We are an out-of-network provider for most insurance companies. In the case of Blue Cross and Blue Shield we are a usual-and-customary provider. Depending upon your insurance and the coverage it provides, we estimate your portion and that portion is expected at the time of service. We will bill your insurance company or provide you with a completed insurance claim form called HCFA-1500 that you can submit to your insurance company. Many (but by no means all) health insurance plans provide some degree of coverage for "out-of-plan" medical care. Our staff will be glad to call your insurance company to determine benefits.

The fee for initial visit is approximately $195. It includes initial history, a physical examination, and review of medical records if any, and based upon this data determining probable causes for your problems. There are additional fees for laboratory and other testing and treatment that are done. These can vary greatly. All fees will be explained and reviewed with you prior to doing any testing or treatment. After your insurance benefits are verified, the office staff determines what your estimated portion is. This portion is payable at time of service. After your insurance company has made actual payments we will bill you for the remaining balance if any. If your insurance company has not paid in 60 (sixty) days from the date of submission then it becomes your responsibility and is payable then.

Yes, we are accepting new patients. A routine appointment is scheduled within one week or sooner depending upon the severity of your condition. If you are sick and need urgent care, we will try to accommodate you the same day if you call us early enough during the day. We will take care of your urgent needs the same day and then see you for a more comprehensive visit at a later date-usually within a few days.

First office visit generally takes two to three hours. For follow up visits plan to be in the office for one hour. If you will be allergy tested allow 1-2 hours. For allergy injections you should allow 30 minutes and for intravenous treatments depending upon the nature of treatment plan to be in the office 1-3 hours. To save you time for follow up visits and allow you to think through your problems you can download the form called "Progress Report" from our website that can be found under "Current Patients" button on our home page. We do encourage you to download and complete the form; you may then email it or fax (314-921-8273) to us for review.

A comprehensive medical history is the cornerstone for making an accurate diagnosis and prescribing an appropriate treatment plan. After you have made an appointment, you will either be mailed an initial comprehensive history form along with other necessary papers or for immediate retrieval you will be directed to our web site to download those papers. Please read them and fill out the history and Patient Information form. Bring all these papers, and all the medicines and nutritional supplements you are taking. Preferably bring in the actual bottles. In addition bring any other medical records that you may have.

Dr Sultan prefers to review your medical history prior to your visit. If at all possible please email or mail back the history. Otherwise you can bring the history with you.

We accept patients of all ages-infants, children, adolescents and adults. Regardless of the age, we are here to find the cause of the illness and provide the answers to better health.

Our office hours are:

Monday.............9am-5pm
Tuesday............9am-5pm
Wednesday........9am-5pm
Thursday...........11am-7pm
Friday...............Closed
Saturday............8am-4pm

For payments we accept personal checks, cash, MasterCard, Visa, Discover, American Express, and Diner's card.

For intravenous (IV) treatments that last 1-hour or more, bring in something to eat and drink. You may also bring in reading or work material or a movie, etc. We do have a TV and VCR in the IV treatment room.

Please call us during normal office hours at (314) 921 5600 and our staff will be glad to make an appointment for you or change an existing appointment. If you call us after office hours, please leave a detailed message with your name, day time telephone #, cell phone and purpose of the call and on the next business day our office will call you as early in the morning as possible to set up an appointment or cancel or reschedule an existing appointment. For appointment cancellations or rescheduling an existing appointment, please give us at least 48 hours notice in advance so that we may accommodate others that may have been waiting to see us.

It depends upon the nature of a problem. If it is an emergency, please call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room. If it is an illness that can be handled in an office setting like a headache, fever, a cough or a cold or wheezing attack or a simple injury etc, we recommend that you call us during our normal office hours as early during the day as possible and we will make every attempt to see you the same day even if it means we have to stay a little bit longer beyond our normal office hours.

Yes, we do provide primary care for our patients and their family members. Patients soon realize that treating the cause instead of the symptoms of an illness is the best route in the long run.  This makes perfect sense because if other family members are not sick enough, simple measures can prevent more serious illness.  Our patients realize that most of their sickness and often years of sufferings could have been prevented to a great degree if the underlying causes had been sought earlier.  Another way to look at your symptoms is that these are warning signals! Warning signal of what? That more serious illness is to follow if you do not to do something definite about the underlying causes. This is exactly how they had gotten sick in the first place. They are clairvoyant now and understand the difference it can make treating causes instead of symptoms.

