Islon Woolf MD
Concierge Medicine
& Critical Thinking
About Islon Woolf MD
I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and grew up in Toronto, Canada. In 1987, I embarked on my undergraduate studies in Biology and Physics at the University of Toronto, where I was awarded two academic scholarships, and at age nineteen, gained an early acceptance to its highly ranked medical school.
After graduating, I relocated to the United States to complete an internship at the University of Southern California, followed by a residency in Internal Medicine at the Mayo Clinic. In 1996, I served as Chief Resident at the Cleveland Clinic and contributed to the development of their new residency program in Florida. I am board certified in Internal Medicine, and a Fellow of the American College of Physicians FACP. I have been practicing Concierge Medicine and Critical Thinking in Miami Beach for over 25 years.
Concierge Medicine
In 1997 when I began practice, I envisioned that I could provide the same level of time and attention to patients as I did during my training, spending hours with each case. Unfortunately, the constraints of a real-world medical practice allotted me only fifteen minutes per patient. I quickly realized that I was unable to connect with my patients and solve their problems.
To overcome this, I became one of the first doctors in the city to embrace the Concierge Medicine model: more time with fewer patients. My practice is capped at three hundred patients, and I typically see less than four patients per day. There are several advantages of the Concierge Medicine over the standard model.
6
Advantages of
Concierge Medicine
Caring
1
My practice is small and I have the opportunity to connect with every one of my patients. No problem is too big and no problem is too small.
Direct Access
2
Direct access means having seamless communication and appointments with your doctor. Instead of delegating your problems to others, I handle them myself. This approach results in quicker care, fewer errors, and better outcomes.
Continuity of Care
3
Your health is dynamic and complex. It requires coordination, documentation, and follow-through by someone that knows you well. This is continuity of care, and it leads to better health outcomes.
Efficiency
4
Primary care doctors are incentivized to get you in the office, but hand you off to specialists to handle the problem. I am incentivized to solve your problem myself, whether in the office, outside, after hours, or on our devices. A far more efficient process.
Accuracy
5
Overworked doctors with limited time and outdated knowledge are prone errors. With fewer patients, I can devote more time to your case, and update my knowledge between cases.
Comprehensive
6
There are many treatment options outside of pharmaceuticals and surgery. There are many philosophies of practice outside of science-based medicine. You need to know all of your options in order to make informed choices.
Critical Thinking in medicine
While the core concept of Concierge Medicine is to provide more time to fewer patients, the way each practice utilizes that time depends on their philosophy. This has led to the emergence of several practice models within Concierge Medicine. When considering a practice, it's important to assess whether their philosophy aligns with yours.
One popular practice model involves extensive testing and treatments, including full-body scans, longevity supplements, IV infusions, and stem cells. However, upon closer inspection, these practices all follow different protocols and make different claims about what makes you healthy. Which begs the question: why so many claims, and how can we determine which, if any, are correct?
This is Critical Thinking in medicine and the central philosophy of my practice: to question and learn how to evaluate medical claims. There are five key principles of Critical Thinking in medicine.
5
Principles of
Critical Thinking in Medicine
Patient Empowerment
1
Patients have been taken advantage of by experts due to their inability to assess healthcare for themselves. Good healthcare, therefore, is not about more healthcare; it's about learning how to assess it for yourself and getting more involved in decisions.
Evaluation of claims
2
Even though healthcare is quite technical, patients can learn how to evaluate claims for themselves. This can be accomplished by taking a systematic approach and factoring in past success rates.
Shared Decision-Making
3
A test or treatment appropriate for one patient may not be appropriate for another. To ensure the best medical decisions, you and I must collaborate and consider your individual values, preferences, and circumstances.
Addressing bias
4
Bias is unavoidable in healthcare. Practitioners carry financial and non-financial conflicts of interest, and specialists naturally favor their own specialty. My practice aims to reduce bias within, and helps you address bias in others.
Lifelong learning
5
For the critical thinker, medical school marks only the beginning. A lifelong of learning teaches us that knowledge is incomplete, becomes quickly outdated, and is frequently refuted. It cultivates the critical thinker's most valuable asset: intellectual humility.
Critical Thinking in Medicine
Blog
There are thousands of claims in healthcare, most are untrue. Your inability to assess these claims for yourself renders you vulnerable to experts. The purpose of my blog is to apply Critical Thinking to medicine to help you evaluate claims for yourself. Each post aims to provide you with good information (clear, understandable, accurate, unbiased, relevant, and complete), and instruct you on how to distinguish good evidence from bad evidence. Feel free to visit the Blog or click on one of my recent posts below.
