786 471 8955 (Call or Text)
786 524 8204 (Fax)
Islon Woolf MD
About
Philosophy
I am an internist who believes that medicine is an intellectual discipline, not a product to be sold. My practice is designed to help patients filter through the noise in healthcare, separating what is true from what we hope is true.
Training
I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and grew up in Toronto, Canada. My training began at the University of Toronto, where I pursued an undergraduate degree in Biology and Physics, and in 1989, gained an early acceptance to their highly ranked medical school.
Post-Grad Training
I moved to the United States to complete my training. This included an Internal Medicine internship at the University of Southern California, an Internal Medicine Residency at the Mayo Clinic, and a Chief Residency at the Cleveland Clinic. I am board certified in Internal Medicine and a Fellow of the American College of Physicians (FACP).
25 years of Concierge Medicine Experience
I began practice in 1997, and quickly discovered that I had a passion for working closely with patients and showing them how to apply critical thinking to their health. To free up the time necessary for this style of practice, in 2002, I became one of the first concierge doctors in the city.
Concierge Medicine
About
The 15-Minute Appointment
Due to the constraints of insurance, the average appointment with your doctor lasts fewer than fifteen minutes. This is particularly problematic in primary care where we must oversee the entirety of your health. Tasks like coordinating care, promoting prevention, and solving complex medical problems demand far more time.
Fewer Patients, More Time
Concierge medicine offers an effective solution for those willing to invest more into their health. All concierge practices operate under this same principle: patients pay a fee so the doctor sees fewer patients. My practice, for example, is capped at three hundred patients, and I see fewer than three patients per day.
5 Ways
More Time Leads To Better Outcomes
5
Concierge Medicine and
Better Outcomes
Access
1
Access to healthcare means timely visits and seamless communications with me, my team, and the network of specialists I've built over the last 25 years. Improved access leads to early intervention, fewer errors, and better outcomes.
Decision-readiness
2
Although decision-making is the cornerstone of healthcare, healthcare professionals are plagued with 'decision fatigue' and 'burnout'. With fewer than three patients per day, our practice is shielded from this. We are always decision-ready.
Continuity of Care
3
Your health is complex and dynamic. Healthcare systems are fragmented and impersonal. You need a stable, well-established practice to coordinate, document, and ensure follow-through. This is continuity of care, and a major determinant of good outcomes.
Efficiency
4
Most primary care doctors create inefficiencies by requiring office visits, and then limited by time, referring you to specialists. My mandate, conversely, is to solve your problems. Regardless of time, location, or how we communicate.
Accuracy
5
Accuracy in diagnosis and treatment depends on thoroughly learning your case and then applying the latest medical research. Due to the rapid pace of medical research, it must be reviewed for every important decision. My team and I have the time for all of these tasks.
3
Critical Thinking in medicine
About
Concierge Medicine is an Amplifier
While concierge medicine - having a doctor with more time - is necessary for good healthcare, it's by no means sufficient. Time is simply an amplifier. If a doctor’s philosophy is flawed, more time just gives more room to carry out bad ideas. Before joining a practice, you should determine the doctor's philosophy.
Incentivized to Lower Evidence Standards
Unfortunately, doctors have a powerful incentive to lower their evidence standards. By accepting anecdotes or animal studies as proof, they can make 'wellness', 'longevity', and even 'miracle cure' claims. This not only builds a following for them, it creates a platform to 'upsell' tests, supplements, and procedures.
The Dilemma of Low Evidence Standards
A serious problem occurs when evidence standards are lowered: Weak evidence can be found for any claim; as such, any claim can be made to look true. The result is total confusion. Thousands of claims about what makes you healthy. No two doctors making the same set of claims. And claims that just flatly contradict one another - one doctor calls meat a superfood, while another calls it a toxin.
Filtering the Noise
This multitude of contradictory claims begs the question: How do you determine which of these claims, if any, are actually true? This is Critical Thinking in medicine. It is the central philosophy of my practice: to help you filter the noise, question the evidence, and empower you to evaluate medical claims for yourself.
6 Key Principles of
Critical Thinking in Medicine
6
Principles of
Critical Thinking in Medicine
Patient empowerment
1
Patients are unable to assess healthcare for themselves and left to trust experts. Unfortunately, experts are prone to bias and harbor conflicts of interest. As a result, good healthcare is not about MORE healthcare, it's about learning how to evaluate healthcare for yourself.
Evaluation of claims
2
Evaluating a medical claim is not as difficult as it seems. It can be simplified into a process of putting the evidence behind a claim into different categories of reliability. Once you learn the process, it can be applied to any claim.
Addressing bias
3
Bias when evaluating claims is unavoidable. Practitioners carry conflicts of interest, specialists favor their own specialty, the media wants more clicks, and patients just want to feel better. My practice is engineered to avoid bias and teach you how to value the process, not the outcome.
Comprehensive analysis
4
There are many treatment options outside of pharmaceuticals and surgery. There are many philosophies of practice outside of science-based medicine. You need to learn all of your options in order to make informed decisions.
Shared decision-making
5
Most decisions in healthcare are not black or white: the evidence is weak, each patient responds differently, and each patient has a different tolerance for risk. The best medical decisions are made when you and I work together to incorporate these uncertainties and your values and preferences.
Lifelong learning
6
For the critical thinker, medical school marks only the beginning. A lifelong of learning teaches us that knowledge is incomplete, becomes quickly outdated, and frequently refuted. It cultivates the critical thinker's most valuable asset: intellectual humility.
Critical Thinking in Medicine
Blog
Patients are Vulnerable to False Claims
Healthcare is filled with thousands of claims, most of which are untrue. Unfortunately, the technical complexity of medicine leads many patients to believe they are incapable of evaluating this information for themselves. This leaves them reliant on others - who are often biased - to judge the quality of healthcare for them. This reliance makes patients vulnerable.
Evaluating Claims for Yourself
Fortunately, evaluating a medical claim is not as difficult as it seems. In reality, it can be simplified into a process that can be applied to any claim. Our blog aims to teach you this process so you can move past biased advice and evaluate claims for yourself.
The Process
-
A claim is only as strong as the evidence supporting it.
-
All medical evidence falls into a few distinct categories.
-
These categories can be ranked into a hierarchy of reliability.
-
Some fool us more than others.
-
To evaluate a claim, simply identify its supporting evidence and where it sits on the hierarchy.
Evidence that supports every claim supports no claim
The categories of evidence near the bottom are not only unreliable, but since they are cheap and easy to produce, they can be used to support any claim. One can find anecdotal evidence, for example, to support any claim. This is why the hierarchy is pyramid shaped - wide at the bottom. However, evidence that supports every claim supports no claim.
Value the Process, Not the Outcome
Suppose we want 'Treatment X' to work, but the only evidence to be found sits at the bottom of the hierarchy - an animal experiment or an anecdote from a friend. The process informs us "Treatment X" probably does not work. If countless treatments with similarly low-level evidence don't work, why would we make an exception for this one? We must learn to value the process over our desired outcome.
Find Our Most Recent Posts And a Sign-up Form
Below