For a true emergency it is always best to call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room. For other concerns call our office during business hours. If there is anything urgent (non-emergency) that requires earlier attention, please call the exchange at (314) 865-6106 and doctor will promptly return your call. After office hours, please do not call for medicine refills, as we do not have access to your medical records. For non-urgent things like appointment changes, etc., please leave message on our answering machine with your daytime telephone and cell phone number. At the next business day our office staff will promptly call you back. If you are sick and want to be seen the same day, please call us as early during the day as possible and we will do our best to accommodate you on the same day. Our general policy is that sick patients will be seen the same day regardless of how busy we are. We are never too busy for situations like this.

Please ask your pharmacy to fax us the request for medicine refills during normal business hours at least one week prior to running out. Your pharmacy can fax us the request at (314) 921 8273. We cannot guarantee last minute refills. For safety and as well as accuracy we do not refill prescriptions after office hours. Please note that each prescription needs to be evaluated by our clinical staff. If necessary, the physician may require an office visit to evaluate the appropriateness of a refill request.

Yes. We have an upper and a lower level. Both levels are handicapped accessible. Patients needing testing and treatment the same day can be brought into the office through lower level and all their needs can be taken care there.

Certainly we do and we do welcome them. No insurance patients are lucky in the sense that there is no insurance company to interfere with what treatment they should or should not get. In order to cut down on healthcare costs we have a special program called "SimplecareŽ". Since we neither need to bill insurance company nor patients, you can get a 20% discount for payments made at the time of service.

You know how expensive the drugs are, trips to the emergency room, and hospitalization is these days. If you don’t have insurance you should be seriously interested in learning our philosophy of treatment. Instead of prescribing drugs we emphasize upon treating the causes as to greatly curtail the need for drugs, emergency room visits and hospitalizations.  To get thoroughly familiarized with our philosophy, please refer to question #s 22 to 25 in this section. We sincerely want you to get well and stay well.

Certainly we do and we welcome them. HMO patients are lucky like no insurance patients in the sense that if they go out-of-network their insurance company cannot dictate what treatment they should or should not get. In order to cut down on healthcare costs we have a special program called "SimplecareŽ". Since we neither need to bill insurance company nor patients, you can get a 20% discount for payments made at the time of service.

We get sick from time to time for various reasons like flu or a respiratory or a urinary infection. We all know that microbes (bugs) in our environment cause these problems. There is no doubt about the role of microbes causing ailments that can be both acute (sudden) in onset and chronic (slowly developing over a period of time) in nature. However a different aspect of environment, non-microbial factors triggering illness especially the chronic illness has not been as widely appreciated as yet as it should have been. Environmental Medicine deals with diagnosing and treating illnesses resulting directly or indirectly from these non-microbial triggers (substances) in our total environment. These include substances we inhale like dust, molds, pollens, animal dander, foods we consume including additives, preservatives, food coloring dyes, and chemicals in our air, food and water supplies. Environmental Medicine recognizes that overwhelming majority of chronic illness results from environmental factors and as well as from nutritional, dietary and hormonal factors. All these factors work together. This is especially true when other causes for chronic illness have been excluded. For example if you have severe migraine headaches and your physician has ruled out anemia, or brain tumor or other metabolic or structural causes for your headaches, then these are most likely being triggered by environmental or related causes.

 

To learn how Environmental Medicine is helping people including those who had tried everything Medicine had to offer thus far and failed, read these Success Stories.

Here are two Tack Laws to ponder:

1. If you are sitting on a tack, it takes a lot of psychotherapy to make it feel good. Isn't it better to take the tack out instead of putting a band-aid over it?

