Creating an Ideal Practice

What I think healthcare is missing

Lately I’ve been trying to imagine what an ideal medical practice would actually look like.

Not what would make the most money. Not what would scale the fastest. Not what would satisfy every insurance requirement or metric.

But what would feel meaningful.

Because if I’m being honest, a lot of modern healthcare feels increasingly disconnected from healing. And I think part of my own dissatisfaction with medicine comes from that disconnect.

When I think about taking care of a patient, the first thing I think about is whether their condition is urgent or not. Emergency medicine exists for a reason, and I’m grateful for the work that I do there. But ideally, I would want to prevent as many emergencies as possible before they ever happen.

And that requires something modern medicine often struggles to provide: time.

In my ideal practice, there would be enough time to sit and talk with someone. Enough time to understand what is actually bothering them, what their life looks like, what they want from treatment, and whether we are even aligned in what we are trying to accomplish together.

I’ve become increasingly uncomfortable with the paternalistic side of medicine—the idea that the physician simply tells the patient what to do while the patient passively follows instructions. I don’t think that creates health. If anything, I think it creates helplessness and unrealistic expectations on both sides.

The truth is, my hands are not magic. There are very few medications that truly cure disease. Most real healing comes slowly through changes in behavior, environment, habits, stress, sleep, movement, food, and mindset. And all of those things require effort from the patient themselves.

So in my mind, the physician’s role becomes less about “fixing” people and more about guidance. Helping people understand themselves better. Helping them move toward better health over time.

But for that to work, there also has to be trust.

And trust requires honesty, respect, consistency, and enough time for a real relationship to form.

That means my ideal practice would probably look slow by modern standards. Longer visits. Fewer patients. More thoughtfulness. Less rushing.

We would focus heavily on preventing and reversing chronic disease, especially through metabolic health and overall physical and mental wellbeing. But the focus would be more on process than outcomes. I think modern healthcare sometimes becomes too obsessed with numbers, as if lowering a lab value automatically means someone is healthy. Instead, I would want good health markers to simply reflect a healthy lifestyle and a healthy body rather than becoming the sole objective themselves.

I also would not want insurance involved. Not because insurance is inherently evil, but because it inserts too many competing incentives between physician and patient. Ideally, it would function more like a cooperative or membership model. People would join because they genuinely found value in the environment, the guidance, and the community.

And community would matter. I would want patients to support one another, to share struggles, progress, ideas, and encouragement. Part of healing is realizing you are not alone.

Ultimately, I think what I want is fairly simple.

More honesty. More trust. More humanity.

Maybe that kind of practice isn’t realistic. Or maybe it’s exactly what people are searching for.

I’m not sure yet.

But I do know this:

The parts of medicine that still feel meaningful to me are the parts where I actually get to connect with another human being.

And I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that way.