There are two angles from which medical providers can approach patient care. The first focuses on the provider, specifically what the provider can offer the patient. The other angle focuses on the actual patient. KindlyMD uses the latter approach. With that approach, we often find that Utah Medical Cards are key to helping patients feel better.
Many of the patients that have turned to KindlyMD for help obtaining their cards suffer from chronic pain. That is expected when you are talking pain clinics and pain management doctors. But we also work with other types of patients. We see patients dealing with PTSD, cancer, nausea, multiple sclerosis, and a variety of other conditions.
Patient-focused care is extremely important to us. Why? Because it is equally important to patients themselves. When a patient sees a medical provider in hopes of finding relief from chronic pain, the pain is often all that person can think about. For patients like these, pain is an all-encompassing circumstance that dominates life, so focusing on the patient and their need for relief only makes sense.
It is true that healthcare is a business here in the U.S. That's okay, by the way. But any business entity that intends to stick around for the long term needs to focus on meeting the needs of its customers in every possible way. Medicine and healthcare are no different. Healthcare's customer is the patient. Providers need to focus on them just as much as any other industry focuses on its customers.
Patient-focused clinics, like KindlyMD, tend to look for as many alternative treatments as possible. We don't zero-in on a single treatment and recommend it to everyone. That's where Utah Medical Cards come in. The Medical Card plays a key role in many of our treatment recommendations.
If you are not familiar with the Utah Medical Card, it is a state-issued card that gives patients access to plant-based medicines that are otherwise off limits. Plant-based medicines have a long history behind them. They have been an important part of Eastern medicine for as long as history records.
Utah Medical Cards are easy enough to obtain by patients who meet a minimum set of qualifications. But to get a card, you first must visit a medical provider who can certify a recommendation for you. For the record, KindlyMD is the largest QMP group in the state. Our QMPs and staff are intimately familiar with the process for obtaining cards, and we’d be happy to walk through it.
This post began with the premise that Medical Cards are often key to patient-focused care. Now let us discuss why that is. In a patient-focused mindset, the primary goal is to help the patient feel better. That goal overrides everything else – from billing to coding and keeping insurance companies happy. Utah Medical Cards are all about the patient. They exist for the patient, are obtained by the patient, and designed to give the patient access to more options.
In chronic pain and PTSD situations, it is not unusual for patients to obtain their Medical Cards because no other treatments have provided sufficient relief. It doesn’t make sense to continue pushing treatments that don't work. If a patient isn't feeling any better with traditional medicine, perhaps a Medical Card would be a better option.
There is a lot more about the Medical Card we could discuss. But quite frankly, the discussion is better had between QMP and patient. For now, it is enough to know that the Medical Card is often key to patient-focused care.
