Season 8, Episode 7: Urgent Care Meets Functional Medicine with Victoria and Akash Bhagat

Evelyne Lambrecht: I love hearing that Lake Tahoe is beautiful, and I feel like in San Diego all the kids have gone back to school. So I love that you’re still enjoying summer.

So Victoria and Dr. Akash Bhagat are the powerhouse duo behind NeuMed Urgent Care and IV Therapy. Dr. Akash is a board certified emergency medicine physician who has launched several innovative ER and urgent care facilities in Houston, bringing tech enabled and hospitality inspired care to life.

And Victoria is a board certified Family Nurse practitioner with over a decade of experience across cardiology, urgent care and integrative medicine. She’s passionate about prevention, hormone health, and bridging traditional care with personalized wellness strategies. Together, they’re redefining the urgent care experience. Their clinic model is not only transforming patient outcomes, but also setting a new standard for how functional medicine can be delivered in an accessible, scalable way.

That’s so awesome. So let’s start with your story. How did NeuMed come to life?

Victoria Bhagat: Well, Akash and I, we got together. We’re both practitioners, as you know, and, we both had this similar passion to create something new in Houston. Houston, there is definitely room for improvement when it comes to health and wellness. It’s not the healthiest city. We love our community. We’ve both lived here for a long time. Akash was raised here. All his family lives here. All of our friends live here. But we feel like there was such a delay or, kind of antiquated way of the way people take care of themselves and the way that people see their health.

So, you know, Akash has been in ER for a long time, I was in cardiology for a long time. We’ve both seen the worst of the worst scenarios when it comes to patient scenarios. All the patients that I would treat had established cardiovascular disease, multiple comorbidities, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and were on many medications and having several interventions throughout the year. Same with Akash, he would come in with people having acute heart attacks, acute strokes, things that have already occurred in their tertiary or more advanced state.

So both of us are very big in our health and wellness journey. We want to make sure that we’re optimizing ourselves, having good long term health, vitality, longevity. We want to feel good, and we know that it’s totally capable to feel good.

So when we came together, we really created this idea of like, let’s create a clinic where it’s affordable, accessible. Somebody can come in, walk in urgent care, treats things from A to Z for illness, from head to toe. And we can treat you that, giving you that professional, traditional, conventional approach, but also be more integrated and apply more of the foundations of health, like proper hydration and proper nutrition with the IV therapy and give you a more well-rounded 360 approach. So we’re really not missing anything. And in Houston, we really felt like, man, there was a demand for that here.

Evelyne Lambrecht: And when you two first met, were you already both interested in functional medicine or did you get married, and you were both doing your thing in conventional medicine, and then you’re thinking like, okay, there has to be a different way. What was that part of the story?

Dr. Akash Bhagat: So the whole functional medicine aspect of you might tell about a little bit later. So initially it was, as Victoria said, that conventional western medicine where you come in for your urgent care, we get all the contracts with insurance companies. And if it’s a flu, if it’s a laceration, if it’s a sprained ankle, something along those lines. Let’s make sure we can evaluate and treat those patients very well. Alongside that, we incorporated the, the hydration and nutrition. I’m in the ER world and at the ER, if you want to come in for a bag of saline and some medication for nausea, vomiting, and pain, you’re out of pocket, $600 or $700 for a copay and then coinsurance, deductibles, etc. You can be out-of-pocket well over $1,000 just to get a bag of saline. And some antinausea, anti-pain medication along with that. So what we discovered is there are a lot of compliments when you add the IV therapy aspect to just proper medical treatment. So we created urgent care plus IV therapy under one roof. The functional medicine aspect of it is truly, in our practice, it’s more getting the deeper health insights with proper blood testing, the blood testing. And alongside that, we can provide better insights into your health care for lifestyle, nutrition and most importantly, some limited supplementation with vitamins and hormones and nutrients. So that’s kind of where our functional medicine journey has led us.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Okay. And I’m curious especially for you, I find it fascinating, many of the doctors I have met in San Diego, in my territory, who opened their own functional medicine practices. They actually came from the ER, which is to me, like the total opposite of doing longer patient visits and actually, you know, working with someone through a plan for a couple of months. I’m curious, why that is such a drastic difference.

Dr. Akash Bhagat: So as born and bred ER physicians, we enjoy solving problems. And we like fixing things. And that’s what NeuMed was born out of. It was born out of my passion for solving problems and fixing things. So I saw a big problem, at least here locally with the health care system, and the overall offerings. So I saw that problem. I want to fix this. So we created NeuMed with myself and Victoria’s minds put together literally over dozens of dinners, on the back of a napkin, and then perfecting the concept and then incorporating into our first brick and mortar location in the Heights.

