Jennette Berry is a Registered Dietitian and practice owner. Her practice, Functional Nutrition Resources, is located in Owasso and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Eight years ago, I started the journey of opening a private practice specializing in functional medicine.
With a background in nutrition, training as a dietician, and education through the Institute of Functional Medicine, I understood the power of food as medicine.
But I also knew we needed to address detoxification, stress, and hormones—all the things the FPC system teaches.
I was excited (and a bit naive) to offer services under insurance. It wasn’t long before we found ourselves completely frustrated. Our claims were being being denied, we were continually audited, and we felt like our hands were tied. Under insurance, we weren’t able to offer labs we wanted to use, and we couldn’t teach what our patients needed to learn.
Despite the setbacks, we plugged ahead and managed to grow. But that growth was all based on volume and seeing as many people as we could—not truly helping like we wanted to.
I was at an event where Dr. Charles Webb spoke, and it resonated so much with me.
I remember texting my husband, Amos, who helps make many business decisions for our practice, that this might be an answer for so many of our frustrations. I felt like we had been sticking our head in the sand with building a business using insurance and truly weren’t able to help clients like we needed too. And insurance was becoming more and more difficult to deal with.
About a month later, we flew down for a Discovery Day.
Hands down, it has been one of the best business investments we have ever made.
In the last eight months, our practice has almost tripled our monthly revenue without insurance being a part of that growth. And we officially just started the process of canceling our insurance contracts.
The best part is the results our practice members are seeing now that we can teach and help them with all the vital aspects of their health.