Before you join the list, I want you to know exactly what you would be joining. This page is the honest version, including the parts that may make this the wrong fit for you.
THE SHORT VERSION
A membership practice. I do not bill insurance.
Every visit is a full hour. Your first visit is ninety minutes.
I am a rheumatologist who works with his hands.
Care is organized in phases, and the cost goes down as you improve.
The goal is to get you to the point where you no longer need me.
This is a membership practice. Patients pay me directly, on a recurring basis, and I do not bill insurance for my care.
I want to be plain about why. Insurance based rheumatology is built around volume. A typical visit is fifteen minutes because that is what the payment structure supports, and a great deal of what actually matters in autoimmune disease does not fit in fifteen minutes. The nutrition conversation does not fit. The sleep and stress conversation does not fit. Putting hands on you does not fit at all.
When you pay me directly, the incentive changes. I do not need to see more patients to keep the lights on. I need to see fewer patients, and see them properly.
You should keep your health insurance. You will still need it for labs, imaging, medications, hospital care, and any specialist I send you to. This membership is not insurance and it does not replace it.
Ninety minutes.
Before you arrive, I read your records. Not skim them. Read them. Most people who come to me have five or more years of labs, imaging, and notes scattered across four or five offices, and no one has ever looked at the whole file in one sitting. That is often where the answer has been hiding.
In the room, I want the whole story, including the parts other doctors have cut you off in the middle of. When it started. What was happening in your life when it started. What makes it worse. What you have already tried and what it did.
Then I examine you, and I put my hands on you.
By the end of that visit you leave with something written: what I think is happening, what I am ruling out and why, and what we do first. It is your document. You can take it to any other physician, anywhere, for the rest of your life.
Every visit after the first is a full hour.
What happens in that hour depends on what you need that day. I do not sell one treatment per month. Some visits are mostly hands on work, releasing restricted fascia and helping stagnant inflammation drain. Some visits are mostly clinical, reviewing new labs and adjusting medication. Some are mostly about sleep, food, stress, or the nervous system.
Most visits are some of each. That is the point of an hour.
I am an osteopathic physician trained in Fascial Counterstrain. I treat restricted fascia directly, in the room. Almost no rheumatologist anywhere offers this, and as far as I can find, no one in Orange County is doing it inside a rheumatology practice.
What Fascial Counterstrain actually is →I am a board certified rheumatologist. I diagnose, I order and interpret labs and imaging, and I prescribe and monitor medication when medication is the right answer.
Nutrition, sleep, stress, the autonomic nervous system, and a home program you can actually do. Not a lecture. A short set of things that take a few minutes a day.
Care moves through phases. We start close together, and we move further apart as you stabilize.
We meet twice a month. This is for the beginning, or for a flare, or for a period when we are actively changing something and need to see what it does. It is meant to be temporary. Most people are here for one to three months.
We meet once a month. This is where most of the work happens and where most patients spend most of their time.
We meet every three months. You are stable. You know your own patterns. You mostly need a check in and an occasional course correction.
You leave. With a written plan, a home program you know how to run, and an open door if you ever need it again.
"The better you get, the less you should need me."
The cost of membership goes down at each step, not up. I want to say that plainly, because it runs against how almost everything else in medicine works. Most of healthcare is built to keep you enrolled. This is built to let you leave.
I decide which phase you are in, not a menu. These are clinical stages, not service tiers, and you cannot purchase your way into more of my time than you clinically need.
A full hour at every visit, and ninety minutes at your first
Records retrieval and review before we begin
Hands on treatment, in the room, as part of your regular visit
Diagnosis, labs and imaging ordered and interpreted, and medication managed
A written plan you keep, updated as things change
Direct messaging with me between visits, answered on business days
A short home program, updated as you progress
Labs at cost and medications at wholesale where I can arrange it, with no markup from me
Communication with your other physicians so you are not the one carrying messages between them
Referral to vetted acupuncturists, physical therapists, and specialists when you need someone who is better at something than I am
I would rather you know this now than find out later.
Insurance prior authorizations for biologics and JAK inhibitors. If you need one of those drugs, I will tell you, I will write the clinical case for you, and I will hand you to one of a small number of rheumatologists I trust to run that part. I am not going to pretend I can do everything.
Emergency and hospital care. If something acute happens, you need an emergency department, not me.
Overnight and weekend coverage. I answer messages on business days.
The cost of labs, imaging, and medications themselves. Those go through your insurance or you pay the cash price directly. I do not mark them up.
Care in states where I am not licensed.
Your symptoms are real and your workup keeps coming back unremarkable.
You have a diagnosis but no one has ever explained why it happened to you.
You have Sjögren's, fibromyalgia, or something in that family where conventional rheumatology does not have a good drug to offer.
You are tired of fifteen minute visits and being handed a prescription instead of an explanation.
You are willing to change things. Not everything, and not overnight, but something.
You need a rheumatologist who will manage a biologic and fight your insurance company for it. That is real, necessary work, and someone else does it better than I would.
You want a diagnosis and a prescription in one visit and nothing else.
You are looking for the cheapest option. This is not it, and I would rather tell you that now.
You are not in a state where I am licensed to practice.
The practice opens in Orange County, California in Summer 2027.
This is an in person practice first, and that is a deliberate choice. Hands on treatment is a substantial part of what I do, and it cannot be delivered through a screen. If you are within driving distance of Orange County, you will get the full version of this.
I expect to see patients from across Orange County and the surrounding area, including Irvine, Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, Tustin, Santa Ana, Anaheim, Huntington Beach, Laguna, Mission Viejo, and Long Beach.
I also speak Korean, and I am glad to see patients in Korean.
Telemedicine will be available across multiple states for the parts of care that translate well to video: reviewing labs, adjusting treatment, and working through nutrition, sleep, and nervous system regulation. If you are not local, that path exists and it is real. It is simply not the same as being in the room.
The exact address will be announced before opening. Join the list and you will have it first.
I am not accepting patients yet. When I do, the list goes first.
I open in Summer 2027. Members of the list hear first and get priority booking.