Why Functional Medicine is the Better Choice for Health Optimization

At InHealthRVA, we believe healthcare should be more than a quick fix or a stopgap to bandaid symptoms and diseases. It should support you to thrive—not just survive or manage established health issues.

Concierge medicine care is conventional medicine (pharmaceuticals and disease or symptom management), while InHealthRVA’s Functional & Integrative clinic seeks to optimize your wellness, not just address established symptoms.

We do this through an investigative, root cause approach to your health needs, goals and conditions. We work with you on a health journey that combines the best of scientifically based holistic & natural medicine, more advanced testing, mind-body support, herbs and pharmaceutical and conventional medical options.

 
 

Understanding Functional Medicine: Going Beyond Symptoms to the Root Cause

 
 

Why Functional Medicine Stands Apart

  • Root-Cause Focus: Functional medicine asks, Why is this happening? We seek to uncover the combination of variables driving your health concerns, including gut health, hormones, cellular health, inflammation and stress. The goal is to uncover what is driving your health concerns and to support your full wellness.

  • Personalized Plans for You: Functional medicine utilizes advanced labs that go beyond routine testing: identifying nutrient deficiencies, hormonal imbalances, microbiome issues and more. With these insights, we craft personalized strategies—integrating lifestyle, nutraceuticals, herbs, and pharmaceuticals—to meet your unique goals.

  • Compassionate, Whole-Person Care: We understand that your health history matters. It’s not just about fixing numbers on a lab sheet; it’s about optimizing your health in ways that align with your life.

 

Comparing Functional Medicine and Concierge Medicine: Thrive vs. Survive

 

Advanced Diagnostics

Functional medicine goes beyond surface-level tests to uncover what’s really going on.

Whole Person

Functional medicine takes a systems-based approach. Your body isn’t a series of disconnected parts—it’s an interconnected system.

Preventative, Personalized Care

Functional medicine doesn’t wait for problems to become crises. By addressing potential risk factors early—before symptoms arise—it builds a foundation for long-term health.

 
 
 
 

Advanced Diagnostics

Functional medicine goes beyond surface-level tests to uncover what’s really going on. Think nutrient levels, metabolic pathways, hormone balance, and gut microbiome diversity—all areas that can profoundly impact your health but often go unnoticed in routine care. We come up with health plans and walk with you through the investigative journey towards discovery wellness.

Concierge medicine typically relies on standard diagnostics like cholesterol panels and blood pressure checks. While important, these tests often miss numerous other areas of health that could hold the key to your wellness.

Both Functional and concierge medicine refer you out to specialists, such as cardiologists and endocrinologists. Your Functional medicine practitioner will then in-house that information back into an integrative health plan to help you understand and consider their recommendations within the whole picture of your health.

Whole-Person Focus

Where conventional care treats symptoms in isolation, Functional medicine takes a systems-based approach. Your body isn’t a series of disconnected parts—it’s an interconnected system. For example, stress can affect gut health, and hormonal shifts can impact energy and mood. Functional medicine addresses these links, empowering your body to heal as a whole.

Concierge medicine focuses conventional analytics of labs to look for established diseases, such as high lipids and diabetes. Then prescribes medications to treat them. While they will do a much better job of talking you through it and following up, they aren’t trained to work with you to understand how to holistically manage and even resolve these health issues.

Preventative, Personalized Care

Functional medicine doesn’t wait for problems to become crises. By addressing potential risk factors early—before symptoms arise—it builds a foundation for long-term health. This proactive, preventative approach ensures you stay ahead of chronic conditions.

Concierge medicine, while offering personalized attention, often emphasizes managing existing conditions rather than optimizing future wellness.

Below is a side-by-side comparison to see how Functional and concierge medicine differ across essential aspects of care:

A Call to Thriving Health

At InHealthRVA, we know you believe everyone deserves the right to wholistic health. Whether you’re managing chronic health concerns, looking for more complete and personalized care or seeking to optimize your health and feel your best, Functional medicine offers the latest in modern understanding of human health, all in a more compassionate model.

Are you ready to move beyond surviving and start thriving? Let’s work together to create a personalized health plan that empowers your body, mind, and spirit. Reach out today—your journey to lasting wellness starts now.




Frequently Asked Questions

  • Email us at info@InHealthRVA.com or give us a call at 804-288-1111 or set up a Discovery call at a time that is convenient for you. Click here to schedule.

  • Anyone 16 years or older can join.

  • We are a hybrid insurance-membership model.

    What does this mean? We will use your insurance for basic appointments and what lab work is covered. There is a yearly membership fee that will allow us the necessary time to spend with you for this complex level of care and education (and stay in business).

  • Traditional PCP’s see roughly 30-40 patients/day and have multiple practitioners on staff.

    We see ~6-8 patients/day and have just one Functional medicine-focused primary care practitioner and one Functional medicine expert consultant (who does not practice primary care nor can bill insurance).

    The only way we can provide this service and stay in business is by having a membership fee.

    Our mission is and always will be to revolutionize medicine to provide underlying cause, whole-person health and wellness care and to make it as accessible as feasible. Under the current insurance and billing environment, this is the best next step towards better insurance coverage for this type of medicine that will allow us to continue to exist as we work towards a better healthcare system.

    We will continue to evolve and push insurance to cover more time and better health and wellness care from a Functional medicine perspective.

  • Not quite. Concierge medicine isn’t (usually) more in-depth medicine, it is only better access and more time with your conventionally-practicing practitioner. InHealthRVA Primary Care will offer more time and more access which is spent doing great, underlying-cause, personalized Functional medicine for you.

    In order to keep this in an affordable price range for our patients, you will not have 24-7, on-call access. If you are having an emergency when there is not an oncall practitioner available from InHealthRVA, you will call and/or go to Urgent Care or the Emergency Room. We will follow up with you immediately within the business day to provide guidance and an immediate appointment, if necessary.

 
 
“I am so grateful for Tressa and her team. I have been seeing her for over 3 years as needed and she has provided not only wisdom and expertise, but a listening and understanding ear. That can be so hard to find in the chronic illness world. There have been several times over the years during periods of discouragement for me that she encouraged me to keep “fighting” and pursuing health when I felt like giving up. I definitely recommend this practice!”
— V.L.
 
 

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