2. If you are sitting on two tacks, removing one does not necessarily result in 50% improvement.

The moral is: you have to find all the triggers and treat them in order to get a lasting relief! That is the gist of Environmental Medicine. So always the key question is: "What is triggering your symptoms?" and this is what a physician in Environmental Medicine has to offer above and beyond routine medical evaluations, testing and treatment that you are accustomed to. Finding the cause and treating the cause can mean a difference between misery and sufferings versus health, happiness and optimal wellness.

How we are different is the most important question a person could ask because it will determine how his or her health is going to be in the future. Depending upon the path taken it will determine whether you will be healthy and robust or more sickness and more un-wellness lies ahead for decades to come.

It is a good thought provoking question. It calls for understanding our medical paradigms. What you will discover pondering on this question could prove to be a true life-transforming experience for you. This is especially true if you are disappointed with the medical results you have been able to achieve or not achieve thus far.

A paradigm means a way of looking at a problem and thinking through it and based upon that way of thinking or analysis finding ways to solve that problem. For example, if you have a headache you can take an Aspirin to relieve it. That is one way of solving problems i.e. treat symptoms. There is nothing wrong with it. We do need a quick relief. On the other hand, an opposing paradigm will say: "Headache is not Aspirin deficiency nor is depression Prozac deficiency. Let us look for the cause." This is how we will approach your problems. Our experience shows that when everything else has failed, looking for the real causes will usually bring the needed relief for you.  A fable regarding paradigms, WELCOME TO THE TOWN OF ALLOPATH, is appropriate to elaborate on this point.

It is good that you have seen a lot of physicians and nothing has been found. Smile with a sense of relief! We want to assure you that your efforts thus far have not been wasted. What it means is the causes for your problems aren't where they have been looking. That is all!

It also means that the causes for your ailment that most physicians are familiar with have been excluded. That is a relief. It is good and important that those causes be looked at and excluded. But it does not mean that we stop there. With this knowledge we can focus now on your real causes because it increases the probability tremendously that it is being triggered by environmentally related causes. "The Man and His Lamppost" is a thought- provoking story that illustrates this point beautifully. Since most physicians are not taught to look for environmentally triggered illness, environmental factors such as listed on the Sickness Iceberg are often left unexplored. This is how you may be prescribed a life sentence of drugs. This is why you may have been told, "I cannot find anything wrong with you, it must be in your head," or "You have to learn to live with your problems."

How will our approach be different?

We will be exploring the environmental and related triggers for your illness that have most likely not been looked at as yet. In such a scenario there are very good chances that real causes will be found and treated to bring the needed relief that you have been looking for. This is how our approach will be different. One of the biggest discoveries made in the field of Environmental Medicine is: Contrary to the usual belief most chronic illness including serious kind of mental illness results from physical factors and not psychological factors. Majid Ali, MD a prominent environmental physician put it most eloquently in the following story in his book, "The Canary and Chronic Fatigue".

The Man and His Lamppost (Edited)

A man was searching for something at night under a lamppost at a street corner. A passerby looked at the man, stopped, looked at the ground, and asked, "What are you searching for?"

"My watch," the man answered.

"Do you want me to help you look for it?" the passerby volunteered.

"Oh yes! Please do," the man answered.

The passerby stooped low and began searching for the lost watch. Minutes passed, but they found no watch. In the meantime another passerby seeing two fairly intelligent men stooped over looking for something asked the same question, "What are you searching for?"

The man answered, "I am looking for my lost watch."
The second passerby also joined in the search for the lost watch. A few more minutes passed by and they found no trace of the watch.

The second passerby stood up, thought for a moment and asked: "Where do you think you dropped your watch?"

"There!" The man pointed to a dark area in the alley.

"What?" the second passerby's voice rose as his whole body stiffened.

"There," the man pointed to the dark alley again, without blinking his eyes.

"Are you crazy or what?" the second passerby nearly screamed at the man.

"I am not crazy. I am searching for my watch," the man replied evenly.

"You must be crazy if you are looking for the watch here while you lost it up there. Why aren't you looking up there?"

"Because it is too dark over there. Here, there is light under the lamppost," the man answered matter-of-factly.

