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Islon Woolf MD
Concierge Medicine
& Critical Thinking
About Islon Woolf MD
I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and grew up in Toronto, Canada. After completing my undergraduate studies in Biology and Physics at the University of Toronto, I gained early acceptance to their highly ranked medical school. I then moved to the United States for an internship at the University of Southern California, followed by a residency in Internal Medicine at the Mayo Clinic.
My training was completed in 1997 at the Cleveland Clinic serving as Chief Resident and helping to establish their new Florida residency program. I have been practicing in Miami Beach for over 25 years and both board certified in Internal Medicine and a Fellow of the American College of Physicians (FACP).
Concierge Medicine
When I began my Internal Medicine practice in 1997, I envisioned providing the same level of care to patients as I provided during my training, spending hours on each case. However, with only fifteen minutes per visit and thousands of patients, I could barely scratch the surface. To get more time with my patients, by 2002 I became one of the first doctors in the Miami to convert to the Concierge Medicine model.
In essence, all Concierge Medicine practices are the same. The goal is to give more time to fewer patients. My practice for instance, is capped at three hundred patients, and I typically see fewer than three patients per day. This additional time leads to several benefits.
5
Benefits of
Concierge Medicine
Caring
1
Because my practice is small I have the opportunity to connect with every one of my patients. No problem is too big and no problem is too small.
Access
2
Access to healthcare means timely visits and seamless communications. With me, my office, and the network of specialists I have built over 25 years. Better access results in early intervention, fewer errors, and better outcomes.
Continuity of Care
3
The healthcare system is fragmented and impersonal, and your health is complex and dynamic. You need a consistent point person to coordinate, document, and ensure follow-through. This is continuity of care, and a major determinant of good health outcomes.
Efficiency
4
Primary care doctors are incentivized to get you in the office, but hand off your problems to a specialist. I am incentivized to solve your problems - whether in the office, outside the office, after hours, or on our devices.
Accuracy
5
Overworked doctors with limited time and outdated medical knowledge are prone to errors. With fewer patients, I can not only devote more time to your case, but continually update my knowledge between cases.
Critical Thinking in medicine
While the core concept of Concierge Medicine is to devote more time to fewer patients, this is only the beginning of good healthcare. The way each practice utilizes this extra time varies greatly, and depends on the practice's philosophy. It has lead the emergence of many different practice models within Concierge Medicine.
For instance, some concierge practices claim to be able to make you live longer and better with an array of innovative laboratory tests, scans, drugs, supplements, IV infusions, and lifestyle recommendations. However, upon closer inspection, one quickly becomes aware that each of these practices follows a different protocol. Literally thousands of different, and often antithetical, ideas about what makes you healthy. Which begs the questions: why so many claims, and how can you determine which, if any, are correct?
This is Critical Thinking in medicine and the central philosophy of my practice: to question medical claims and learn how to evaluate them for yourself. There are six key principles of Critical Thinking in medicine.
6
Principles of
Critical Thinking in Medicine
Patient Empowerment
1
Patients are unable to assess healthcare for themselves, and left to trust experts whose interests may not align with their own. As a result, good healthcare is not about more healthcare, it's about learning how to evaluate healthcare for yourself.
Evaluation of claims
2
Even though healthcare is quite technical, by taking a bird's-eye view and considering healthcare's performance from the past, patients can learn how to evaluate any claim.
Comprehensive
3
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 decisons.
Shared Decision-Making
4
Most decisions in healthcare are not black or white. A treatment appropriate for one patient may not be appropriate for another. The best medical decisions are made when you and I collaborate and incorporate your values, preferences, and circumstances.
Addressing bias
5
Bias is unavoidable in healthcare: practitioners carry financial conflicts of interest, specialists favor their own specialty, the media is looking for clicks, and patients want to feel better. My practice aims to reduce bias within, and helps you identify bias in yourself and others.
Lifelong learning
6
For the critical thinker, medical school marks only the beginning. Lifelong 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 makes you reliant on others and vulnerable. By applying the principles of Critical Thinking, this blog will teach you how to evaluate healthcare claims for yourself. The process is simple...
A claim is only as good as the evidence that supports it. So the first step is to gather the evidence and evaluate it for: accuracy, relevance, and bias. The next step is to give context to the claim by seeing how similar claims with similar evidence fared in the past. With this, you can determine how likely the claim is true. Below, find our most recent posts and a sign-up form. Also don't hesitate to explore Dr Woolf's lectures on YouTube.