And the concept was embraced by that local community. And then we expanded from there. I think the parlay into functional medicine for a lot of the doctors because, they see that sticking to purely traditional medicine, writing a prescription, doing some basic blood work that’s recommended by the American Association of Family Practitioners or ultimately, it’s by a lot of times it’s by studies funded by either big pharma or insurance companies. You know, we’ve got to think outside the box and do a little bit more than just what’s recommended by these larger entities. Let’s do our own research and find out what other biomarkers we can look into and what are those mean for our health, for our wellness, for our longevity. And how can we pick up some of these chronic diseases, inflammatory states at an earlier stage in life so we can avoid getting on those medications or avoid those surgeries and avoid those hospitalizations or illnesses by getting these better, deeper insights, earlier in life on elective basis.

Evelyne Lambrecht: So what does this actually look like in practice? I mean blending in the functional medicine into an urgent care model. So is it like if somebody comes for, they have a cough or something, then you might recommend more nutritional immune support. Or if somebody comes in with, say, an ankle sprain, you’ll treat the ankle and do all the things that would normally be done. But then you might also recommend some sort of anti-inflammatory herb formula. Is that kind of how it goes?

Victoria Bhagat: It is very similar to that. So say somebody who comes in has like upper respiratory symptoms, are feeling really fatigued. They have fever, they have cough, you test them, they have Covid or something like that. It’s a very easy thing to say, hey, are you supplementing with anything? Let’s introduce the conversation of the nutraceuticals. Vitamin D is the gold standard for proper immune function. So really, none of those patients should be leaving the clinic without a vitamin D shot. It is just as powerful as giving a prescription medication.

And many times a lot of these people come in and they have a virus, which is not going to be benefited by any antibiotic. But we have grown into this culture where everyone expects to have this pharmaceutical medication or, pharmaceutical intervention for it to feel like you’re getting treated or that’s what you need when a lot of times we’ve kind of lost ourselves in all of these synthetic things where let’s just go back to the foundations.

When Covid was really hot, there were so many evidence based, peer reviewed articles showing, hey, everyone needs to be supplementing with vitamin D, zinc and vitamin C. These are going to have a more notable impact in your recovery and symptom relief from Covid than any prescription medication. But yet you still saw all these patients like going through great lengths to find ivermectin and all of these other things. And it’s because we’ve been kind of trained throughout decades that Western medicine has trained us to be more far pharmaceutical and intervention based rather than, hey, there’s so much we can do with a more conservative, natural approach that has really powerful effects.

And so that’s where we come in, and we wanted to be able to introduce both of them because we see the power and the benefit both. But we do think there’s a disservice when you’re just focusing on one thing conventional, traditional Western medicine, and you’re not considering more of the pillars and foundations of health, and that would be the nutraceuticals, supplementation, etc.

And then, you know, if you want to be more on the other side, we have people come in with migraines or stomach bugs, they’re having nausea and gut irritability, getting an infusion with Pepcid, with Toradal, with Zofran. These are, strong prescription strength anti-inflammatories, antinausea medications. That person’s going to walk out like feeling ten out of ten, where otherwise they would have really had to go to an emergency room, wait for hours in waiting lounge, and then go home with, like a $3500 bill to get that. So we’re able to offer that walk in affordable and accessible.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Yeah. So I’m curious to patients come to you because they’ve heard that you are more integrative, more functional. And so they’re like, oh, that’s the urgent care I want to go to. Or is it like they search for an urgent care and then they come and then they’re pleasantly surprised maybe when you have these other options?

Dr. Akash Bhagat: I think it’s going to be both. We’ve got a great reputation in the Houston area with, you know, if you search us, we’ve got, you know, 4.6 to 4.9 star rating on Google. A lot of people love us. We’ve got a high amount of repeat patients as well. And we’re blessed and lucky to have that. And that’s by design. We try to create a culture where we hire the right providers, and we offer them a facility in which they are, they’re understood, they’re listened to, any concerns they have. We take action based on that. So we provide an excellent environment where fantastic providers like to stay and work.

And that type of loyalty also provides, that type of personality rolls downhill. So when patients come in, they see providers that are happy, they’re excited, they’re not depressed, they’re not overworked. And just treat it like another cog in the health care spoke. So that excellent experience for the patients leads to a loyal, a loyal customer base. So that’s part of the equation.

Patients do come in a lot of times, say urgent care near me said let me go to NeuMed. They’ve got a great reputation. Let me go in. So they come in and then they tell us, hey, I’m feeling tired, but I also have this, the fever, chills, headache. So we can do some of the bedside testing for strep, flu, Covid, do a urinalysis to a lot of these tests, send off some blood tests also.

But then we also have the luxury of having a little bit more time where we can educate the patient. Hey, there are some other things that may be causing your fatigue. There are some extended blood panels that we would like to run. Would you like to do that and get some deeper health insights like, oh yes, absolutely. Tell me about that. And since our providers know about that, that’s a service. And that’s a discussion that we can have. Subsequently we’re able to give them, you know, some IV fluids with some vitamin B-complex, B12, a shot of vitamin D, some good is down vitamin C, a lot of these nutraceuticals, which does a ton of evidence based research out there that shows that there is a lot of benefit for these vitamins given the use cases that we dispense them for.