Looking for the causes in the right place is what provides the basis and hope for millions of people suffering from all sorts of physical ailments and as well as mental ailments. It allows them to be able to get well, get off psychiatrists' couches, and get off nerve medicines and other medicines and enjoy life once again -- symptom-free and drug-free. To learn how this approach has changed life for thousands of patients, please click here.  This is why we say that you do not have to live with your problems unless you choose to. You can do something definite about it.

Please look at the Sickness Iceberg. The tip represents the symptoms and the bottom represents the Causes. These are the most common causes of chronic illness that typically are not explored. Depending upon your history these are some of the causes that we will be exploring.

Let us look at what are the common reasons people consult a physician? Normally we contact a physician only when we are having some problem. We seldom contact a physician regarding preventive care. Even if we consult a physician for "preventive care" it is generally limited to doing pap smears, mammograms, cholesterol check, PSA check or some preventive vaccinations etc. That is it. Most of this so-called "preventive care" isn't truly preventive care. Its primary aim is early detection but not prevention of disease from happening in the first place. Early detection is important too. However the essence of preventive medical care revolves around two important goals:

1. Preventing things from happening in the first place. If we have genetic tendencies to develop certain diseases like hypertension, diabetes, cancer etc. take effective measures to postpone them for as long as possible. This is true prevention. Dr Julian Whitaker says, "Preventive Medicine is boring-when done well nothing happens." Well, if something is happening in your family, probably nothing of value is really happening!

2. If we do develop disease, detect it early and treat not the symptoms but the causes so that the disease can be reversed and long lasting relief obtained without dependence on drugs. This is true healing.

C. A. R. E. model of medical care and wellness accomplishes these very goals and we will share with you how it is done.

Let us start with a scenario that is fairly typical. You were born healthy and you remained healthy for a while. You did not need much medical care. So basically you were useless to the medical profession to that point. That was great! However somewhere along the line you develop some problem. You wait for a while to see if it goes away at its own. You wait long enough and it does not go away and instead it is becoming more bothersome. Now you consult a physician. He examines you and may run certain tests and eventually prescribes you a medicine. Medicine suppresses the symptom effectively. You are happy and you think that things are ok. Are they really ok or it is just a false sense of security? However, sure enough your symptoms return so you return to the doctor. Again more of the same or other symptomatic medicines are prescribed. This merry-go-round goes on for a while. As time passes, symptoms return with increasing frequency and increasing severity. If you wait long enough more and more symptoms belonging to other body organs may be added on. In due course of time you can no longer be taken care of by a generalist and need to be referred to a specialist. As more time passes, the number of symptoms, the number of specialists, the number of tests and the number of drugs keeps increasing. It appears like you have joined Disease-of-the-Month club. This is called Spreading Phenomenon in Medicine.  This is how the sick get sicker and sicker by following current medical protocols. This scenario may take decades to notice a significant decline in health. If problems linger on, surgical interventions may become necessary like tonsillectomy for repeated sore throats or tubes in ear for fluid in ears, hip replacement for arthritis and cholecystectomy for dysfunctional gall bladder, etc. You get the point.  To further elaborate how the sick get sicker a fable, WELCOME TO THE TOWN OF ALLOPATH, is worth reading.  See how it may apply to you.  The sick are getting sicker, and no matter how sick they get nothing beyond the two traditional options is being offered-drugs and when everything else fails, surgery. As far as drugs are concerned we have many and none heal anything. Regarding surgery, when an organ gets so sick that you are better off without it than with it, it is taken out. How can you get tonsillitis if your tonsils are gone? Yes, it is a cure but of what kind?

One point that is missed in all this is that symptoms are warning signals. Warning signals of what? Of two things: A. There is something wrong that needs to be fixed, and B. If you don't fix the problem more serious illness is on the way. Sure enough more illness will follow if we wait long enough. This is what we have to realize and act accordingly to find and treat the root cause. This is the only way to reverse the disease and prevent it from being a bigger problem. Over and above the traditional approach, C. A. R. E. model offers the third option that truly empowers you to bring maximum wellness, healing and longevity.

Here is how C. A. R. E. model is applied in clinical practice.

