Medical Supervision and How it Works

Dr. Carney particpates in providing medical supervision for corporate health retreats to ensure the safety of medicine-dependant participants as they make significant lifestyle changes. It is nescessary, because of the health improving power of a plant-based diet, for some participants to be monitored on a daily basis to ensure the combination of the diet and their medications does not bring their numbers dangeriously low. Low fat unprocessed whole natural foods prepared in a simple manner aid in the lowering of blood pressure and blood sugar. These plant food triggered natural responses coupled with drug medications, also intended to lower blood pressure and blood sugar, can drop blood pressure and blood sugar to unsafe levels. The solution is to monitor participants numbers and adjust their medications on an almost daily basis. Often within a period of a week participants are able to safely come off of medications they had previosly been told by health professionals would be required for the rest of their lives. Those same medications which attempted to keeep their numbers under control can become dangerous if not properly monitored and adjusted while transitioning to a low fat whole natural foods plant based diet.

Typically, during a week-long health retreat participants vitals are taken and their blood is drawn twice during their week. The first time is on the first morning (Usually Sunday or Monday) and the second time is typically on the following Friday morning. In order to process one hundred plus participants in as close to a two hour window as possible we set up four tables with eight draw stations. We also set up other rooms where the participants have their blood pressures taken and their weight recorded before coming into the blood drawing room. We have had a half dozen Health Retreats now to work out the details and the system just keeps getting better and better.

The blood drawing room can also be used for group medical appointments by moving the tables to the room edges and bringing in dozens of portable chairs. At these group appointments the participants generally hear a short talk from Dr. Carney. Next they are all then seen privately, one at a time, in a screened off consultation area that we generally set up with an exam table and privacy partitions.

During the group visit we also lecture the participants while Dr. Carney is providing one on one visits with selected participants. For the first group visit Sean, Dr. Carney's husband, shares techniques used in the Carney household for preparing LOTS of food in a fast and simple way to ensure that there is always plenty of of healthy food around. This reduces the temptation, when hungry to eat unhealth foods. The participants enjoy this time and ask a lot of questions. Some group appointments have been made extra special by the presence of honored guests. At previous events we were fortunate enough the have Jeff Novick and Caldwell Esselstyn Jr. MD talk to the group.

Setting up the Medical Clinic at these Health Retreat programs can be a significant technical challenge due to the need to be connected from the Immersion to the AllMedPhysicians, pLLC office network. This is needed in order to utilize our Electronic Medical Records and also our File Sharing. Some resorts are very well equipped to handle such needs and one actually provided a completely separate and dedicated high speed Internet connection that we were able to use. Other facilities have been more of a challenge where Internet was almost non-existent. We generally bring workstations from the AllMedPhysicians office exam rooms as well as a tablet and a laptop. Our staff are able to work from these workstations at the resort office almost as conveniently as if they were at their own desks at the AllMedPhysicians, pLLC office. This also enables Dr. Carney to monitor issues at the AllMedPhysicians office and take care of patient requests that have been coming into the office during the week we are away at the health retreat.

We bring a router that connects automatically to the office router and creates a Virtual Private Network with our office. In telephone challenged areas we have brought a wireless bridge and a hot spot for our telephone provider and have picked up a wireless internet signal and directed it to the hotspot in order to create a virtual telephone tower. It is amazing how creative we have had to be! At one retreat we hung the antenae in our bedroom to cover a large area and provide mobile service to ourselves and some participants!

It is always a challenge to close up the office for a full week at a time, especially when travel is involved, but the rewards of seeing lives so radically tranformed in such a short time are worth it. And, most of Dr. Carney's patients are very understanding as they too have benefited from her passion to help people to regain optimal health!