To make an appointment, call or text: 320.347.1212
E-mail: info@justbewell.info
Functional Medicine is unique and separate from conventional medicine.
If you are unfamiliar with Just Be Well or Functional Medicine, please read this.
You can learn more about Thomas Sult, M.D. and his training on our Home page at the bottom under Meet Us (https://justbewell.info/)
Just Be Well is a Functional Medicine clinic. Functional Medicine is about designing personalized diet and lifestyle programs along with Nutritional Supplementation based on your unique individuality. These supplements are often selected based on tests of your genome, metabolome, hormones, detoxification, energy metabolism, and other factors. Supplements, testing and interpretation of results are not included in the visit price.
The Just Be Well Clinic is CASH ONLY. Functional Medicine is a form of Complementary Alternative Medicine (CAM), which has a different philosophy than conventional allopathic medicine. Our services are NOT considered “Medically Necessary” and insurance does not recognize the value of Functional Medicine and will not cover our services.
You will not be able to submit your Just Be Well visits to your insurance for reimbursement. Medical officers of Insurance companies are not interested or educated in CAM, and do not see the value.
Time slots – START and END times – are important, to respect other patients please plan accordingly.
Once your appointment is scheduled, you will receive an email confirmation with instructions on preparation for your visit.
Why Dr. Sult will not interact with Insurance companies
Payment is due at the time of scheduling. You may cancel within 2 days of scheduling for a full refund. Cancellations after 2 days of scheduling and 14 days before your appointment will result in a charge of 50% of the visit fee. After that time, you will be assessed the full amount of the visit.
The insurance model is based on the standard health care model of disease management. The medical officers and chart reviewers in health care insurance companies are not educated on Functional Medicine. They see Functional Medicine as a deviation from the protocol that they have approved.
In the standard model of disease management, you make the diagnosis with history, a physical exam, and then test. Based on the diagnosis, you treat according to a protocol. That protocol is generally one size fits all.
That is not the way Functional Medicine works. Dr. Sult treats patients not based on their diagnosis but based on Functional Medicine. We start with a deep understanding of what your diagnosis is; but then the questions become:
- Why would YOU have this diagnosis?
- What is different and unique about you?
- How can we rebalance your systems to fully express wellness over disease?
Functional Medicine looks at you comprehensively.
Wellness is the optimal expression of your genes as they interact with the totality of your environment. At Just Be Well, we use the principles of Functional Medicine to help you express the very best version of yourself.
We look at your ATMs (Antecedents, Triggers, and Mediators). Antecedents are genetic factors, prior illnesses, injuries, and habits. Triggers are those events that set-in motion the aberrant biochemistry that results in illness. Mediators are the biochemical processes that keep you ill. Then we look at 7 domains of physiological function, Assimilation (how you get things into your body, Defense and Repair (your immune system, repair system, and inflammation system), Energy system (conversion of food into energy to do every biochemical process in your body), Detoxification system (how you remove toxins), Communication (hormones, neurotransmitters, and other signaling molecules), and Structural integrity (Cellular and intracellular dynamics to muscle and bones).
And we look at Mental (thinking, cognitive, memory), Emotional (gratitude, love, anxiety, anger) and Spiritual (a sense of purpose and place in the larger context of life and death) processes. Studies have shown over and over again, that mental patterns, emotional states, and spiritual connection have profound effects on our health.
All of this is investigated using deep conversation, history, physical exam, various Laboratories tests, and questionnaires.
From here we optimize your 5 modifiable lifestyle factors:
- Sleep and Relaxation
- Exercise and Movement
- Nutrition
- Stress Management
- Relationships
This builds a Whole Life intervention designed to express the very best version of YOU.
You can see that this is a very different philosophy than what the insurance model is looking for. They see Arthritis and expect to see medications being used, but we are treating gut imbalances (what we have found to be the cause of your autoimmune process). They see Depression and expect antidepressant medications, we are treating chronic inflammation (a known cause of depression and one we may find) – A real mismatch!
At the very least, they will tell you that what you are getting is “Not Medically Necessary” – they will request records and letters, and in the end, deny coverage. This results in two possible outcomes. The first is they finally review the case after months of treatment and then tell you it is not covered and want their money back. That results in us sending you a big bill you were not expecting. Or they tell us that it is not covered, and we cannot bill you in which case we cannot pay our staff…
In the worse cases, they are so concerned that we are not following the protocol they see as the right path, they report us to the medical board and a multiyear investigation is unleashed.
We do not use insurance billable codes for these reasons. We do not bill, submit for billing, or provide a super bill. We will not respond to any insurance company for any reason.
Insurance is for mainstream care. If you are interested in mainstream care, you should not be seen at Just Be Well. We use Functional Medicine, and the insurance industry is not prepared to assess if that care is appropriate or not. And this is why we cannot be your primary care clinic.