So patients are able to come in and not just get the prescription for their antibiotic or antiviral or anti-inflammatory or eye drops for their infected eye. They can have a little bit more of an in-depth conversation about their health, about their wellness. And then there’s the other side of our, company that also does, you know, the IV fluids and the vitamin shots. And then we can also offer those, deeper insights using laboratory testing.

Evelyne Lambrecht: I just had quite a few questions come up based on your answer. So you said that the visits are a little bit longer. So I was curious how that works, because I know that you accept insurance. And another question that came up for me is how have you trained all of your staff in this? So, we’ll do the first one first though.

Dr. Akash Bhagat: A great question. Are there times when people come in and they’re in and out in 15 minutes? Absolutely. But our providers do know that, yeah, if someone does need the extra time and extra counseling, that especially if we have the capacity to continue and educate that patient, try to educate every patient on their health concerns and make sure everyone leaves empowered with knowledge so they know more about their either disease state or symptoms. And so they also have a plan of care once they walk out.

Victoria Bhagat: For the provider training, it does require a lot more outside of what they got in their original training. So that’s where I come into play. And then I have other lead nurse practitioners that I hire and then I train for these particular positions. So we’re just continuously learning. We have a monthly provider call where we all log in and we all talk about everything. We also have a team portal, which we call team NeuMed, and it’s a communication thread where we post all our policy procedure. Everything is very organized within each category space. So for example, functional health labs has its own category space with all of its content, all the information needed there.

Same for iron infusion, same for NAD therapy. So we have to stay super organized, and we have to stay very up to date with the evidence based research is showing, and we all took that oath when we decided to become practitioners. The constant learning is lifelong. And so we all have that personality where we enjoy it. We’re always looking for it. So it is just constant conversations. It is a big role of mine in the company to be that advocate for the nurse practitioners, for our providers. And that’s a big part of what I do.

Every week I go to different locations. We sit one on one. I am open to communication. They can call me, text me any time. But yeah, we do provide very robust resources on a team. NeuMed portal that’s all very tech-savvy, it was built specifically for our company.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Nice.

Dr. Akash Bhagat: Evelyne, that’s an interesting question. I want to give another comparison. We would on board, not just health care professionals and nurse practitioners from other companies, but also LMRTs and MAs. One of them brought us a training manual from one of the other urgent care centers, and it was literally a 400-page binder with screenshots of the software showing them where to click and how to document. In a today’s digital age, that’s just such an antiquated teaching tool. So actually, initially we brought in some folks that had, extensive experience in and technology and, and then some of the computer programming. So we designed a proprietary communication training platform that it’s our own, which we can put in training videos and documents on and disseminated to all locations all at once. Put a little update to drive, our providers attention to those training documents, and they read them right there while they’re on site.

All of our NPS have two large screens, one for the documentation software and another, they have our team NeuMed portal so they can continuously be trained while they’re working. So, it’s a constant state of, educating and, updating our NPs on what’s the latest and greatest.

Evelyne Lambrecht: That sounds very fun, fast-paced and fun and always learning. And I think that’s one of the most beautiful things about this field, is there’s no shortage of things to learn, and there’s just so much knowledge being added to the field every single day.

Dr. Akash Bhagat: Right.

Victoria Bhagat: Progressive. Yes.

Evelyne Lambrecht: So you guys have grown very quickly. What are some of your strategies that you feel like have helped you scale successfully while maintaining that quality of care?

Dr. Akash Bhagat: Surrounding yourself with the right team. I’d have to say, we have made mistakes. What we try to pride ourselves on is trying to figure out those mistakes quickly and be solution oriented, and think practically and logically and not emotionally, and try to find the right people to put in the right roles.

What we’ve learned is you can have something that’s someone who’s a fantastic human being and excellent at a job. But if you put that same person in the wrong role, you’re just setting them up for failure. No matter how many tools you give them. So we try to put our employees in roles that they’re passionate about, educated within, and have a strong background, in order to succeed in that role. So I think that’s been key in getting us to where we are right now.

Victoria Bhagat: And also just staying in close communication with the staff that you hire and constantly getting feedback and doing like friendly audits, basically like checking in with everyone, and seeing how you can further streamline the process. What are friction points, what is working and constantly revising, constantly improving. So we are just always on the lookout. It’s definitely like we implement it this way and this is how we’re going to do things. A year passes by and then we’re like, hey, how’s things going? Absolutely not. You know what we do constant and frequent check ins. So I would say that is also key to our success.

Dr. Akash Bhagat: One of our phone calls, what we would call it, it wasn’t like a check in with the staff. It was roast the leadership. So we wanted only what we were doing wrong. So we constantly, we’re soliciting

Victoria Bhagat: For constructive feedback.

Dr. Akash Bhagat: Constructive feedback, yeah. We weren’t looking for fake compliments. We wanted them to get the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Victoria Bhagat: Right.

Dr. Akash Bhagat: And they started with the ugly. And then, of course, if there’s some positive we would get that also. But I think as long as you’re the key individuals who have their hands on our patients, as long as there’s an open line of communication from them to you and you’re getting direct feedback, then there’s plenty of room to improve and stay ahead of the curve when it comes to running an up-and-up shop.

