Introduction
My colleague at Owlicity, Chris Cloke Browne has recently written about the interesting work of Dr Peter Attia in his book “Outlive”.
Who wouldn’t sign up for the idea of working with your doctor to chart a course through life, doing your best to avoid series disease as opposed to reacting if and when it arises?
Practice in the UK is moving some way in that direction with GP health checks for men and women as they reach a certain age, this thinking seems to be accelerating that and making it as personal as possible.
Navigating the ice field
If the plan is to have a medical hand on the tiller as you steer through life from a health perspective, what does that look like?
Presumably regular consultations and testing, with medical based anticipation hoping to avoid series health episodes. Will medical records look more like a car’s service history from a main dealer?
What’s different from the current situation?
Currently medical records chart basic medical protection from birth, vaccinations and the like, then episodes of disease or trauma management as they arise, with some screening for specific conditions in later life.
So, we suppose the big difference will be notes of regular reviews with lifestyle advice and what might be described as low level medication/supplements. Clearly if something more serious arises, then an appropriate intervention will be made.
What does a defensible case look like in this new world?
We have been used to specific episode being scrutinised, almost in isolation. However, if we are charting a course through life, the breach of duty evidence will be very different. Certainly there can be no guarantees that serious disease will not develop and we are concerned that this sensible medical approach risks doctors being judged as clairvoyants.
So, we think consent will be different in that it will have to contain what cannot be an open-ended expectation of a level of health.
What Owlicity is trying to do…
From our experience, large numbers of potential cases can be headed off at an early stage with supportive expert evidence.
The idea of mutual support is not new. We aim to have clients who practice in various aspects of functional medicine and to be in a position to report in our cases.
We follow this approach with non-functional medicine and dentistry currently and we think this is the approach to adopt with this.
So, if you are starting in functional medicine or have an established business, come and join us!