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About Islon Woolf MD
I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and grew up in Toronto, Canada. I began my undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto in Biology and Physics, and in 1989, gained early acceptance to their highly ranked medical school.
After graduation in 1993, 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 where I helped build their new Florida training program. I am board certified in Internal Medicine and a Fellow of the American College of Physicians (FACP).
In 1997, I settled down in Miami Beach to begin practice, and shortly afterwards, in 2002, became one of the first concierge doctors in the city. My practice focuses on helping patients make good medical decisions by applying the tools of critical thinking.
Concierge Medicine
Due to the constraints of insurance, the typical doctor spends fewer than fifteen minutes per patient. This is particularly problematic in primary care and internal medicine where we must oversee the entirety of your health. Tasks like coordinating care, promoting prevention, and solving complex medical problems demand far more than fifteen minutes. Because of this, most of us act like an urgent care, providing only temporary fixes and only scratching the surface.
For those wanting more time with their doctor and willing to invest more into their health, Concierge Medicine is an effective solution. Essentially, all Concierge practices operate under the same principle: the patients subsidize the practice allowing the doctor to carry a lighter patient load. My practice, for example, is capped at three hundred patients, and I see fewer than three patients per day.
This extra time leads to several benefits.
5
Benefits of
Concierge Medicine
Caring
1
Because my practice is small I have the opportunity to connect with every one of my patients. No problem is too big and no problem is too small.
Access
2
Access to healthcare means timely visits. It means seamless communications with me and my staff, and my network of specialists that I built over 25 years. Better access leads to early intervention, fewer errors, and better outcomes.
Continuity of Care
3
The healthcare system is fragmented and impersonal. Your health is complex and dynamic. You need a consistent point person to coordinate, document, and ensure follow-through. This is continuity of care, and a major determinant of good health outcomes.
Efficiency
4
Primary care doctors are incentivized to get you in the office, but hand off your problems to a specialist. I am incentivized to solve your problems - whether in the office, outside the office, after hours, or on our devices.
Accuracy
5
Overworked doctors with limited time and outdated medical knowledge are prone to errors. With fewer patients, I can not only devote more time to your case, but continually update my knowledge between cases.
Critical Thinking in medicine
While the core concept of Concierge Medicine - to spend more time with fewer patients - is necessary for good healthcare, it's by no means sufficient. The way each practice utilizes its extra time is highly dependent on its philosophy. In fact, Concierge Medicine acts as an amplifier of that philosophy. This has lead to the emergence of many practice models within Concierge Medicine - all with vastly different adherence to good medical science. It is therefore critical and incumbent on you to determine the philosophy of the practice you intend to join.
For instance, some Concierge practices claim to be able to make you live better or live longer with an array of innovative laboratory tests, scans, drugs, supplements, IV infusions, and lifestyle recommendations. However, upon closer inspection, one quickly becomes aware that each of these practices follows a different protocol. Literally thousands of different (and often antithetical) ideas about what makes you healthy.
This begs the following questions: why so many claims, and how can you determine which, if any, are correct? This is Critical Thinking in medicine and the central philosophy of my practice: to question medical claims and learn how to evaluate them for yourself.
There are six 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 whose interests may not align with their own. As a result, good healthcare is not about more healthcare, it's about learning how to evaluate healthcare for yourself.
Evaluation of claims
2
Although healthcare is a very technical field, by taking a bird's-eye view and considering our past performance, patients can learn how to evaluate almost any claim.
Comprehensive
3
There are many treatment options outside of pharmaceuticals and surgery. There are many philosophies of practice outside of science-based medicine. You need to know all of your options in order to make informed decisons.
Shared Decision-Making
4
Most decisions in healthcare are not black or white. A treatment appropriate for one patient may not be appropriate for another. The best medical decisions are made when you and I collaborate and incorporate your values, preferences, and circumstances.
Addressing bias
5
Bias is unavoidable in healthcare: practitioners carry financial conflicts of interest, specialists favor their own specialty, the media wants more clicks, and patients just want to feel better. My practice aims to reduce bias within, and helps you identify bias in yourself and others.
Lifelong learning
6
For the critical thinker, medical school marks only the beginning. Lifelong learning teaches us that knowledge is incomplete, becomes quickly outdated, and is frequently refuted. It cultivates the critical thinker's most valuable asset: intellectual humility.
Critical Thinking in Medicine
Blog
There are thousands of claims in healthcare. Most are untrue. Your inability to assess these claims for yourself renders you vulnerable. By applying the principles of Critical Thinking, this blog aims to help you evaluate healthcare claims for yourself.
The process is simple. A claim is only as good as the evidence that supports it. So the first step is to gather the evidence and evaluate it for accuracy, relevance, and bias. The next step is to give the claim and its evidence context by finding similar claims with similar evidence from the past, and see how they performed. With this, you can determine how likely the claim is true.
Find our most recent posts and a sign-up form below. Also, don't hesitate to explore Dr Woolf's lectures on YouTube.
