit to doing that, right?
So I started that and then really just did some research on companies looking to hire physicians as 1099s in obesity integrative. And I did some interviews, but then I finally found a company, a startup company that I worked with, and there were a few other companies I did some work with, but this one, we do a lot of GLP-1 and lifestyle therapy, a little more, they're developing a little bit more of a direct primary care model as well, but I work much fewer hours, work only during the day, no holidays, no weekends, no nights, and it's just, it's a really great experience. And then I also do contracting through other companies doing medical reviews, medical writing, editing. Most recently, got hired on as a medical director for a med spa. So there's just so many opportunities out there that doctors don't really know.
John: I can ask you about each of them. But I'll just clarify for the listeners, was this med spa a non-physician owned med spa, and you're the medical director so they can do certain things?
Dr. Clements: It is a whole other entity, yeah.
John: Okay, so that's common. There are, it's also common for physicians to open their own med spas, but that's a whole, that's another entity. And I know that LivingWellMD is your practice, right? Your virtual practice. And so are you doing, so you're doing the work for some of these 1099 just as Dr. Clements, is that that funnels through Living Well MD or is that more for your coaching and your preventive medicine that kind of thing?
Dr. Clements: It does. Everything funnels through my business. So everything that I do, whether it's coaching privately or if it's through the 1099s, it's all run through my business.
John: All right, no worries. Yeah, no, that's good, that's good. It protects you too. But I see that you say on your website that you're able to work in five states, which I think makes me think, okay, then you're working as a licensed physician. Okay, so which of the people that contact you, or the kind of people that you're working with, I'm sure those that maybe you're prescribing meds, of course, but is everyone under your license or not under? There's health consulting or coaching that could be separate from that.
Dr. Clements: Yeah, yeah. So I also have, I'm board certified as a health coach, so I did that program as well. This is always when I was stumbling around and I didn't know what I want to do, and doctors always feel like, "I don't know if all doctors are this way, but I always felt like I need to get more education in order to be, you know..."
John: It's kinda how we're built.
Dr. Clements: It's just how we're built. So I did that, and I really enjoyed it. So I work as a certified health coach, which really, for the people that don't know, it's through our behavior change. So it's helping people stop smoking or they stop drinking six cokes a day or things that they don't even realize they're doing that's causing weight gain and poor health. You work on that and it's really using me as an accountability partner to help their behavior change, yeah.
John: So now that's something you could do as a coach and you wouldn't necessarily need a medical license to do that. No, you don't. But then in any given week, you might then the next day or the next hour work with someone who you're prescribing something for, is there, how that works?
Dr. Clements: Sure, absolutely, yeah.
John: Now, do you have to have a medical record, a typical medical record?
Dr. Clements: Yeah, and there's, the cool thing is there are just so many different options out there now, a lot of different tech companies doing EMRs and relatively low overhead, so if you're doing anything remotely, one of the reasons I didn't want a primary office is just the cost of real estate and rent. I didn't want to rent anything if I was going to do something, I was going to buy something, but in our area there's really nothing to buy unless you want to buy a big warehouse, right? So it's, and really, I enjoy, I think that when you really start to think about making a career change, really think about not just what you're passionate about, but how you work really well. And to be honest with you, even after working in the ED I just realized how much better I work alone, by myself versus with tons of other people around me, and everybody has their own little thing. Everyone's got their own preference, but for me, it was more of a quiet environment where I thrive.
John: So if you're treating some patients as a physician, then you have to have malpractice insurance, I'm sure.
Dr. Clements: Yeah, you do.
John: Okay. Anything else people need to think about that maybe they don't think of on first blush.
Dr. Clements: Oh gosh, taxes. Really work with a good tax professional because I have just, my husband, in all honesty, he's in the finance world, and he just shakes his head, he's, I can't believe you don't�it's just keeping everything documented, keep everything that you have, and you don't really, you don't need to get a massive education like I did necessarily. I was just very insecure and wanted to make sure I had all my ducks in a row. But if you're a doctor, just remember that you're smart, you're smarter than 99.9 percent of people, and you can do this. It just, it takes some creativity, and that's one thing that we don't�doctors, just be creative, and that's what's so fun about it, that's what keeps you alive and joyful. And if you get stuck in a rut, I think that's what really contributes to burnout, it's just you're focusing constantly on the negative aspects when there are so many opportunities out there. And like, I love what I do, I love my patients, I love working with them, I love that they're happy all the time, it just, it's really great.
