Metrodora clinic, which the Instacart CEO announced founding a while back, is now open and taking patients. They specialize in a wide range of conditions, including ME/CFS, long Covid, POTS, connective tissue disorders, and IBS. Almost all of them share a common thread: They're poorly understood and have limited treatment options. Website Twitter Information on what insurance they accept is limited. Their new patient form merely states, "Metrodora is working hard to contract with multiple insurance payers at this time".
Bit of a side note (now I’ve checked) but I remembered reading about a place people with me/cfs apparently went to live because there was a treatment offered but they needed to be in town etc years ago so looked it up just in case it was this one but it isn’t (it’s one in Invline Village Nevada) https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/a-town-for-people-with-chronic-fatigue anyway had to remind myself what the treatment then was: 2019 article and talks about Ampligen. Be interesting to hear updates 4yrs on if places do offer different treatments and whether they do work out etc or if there are other things being tried in other countries I guess ?
Looks like they have big ambitions for research and research collaborations too, including a biobank, genomics and other biomedical research and treatment trials. https://www.s4me.info/threads/germa...ort-out-now-may-2023.21266/page-8#post-475248
I went to the patient questionnaire on their website to see what information they were gathering. One of the questions is, "Are you a previously established patient of one of our clinicians?" If yes, they ask you to select the doctor. I thought it would be interesting to share that list of names.
I found an article talking about the Metrodora Clinic and its CEO: https://www.fastcompany.com/90878703/instacart-ceo-fidji-simo-metrodora-institute It's a much bigger operation than I thought! 15,000 patients expected by the end of the year? And why are only women patients mentioned? (line breaks added to both quotes) This quote reveals that the CEO has endometriosis and POTS. I don't have the medical expertise to evaluate the claims made on the Metrodora website. It feels like there's a lot of hype, and I don't know whether the category "neuroimmune axis disorders" is valid. I'm sorry to be so skeptical. I do hope that this ends up being a useful facility for patients.
Laura Pace is there and she is an outstanding gastro doctor that has done many presentations for dysautonomia international.
They don't rent the whole building. From https://fortune.com/2021/10/04/instacart-ceo-fidji-simo-womens-health-startup-metrodora-institute/
There are three main physicians listed, one of whom is Anne Maitland. She has co-published with Afrin on Mast Cell Activation Syndrome in EDS. I am pretty sure there is no such thing. I am afraid this looks like the standard alternative sideshow.
Re Doctors - I think the key thing is that since we don't a disease mechanism/biomarker/diagnostic test/treatments --- not much a Doctor can do constructively -- maybe negatively --- failing to support --- I guess some Doctors would suggest we push for research like UK GWAS - Chris Ponting DecodeME - currently recruiting!