Becoming a Patient of Dr. Haiden

Before becoming a patient of Dr. Haiden, we invite you to explore more about Dr. Haiden's practice and her integrative functional medicine philosophy. You can also visit the FAQs section to answer many other questions you may have.

After reviewing this web site, you can make an appointment by calling our office. You can also use the website contact form to send an appointment request. You are welcome to call our office for a brief conversation with Dr. Haiden to determine if our services are right for you.

Our office phone number is (408) 335-6848.

Upon making your appointment, you will be sent a health survey to complete. It is important that you fill out that survey completely and return it to our office. We will also ask that you send us any pertinent health records that you have so that we can review them briefly before your appointment.

Your Initial Appointment

Your initial appointment will be 90 minutes. The goal of this appointment is for Dr. Haiden to hear your story, understand your goals, gather information, and come to a mutually agreeable plan going forward.

During this appointment, we will:

• Clarify your concerns and pin-point your goals, in order of importance to you
• Hear your story and go over what you have tried, what has worked, and what has not worked.
• Review any lab results or other studies you may have already had.
• Review your diet and any changes you have made in your diet
• Gather a list of your current supplements and medications, and any changes that have been made in those and any effects that has had
• Do a focused physical exam focusing on your condition.

• We will go over recommended laboratory testing. We will consider testing you have already had, discuss which tests may be the most important to obtain, and which ones we can decide about later.

• Some of the testing we offer is from specialty labs. For this testing, we will be able to have a discussion about the cost of those tests, and whether or not you should be able to use your insurance, so that you can make informed decisions. For standard testing that is done through common labs, we do not know the prices those labs charge or how your insurance will pay.

• While we can not remedy the cost of health care, we do make every effort to consider cost in the laboratory options available to us.

• In some cases, if your case is complex, or there are many records to review, Dr. Haiden will need to spend time reviewing after your appointment. Also, Dr Haiden may ask you to provide more information about some things.

You will leave your appointment with a written plan that may include any combination of:

• Recommended testing
• Dietary change
• Supplement recommendations
• Prescriptions if applicable (such as for thyroid medication or SIBO antibiotic treatment)
• Lifestyle and environmental modification recommendations
* In general, our approach to gut bacterial problems is to remove the bad microbes, rebalance the diet and bacteria, and restore the gut.
Because people come to us with many different diets in place already, your dietary recommendations may be unique to you. So, while some people will be starting fresh and receive a recommendation for a 30 day "rebalancing" diet, others may receive different recommendations.

You will have a follow up visit, usually about 45 to 60 days after your first appointment. This gives time for us to see how you respond to any interventions, and also gives time for your lab work to return. For some of the labs that come back earlier, we will alert you to the results before your follow up appointment.

Initial Follow-up Appointment

This appointment can be done in person or over the phone, however, Dr. Haiden finds it is sometimes best if this appointment is in person. This appointment usually lasts 60 minutes.  In complex cases, it can take a little longer.

At this appointment we will:

• Discuss any issues that required extra review on the part of Dr Haiden.
• Review the results of testing
• Assess how are responding to our initial recommendations
• Go over any frustrations you are having with fitting change into your routine
• Go over new recommendations for diet, supplements, or other changes, as a result of test results or your response to the initial interventions.
• Revisit the need, if any, for the testing that we set aside at the first visit.
• Answer any remaining questions you may have.
• Set up a time-line for your next visit.

Further Appointments

• Every person and every case is different
• Some problems resolve relatively quickly while others require more steps and more time.
• Usually follow-up appointments are best every 6-8 weeks.
• These visits can be in person or via phone.
• If you are outside of the local San Francisco Bay Area, you should have an in-person visit at least once per year if your condition requires care for more than one year.
• Brief questions and clarifications are free of charge. More involved questions or clarifications that constitute the time of an appointment will be charged as an appointment.

Fees

• A new patient visit is $499 and is 90 minutes. This fee includes your office visit plus review of your case and any past records.
• The first follow up visit is $399 and is one hour. This fee includes review of any new labs and formulation of a plan going forward.
• Further follow up visits are charged by the hour at $270 per hour prorated for the length of the visit. Most follow up visits can range from 30 minutes to 60 minutes. Though sometimes they are less, and occasionally more, depending on complexity.
• Brief questions and clarifications are free of charge. More involved questions or clarifications that constitute the time of an appointment will be charged as an appointment.
• Testing fees are paid directly to the lab.
• Payment is taken at the end of the appointment.
• We do not do insurance billing. You may submit your super-bill to your insurance for reimbursement.

Testing and Supplements

Some of the testing that we commonly recommend:

• Conventional blood testing - Vitamin B12 assessment, Vitamin D, Celiac panel, Thyroid testing (including TSH, free T3, free T4, autoimmune markers), anemia and iron markers, cholesterol panels (including lipid particles), and diabetic markers. Occasionally, we may recommend more involved testing in order to try to discover the source of a suspected infection, or clarify other less usual conditions.

• Complete stool testing - We very frequently recommend this test. This test looks for bacterial imbalance or overgrowth, parasites, fungal overgrowth, digestive enzyme markers, inflammatory markers, lipids, and fatty acids. This test is to assess general intestinal or small bowel bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) or imbalance (dysbiosis).

• Breath testing - For small bowel bacterial overgrowth (SIBO). We frequently recommend this test.

• Organic Acids testing - There are a couple variations of this test. It is used to assess gut bacteria and fungal breakdown products, amino acids, neurotransmitters and fatty acids. It also gives information about how efficiently the energy making process is working, and whether or not there are inefficiencies in metabolic enzymes that require specific vitamins, minerals or nutrients, and if there are extra demands being put on the detoxification system. We recommend this test on a case-by-case basis.

• Saliva or serum hormone testing - For adrenal and sex hormones.

• Genetic testing - Testing for methylation (MTHFR) is the most common test we recommend. However, there is also testing available to clarify cholesterol risk, genetic markers that give information about how medications are processed (CYP's), and markers for potential inefficiencies in clearing toxins.

• Testing may need to be repeated periodically to assess progress.
• We do not mark up, or collect payment for, any testing. Payment is direct to the lab.

• Patients are welcome to purchase recommended supplements from any source. I you wish, you may purchase from Dr. Haiden's Emerson Ecologics online portal.

 

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To help you decide if Dr. Haiden's approach and services are right for you, schedule a free 15 minute phone call by calling us at 408-335-6848, or contact us via the contact form.