Always At Your Service

A survey conducted in 2022 by the highly respected physician search firm Merritt Hawkins showed that in 15 of the largest US markets, patients had to wait an average of 26 days for their first appointment with a new primary care provider.

And, of course, that visit didn’t last very long. With too many patients to see and too little time to see them, primary care physicians spend an average of about 15 minutes with patients.

That’s not good for the patient, and it’s becoming a growing point of frustration and concern for doctors, which is why Nikolaos Kanellopoulos, MD, of Island Family Health in Merritt Island, is offering a concierge medicine model.

Also known as a personalized membership program, concierge medicine allows for prompt appointments, expanded one-on-one time with the doctor, virtual visits and more, all for a monthly fee.

Many physicians, including Dr. Kanellopoulos, liken concierge medicine to a gym membership that offers clients an opportunity to work out any time they want.

“From the physician’s standpoint, this model offers us more time to take care of our patients,” Dr. Kanellopoulos says. “And with more time, we can be more proactive with our patients instead of always reacting to whatever the patient presents with.

“That’s very important because the opportunity to address issues that may develop down the road can help prevent several issues, including emergency room visits and hospitalizations. It’s just a better quality of care.”

Dr. Kanellopoulos made the decision to offer the concierge medicine model to his patients this past spring. His desire to learn more about his patients’ needs was at the core of his decision.

“The best way for me to treat my patients effectively is to get to know exactly who they are and what problems they have,” he says. “The old model allowed very little time for that, in part because I had to devote a lot of my time to administrative work.

“With this model, I’m able to be a doctor again, and I’ve found that I am indeed spending more one-on-one time with my patients. And for some patients, especially my elderly patients and those with complex issues, that makes a big difference in their life.”

A Proactive Approach

Membership in the Island Family Health concierge program includes a proactive health assessment that goes beyond the typical physical examination that a patient typically receives every year because it includes discussions regarding diet, stress and sleep habits.

“The assessment also covers a lot of the bases in what we call lifestyle medicine, which includes weight management, well-being, exercise and fitness,” says Dr. Kanellopoulos, who lists medical weight loss and treatment of obesity among his specialties.

“Obesity has become a pandemic, not just in our country but around the world, and a lot of chronic medical conditions such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, sleep apnea and acid reflux disease stem from that,” the doctor notes.

“The best way to treat those problems is to better manage the obesity. That typically requires several lifestyle changes, so it completely revamps the patient’s care because you go straight to the source of the problem instead of just treating reactively.”

One of the programs for obesity offered by Island Family Health is called the hCG Diet. According to Dr. Kanellopoulos, it is a medically supervised, very low-calorie diet that works great for motivated patients.

The hCG Diet requires a daily injection of human chorionic gonadotropin, a hormone that helps suppress the appetite when received in low doses. There are two hCG Diet programs, one for patients seeking to lose 20 pounds or more that lasts six weeks and another for those who want to lose less than 20 pounds that lasts three weeks.

“Another program we offer that has really taken off of late is the Wegovy® or semaglutide diet,” Dr. Kanellopoulos notes. “That one uses a medication called semaglutide that was first approved for use by diabetics.

“The more this medication was studied, the more it was learned that patients using it were losing weight. Since then, semaglutide has been approved by the FDA for obesity so you don’t have to be a diabetic to use that medication anymore.”

The semaglutide diet requires a weekly injection of semaglutide. The medication activates a receptor in the brain that slows the digestive process and makes the patient feel full quicker while eating. It also stabilizes blood sugar, which reduces the participant’s cravings for sweets.

But Wait, There’s More

In addition, Island Family Health has long offered treatments for issues such as urinary incontinence, and it will continue to do so under the concierge model.

The practice will also continue to offer several leading-edge medical aesthetic and body contouring services.

Some of those treatments are combined in packages, including one with three of Island Family Health’s most popular aesthetic and contouring devices from BTL: Emsculpt NEO®, Emsella® chair and Emface®.

Ideally suited for people with a body mass index (BMI) less than 35, Emsculpt NEO is a nonsurgical body contouring treatment that eliminates stubborn fat and tones and strengthens muscle in the abdomen, buttocks, arms, calves and thighs.

Emsculpt NEO treatments are delivered through an applicator that emits rapid pulses of high-intensity electromagnetic and radiofrequency energy that heats the fat cells until they die or melt away. The lipids inside the fat are later released into the lymphatic system and excreted.

As the fat cells are treated, muscles in the targeted area are also heated, and a device on the applicator delivers the equivalent of thousands of contractions to those muscles in a matter minutes. The contractions tone and strengthen the muscles.

The Emsella chair treats urinary incontinence, which is an involuntary loss of urine typically caused by a weakening of the bladder or sphincter muscles in women who are pregnant, have had children or are going through menopause.

As its name suggests, the Emsella chair is just that, a chair that patients sit on comfortably while fully clothed. The chair emits pulses of electromagnetic energy that contract and stimulate the muscles in the pelvic floor.

The Emface targets the forehead and three muscles under the zygomatic cheekbone; it uses radiofrequency and high-intensity focused electric stimulation (HIFES) to tone those muscles and lift the face.

The stimulation selectively tones the gravity-defying muscles of the face and is combined with radiofrequency to increase collagen and elastin to soften wrinkles.

Island Family Health recently added several other services, including BTL Emtone® for the treatment of cellulite, BTL Exilis® for skin tightening and facials using the Obagi® Skintrinsiq™ device.

Skintrinsiq uses blue and red light therapy to clean, clarify and brighten the skin through the use of a unique device that extracts debris and impurities from the skin, then infuses and locks in Obagi’s proven skin care products.