C stands for Cause. Our first question is what is or what are the causes for your symptoms like headaches, stomachaches, sinuses, muscle pain, depression, fatigue or whatever your complaints might be. Depending upon your symptoms and history appropriate investigations are conducted to uncover the causes for your problems (click here for conditions we treat). We will educate you what these causes are, how are they affecting you and what to do about them. Most common causes of illness are listed on the sickness iceberg.

A stands for appropriate Actions. Now based upon the causes a treatment plan is laid out to correct or treat the causes and not just cover up symptoms with drugs. When this plan is followed, the next two things will happen automatically.

R stands for Relief: Obviously if you remove the cause, what will follow next? Relief from distressing symptoms. Here are two tack laws to ponder.

1. If you are sitting on a tack, it takes a lot of psychotherapy to make it feel good. What is the answer? Take the tack out.

2. If you are sitting on two tacks, removing one does not result in 50% improvement. The moral is to identify and remove all the tacks and then allow body to heal. You will certainly feel better.

Albert Einstein said, "Most fundamental ideas of science are essentially very simple and may be expressed in language comprehensible to everyone."

Can it get simpler than this -- when you treat the causes you are likely to get better and won't need drugs?

The second important and pertinent thing Einstein said was: "The significant problems we face cannot be solved with the same level of thinking that we were at when we created them." Sure enough drugs bring symptomatic relief. Drugs bestow a false sense of security while underlying mineral deficiencies, hormonal or other causes that were responsible for the illness remain unidentified and uncorrected or untreated. Not only that, drugs themselves become a major cause of aggravation of disease and as well as causing more illness and even death. There are over 250,000 deaths per year attributable to legal and appropriate use of drugs and innumerable serious side effects. Problems caused by pills cannot be solved with pills. Can it get simpler than this? Dependence on drugs cannot bring a lasting relief.

E stands for Expected results. This gets directly tied in to what is quality medical care. How would you recognize quality medical care? This is a fair question. When you go out in the market, you know what color, what model, what year and which features you want. On the other hand when you go out in the market to purchase health care what yard stick you have to measure quality?

Here it is: In short, quality medical care should get rid of your symptoms, get rid of your drugs and get rid of physicians (virtually). Can it get simpler than this? This is the essence of good medicine.

Dr Melvyn R. Werbach, a psychiatrist on the faculty of the School of Medicine University of California at Los Angeles and director of the Biofeedback Medical Clinic in Tarza, California calls it "Third Line Medicine." This deals with diagnosing and treating causes of illness.

This is what C. A. R. E. model is all about -- quality that directly translates into improving the overall health of individuals. Is this the quality medical care you are looking for?

Isn't this simple enough now? Ok, maybe not yet! I quote my great teacher and friend Sidney Baker MD, "Frankly I don't care what you do to get well -- drugs, surgery, psychotherapy, chiropractic care, massage, aromatherapy -- it is much more desirable to take the tack out before you sit."

Come on board and we will do our best to get you well.

It is a very important question that requires a careful review and comparison between medical care received within Managed Care system with all its constraints and the private medical care outside such constraints. It has to do with quality of medical care. At times getting care within Managed Care will be cheaper while other times it will be expensive. We will discuss those situations a little bit later.

It is natural; everyone wants to save money. So should you. We will show you how. Looking at it superficially, since per encounter you pay less (under managed care) it appears that it is cheaper. However is it truly cheaper? In reality it is the precise reason for escalating health care costs. Let us look at it from another angle and see what is really cheaper.

We see patients who have tried everything Managed Care (with all its restrictions) has to offer and failed. Is it realistic then, to expect that another physician still on Managed Care will be able to do something definitely far superior than what has already been done? One thing is for sure; most physicians do their best under the given constraints.

If we have to gamble we would say, "What has been done for you thus far, we are sure nothing better could have been done," while keeping the same constraints in place. We know, still our desire would be, "I wish someone could".

In order for things to get better something in patient-physician relationship has to change and that change is try a physician whose hands are not tied. Seek Un-managed Care! Jane Orient, MD in her remarkable book "Your Doctor Is Not In" emphasizes the deterioration in patient-physician relationship - a social change that has taken place over the last two decades. Her solution to this problem is simple: Empower patients through Un-managed Care to benefit from what is the best that the American Medicine - not commercialized medicine - has to offer. This is like it had always been. This is why practices like ours exist and an increasing number of physicians are distancing themselves from Managed Care.

