Our Process | Vitality Functional Family Medicine

Your Path at a Glance

Two phases. One continuous relationship.

Consultation

60 min

Lab Draw & Review

75 min

Visits 1–6 or 1–10

Monthly

Your Next Chapter

Final Visits

Ongoing Optimization

Year Over Year

Restoration Phase

Find the root cause. Rebuild the foundation.

Optimization Phase

Protect what you built.

The Restoration Phase is where we identify what's actually driving your symptoms and rebuild the biology underneath them. It runs six or ten visits depending on the complexity of what we find. The Optimization Phase is what comes after: ongoing care with a team that already knows your whole story, so gains get tracked year over year instead of quietly sliding backward.

What Each Visit Is For

Visits are about a month apart. That spacing is deliberate.

A month gives you time to implement changes, observe patterns, and gather real data before we adjust anything. Adjusting a protocol every week means adjusting it on noise.

Visit	Focus	Length	What you leave with
Consultation	Full health timeline review, antecedents, triggers, mediators. Lab orders placed.	60 min	Initial care plan + lifestyle prescriptions to start immediately
Lab Review	The most information-dense appointment of the program. Detailed interpretation of every result, root-cause mapping, start of your supplement and medication protocol.	75 min	Your personalized protocol and your plan for month one
Follow-Up & Refinement	Where the real work happens. We monitor how your body is responding, refine the protocol, adjust interventions, repeat labs as needed.	60 min each	Updated top priorities + progress markers
Deep Optimization10-visit track	Advanced work, deeper hormone balancing, longevity planning, system-level fine-tuning once the foundation is solid.	60 min each	A long-term health roadmap
Your Final Visits	Strategic review of your progress, goal-setting for the year ahead, and your transition into ongoing care.	60 min	Your long-term roadmap + transition plan

Vitality nurse drawing labs for a patient

About Your Lab Review

Come ready to take notes. Most people find it a lot of information at once, and that's normal. You're welcome to record the visit. Your job that day isn't to understand everything. It's to leave clear on your top three priorities and what you're doing about them this month.

Inside a Single Appointment

Every visit follows the same four beats.

1 · Prepare

Before you arrive, you review your last commitment honestly and write down the questions that came up since. The best questions never occur to anyone during the appointment.

2 · Discuss

We work through what changed, what didn't, what your data shows, and what it means. This is a conversation, not a status report.

3 · Commit

You leave with one to three priorities. Not twelve. Clarity is what creates momentum.

4 · Track

You capture the specific metrics your provider flagged between now and the next visit, so the next conversation starts from evidence instead of memory.

The Part Nobody Explains

What we ask of you between appointments.

The exam room is where we build the strategy. Your kitchen, bedroom, and calendar are where it works or doesn't. Here's the actual operating rhythm, it's smaller than most people expect.

After Each Visit	Write down your commitment the same day, while the conversation is still fresh. Start tracking that evening, not tomorrow.
Each Day	Track the priority metrics your provider flagged. Not everything. About three minutes.
Each Week	Ten minutes. Note one thing that worked and one question to bring to your next visit. That's the whole job.
Before Each Visit	Review your last commitment honestly and bring your written questions.
When Life Gets Messy	Don't try to catch up and don't backfill. Restart with the next meal, the next bedtime, or the next walk. Consistency is built through returning, not through perfection.

What Good Participation Actually Looks Like

You don't need 100% compliance. You need honesty. Doing well most of the time still reveals real patterns. One consistent habit beats six abandoned ones. Missing a week doesn't erase the weeks before it. The goal isn't a perfect record, it's an honest one.

How We Set Goals

You don't rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

Knowing what to do is the easy part. Staying consistent when motivation fades and life gets loud is the hard part. Every month you'll set one commitment using the same three-part structure.

Goal

Where you're going, rooted in something that actually matters to you. Energy to keep up with your kids. Feeling calm in your own skin. Being strong at 70. Not a number you think you're supposed to want.

Plan

The specific next step. "I'll eat a protein-rich breakfast at least four days a week for the next two weeks." Plans don't need to be impressive. They need to be possible.

System

What keeps it going when motivation is gone. Healthy food where you can see it. Movement scheduled like an appointment. A wind-down routine that runs itself. This is where lasting change actually lives.

Your Data

Thirteen data points. Three minutes a day.

Between visits you'll capture a small set of daily markers across nutrition, movement, sleep, wellbeing, and GI function, plus a short weekly reflection. When something needs a closer look, your provider will point you to a more detailed log: meals, sleep, bowel movements, movement, symptoms, or food-and-symptom correlation.

Your observations are clinical data. The numbers you write down become the story we read together.

How This Works

This isn't done to you. It's done with you.

Your provider brings expertise, insight, and strategy. The daily implementation, the choices at breakfast, the sleep habits, the consistency over months, is yours. And it matters more than any prescription we could write.

Your Care Team Brings

Deep investigation of your full health timeline
Functional lab interpretation and root-cause mapping
Personalized nutrition, movement, sleep, and stress prescriptions
Targeted supplement and medication protocols
Ongoing refinement and strategic thinking
Honest partnership and genuine curiosity about your wellbeing

You Bring

Daily implementation of your lifestyle prescriptions
Honest reporting of what's working and what isn't
Consistent use of your tracking tools
Thoughtful questions at each visit
Patience with a process that takes real time
Willingness to change patterns, not just take pills

Your Care Team

Functional medicine is team-based medicine.