Evelyne Lambrecht: I love this. I’m curious, what are some challenges you guys have faced? And I’m especially interested with you guys being married and running a business together, how does that work? Because even I’ve seen this many times over the years where it’s even friends who open a practice together and at some point they decide to go their separate ways. And so I’m curious, like, do you kind of keep that separate, or do you guys have any rules around not talking about business at home? Or is it all just like work life integration?

Victoria Bhagat: Work life integration. We wake up and it’s like, hey, I had this idea, or in the middle, we’re putting their kids to sleep and laying there while they’re drinking their little bottles. And we’re like, what do you think of this? It’s a constant and neither one of us get overly fatigued or annoyed or frustrated by it with each other. We just are always constantly bouncing ideas off each other and just a good night’s sleep and waking in the morning. And it’s like a whole new conversation. We’ve kind of already redirected from the night before, it’s just how we operate.

And weirdly enough, early on, I remember feeling a little nervous about that, like, man, I’ve heard, I don’t know, I’ve heard a lot of stories about people working together. Husband and wife. I’m scared what this is going to do to us because we have such a great friendship and such a good relationship, and we love being around each other all the time.

But it’s never been rooted in business and business, it’s business. But surprisingly, in life, we do very well. We work very well. I think we have since we created NeuMed together from inception. And we’ve had the same goals and the same vision, as we’ve built it, we’ve just we’re just supporting each other and continuing to strengthen the concept.

I will say we are, though, very different in the way that we approach our business. I cannot do what he does. And he can’t do what I do. So that actually brings a lot of harmony because I kind of take over some things that he just genuinely doesn’t have in him. And then he’s got the entrepreneur, the big vision. He’s risky. He’s like, let’s do this. And like he starts putting things into action. And I’m like, I would just have a panic attack if I were on my own to think about those things. So then I’m just like, okay. Like, if you’re confident in this, this is what you want to do, let me do like the nurturing and the policy procedure that it’s going to take to really actually implement that safely and accurately to get everyone on board.

So I start thinking about the other steps that it takes to actually make that happen successfully. So I think the fact that we are so different in our skills or in our business skills makes it a good thing. I feel like if we were both strong in the same thing, we probably would clash. So we have that going for us.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Yeah, that’s great. And what are some of the challenges you’ve encountered over the last few years?

Victoria Bhagat: Oh my gosh. So challenges which challenge would you like start first? Insurance.

Dr. Akash Bhagat: Yeah. First and foremost is insurance. Didn’t realize how difficult it would be to negotiate decent contracts with them. You know how influential they are on our consumers mind. How a lot of patients take ownership over their insurance company, and don’t feel like they have an actual relationship with their health care provider. So it’s that learning curve where we didn’t realize how we knew the insurance companies were powerful. We didn’t realize that they are this influential in a person’s decision-making.

So people will come in and say, well, I don’t want my insurance company to be billed for that. You know? Well, you’re paying $800 to $1,000 a month, and you don’t want your insurance company be billed, and you should say, you are my doctor. You are my urgent care and it’s the insurance company. But it’s like taking that ownership of they feel it’s like they are their insurance company when in actuality, insurance doesn’t always care that much about their insureds. Sure, they want to do the right thing and in many situations, but, it’s the doctors, the nurse practitioners, the MAs, the folks that have their hands on the patients that have the patient’s best interests at stake.

And I wish that that take the relationships between, health care providers and patients could be more popular than they are now. So I think that’s been the biggest challenge, kind of proving to our patients that we are actually looking out for their best interest. While we are also, of course, trying to run a business and keep all of our employees paid properly.

Victoria Bhagat: To give two examples about insurance, for one example, it took over a year of being open to even become a network with our first contract, our insurance. And it’s because they will push it back just to add another month delay. After another month delay. And it can be such tedious things. You have to call them constantly. You’re constantly being redirected to a different person and each different person asks for different things. So even after you’ve satisfied all of their requests, they’ll send you to another representative which will have completely set of new requests and then further delay things.

They’re very strategic in that, they love to confuse people, and just to delay things in their favor. So for over a year, we were out of network. And it took an incredibly long time to become in-network. And I think starting this business, we were very naive. We knew that insurance companies were manipulative. And quite fraudulent, but we didn’t know to what extent that they were.

Another example is, insurance companies, for example, over the last, especially couple of years where we’ve seen inflation and economy changes, we’ve had our staff, labor costs go up, our staff costs have gone up, our supply costs have gone up, our facility costs have gone up. And insurance premium has premiums have gone up. Insurances are charging their patients more for the same things because of inflation, but they have not made any changes to the reimbursement that they pay their doctors. So anyway, that’s just a little interesting too, but that I would say is one of the biggest hurdles is the insurance companies.

Second to that is, I think, just the big players in the healthcare market, in Houston, we’ve got big players like Methodist and United Health Care. And, when you’re the new kid on the block, you’re kind of an underdog. You have to really prove yourself and establish yourself, and your worth and verify that you are providing good standard of care where all these other companies that are very large and have been established for a long time, you know, have grown, and establish themselves. So you also have that really solid competition.