One of our patients once remarked quite eloquently "What was wrong before? We went to our physician, he had time, he did the best he knew how, and we followed his advice. There was no pre-authorization for this visit or that visit, this test or that test, or restrictions to go to this specialist and not to that specialist. There were no restrictions which tests and which medicines you could or could not get. There was nothing like which physicians you can see, which physicians you are barred from, even if the approved physician cannot help you. It seems like the list of "can not" is longer than the list of cans. After you have gone through all the hoops you find a physician, he has hardly any time for you. If you mention to him another problem he is prompt to refer you to another physician. Now you have to go through the same thing all-over again. Before, the single most important criterion for selecting a physician was: Is he the best in his field and can he help me; now the first thing is if he is on the list." Priorities have changed; so have end results changed!

So we have to examine what Managed Care offers - does it represent the best that American Medicine is all about?

No, it just represents a part of it.

Managed Care is great for taking care of routine basic medical needs. It is important and critical that the basic medical care should be affordable and remain affordable for all Americans. It is especially in view of massive increases in basic medical care costs for things like drugs, emergency medical care and hospital medical care we need to have somebody or some entity to keep check on prices. Managed Care does a good job at it. This is not the format to discuss how insurance companies and now Managed Care, which is a form of insurance, are themselves a major cause for skyrocketing medical care costs in the first place. So that we do not deviate from our main goal it suffices to say that because of insurance the medical care costs have not been subjected to the same forces as other commodities have been in a free market economy. Anyway, the point is if you are generally healthy and get sick now and then or have an emergency situation or need hospitalization, Managed Care is here for your rescue.

These are the pluses in favor of Managed Care. However, when it is unable to deliver the needed care, we shouldn't stay stuck in Managed-Care mode and should be willing to go out of network for needed medical care. This is when you have a problem that is of a longer duration and you have not been able to resolve the issue satisfactorily through Managed Care. A few common examples would be severe migraine headaches, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, arthritis, chronic digestive complaints, asthma, sinus problems etc. For a more comprehensive overview look at the symptoms list.

 It is then this Un-managed Care difference that allows physicians to offer the other half of the very best that American Medicine has to offer -- to solve problems that are not otherwise possible. Do you really believe Managed Care was created to provide the very best medical care that we know how, or was it created in response to big business' demand to provide basic medical care for average working Americans?

Since we are talking about quality it is nice to be reminded of what Sir Winston Churchill once said: "I am easily satisfied with the best." So should you. If you are satisfied with Managed Care, stick around. If not, seek care outside Managed Care.

Imagine, if every physician was on Managed Care and you had no choices, what would you do? Where would you go? Who would you turn to? What choices would you have? Therefore, Managed Care as well as Un-managed Care both have their own roles to play in providing us with the best possible medical care we need and want.

By proposing you to consider Un-managed Care we are not guaranteeing, warranting or implying that you will get far better results. However, this is the way many have been helped. In order to make an intelligent decision whether to go out-of-network or to stay within the network you have to pay attention to two main factors. The first one is the philosophy or basic approach and the second being the cost. What will be the new approach? If out-of-network approach will be to use drugs to cover up symptoms then the results are not likely to be much different. On the other hand if the approach is going to be to look for the cause then it is altogether another deal.

Our approach is looking for the underlying causes and treating those causes. Why take drugs to treat symptoms when you can treat the cause? Probably so far you have been treating symptoms. We cannot say it better than did Sidney Baker, MD. He put it as it is. "There are drugs to put you to sleep, wake you up, make you poop, or alleviate pain. There are no drugs to heal you."

Our philosophy gets tied into our C.A.R.E. model of medical care. The second factor is "cost". This is again tied in to the philosophy or the basic approach. When you treat the causes instead of the symptoms what benefits are you likely to reap? What is cheaper in the long run-treating symptoms or treating causes?