John: That's very inspirational, really. That's part of the reason I do the podcast is to hear stories like this. But I can get real picky too, like I'm looking on your website, so one of the things that's on there, of course, weight loss and so forth, and then hormone therapy. So I'm just, okay, I'm a, if I'm a patient, what kind of hormone therapy can I get from you?
Dr. Clements: Yeah, it's funny. So I'm mostly right now just focused on menopausal women, right? So I'm a big believer that your hormones, not just your hormones itself, but just how you eat and what you do, again, going back to that, I didn't appreciate until I got into this how much that impacts your hormones, how much it impacts your neurotransmitters and your brain function. And so seeing women kind of transition from really frustrating symptoms to no symptoms at all is just quite fascinating. So that's what I focus on now, so I should probably clarify that on my website, right? But yeah.
John: All our websites are like dated like a week after we put them up, but pretty much, pretty much. Let's see now, of the experiences you had with the integrative and the other certifications and so forth, which one of those would you say in general, for a physician, would be maybe the first one to look at to really try and get a good sense, like especially if they want to be more like a health coach, was that pretty useful?
Dr. Clements: Yeah, it was. So I did the Duke Health Coaching program, and the cool thing is a lot of these are mostly remote, so it's a lot of online lectures, online training. We did a lot of online group training, so you could work with a peer where you would just coach back and forth, things like that. So that was really helpful when you're working. When I was able to do this all as I was working. And then if you really want more of the medical aspect, like I learned so much about supplements and functional medicine, really determining the root cause of the problem. It's the integrative medicine training program, and then obesity medicine just wraps it all together because so many things go back to obesity. It's a lot of different cancers and high blood pressure, diabetes, it all loops in together.
John: The other thing that we�you haven't mentioned specifically, but it's, I guess, a given, but of course, you're not really billing Medicare or insurance plans at this point. To me, that's ninety percent of the problem in medicine is having to deal with that and have to build your own group just to be able to get paid thirty dollars.
Dr. Clements: It is, yeah. So I did work with an attorney, and he was very good and helpful. You can get some things online, you can use AI to get some tools, but actually what's really helpful to have an attorney on my side to just bounce questions off of, to really get paperwork set up, to know that there's specific nuances to Medicare either having to opt out or not taking it at all. There's little things that you have to know in order to not purposely break the law, right? Because none of us want to�the lies, 'cause sometimes you just don't know what you don't know.
John: The other thing I was interested in is because I saw it, I think on your LinkedIn, is that, and you mentioned it earlier, medical writing. And I guess it's, you were doing different things, right, to fill in and that, but you seem to be�I don't know, it seemed to show up in several places. Like you enjoy that. Tell us, if you have a minute, tell us about that, how that fits in, and why you like it.
Dr. Clements: Yeah. I think it goes back to somewhat of the learning, right? So whenever I write a paper, I feel like I'm an expert on it. I've done the research, I know it. I've always was never quite interested in primary research, but I love going back into the literature and helping people understand and to help patients, as well as other doctors, but just really helping the people understand the most recent literature, and so it's my fun little side job that I enjoy doing. It's relaxing, I like it. And believe it or not, even with AI, it's terrible at medical writing. I find errors all the time. And so if you think that it's just going to go straight to AI now, it hasn't yet. It's certainly humans still write much better for medical writing than AI does.
John: And does most of your writing end up being for patients, for clients, for humans? You know, not other physicians, it's not CME, it's not education except for education of people, okay?
Dr. Clements: Yeah, mostly patients, that's what I really actually enjoy the most, I think now. And it's okay, one of the things I would tell other doctors is, it's okay to change your mind, it's okay to shift your focus at times because you're going to learn something through the process of finding out something you thought you might like versus, "Wow, I actually really like this." So it's okay to change your mind sometimes.
