Physician Service Description

Patients with unusual, perplexing, or complex symptoms and conditions are not well served by the fast-paced U.S. health care system. An estimated 20 to 30% of all primary care consultations are for "medically unexplained symptoms" for which standard evaluations have resulted in no medical diagnosis. If this describes your experience, consider a Consultative Medicine appointment with Dr. Long. This consult may be done via Telemedicine or in-person, and is for patients who have: 1. Unexplained symptoms, and are searching for a diagnosis 2. Rare or difficult to diagnose conditions 3. A wide variety of symptoms that could be caused by multiple conditions This intense consultation will focus on your symptoms, with the goal of expedited diagnosis and treatment. Typical consults take about three hours, and include a detailed report to share with your primary care physician. Why the image of a zebra? Doctors are taught 'when you hear hoofbeats, think horses not zebras,' meaning a doctor should first think about what is a more common—and potentially more likely—diagnosis. The singular focus of this consultation is to consider all the zebras. Dr. Long also evaluates patients who have complications related to Ehlers Danlos Syndrome in a one to three hour consultation.