Update 10/2021

As an update to the community, we wish to present a few points.

Firstly, psychiatric services and demands at this practice have seen a surge over the past 1 year, and as a result the practice is adjusting to this demand by providing increasingly more comprehensive psychiatric services and treatment.

Based off patient testimony, this seems to be closely related to COVID Report Related Stress, Social Media Related Stress, financial and occupational stress, and the interplay thereof.

The Mental Health Services offered in Bradenton are excellent, and have served the community well. At the same time, the amount of mental illness by way of Major Depression, Alcoholism, Anxiety, Drug Addiction (prescribed and/or illicit), PTSD, Mood Disorders, Psychosis, Human Trafficking in the local community, are extensive.

When patients are referred to local psyche treatment centers, delays in care, systems based, not an individual personnel one, are common. This is mainly based off a prolific shortage of Physicians, by the way. As a result, patients are finding themselves using the ER and/or hospital as their source for primary care. Others still find themselves suffering without any access to treatment at all.

In an attempt to mitigate this trend and stream line delivery of this highly demanded specialized healthcare, the practice is well equipped, and routinely commences antipsychotic treatment when indicated, and subsequent follow up. Psychiatric Therapy at this office is comprehensive and includes pharmacy and/or psychotherapy. This is what we are seeing over the past 1 year, not COVID so much.

On that, vaccines are becoming a common topic of discussion in patient encounters. There does not appear to be any evidence based rationale for the majority of patients in their decision making, most patients simply voice their already decided opinion on the matter. Some want it, some don’t and we support them either way.

In other news, Medical Cannabis has become increasingly popular over the past several months, and we feel privileged to be part of this movement. Patients with us have been referring new patients to us, and we are humbled by this. More and more patients are looking for a natural stress reliever, and are giving us overwhelmingly positive feedback that it helps, and the Florida program is quite good, the quality of the product is superb.

On an operational front, we are receiving a surge in the volume of patients expressing discontent with large corporate practices. New patients are relating their story to us of changing doctors due to poor performance on the front end office, not their physician per se. Things like patient phone calls not being returned, medications not being refilled, the health care provider changing on the patient frequently, long wait times in the office, the doctor not spending enough time with the patient, etc. Many are heart broken over this and we are happy to receive these patients, to reduce barriers and provide accessibility to the highest quality primary care in the area. Most of those issues occur when the operation has more personnel than it really needs.

At ECIM the phone call is live answer always, the staff is 4, there is only one physician you will see. Patients are requesting this type of format and ECIM is well equipped to meet this demand. We practice evidence based medicine, thank you for reading.

Thank you.

Dr. K