And what would you say Akash would be another challenge that we faced?

Dr. Akash Bhagat: I think you had the two big ones. It’s more just external forces. You know, the team has worked very well, amongst and with each other. We’ve brought on, smart financial advisors also recently to help us get to the next stage. So everything internally is going fantastic. Just dealing with insurance companies, negotiating those contracts. That’s just something that it’s tough to deal with, especially when you, to a certain degree, insurance companies, there are friends, they do pay bills. And we rely on them to compensate for us taking care of their insureds.

By the same token, I do wish that there was some, better ways where we could get compensated the same as someone else providing the same service. As opposed to, hey, this other person is a large institution. Therefore, we’re going to pay them 2 to 3 times the amount that we’re paying you, even though you’re providing the exact same service. You have the same type of trained providers. But since they have more leverage, then, we just don’t get the same deal. So that’s really it.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Yeah. It’s wild with insurance. And I think that’s why so many functional medicine providers, they just start a cash based practice or concierge membership. But to me, we still want things to be accessible for people. Right. So like you’re saying, they’re already paying for insurance because we need it for worst case scenario then we want some of that money to actually get us some benefits. So I don’t envy you guys.

Dr. Akash Bhagat: And we’ve come up with some solutions, Evelyne. We actually created our own membership model where for $129 bucks a month, they can come to us as often as they want. They get all their diagnostics, all their testing, their prescriptions, their shots, everything covered for $129 a month. And honestly, that covers about 80% of what people need on a regular basis. And for I think it’s $59 or $79 a month, they can come in as often as they want. They get all the diagnostics covered. And they just pay a $75 copay to us.

So we offer some solutions for those people who want that peace of mind, and who are saving that $400 to $1,000 a month on insurance premiums. And they want something where it’s predictable, where they’re not getting any surprise bills, which we’re also extremely transparent about our costs. Where we’ve found problems, we’ve implemented solutions for our patients.

Evelyne Lambrecht: That’s great. You have mentioned the diagnostics a few times. So I’m curious, what are some of your favorite tools to use in practice for that aspect?

Victoria Bhagat: Well, when it comes to more of our wellness, our favorite diagnostic right now would be the functional health labs. And when we say functional health labs, essentially what that means is just comprehensive panels. It’s going to be far more than what you get at your annual physical. So this is going to test for vitamin and nutrient status. This is going to check for adrenal health hormones, inflammatory biomarkers, cardiovascular, risk factors, instead of just your lipid panel. This is will also add some genetic risk factors or planetary biomarkers that we see with people with have heart disease, like homocysteine, CRP, lipo A and B and then you know, like vitamin D, and magnesium and B12, things like that, that are not routinely tested. And then a very comprehensive hormone panel.

So this is going to just give you just a much bigger picture of where you are objectively, especially for those who come in and they’re like, man, I’ve gone to my annual physical every year. They say everything looks normal, but I still don’t feel good, I just don’t, I feel sluggish, I have brain fog, I have frequent migraines. I feel like I get sick too often. It takes me too long to get better. I’m young. I don’t know why I feel like, I feel like I should be feeling better. That’s such a common complaint that we hear. And the reason why many times this is so common is that we are standardized blood tests are parameters are extremely wide. They’re graded from the lowest functioning human to the highest functioning human. So a lot of times you’ll see parameters that are like normal is 5 to 250. If you’re anywhere in between there, you’re normal. That’s just crazy.

So year after year people are just seeing okay, as long as it’s within this normal parameter, I’m good, I’m good, I’m good. Years go by. The next thing you know, they have some kind of event, like a stroke, or they have full-blown hypothyroidism or something, and they’re like, well, everything looks normal. I’ve been to the doctor and just suddenly they just have this disease state that now requires pharmaceuticals and medical interventions.

So the point of functional medicine or, more comprehensive blood testing is to be able to test those parameters become much more narrow, much more strict. And the parameters are tested, are compared to optimal thriving individuals. So you’re not going to have this huge parameter from 5 to 250. It’s going to be more like, you know, 100 to 200. So we’re being very strict and more narrow on that parameter. Like if it were me and I’m going to get comprehensive blood testing, I don’t want my, my blood compared to the lowest functioning human being that ever existed. I want my test to be compared to thriving, optimal individuals because that’s how I want to feel, and that’s where I want to be. So I want my bloodwork tested compared to that. And so that’s what that does.

Evelyne Lambrecht: And you guys use, OptimalDX. Is that right to, for a functional blood testing?

Victoria Bhagat: So it is a software. Yes. That gives us all of those parameters and also helps to create a very empowering educating tool, so that when the patients receive a report, it’s not just like, hey, we tested homocysteine and A1C, and C-reactive protein. And they’re like, what does that even mean? I have no idea. To a practitioner, that’s easy. But to patient facing that’s confusing and overwhelming. So it will break it down into categories where it’s very easily digested. And so you get a really good understanding. And then it’ll also explain like, hey, an A1C is the average a blood sugar levels over three months. And this is what it can indicate. This is what it tells you. And very easy to understand verbiage, so that it may take the patient a lot longer to really digest that report, but at least they really understand where they stand right then and there. And they can implement changes, focused changes.

