If you’re like most people, you love your doctor.
In fact, you’d LOVE to spend more time with him or her discussing your health concerns and having your preventative care questions answered. And no doubt your doctor would love to spend more time getting to know you and offering his or her expert advice.
Unfortunately within the current medical system, our doctors are limited in the amount of time they can spend with each patient…often to the tune of about 7 minutes per visit in the United States.
That’s not a lot of time to conduct a thorough intake and investigate puzzling health issues; let alone provide individual recommendations on how to live a healthier life and prevent disease.
As patients, we are frustrated by this, and so are our doctors…but the truth is their hands are often tied.
Tied to the hospitals who run their practices for a profit, tied to “medical quotas” that demand they see a certain number of patients per day or tied to insurance companies that dictate the level of care they can provide to each patient.
In this toxic healthcare climate, it’s no wonder patients slip through the cracks and are left feeling under-served, while doctors report the highest levels of job dissatisfaction in history.
Our question to you is: do you intend to stay lost and under-served within our current system or are you ready to take your own health back into your own hands?
If you prefer the latter, read on to discover the empowerment that comes from building an affordable layer between you and the medical system in the form of a Health Coach.
What is a Health Coach?
A Health Coach is a trained healthcare professional who specializes in guiding and empowering you to implement the fundamentals of health creation to maximize wellness.
The expertise of a Health Coach can vary from practice to practice, but typically they work alongside your doctor or healthcare provider to educate and support you in your individual health progress and wellness goals.
Think of them as your medically-supervised partner in self-health creation, who can advise you on all the proactive ways you can support and maintain your health.
At kNew Health, for example, our Health Coaches are all trained in Functional Medicine and work with patients to implement a customized wellness plan that includes optimizing nutrition and detoxification, stress management, exercise and other fundamentals of self-health creation.
Why Innovative Doctors LOVE Health Coaches (and you will too)
Smart doctors, who understand the value of lifestyle in preventing and treating disease, often employ Health Coaches to help them offer a higher level of personalized care.
For example, many of the well-known integrative “celebrity” doctors employ Health Coaches to help educate and motivate their patients, which enhances the patient’s experience while producing superior health outcomes. This also allows the doctor the time they need to focus on initial visits, complex cases, advanced lab work, medication management and performing medical procedures.
The doctor-health-coach dynamic is not meant to replace the patient-doctor relationship, rather to support healing by enhancing individual patient communication, education and service.
Which is why innovative doctors love Health Coaches, and so do their patients.
The Benefits of Working with a Health Coach
Aside from more individual attention, some key benefits of working with a Health Coach include:
- Easier communication—it’s typically much easier to get in touch with a Health Coach than a doctor. For example, our kNew Health Coaches are available and accessible through out online platform when you need them most.
- Better health results and outcomes—accountability counts when it comes to making changes in your lifestyle habits and health, but it can also help you prevent and overcome chronic disease. For example, a 2016 study conducted by University of California San Francisco, showed Health Coaching can play an important role in chronic disease management, with patients fairing significantly better in achieving their clinical goals when assigned a Health Coach(1).
- Better education—unlike the time constraints of typical doctor visits, it is your Health Coach’s job to take the time to ensure you have the education and tools you need to make lasting changes and progress. Plus many Health Coaches, like those at kNew Health, are available and accessible online without an appointment.
- Motivation when you need it most—though most of us wouldn’t think of trying to contact our doctor when feeling demotivated, it is your Health Coach’s job to check in with you frequently on your health goals and provide that much-needed motivation when you need it. Accessibility like this results in greater patient empowerment and better outcomes.
- Decreased healthcare costs—studies have shown that working with a Health Coach can help save you tons of money by reducing medical costs and hospitalizations (2).
Is a Health Coach Right for You?
As the studies cited above suggest, a medically-supervised Health Coach is an ideal choice for those dealing with acute conditions, chronic disease (like diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune conditions, etc.) and those looking to improve their overall health and wellness.
Plus, they act as that “layer” of affordable individual care between you and your doctor.
This relationship allows you to super-charge your treatment and preventative care, by keeping up on disease markers, optimizing your lifestyle and nurturing a foundation of health that lasts a lifetime.
Plus, your doctor will be thrilled by your state of health come check-up time.
At kNew Health, our medically-supervised certified Health Coaches specialize in helping members add that layer between them and their doctor, at an affordable rate.
Click here to learn more about our membership-based healthcare programs, and get affordable access to feeling good again.
And click here to learn more about the 7 fundamentals of self-health creation.
-The kNew Health Team
References
1:http://www.annfammed.org/content/13/2/130.full
2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20860506/
