Utah's Medical Card program has now been up and running for a couple of years. Much to the surprise of many people, more than 83,000 Utahns have signed up for their cards at this point. That is a lot of people. Each one represents someone dealing with a qualifying medical condition who simply wants to feel better. From our perspective, individual motivations for obtaining Med Cards are an important part of the treatment equation.
Do you have a Utah Medical Card? If so, what was your motivation for applying? There is no right or wrong answer here. Patients visit KindlyMD clinics for a variety of reasons. We get it. We understand that every patient's journey is unique. What motivates you could be completely different from a hundred other patients.
We would like to share some of the motivating factors patients talk about when they visit our clinics. We could probably make the case that the most commonly heard motivation is that nothing else has worked. In other words, a patient has tried all the other traditional treatments normally recommended for her condition. But after so many years of trial and error, she still feels no better. All those other treatments have failed.
Unfortunately, this is more common than most people know. Many of the conditions on Utah's qualifying conditions list just do not respond well to traditional treatments. And even when they do, some patients find that they don't feel as good as they would like to. Traditional treatments only offer limited relief.
In a sense, patients motivated by this particular issue are looking at the Medical Card as their last remaining hope of relief. That motivates us to do everything we can to provide complete care within the Medical Card setting.
Another thing that motivates patients is a reluctance to take prescription medications over long periods of time. As strange as that might sound in a culture that relies so heavily on pharmacology, we have seen many patients who just do not care to go down that road. Many of them have been on long-term prescriptions by the time they make it to KindlyMD.
If it is medication they need, they would prefer plant-based medicines over pharmacologically based prescriptions. They see plant-based medicines as more natural and better for them. So for them, getting a Medical Card just seems like the best course of action.
Our approach to healthcare is a little bit different. Likewise for many other providers who do what we do. Collectively, we believe that a holistic approach to healthcare is the best approach of all. Many of our patients come to us because they prefer the holistic approach.
Holistic care does not focus exclusively on a patient's illness or symptoms. Patients are people. Their medical conditions are just one aspect of who they are and how they live their lives. Holistic care recognizes that and seeks to treat the whole person rather than just a single condition and its symptoms.
The Medical Card philosophy complements the holistic approach perfectly. Obtaining a Med Card gives patients access to plant-based medicines. But patient care does not begin and end with those medicines. The holistic view of healthcare prefers overall wellbeing instead of mere symptom relief.
It has been said that treating qualifying conditions with plant-based medicines is a journey. We wholeheartedly agree. What motivates people to embark on that journey is different from one person to the next. What was your motivation?