Each person on your team brings a distinct lens, and they talk to each other. If someone has a question or an update relevant to your care, it gets shared. You should never feel like you're starting from scratch with each person you work with.

Amrit Dockery, DO, Physician, Co-Owner and Chief Medical Officer

Amrit Dockery, DO Physician · Co-Owner & CMO

Board-certified family medicine physician with specialized training in functional medicine through The Institute of Functional Medicine.

Heather Thornton Health & Life Coach

30 years of combined experience in helping and healthcare roles, shaped by her own health journey.

Madison Ruble, Head Nurse and Nutrition Coach

Madison Ruble Head Nurse & Nutrition Coach

BSN, RN with 5+ years in the ER and Quality Improvement, now focused on personalized functional care plans.

Tanveer Harless Administrative Director

Her own difficult path through conventional medicine drives her commitment to making every visit feel heard, supported, and genuinely cared for.

Included and Available

Your care doesn't stop at the exam room door.

Included

Health coach and patient in a coaching session at Vitality

Life & Health Coaching

The bridge between your treatment plan and your Tuesday afternoon. You already know what would help, drink more water, sleep more, stress less, move your body. The problem isn't knowledge. It's the real day with the real schedule. Coaching is where insight becomes a system that holds.

Nutrition coach reviewing a plan with a patient at Vitality

Nutrition Coaching

A lab-informed nutrition strategy is only as good as the habits that execute it. Our head nurse and nutrition coach translates your protocol into food you'll actually buy, cook, and eat.

IV Therapy

Nutrients delivered at full bioavailability, bypassing gut absorption entirely, useful when absorption is part of the problem or when you need a faster correction.

Vitality team member reviewing a supplement with a patient at the in-house dispensary

Supplement Dispensary

Retail supplements are largely unregulated, and form and dose matter as much as the ingredient. Everything we dispense is chosen by your provider for a specific reason, at a specific dose, from a verified source.

On Our Core Program

Three additional services for patients who want the movement layer.

Movement assessment at the Vitality performance and rehab clinic

VO2 Max Test

A direct measure of cardiorespiratory fitness, and one of the strongest available predictors of longevity and healthspan.

Movement Screen

A comprehensive physical readiness assessment at our performance and rehab clinic.

Custom Workout Program

A personalized training plan written by a performance physical therapist.

The Optimization Phase

Most patients who finish don't want to go back to fragmented care.

By the end of your program you'll know which biomarkers reflect your specific risks, which levers actually move your physiology, and you'll have a team that knows your full story. The Optimization Phase is how we protect that. Direct Primary Care is a flat monthly membership that removes insurance from the relationship entirely, no billing codes deciding what your appointment is about.

Traditional Insurance Model

Vitality Direct Primary Care

Traditional Insurance ModelReactive, you come in when you're sick

Vitality Direct Primary CareProactive, we plan for what's ahead

Traditional Insurance ModelShort, fragmented visits

Vitality Direct Primary CareUnhurried, relationship-based appointments

Traditional Insurance ModelPhone trees and portals

Vitality Direct Primary CareDirect access to your provider by text, call, or message

Traditional Insurance ModelInsurance drives the agenda

Vitality Direct Primary CareYour health goals drive the agenda

Traditional Insurance ModelGeneric preventive care

Vitality Direct Primary CarePersonalized longevity and biomarker planning

Traditional Insurance ModelHandoff to specialists by default

Vitality Direct Primary CareCoordinated, continuous care

Clinical Access

Quarterly or biannual optimization check-ins
Direct provider access by text, call, or portal
Same-day or next-day appointments for acute concerns
Comprehensive annual labs with functional interpretation
Prescription management and referral coordination

Longevity & Optimization

Ongoing biomarker tracking and trend analysis
Personalized longevity and healthspan planning
Continued supplement protocol management
Access to IV therapy and other clinic services
Priority access to new programs and services

Functional medicine addresses the root cause. This is how we protect what you've built, and keep building.

Common Questions

What to know before your first call.

01What happens on the first call?▾

A focused 30-minute conversation, in person or virtual, about what's going on and what you're trying to achieve. If we agree we're a good fit, we schedule your full hour-long consultation and may order labs beforehand to get a head start.

02How is my plan actually built?▾

From your history, your goals, and your lab results, read through a functional lens. It isn't pulled off a shelf. Two people with the same diagnosis routinely end up with very different plans.

03What should I bring to every visit?▾

Your written questions, an honest account of what you did and didn't implement since last time, any new symptoms or patterns you've noticed, and records from other providers.

04What if I fall off between visits?▾

Tell us. That's genuinely more useful to your provider than a perfect-looking month. Knowing which recommendation didn't survive contact with your real life tells us what to redesign.

05Does it end when my program ends?▾

No. Your final visits are about the year ahead, and most patients continue into Direct Primary Care so progress keeps getting tracked instead of quietly sliding backward.

Here's exactly what happens. Visit by visit.