John: Yeah, sometimes you just have I don't really like that so much, it's not worth the time or it's not something that I really, I've always wanted to do or I'm good at, so okay, I'll switch to something else. Makes great sense. Yeah. Alright, we're going to probably run out of time here in a minute, but let's see. Before I get off the medical writing, how do you find who you're going to write for? Just as a question.
Dr. Clements: Oh, that's a great question. So there's a society called the American Medical Writers Association. You can put a profile up there and be cautious, because sometimes people like, if you see a weird email, questionable email, you might not want to do that because sometimes there's people trying to scam you. But there are legitimate places that do look for medical writing. They also have a conference that I went to to meet all of these different companies and learn more about it. There's different types of medical writing, but there's patient writing, there's pharmaceutical companies looking for regulatory writers, just so many different opportunities.
John: That's good, that's a good bit of advice. I think, yeah, I'll put that in the show notes as a reminder. Anything else you want to tell us about? We can go back and say, "If you're like miserable in your practice and you're just getting burned out or for whatever, not what you thought it was, and I don't know, just maybe the early steps they can take to maybe make a change in their career or their jobs and any words of encouragement."
Dr. Clements: Yeah, I would say just find what you're really passionate about. If you're passionate about what you do now, great, then think about maybe some other ways you could apply it, whether it's consulting, whether it's legal�there's also the legal avenue to be an expert witness or something like that, whether it's telehealth, that's really like something I just love. Whatever it is, just kinda do your research, and that's the great thing about Google and AI is that things just pop up all the time, and it's amazing what's out there. Just find that interest, and then if you need to get additional education, then research that, which is what I did, while you're continuing to work and save some money so when you make that leap, you're not quite overwhelmed with any financial burdens as well.
John: That's a, that's good advice too, but, and you definitely can say that it is possible to switch to some form of virtual�it could be medicine, coaching, something like medicine, and not have to worry about insurance and just focus on your client patients or whatever and enjoy medicine again.
Dr. Clements: Yeah, and that's the thing, I really feel like now I'm able to connect with my patients better, I'm able to help my patients better than I ever was in the hospital, and I really think that this is the future of medicine, not just telehealth, but also just preventative care, because people aren't getting that education, and you as the doctor are the educator, you're the teacher, and so even to reach those patients via telehealth is just so incredibly valuable to these patients, they're so grateful, and they're making so many great strides with improving their health. Just by that. So, I do what I do.
John: That's awesome. Do you mind if we go to your website and check it out just to see what you're doing? I'll put that in the show notes for people that want to see what that looks like. It's very nice. I, it's very well laid out and it's clear on what you do.
Dr. Clements: It's a work in progress, I will say that. It's a work in progress, like all websites.
John: Yeah, exactly. Okay, we'll have to go every three months we're going to check it out. And do something on your own online like you're doing. It could, it's, you've made it, obviously, other people have done it, and we're all smart people, we should be able to figure that out with a little time.
Dr. Clements: Absolutely, one step at a time.
John: Thanks for the encouragement, and I guess with that, I'll say goodbye for now.
I found today's interview to be interesting and quite inspirational. Jennifer made a big pivot from treating patients in medical crisis to promoting wellness, preventive medicine, and health coaching five years ago. If you want to download a transcript of our interview and access all the links mentioned today, plus links to related episodes, go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/promoting-health.
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How to Shift from Crisis Management to Promoting Health
PNC Podcast Episode 471 with Dr. Jennifer Clements
John: Welcome back, nonclinical nation. Today I'm presenting my interview with Dr. Jennifer Clements, an emergency medicine physician who experienced the frustration of years of treating the same patients over and over again. So after some soul searching, additional training, and much planning, she completely redesigned her way of practicing medicine.
Dr. Clements graduated from the University of Kansas School of Medicine and completed an emergency medicine residency at the University of Kansas Truman Medical Center. She also holds degrees and certifications in exercise physiology, psychology, and integrative medicine.
Before I go any further though, I have an important message, so listen up! I just discovered that an old friend of mine is selling his fifteen-year-old non-clinical business. His business broker sent me a copy of the offering summary, and it looks like an awesome opportunity. It's currently a one-person online business, but is certainly scalable by the right physician buyer. My friend trains doctors looking for part-time non-clinical work to help lawyers manage personal injury cases for generous insurance settlements. So if you want to get the report that I read, call my friend's broker, Glenn Cooper, at 303-919-2694. Call him anytime, and if you have to leave a message for a callback, tell you the truth, if I were younger, I'd buy it myself.
