Chris Kresser: I think I may have answered this already. Apologies if I have. The good news is the answers to all these questions are public. They’re not secret at all. They’re actually right on our website, our clinic website, and I recommend that you put your fees and an estimate of what things will cost on your website, as well. It’s helpful both for patients and for you because you don’t necessarily want to be attracting a whole bunch of patients who aren’t able to pay your fees. There are lots of different ways that you can offer services to lower-income folks. One way is providing a certain number of scholarship slots, which I’ve done historically. Another route that some practitioners have taken is … well, Dr. Tom Cowan in San Francisco, he calls it community-supported healthcare, kind of like community-supported agriculture, and he does a monthly fee, very low, sliding scale, but if I recall, it’s somewhere between $10 and $50, or $20 and $100, something like that. That’s kind of like a fee that patients pay to be in the practice, and then that kitty of money supports the treatment of other patients who aren’t able to pay because of financial hardships. I know some clinicians that are using that model. I’m kind of digressing here. I just wanted to mention that.
If you go to CCFMed.com, our clinic website, you click on “New Patients,” and then you click on “Learn how Chris Kresser and Amy Nett work with patients,” and then you scroll down, you’ll see a complete breakdown of our fees, including the initial consult and the case review. We give an estimate for lab tests, which is about $600 to $1,500 typically after the initial consult, depending on the patient. We give an estimate for supplements that are part of the treatment plan after the case review, which ranges between $150 and $300 on average. We give an estimate of the grand total of the case review fee when you include everything, and that’s typically $1,750 to $3,700, and how much money will be due at what point in the process. Check out that page. I think it will answer all your questions regarding fees.
There are obviously lots of ways to help people, right? There’s one-on-one treatment, where we see a patient and order labs and do that whole thing, and that’s the most intensive way of doing it. But you can help people by writing, writing a book or writing blog articles. I frequently get emails or run into people who say that just reading a particular article on my website was enough to completely change their lives, to keep them out of the hospital or literally, in some cases, save their lives, so don’t underestimate the power and the impact that that can have. That’s why I included Evergreen Audience, Keith’s course, in the pre-course, and I’m sure most of you discovered me by reading one of my articles or listening to the podcast or something. All of that is offered for free. I’ve never charged for that. I had no plan to charge for that. I offer a lot of e-books and other resources that are specific to particular conditions for free, and I have plans to offer even more free resources because, like all of you, I’m sure, I got into this primarily to help people, and that’s how I can have the biggest impact, offering these things to the widest section of the population.
We also have some plans to offer group classes on particular health conditions through the clinic, so maybe a Zoom video group class on healing IBS naturally or addressing skin problems without steroids or drugs, these kinds of things, for a couple of reasons. Number one, we can get a little more specific on treatments than we could in just an article or a podcast, and then also people can kind of have a sense of community and being connected to others that have a similar condition and feel less isolated and alone. So there are things like that. You can do group classes. That can make your services more affordable to people.
You can use one of these community-supported models or ideas. I know Dr. Shoemaker used to charge everybody who he saw a $100 up-front fee just to enter the practice, and that money went into a kitty that was then used to cover treatment costs for patients who didn’t have the financial means to pay themselves. That’s another kind of spin on how you can do it. You could have a monthly practice fee, like I mentioned with Dr. Cowan, that supports that. You could just offer a certain number of pro bono spaces or reduced-rate spaces in your practice, which is what I’ve done. We are investigating a kind of monthly fee model, as well.
There are lots of different options and lots of different ways to help people, so it really comes down to how you want to do it and where you want to direct your focus and attention.