Because at the end of the report, you’re going to get health concerns, and the health concerns are all rated on degree of dysfunction based on your labs. So if there’s greater than 50% dysfunction then it’s going to give you recommendations on that. So if it’s vitamin D and it’s, you know, we’re going to suggest vitamin D supplementation or if maybe it’s something hormone related.

And this is also going to give us more focused cues on if we need to redirect to a specialist. We know which specialist to redirect, like, hey, let’s go to endocrine or hey, let’s go to gut ecology or hey, it’s more just vitamin status. Just some supplementation can make a big difference.

Evelyne Lambrecht: So with the OptimalDX, is it something that you recommend to every patient? And then how often are you doing that? And I assume all of your providers have been trained in that. I’m just kind of curious if you can talk through like the implementation of that and what that looks like at NeuMed.

Victoria Bhagat: So yes, I recommend functional health labs to every patient. I think everybody should be getting comprehensive testing once a year. And that’s the bare minimum that you can all be doing for your health. It’s the greatest investment you can do. If you could just refrain from the Starbucks coffee or buying that designer handbag like investments and functional health labs, every single person could benefit from that.

You know, everyone is different. There are some people who are more progressive and more interested and proactive in their health and are going to really seek that out and request that. And then there are others who really just want to get labs that are covered by their insurance. And that’s where there’s just that education, that goes into it that’s like, hey, and your physical labs are really just the bare minimum, and this is what it’s going to tell you. And, you know, there’s so much more to the story. There’s so much more to what makes you up.

So, we’re here to advocate and educate on that, and we are working on making them more affordable. I think that’s been probably the greatest, barrier is patients are like, man, this like, it’s expensive. It’s like, yeah, you know, everything these days is expensive. And like, the truth is, these labs are expensive. Like, they’re not cheap labs. So it’s not that we purposely make these panels pricey, but I know that we are working diligently to see how we can lower the cost to make it more accessible to patients. Because it is our passion to make our community healthier. And so that was a big part of our concept, was NeuMed was meant to be this affordable, accessible place for patients to get better care. So, we’re hoping that we just launched it now, like, two months ago. So over time that we can find ways to be more creative, to make it more affordable.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Let’s talk a little bit about supplements. So I’m curious, do you carry certain supplements in all of the locations? Are you sending people to your online virtual dispensary and utilizing like an e script recommendation? How does that process work in your practice?

Victoria Bhagat: Yes. So supplements are a big deal. We do have a virtual dispensary with Designs for Health. We did choose them because they are very high quality. They are vetted, they’re clean, they test their supplements. That’s a big question that comes in through our doors all the time is like, hey, I want to take this supplement, which like brand do you recommend?

On like Instagram and TikTok patients are fed so much information. We have influencers with no medical background pushing and pushing a certain supplement because they’re going to get some kind of financial incentive on the back end, and it’s dangerous, really. It’s so scary. So we’re like, hey guys, really, supplements are not created equal. It is super important that you go with like a trusted source when it comes to that. It’s something that you’re putting into your body daily, and you’re trusting that it’s going to have a positive output. But the truth is, many of these supplements are formulated with byproducts and preservatives that once they get broken down by digestive enzymes in the body, they turn into byproducts or oxidative stress, which can actually counteract the reason you even took them. So quality matters, where you get the matters.

We have the virtual dispensary where you can purchase like on your own, kind of like an online shopping experience. And we do carry some supplements in-house with nine different ones. We chose some of the more common ones that we see, like probiotics. We have NAD++, which is the precursor to NAD. We have a hormone optimization supplement which contains DIM, and another proprietary blend that helps rid the body of the bad hormones and optimize the good hormones. We have some, supplements that are really good for calming, anxiety, and balancing the central nervous system. So we have a good variety there in-house. But if you want to shop more broadly, then we do have the online dispensary with Designs for Health.

Evelyne Lambrecht: That’s great. And I’m curious, we don’t always talk about this, but since we are the Designs for Health podcast. But I’m curious, how do you feel like Designs for Health has supported your clinical and your business vision?

Victoria Bhagat: It’s been very well, easy. Honestly. It came pretty opportunistically because it’s exactly what we needed and what we’re trying to do. So, when we got connected and the more and more we learned, the more and more we were like, hey, this is like, kind of like a piece of a puzzle that just fit perfectly and created our experience to be more turnkey. And made it very easy.

So I would say that it’s allowed us to really streamline our recommendations and our patient care, like our patient treatment plans, because now we have like a trusted source like, hey, you know, here’s this online dispensary, click this link or follow this QR code and it takes you straight to the source with all the options available, we can create custom, links to patients directly for their exact supplementation plan, where they can just click that and they’re all right there and they can just purchase them. So it eliminates like option overload or which type of magnesium. There are three different types. Which one? So we can make those direct recommendations for them and make it super easy. So it’s been it’s been great adding to our practice.