Today's guest realized that her traditional medical education and work as a physician didn't fully align with her interest in promoting health and wellness. And it was having a negative impact on her life as well, so she made a dramatic shift that she'll be describing today, so I can't wait to hear from her. Dr. Jennifer Clements, welcome to the show.
Dr. Clements: Thank you, John, I really appreciate it. Glad to be here.
John: So just a little preview for the listeners, I guess I could think of other more dramatic changes, but anytime a physician changes from intense, long hours, you know, highly stressful to something a lot better and more comfortable and more flexible, whether it's from being a neurosurgeon or an ED doc or whatever to something else, I'm just really interested in hearing about that. So tell us about your background, your early career, what you were doing initially in your career, and then we'll get to the good stuff.
Dr. Clements: Yeah, absolutely. So I was born and raised in the Kansas City area, so I did all of my medical training there. When I went to college, I went to University of Notre Dame. I really didn't�I was so young, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I knew I was interested in the science, I was good at science, but my dad was a physician, and so I thought, I saw how many hours he worked, and he worked way back in the day when it was just really intense, and so I wasn't quite sure if that's what I wanted to do.
Fast forward a little bit, I just decided that medicine picked me, right? So just, I love to learn, my love of learning has always been there, and I just decided to go to medical school a few years after college, and then through medical school, residency. In medical school, they don't really�I'm always interested in wellness. I'll backtrack a little bit. I was a runner. I've always been interested in health and wellness, but I never felt like the medical training really promoted that very much. I can't even remember if we ever had a lecture in medical school on nutrition or physical activity or the importance of preventative care. It was always "Here's your Lipitor, here's your high blood pressure medicine." And I thought, "There's gotta be a better way," but I didn't get any of that exposure in medical school.
So I chose emergency medicine 'cause I loved everything, I just chose it mostly because I couldn't really pick what I liked the most, and about the ED you get to see a little bit of everything, and so I really enjoyed that aspect of it. So that is why I chose emergency medicine and went just to the residency at University of Missouri, Kansas City.
John: Got it. And then you were working as an emergency physician, how many different places did you end up working before finding out that things weren't just quite what you expected or wanted?
Dr. Clements: Sure. So after residency, I went to the Cleveland Clinic and worked there, and then for personal reasons, I left, went back home and worked a very short time in the community, but it wasn't very long. I was more interested in academic medicine, simply because of my love of learning and teaching, and felt like that was a better fit for me. So I went to Emory and I really enjoyed it there, actually it's a great place to work. I worked at Grady Hospital in downtown Atlanta, so it was definitely a learning experience and I learned a lot. But throughout that, and we'll probably get to this, I started to see things that really just I wanted to work on with medicine.
John: Did you have any exposure to people that were doing anything different? I don't know, direct primary care or prepaid or concierge medicine or anything like that?
Dr. Clements: Nothing, nothing. I was completely�okay, so my husband says I was institutionalized, right? So a lot of doctors think that this is the�my dad was this way, it's the only way to go, you've gotta be a hospital worker, working at a hospital, otherwise it's just�there's no other way to go. And what I've been learning through this process is luckily I have a husband who is in the business world, and he's like, "You are definitely institutionalized. There are so many opportunities out there, you just have to take the leap of faith."
John: So, yeah, I said, "You're not exposed to it, how are you going to know about it?" You know, so then some of us had to just take the bull by the horns and say, "There's gotta be something better out there," although even then, it's kinda, you flail around for a while. So was there something particular that triggered you to look and consider what you�
Dr. Clements: A little bit. I'd really actually enjoyed my job at Emory, but my husband lived in Savannah, so we actually did the distance thing for quite a long time. And I thought, there are no academic centers in Savannah. I really am�COVID hit, and I was, I finally realized I saw my last dead person. I just, it really does a number on you when you, you don't realize it in the moment, but for me it really did. I'm very sensitive and really care about my patients, and when people are just dying in front of you all the time, especially during COVID. And I thought, I told my husband I couldn't work in the setting anymore, so I had to really figure it out.
