When I started building this practice, I thought the most important thing I was offering was a different approach to medicine.
Dr. Jeff Kindred, DOMore advanced testing. Longer time horizons. A framework focused on health span, not just disease management. All of that matters. But the longer I do this, the more I realize that none of it works without something more fundamental.
The most powerful thing I can offer a patient is knowing them.
Not their chart. Not their last set of labs. Them. Their history, their goals, what they’ve tried before and why it didn’t last, what they’re actually willing to do, what keeps them up at night. That kind of knowing takes time. It takes continuity. And it is almost impossible to build inside the structure of modern medicine.
What Most People’s Healthcare Actually Looks Like
You have a symptom. You call your doctor’s office and wait three weeks for an appointment. You sit in a waiting room for an hour. You see a provider you’ve never met, who has ten minutes, who is reading your chart for the first time while you’re sitting in front of them. They address the immediate issue. They move on.
Nobody asks how you’ve been sleeping. Nobody asks what your stress level has been like, or whether the weight you’ve been trying to lose is affecting how you feel about yourself. Nobody has time to notice that this is the third time in eighteen months you’ve come in for something that might be connected to something larger.
That is not a criticism of the physicians inside that system. Most of them went into medicine for the same reasons I did. The system has simply made continuity structurally impossible. A panel of 2,000 patients, fifteen-minute appointments, documentation requirements that consume half the day. There is no version of that math that leaves room for relationship.
So people adapt. They look up their own labs online. They order direct-to-consumer hormone panels. They go to a weight loss clinic that will prescribe a GLP-1 without ever reviewing their metabolic history. They get a piece of the answer here and a piece there, and nobody is putting it together.
That is not a healthcare plan. That is managed fragmentation.
What the Relationship Actually Changes
When I know a patient — really know them — everything about how I practice changes.
You get a rash. In most systems that means waiting a week to get into primary care, months to see a dermatologist, or surrendering an afternoon to urgent care where someone who has never met you spends eight minutes guessing. For my patients it's a video call. I look at it, I know your history, I know what you're on, and in fifteen minutes we have a plan.
We do a DEXA scan and a VO2 max test. I am not handing you a report and sending you on your way. We sit down together and I walk you through what the numbers mean for you specifically — your body composition, your cardiovascular fitness, where you are relative to where you want to be at 60 or 70 or 80. We build a plan. We revisit it. When something changes, we adjust.
You want to address your weight. I already know your metabolic history. I know what you’ve tried, what worked, what your labs looked like a year ago, how you responded to a medication change. We are not starting from zero. We are building on a foundation that took months to establish.
Something doesn’t add up in your bloodwork. In a traditional system, that might generate a referral, a repeat test in six months, a letter saying values are “within normal limits.” In this model, I notice it because I have the time to notice it. And I have the time to go looking for what it means.
The Doctor Who Doesn’t Have All the Answers
I want to be honest about something. I do not know everything. No physician does.
What I can offer is time and genuine investment in finding the answer when I don’t have it. If something is outside my expertise, I will tell you that clearly. I will find the right specialist. I will stay involved so that your care doesn’t become fragmented the moment another provider enters the picture.
That kind of follow-through is only possible in a practice built around relationship. When my panel is small enough that I know every patient, when I am not racing through a packed schedule, when I have the margin to actually think — that is when medicine works the way it is supposed to.
It is not a revolutionary concept. It is actually the oldest model in medicine. A doctor who knows you. A doctor you can call. A doctor who is in your corner, not just at your annual physical, but throughout the year, as your life changes.
Who This Is For
This model is not for everyone, and I say that honestly. If you are healthy, young, rarely need care, and have access to a strong primary care physician you see consistently — you may not need this.
But if you are someone who has stopped expecting much from your healthcare because the system has trained you to expect little — if you are managing multiple things and nobody is looking at the whole picture — if you have goals for your health that go beyond not being sick — then the absence of a real physician relationship is costing you something.
I started Hi, Finch Health because I wanted to practice medicine the way I believed it should be practiced. Not in ten-minute increments. Not at arm’s length. With enough time and continuity to actually make a difference in someone’s health over years, not appointments.
That starts with knowing you.
If you want to find out what that looks like in practice, I’d love to talk.
Set up a consultation with Dr. Kindred.
Read more from the Hi, Finch Playbook:
Medicine 3.0 and Concierge Care: Why Your Relationship with Your Doctor Matters More Than Ever
Why We Use DEXA Scans in Concierge Medicine
GLP-1 Medications and Muscle Mass: What the Evidence Shows
Perimenopause Starts in Your 40s. Most Women Are Never Told That.