Evelyne Lambrecht: I love hearing that. And I love, my practitioners love using the e-script option. It’s just made things so much easier since we’ve had that the last like 2 or 3 years. So that’s awesome.

So I’m curious, what’s next for NeuMed like in the next 1 to 2 years, but then also in the next 10 to 20 years?

Victoria Bhagat: We have plans! Akash do you want to talk to us at this point?

Dr. Akash Bhagat: Yeah. Well, we get approached by, not just patients but providers. And folks who are just excited about the business concept that we built. So, we’re looking into various strategies to expand currently. And some of that include some strategic partnerships with smaller health care systems, as well as independent business owners. So whether that’s via joint ventures or franchise type concepts, over the next couple of years, you’re going to see some pretty exciting, rapid expansion of NeuMed throughout Houston, and Austin, and San Antonio and probably outside of the state as well. So more on that in the future. But we’ve been having some excellent discussions.

Evelyne Lambrecht: That’s really, really exciting. And what do you hope ultimately is your legacy with NeuMed?

Dr. Akash Bhagat: We’ve always thought that NeuMed would be the clinic of the future. So not only are we trying to incorporate, we definitely don’t want to be AI run, but we are interested in incorporating technology in order to more efficiently run our practice. To streamline the patient experience, to enhance the patient experience, to minimize documentation errors, maximize communication. And also just to provide more time between the provider and the patient. So if we can lean on machine learning to take some of the redundancies out of our work so we can concentrate on more that sacred, provider relationship with the patient, then that’s what we’re working on right now. And we want to be the first to market to do that because we’re small enough. And, nimble enough to be able to do so. So we want to be first to market and do that best.

Victoria Bhagat: But also, I wanted NeuMed to really be like, set the tone for a new health standard. Like, I feel like all clinics and all specialties should be incorporating and integrating more health and wellness than their treatment approach. And since we saw a big gap and there wasn’t that didn’t really exist. That’s why we created NeuMed in the first place. So I see that people are caring more and more about their health and being proactive and wanting to investigate and learn about themselves and not just wait for a problem to occur to start asking questions.

So hopefully this eventually becomes more the standard of care in the next 5 or 10 years. Every clinic has, yes, we have our Western medicine, we have our pharmaceuticals, our interventions, but we also have that that nutraceutical foundation, too, that we integrate into all of our patients care.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Yeah. And speaking of the foundations, you mentioned in the beginning that your providers do talk to your patients about some of those lifestyle changes. And I’m curious, do you have any nutritionists or health coaches, or do you run any group programs like group detoxes or group programs that encourage patients to come in and like learn together on those foundational aspects of health?

Victoria Bhagat: I love that we don’t have where we have like routine or scheduled learn sessions or anything like that. But we have partnered with different lifestyle medicine coaches. One of them is Verified Wellness. She was born and in Houston. She’s lived her whole life here in Houston. And so essentially she is like a GLP-1 specialist. She will hold your hand and walk you through so she’ll get the objective data, look at the functional health results. Have a one on one consult and then be able to give you actionable ways to implement change because sometimes it can feel very overwhelming. We get patients who have several things come at them and they’re like, oh my gosh, they feel fearful. They feel their health is so bad. And it’s really not that sometimes it just takes some educating and breaking it down and having somebody educated in that to kind of give you the first, few steps to get you started. So we do partner with people who do that.

Evelyne Lambrecht: I think that can be helpful too, because I believe that you can get insurance reimbursement for group sessions like that. And I think it really helps because then it allows the licensed providers who provide the medical care, they can focus on that higher level care, versus the foundational stuff.

What would you tell other clinicians who want to practice in this way, but maybe feel a little overwhelmed and unsure where to begin?

Dr. Akash Bhagat: There’s definitely a lot to learn. There are a lot of resources out there. It does take a lot of self motivation and desire to learn, and understand more about the preventative aspect of health. Getting some partners so you can lean on other people’s expertise, folks like you guys over at DFH have been wonderful and sharing resources and getting us plugged in with other folks in the industry also. So getting that really good personal foundation. Surrounding yourself with a network of folks who can assist as you grow has been fantastic, because when you have a really solid network, then you’re part of a bigger group of trusted professionals, and you’re not just a solo provider out there trying to do everything on your own.

Victoria Bhagat: Surrounding yourself with like-minded business entrepreneurs who have the same goals in mind. Or you can even shop your inspiration and go to places that are doing things that you’re doing at a higher level, and maybe experiencing it firsthand and seeing what you like. Take a pen and paper, write the things you liked, the things you didn’t and see how you want to personalize your experience if you wanted to do something similar but different. But yeah, it does take a significant amount of educating effort and then also a little bit of or a lot of risk. You’ve got to be willing to take on a decent amount of risk, especially in a city like Houston, because there are more progressive cities out there that are a few steps ahead of all of us. I’m grateful for the wellness world here in Houston that is really trying to make a difference in our community. And making our community healthier and to educate. But I have found that it takes a lot of repetition to educate patients on health and wellness just because they didn’t really grow up learning it. So they’re just kind of learning it for the first time.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Excellent point. And how wonderful that you do get to do something like that in a city like Houston.