Let us examine. If you treat symptoms with drugs instead of treating the cause what is likely to happen to your symptoms? They get worse over time. This is exactly how the sick get sicker following the drug route. On the other hand by treating the cause, what is likely to happen to your symptoms? They will go away! That is the crux. When your symptoms are gone what will happen to your drug use? It will go down! When your symptoms are gone and need for drugs has gone down what will happen to your trips to physicians and pharmacies, emergency rooms and hospitals etc? They will go down too! What will happen to the cost? It, too, will go down! Can you imagine savings accomplished by just eliminating the life-long need for sinus medications, breathing medicines' pain-killers, cholesterol lowering drugs, antacids, antidepressants, sleeping pills to mention a few.

Aren't these the goals that you would like to accomplish? How will you feel when you have achieved such results? How will you feel when you have no headaches, no fatigue, no aches and pains, no sinus or breathing problems to speak of, etc. and when you get up in the morning you are full of energy, you experience no symptoms and you are ready to hit the road? Would you say, "Gee that is great? Would you say then "This treatment is restoring my health back to normal?"

Remember one mathematical formula: When you put enough small numbers together its sum will exceed any large number.

What is the implication of this? No matter how low are the co-pays, if you treat the symptoms and increase the need for number of trips to physicians and pharmacies, eventually you will be spending a lot more on health care. One thing is for sure-symptoms will keep returning! It is guaranteed then, you will be returning to physicians and pharmacies. And that is exactly what is happening. Now you see the sick are getting sicker and the rich are getting richer! Per encounter, you may be paying less as compared with going out-of-network but in reality you may be spending a lot more.   WELCOME TO THE TOWN OF ALLOPATH is a nice fable to elaborate this point.  Cost is not just what you pay but also what your insurance is pitching in -- not to mention the wages lost since taking time off work and the sufferings resulting from your illness. Since the advent of Managed Care and despite restricting medical care, the costs have not gone down. To the contrary, they have gone up substantially! Did you know that chronic sickness resulting primarily from treating symptoms is the single most important cause for most people's financial troubles? Staying within the Managed Care system and treating symptoms is a constant drain on your financial resources. Going out-of-network and treating the causes raises a good likelihood of stopping unnecessary financial drain and improving quality of health. We see many patients who have eventually become disabled and not able to work at all as a result of symptomatic treatment. Imagine annual financial loss from being unable to work and is repeated year after year. Remaining sick isn't cheap, you know!

Our national health care costs are over $2 trillion per annum and rising. Commenting on this, the father of Environmental Medicine, Theron G. Randolph, MD stated, "Health - real health - continues to elude us. We are spending more and more and seem to be getting sicker and sicker." Why? Because we are treating symptoms!

In order to stop the financial drain my great friend Dr Gary Oberg reminds us of old wisdom, "When alligator is snapping at your heels, it is hard to remember that the initial objective was to drain the swamp."

It is our estimate that if we switched our approach to focus primarily on treating the real causes, as a nation we could cut our health care costs up to 90%.

So far we have talked about what you can expect to receive from us. If your main concern is still that you simply cannot afford medical care outside the network then we have a few solutions. First of all, we have SimplecareŽ - if we do not bill your insurance company and you pay at time of service, we give you a 20% discount.

Second, here is the truth: Healing is not as much what a physician can do for you as much it is what you can do for yourself. Therefore the most important thing for us is to teach you about the causes, what they are, how they are affecting you and what you can do about them. In other words, it is for us to direct you in the right direction and share with you various low-cost options in testing and treatment. We have a lot of educational material to direct you to. In such a situation we do the least. If you have significant financial constraints but are determined our educational material will in most instances provide the means for you to obtain better health. Moreover, you should be looking forward to saving money by reducing dependence on physicians and pharmaceuticals, etc.

Now we have given you our perspective how our medical care will be different than Managed Care.

The bottom line is that our emphasis is on quality and results and not on drugs and stitch-up this and zaps that.

We cannot guarantee any results but will do our best to get you well. It is this strength that our patients like and this is why they refer their friends and loved ones to us. For these reasons many savvy patients are specifically looking for physicians not tied to Managed Care. They want to make sure that the physician is not on the providers' list. These are the reasons why we are not part of Managed Care.

You have to make the final decision whether to stay within Managed Care or try something different. You are the boss.