But in the meantime, I was doing some additional training in integrative medicine, as well as obesity medicine, and I did some separate training programs simply because when I worked in the ED I thought to myself, "Okay, we've got all of these patients that are coming in, take out the trauma patients, take out the infectious diseases, but we have all of these other patients coming in for their chronic heart failure or their chronic hypertension, and I'm thinking to myself. Okay, so we're just patching them up with medication, but isn't there another way? What is the common denominator?" And obesity is a significant common denominator. I have learned so much about the importance of weight management in your health and wellness, in preventing chronic diseases, and so I'm very passionate about that. Not to mention nutritional therapy now and physical activity and stress management, everything is just so important in our overall health and wellbeing.
John: Yeah, I remember patients like that. I was in family medicine. And the obese patient on a CPAP machine and going into respiratory failure, and it's the guy didn't, he couldn't lose a pound, and the guy that was diabetic didn't take care of himself, and every three months he'd come in and I'd be like, "Do we have to take that shoe off? I think so," and I knew what would happen, he'd have to be in the hospital. But people like that will show up in your ED all the time, so, oh, it just becomes, yeah, it just doesn't give you a good feeling.
Integrative medicine, as at least from an educational standpoint, how do you figure out wellness, nutrition, integrative medicine, functional medicine, there's, I think, two or three other versions?
Dr. Clements: That is really a great question. I can't really answer that question directly. I just, I would say googling, reading over time, realizing that this is really the way I want to go. Again, this wasn't really something that was widely known when I was in medical school. I probably would have picked it, right? But I can't, I don't want to take my emergency medicine training back though, because I've learned so much in the ED that has helped my patients now, right? So I wouldn't trade it for anything, but at the same time, I'm just grateful that a lot of these training programs are coming about and education for doctors and other healthcare professionals because it just is amazing how much what you eat, what you do is just way more important than I think anybody ever realized.
John: For sure. Yeah. And exercise, right? That's the other thing that people think they can do without, and which is ridiculous. But so then you're in, you're into this, you're actually doing some extra training. So at what point did you decide to kind of formalize what it was you were going to do, how you were going to do it, without skipping to the end here, but you're doing most of it virtual, if not all of it. And so how did that whole thing coalesce?
Dr. Clements: Okay, so it's, it's convoluted, right? There's no�I think that if I can give any piece of advice to the listeners, is don't expect a straight path like you did in medicine. There's no graduation point. There's no, if I do this, then I'm going to graduate and then finish with this, and it's not that way. It's one day at a time, one step at a time, and eventually those little steps add up to bigger steps like my weight loss patients, right? So it's not, there's no straight line, but what I would say is I did the education and really got a solid confidence in what I knew, I knew what I was doing.
And so by that time I graduated from the obesity, I got board certified in obesity medicine in 2021, I believe. That was way before the GLP-1 craze, which was just crazy to me that it just exploded. I got lucky there, a lot of ways.
John: Good planning, good planning.
Dr. Clements: I know, I didn't plan it, but yes. And then integrative medicine I did a little bit before then. I graduated in 2021 as well, but I didn't get board certified until 2023. The training program is great, Dr. Weil's program is great in Arizona, which is the one that I did. The only thing that you have to think about with that is you really have to subspecialize a little bit. There's not, unless you want to just get completely overwhelmed with all of these different things, and eventually over time you can learn and grow and develop new skills, but I really wanted to focus a little bit more into the obesity side of things, which is why I did the training after that or concurrently for a while there.
John: Yeah. That was integrative, is that for physicians only or is that multidisciplinary or what's that like?
Dr. Clements: I think it's multidisciplinary. I think they do nurse practitioners and I think like nurse anesthetists. I think they do advanced practitioners.
John: Did that serve as a bit of a source for any kind of mentors or anything in there that, or you could talk to people that were maybe already implementing? Or were they all pretty much still in the planning phase and getting the education?
