Maggie McKay (Host): At Memorial Hospital, they have an amazing program called Memorial Institute of Health and Healing. And if you'd like to find out what a first visit would look like, our guest today, Dr. Yoon Hang Kim, Chief Wellness Officer, is here to fill you in. Welcome to a podcast from Memorial Hospital. I'm your host, Maggie McKay.

Thank you for joining us. Good to see you again, Dr. Kim.

Yoon Hang Kim, MD: Maggie, it's great to see you.

Host: Would you please introduce yourself?

Yoon Hang Kim, MD: I'm Yoon Hang Kim. I'm a physician trained in integrative medicine, functional medicine, and lifestyle medicine. And I provide care for the Memorial Institute for Health and Healing, as well as development of that program.

Host: And what is Memorial Institute of Health and Healing? Just a general overview.

Yoon Hang Kim, MD: So when I first came here to create an integrative medicine program, because there are so many aspects of what we wanted to do, we created an institute. So the Memorial Institute for Health and Healing is the entity or organization that we have created to best support the different programs we have.

Host: And what clinical services are provided at MIHH?

Yoon Hang Kim, MD: The most important that we do for the community would be the integrative oncology program, and then we have integrated pain management program, and then we have the integrated medicine and functional medicine consultation services, and we also have reversing diabetes program using lifestyle and low carb and keto. Those would be the four big things that we do.

Host: And patients who come to you, what kinds of conditions are they treated for?

Yoon Hang Kim, MD: Most of the people come here for complex conditions that they did not get a happy result or satisfactory results with conventional medicine. So, those obviously integrative oncology, cancer patients, integrative pain management, chronic pain patients, and then functional medicine, integrative medicine. Most people come for irritable bowel syndrome, autoimmune conditions like MS, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and for diabetes, there are people who want to optimize or reverse their diabetes, then obviously they can come to us for that. And then there's also weight loss services using lifestyle medicine as well.

Host: Are there some people that just don't respond to conventional medicine? How does that work?

Yoon Hang Kim, MD: I think it's a numbers game. I think that population wise, there appears to be good response but individual wise what happens is that there will be a fraction of people who are not responding well to conventional medicine, then those people are seeking and we provide services that is really fantastic because we take insurance, we will bill their insurance, whereas most of the functional medicine services does not do that.

Host: What are some examples of functional medicine testing that are available at your institute?

Yoon Hang Kim, MD: The three top tests that I utilize, one is looking at the microbiome of the GI system and digest system, and also looking at any imbalance of the probiotic bacterias, and also looking at hidden infections like yeast infections, parasite and bacterial infections that should not be there. And then the other test that I use a lot is cortisol testing. So in conventional medicine, we test cortisol one time at 8 a.m. And the functional medicine, we can measure it throughout the day so that we get like four data points. And we can also get information about sex hormone and basic organic acid testing. And the third one would be micronutrient testing, which tells me about people's nutrition at that time.

The fourth would be a test known as 3x4 genetics testing where, whereas there is weather report we can generate, now we can generate a health report for individuals that is, like weather report, it's not 100 percent accurate, but just like weather report, if you want to go on vacation or go out to beach, most people want to know what the weather is going to likely to be, and they know it's not 100%, so the health report with the DNA is similar.

Host: That is fascinating. I've never heard of that. So what makes Memorial Institute of Health and Healing different?

Yoon Hang Kim, MD: Two things that we really look at is patient engagement and optimal outcome, and I think as a physician, we are all focused on outcome. What we have different is that we, every patient is given or assigned a nurse navigator, and the nurse navigators sometimes will engage with patients before they come, when they come and after the visits.

So the nurse navigators really provide a wraparound service connecting with patients, all the questions go through them, and they are in charge of direction of the care, engagement with the patient. And we're very fortunate because the system has allowed me to hire nurse navigators which is considered the highest trained level of navigators.

Host: Oh, that is amazing that people have this alternative, so to speak. Is there anything else you'd like to add that we didn't cover that you would like people to know?

Yoon Hang Kim, MD: One of the things that I would like people to know is that even though our location, we are in a rural area and we're in a critical access hospital. I want to say that we provide the best care that I've ever been allowed to create by health care systems, compared to huge systems within like number five business in the U.S., or huge academic system, or huge not for profit system. But what I can say is that the commitment to highest level of quality of care and the optimal outcome, I just have not seen that kind of dedication. And that goes all the way to our president, Ada Bair, who, who gets credit for instilling this kind of culture.

Host: And if someone would like to find out more about Memorial Institute of Health and Healing, where would they go?

Yoon Hang Kim, MD: They can Google us and they should be able to find us. Memorial Institute of Health and Healing. We are a member of Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine and we're very fortunate that many of the press have covered us. Now they can Google us and they will find us.

Host: That's awesome. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise. This has been so informative. We appreciate you.

Yoon Hang Kim, MD: Thank you. Thank you, Maggie.

Maggie McKay (Host): Again, that's Dr. Yoon Hang Kim, and again, if you would like to find out more, you can go to mhtlc.org. If you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels, and check out our entire podcast library for topics of interest to you.

I'm Maggie McKay. Thanks for listening to a Memorial Hospital podcast from Memorial Hospital.