Victoria Bhagat: That needs it you know.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Absolutely. So we’re going to wrap up with my signature questions that we ask every guest. So it’s just kind of rapid fire. And Victoria I’ll start with you. What are your three favorite supplements for yourself?

Victoria Bhagat: My favorite supplements right now well I’ve been taking consistently is vitamin D. Holy grail. Cannot compromise on that. That’s the gold standard we all need to be supplementing. So vitamin D acts like an antioxidant great for immune health, recovery. But great for boosting your mood.

Second one would be CoQ10. CoQ10 also acts like an antioxidant, great for oxidative stress, energy, endurance, DNA and mitochondrial repair. It’s also like a nonnegotiable if you were of childbearing age and trying to make sure you have good reproductive health and wanting to conceive, it promotes good egg quality. So that one in the last one would be NAC, or N-Acetyl-Cysteine, which is the precursor to glutathione. As we age, our glutathione stores start to progressively decline, which leads to natural aging. But we don’t have to let that take full course. We can supplement to slow that down. So I do it.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Great. And, Akash, what about you? What are your three favorite supplements?

Dr. Akash Bhagat: For me, two of them are the same as Victoria’s, NAC and vitamin D for the same reason she said. The reason I like NAC is, it also has glutamate or promotes glutamate production. And that’s excellent for brain health, which is very important to me as I’m getting close to my 50. Vitamin D for all the reasons Victoria said. And then, I love my probiotics. I’ve noticed that I feel better when my gut health is in check, and, healthy gut leads to just decrease overall body inflammation. And, I notice I feel better, I have more energy. My mood is a little bit more uplifted also, when my belly feels light, I’m happier. Those are my favorite ones.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Great. And, Victoria, what are your go-to health practices?

Victoria Bhagat: For me? To keep me happy, I need two things every day. I need my skincare routine. Okay? I need to be able to have ten minutes to apply the different layers of my serum and my sunscreen and feel fresh. And then secondly, I always want to get at least a 20-minute brisk walk outside. That is what keeps all those stagnant thoughts, all of those to-do lists in my head that kind of run a little haywire when I’m walking briskly outside and like, multitasking and looking at the trees and the fresh air. For some reason, I’m able to sort everything in, and I find the solutions to all those heavy thoughts that I’ve been carrying throughout the day. So nonnegotiables.

Evelyne Lambrecht: And, Akash, what about you? What are the health practices that keep you energized?

Dr. Akash Bhagat: Yeah, one of my favorites, as Victoria said, I love spending time outdoors in nature, especially when the weather’s favorable. I do that kind of in a meditational type fashion. I love my high intensity, the HIT type training. So I enjoy that a couple times a week and whenever I can get in a hot yoga or at least some decent type of yoga session in once or twice a week, always gives me that mental reset and allows me to feel like I can handle all the problems that I may have. So just kind of clears my mind.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Wonderful. And last question for you guys, Victoria, what’s something you’ve changed your mind about through the years?

Victoria Bhagat: I would have to say the biggest one is how the annual physicals, it all starts with that preventive care. Since I’ve been in cardiology all the patients I’ve ever treated have multiple comorbidities or super ill on multiple medications and are functioning like a ninety-year-old at the age of 65. All of those things could have been prevented. It just took some more, deeper insight and knowledge earlier on. So I think starting at the age of absolutely no later than 30 years old, take your annual screening very seriously and invest in more comprehensive blood work. Start there and then, that can save you a lot in the future.

Evelyne Lambrecht: I think that’s an excellent reminder, even for us as healthcare practitioners. Right. Because we’re all so busy taking care of others that it can be easy to neglect our own health as well.

And, Akash, what about you? What’s something you’ve changed your mind about through your years in this field?

Dr. Akash Bhagat: I no longer take any one person’s opinion or advice when it comes to my health. So I do my own research. I look at various sources. There’s a ton of misinformation out there. I would never jump on the first trend, that’s out there either. Let the time do its thing and vet out what’s effective and what’s a hoax? Don’t listen to AI about everything. AI has hallucinations. Yes. And, creates things when they’re not true. And, we definitely don’t want to rely on AI type tools to give us all of our health advice.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Excellent reminders.

Dr. Akash Bhagat: It’s an excellent tool. Yeah, it’s an excellent tool, but check sources on everything.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you for that reminder. Well, thank you both. This was wonderful. I really enjoyed this conversation with you. And, I wish you both the best of luck as you take NeuMed into the future.

Dr. Akash Bhagat: We appreciate it.

Victoria Bhagat: Thank you. Yeah, we’re happy to be on with. Thank you.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Thank you so much. And thank you for tuning in to Conversations for Health. Check out the show notes for resources from this episode. Please share this podcast with your colleagues. Follow, rate or leave a review wherever you listen. And thank you for designing a well world with us.

Voiceover: This is Conversations For Health with Evelyne Lambrecht, dedicated to engaging discussions with industry experts, exploring evidence based, cutting edge research and practical tips.