Dr. Clements: I did, and they give you some really good business education as well. But I, to be honest with you, I was kind of overwhelmed and thought, I don't know what I'm doing. You just get so caught up with seeing patients and going home, seeing patients and going home and getting a paycheck, that you don't know what you don't know. And now looking back, I think I would have�yeah, I don't know, I think it's really truly about stumbling your way through, at least for me it was.
John: But at some point you came up with a plan and, 'cause I know what you're doing now and you're seeing clients, patients and taking care of people, so it's a separate business, I'm assuming everyone normally gets an LLC or does something to say, "Okay, this is a real thing." So how did, take us through those steps a little bit at a high level.
Dr. Clements: Sure. Luckily I had my husband to guide me a bit. He just barely touched anything that I did. I started my own LLC, that's the first step. It's really easy, you just file through the state that you want to start your business in. And then the cool thing is you can be an independent contractor. So there are so many companies out there that want to hire part time 1099s, and you can stay very busy and earn a very good income just doing part time jobs and run it through your business. And the cool thing is then you can have business tax implications or benefits. So there's a benefit to doing that, right?
So I started that and then really just did some research on companies looking to hire physicians as 1099s in obesity integrative. And I did some interviews, but then I finally found a company, a startup company that I worked with, and there were a few other companies I did some work with, but this one, we do a lot of GLP-1 and lifestyle therapy, a little more, they're developing a little bit more of a direct primary care model as well, but I work much fewer hours, work only during the day, no holidays, no weekends, no nights, and it's just, it's a really great experience. And then I also do contracting through other companies doing medical reviews, medical writing, editing. Most recently, got hired on as a medical director for a med spa. So there's just so many opportunities out there that doctors don't really know.
John: I can ask you about each of them. But I'll just clarify for the listeners, was this med spa a non-physician owned med spa, and you're the medical director so they can do certain things?
Dr. Clements: It is a whole other entity, yeah.
John: Okay, so that's common. There are, it's also common for physicians to open their own med spas, but that's a whole, that's another entity. And I know that LivingWellMD is your practice, right? Your virtual practice. And so are you doing, so you're doing the work for some of these 1099 just as Dr. Clements, is that that funnels through Living Well MD or is that more for your coaching and your preventive medicine that kind of thing?
Dr. Clements: It does. Everything funnels through my business. So everything that I do, whether it's coaching privately or if it's through the 1099s, it's all run through my business.
John: All right, no worries. Yeah, no, that's good, that's good. It protects you too. But I see that you say on your website that you're able to work in five states, which I think makes me think, okay, then you're working as a licensed physician. Okay, so which of the people that contact you, or the kind of people that you're working with, I'm sure those that maybe you're prescribing meds, of course, but is everyone under your license or not under? There's health consulting or coaching that could be separate from that.
Dr. Clements: Yeah, yeah. So I also have, I'm board certified as a health coach, so I did that program as well. This is always when I was stumbling around and I didn't know what I want to do, and doctors always feel like, "I don't know if all doctors are this way, but I always felt like I need to get more education in order to be, you know..."
John: It's kinda how we're built.
Dr. Clements: It's just how we're built. So I did that, and I really enjoyed it. So I work as a certified health coach, which really, for the people that don't know, it's through our behavior change. So it's helping people stop smoking or they stop drinking six cokes a day or things that they don't even realize they're doing that's causing weight gain and poor health. You work on that and it's really using me as an accountability partner to help their behavior change, yeah.
John: So now that's something you could do as a coach and you wouldn't necessarily need a medical license to do that. No, you don't. But then in any given week, you might then the next day or the next hour work with someone who you're prescribing something for, is there, how that works?
Dr. Clements: Sure, absolutely, yeah.
John: Now, do you have to have a medical record, a typical medical record?
Dr. Clements: Yeah, and there's, the cool thing is there are just so many different options out there now, a lot of different tech companies doing EMRs and relatively low overhead, so if you're doing anything remotely, one of the reasons I didn't want a primary office is just the cost of real estate and rent. I didn't want to rent anything if I was going to do something, I was going to buy something, but in our area there's really nothing to buy unless you want to buy a big warehouse, right? So it's, and really, I enjoy, I think that when you really start to think about making a career change, really think about not just what you're passionate about, but how you work really well. And to be honest with you, even after working in the ED I just realized how much better I work alone, by myself versus with tons of other people around me, and everybody has their own little thing. Everyone's got their own preference, but for me, it was more of a quiet environment where I thrive.
