The California Center for Functional…
The California Center for Functional Medicine (CCFM) promises a better approach to healthcare, but they don't deliver. It feels like a business that is trying to scale, but they are doing that at the expense of the patient experience. The clinicians themselves are competent and caring, but the system they have developed is frustrating.
1) They rely on a subscription model, which is very opaque and hard to navigate. The website doesn't mention this, but after 6 months you can't update your subscription level. Mind you, there is no dashboard to see how many "minutes" you have used.
2) You cannot contact your clinicians directly, all messages go through the staff (which are often slow and/or unresponsive) so you end up playing games of telephone even with simple yes/no questions.
3) I'm not sure if the staff is spread to thin, but the support is awful. Messages are not returned for weeks or even at all and the communication itself is often very rushed and incomplete. You get a lot of super long messages because they are using templates and form responses. I don't need everything just for me, but it is just an example of them shifting burden to patients to make things easier and more "efficient".
I had hoped that CCFM would be a more holistic model for healthcare where they would be partners for me. If that was the case the expense would be worth it. As it is, you get a worse experience at a higher price.