John: So if you're treating some patients as a physician, then you have to have malpractice insurance, I'm sure.
Dr. Clements: Yeah, you do.
John: Okay. Anything else people need to think about that maybe they don't think of on first blush.
Dr. Clements: Oh gosh, taxes. Really work with a good tax professional because I have just, my husband, in all honesty, he's in the finance world, and he just shakes his head, he's, I can't believe you don't�it's just keeping everything documented, keep everything that you have, and you don't really, you don't need to get a massive education like I did necessarily. I was just very insecure and wanted to make sure I had all my ducks in a row. But if you're a doctor, just remember that you're smart, you're smarter than 99.9 percent of people, and you can do this. It just, it takes some creativity, and that's one thing that we don't�doctors, just be creative, and that's what's so fun about it, that's what keeps you alive and joyful. And if you get stuck in a rut, I think that's what really contributes to burnout, it's just you're focusing constantly on the negative aspects when there are so many opportunities out there. And like, I love what I do, I love my patients, I love working with them, I love that they're happy all the time, it just, it's really great.
John: That's very inspirational, really. That's part of the reason I do the podcast is to hear stories like this. But I can get real picky too, like I'm looking on your website, so one of the things that's on there, of course, weight loss and so forth, and then hormone therapy. So I'm just, okay, I'm a, if I'm a patient, what kind of hormone therapy can I get from you?
Dr. Clements: Yeah, it's funny. So I'm mostly right now just focused on menopausal women, right? So I'm a big believer that your hormones, not just your hormones itself, but just how you eat and what you do, again, going back to that, I didn't appreciate until I got into this how much that impacts your hormones, how much it impacts your neurotransmitters and your brain function. And so seeing women kind of transition from really frustrating symptoms to no symptoms at all is just quite fascinating. So that's what I focus on now, so I should probably clarify that on my website, right? But yeah.
John: All our websites are like dated like a week after we put them up, but pretty much, pretty much. Let's see now, of the experiences you had with the integrative and the other certifications and so forth, which one of those would you say in general, for a physician, would be maybe the first one to look at to really try and get a good sense, like especially if they want to be more like a health coach, was that pretty useful?
Dr. Clements: Yeah, it was. So I did the Duke Health Coaching program, and the cool thing is a lot of these are mostly remote, so it's a lot of online lectures, online training. We did a lot of online group training, so you could work with a peer where you would just coach back and forth, things like that. So that was really helpful when you're working. When I was able to do this all as I was working. And then if you really want more of the medical aspect, like I learned so much about supplements and functional medicine, really determining the root cause of the problem. It's the integrative medicine training program, and then obesity medicine just wraps it all together because so many things go back to obesity. It's a lot of different cancers and high blood pressure, diabetes, it all loops in together.
John: The other thing that we�you haven't mentioned specifically, but it's, I guess, a given, but of course, you're not really billing Medicare or insurance plans at this point. To me, that's ninety percent of the problem in medicine is having to deal with that and have to build your own group just to be able to get paid thirty dollars.
Dr. Clements: It is, yeah. So I did work with an attorney, and he was very good and helpful. You can get some things online, you can use AI to get some tools, but actually what's really helpful to have an attorney on my side to just bounce questions off of, to really get paperwork set up, to know that there's specific nuances to Medicare either having to opt out or not taking it at all. There's little things that you have to know in order to not purposely break the law, right? Because none of us want to�the lies, 'cause sometimes you just don't know what you don't know.
John: The other thing I was interested in is because I saw it, I think on your LinkedIn, is that, and you mentioned it earlier, medical writing. And I guess it's, you were doing different things, right, to fill in and that, but you seem to be�I don't know, it seemed to show up in several places. Like you enjoy that. Tell us, if you have a minute, tell us about that, how that fits in, and why you like it.
Dr. Clements: Yeah. I think it goes back to somewhat of the learning, right? So whenever I write a paper, I feel like I'm an expert on it. I've done the research, I know it. I've always was never quite interested in primary research, but I love going back into the literature and helping people understand and to help patients, as well as other doctors, but just really helping the people understand the most recent literature, and so it's my fun little side job that I enjoy doing. It's relaxing, I like it. And believe it or not, even with AI, it's terrible at medical writing. I find errors all the time. And so if you think that it's just going to go straight to AI now, it hasn't yet. It's certainly humans still write much better for medical writing than AI does.
John: And does most of your writing end up being for patients, for clients, for humans? You know, not other physicians, it's not CME, it's not education except for education of people, okay?
Dr. Clements: Yeah, mostly patients, that's what I really actually enjoy the most, I think now. And it's okay, one of the things I would tell other doctors is, it's okay to change your mind, it's okay to shift your focus at times because you're going to learn something through the process of finding out something you thought you might like versus, "Wow, I actually really like this." So it's okay to change your mind sometimes.
John: Yeah, sometimes you just have I don't really like that so much, it's not worth the time or it's not something that I really, I've always wanted to do or I'm good at, so okay, I'll switch to something else. Makes great sense. Yeah. Alright, we're going to probably run out of time here in a minute, but let's see. Before I get off the medical writing, how do you find who you're going to write for? Just as a question.
Dr. Clements: Oh, that's a great question. So there's a society called the American Medical Writers Association. You can put a profile up there and be cautious, because sometimes people like, if you see a weird email, questionable email, you might not want to do that because sometimes there's people trying to scam you. But there are legitimate places that do look for medical writing. They also have a conference that I went to to meet all of these different companies and learn more about it. There's different types of medical writing, but there's patient writing, there's pharmaceutical companies looking for regulatory writers, just so many different opportunities.
John: That's good, that's a good bit of advice. I think, yeah, I'll put that in the show notes as a reminder. Anything else you want to tell us about? We can go back and say, "If you're like miserable in your practice and you're just getting burned out or for whatever, not what you thought it was, and I don't know, just maybe the early steps they can take to maybe make a change in their career or their jobs and any words of encouragement."
Dr. Clements: Yeah, I would say just find what you're really passionate about. If you're passionate about what you do now, great, then think about maybe some other ways you could apply it, whether it's consulting, whether it's legal�there's also the legal avenue to be an expert witness or something like that, whether it's telehealth, that's really like something I just love. Whatever it is, just kinda do your research, and that's the great thing about Google and AI is that things just pop up all the time, and it's amazing what's out there. Just find that interest, and then if you need to get additional education, then research that, which is what I did, while you're continuing to work and save some money so when you make that leap, you're not quite overwhelmed with any financial burdens as well.
John: That's a, that's good advice too, but, and you definitely can say that it is possible to switch to some form of virtual�it could be medicine, coaching, something like medicine, and not have to worry about insurance and just focus on your client patients or whatever and enjoy medicine again.
Dr. Clements: Yeah, and that's the thing, I really feel like now I'm able to connect with my patients better, I'm able to help my patients better than I ever was in the hospital, and I really think that this is the future of medicine, not just telehealth, but also just preventative care, because people aren't getting that education, and you as the doctor are the educator, you're the teacher, and so even to reach those patients via telehealth is just so incredibly valuable to these patients, they're so grateful, and they're making so many great strides with improving their health. Just by that. So, I do what I do.
John: That's awesome. Do you mind if we go to your website and check it out just to see what you're doing? I'll put that in the show notes for people that want to see what that looks like. It's very nice. I, it's very well laid out and it's clear on what you do.
Dr. Clements: It's a work in progress, I will say that. It's a work in progress, like all websites.
John: Yeah, exactly. Okay, we'll have to go every three months we're going to check it out. And do something on your own online like you're doing. It could, it's, you've made it, obviously, other people have done it, and we're all smart people, we should be able to figure that out with a little time.
Dr. Clements: Absolutely, one step at a time.
John: Thanks for the encouragement, and I guess with that, I'll say goodbye for now.
I found today's interview to be interesting and quite inspirational. Jennifer made a big pivot from treating patients in medical crisis to promoting wellness, preventive medicine, and health coaching five years ago. If you want to download a transcript of our interview and access all the links mentioned today, plus links to related episodes, go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/promoting-health.
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