Not having insurance that doesn’t cover the kind of care you actually need, is one of the most common reasons women in Wichita put their health on the back burner. The assumption is that without insurance coverage, thorough healthcare is financially out of reach. For some types of care that assumption is correct. For functional health care, it’s worth reconsidering.
The way functional health practices are structured, and the way True Health Clinic specifically operates, is already built around a cash-pay model. That means the financial picture is more transparent, more predictable, and in many cases more accessible than patients expect before they ask. Understanding what’s actually available for women in Wichita who are self-pay, what it costs, and how to make the most of the tax-advantaged accounts many people already have, is worth knowing before you decide that insurance coverage is a prerequisite for getting real answers about your health.
To understand why cash-pay functional health care is structured differently from conventional insurance-based care, it helps to understand why the two models are fundamentally incompatible.
Insurance reimbursement is built around a coding system that assigns specific billable codes to specific diagnoses and procedures. Reimbursement rates for those codes determine how long appointments can realistically be, how many patients a provider sees per day, and what kinds of evaluation and care are economically viable within the practice.
Functional health care requires more time, more thorough evaluation, and more individualized care planning than the insurance reimbursement model supports. A new patient examination at True Health Clinic is an extended appointment designed to take a complete health history, understand the full picture of what’s driving a patient’s symptoms, and order specialty testing matched to the individual clinical picture. None of that fits within the coding and reimbursement framework that governs insurance-based care.
Operating outside of insurance allows True Health Clinic to structure appointments, testing, and care plans around what patients actually need rather than around what insurance will reimburse. It also eliminates the administrative overhead of insurance billing, which in conventional practices consumes significant staff time and operational resources. In a cash-pay practice, those resources go toward patient care instead.
The trade-off is direct payment for services rather than insurance coverage, which is a real financial consideration. But for women who have been navigating a conventional system that keeps telling them their labs are normal while they continue to feel unwell, the financial investment in care that actually goes deep enough to find answers is often one they wish they had made sooner.
True Health Clinic provides functional health care for women dealing with a wide range of chronic and complex health presentations. The conditions and concerns most commonly addressed include:
Hormonal health across all stages of the female reproductive lifespan, including menstrual cycle irregularities, PMS and PMDD, PCOS, perimenopause and menopause, and the hormonal drivers of mood, energy, weight, and cognitive function that conventional gynecological care frequently addresses only superficially.
Thyroid health, including Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and hypothyroidism evaluated and managed with a level of thoroughness that goes beyond a standard TSH check to understand the full picture of thyroid function, conversion, and autoimmune activity.
Gut health, including the chronic digestive complaints that fall through the cracks of standard gastroenterological care, the gut-hormone and gut-immune connections that influence health well beyond the digestive tract, and the root causes of food sensitivities and reactivity that keep expanding despite elimination diets.
Autoimmune conditions, approached from a root cause perspective that addresses the immune drivers rather than only managing symptoms, with particular attention to the gut health, dietary trigger, nutrient status, and stress physiology dimensions that conventional autoimmune management rarely incorporates.
Fatigue, brain fog, and chronic unexplained symptoms that haven’t been adequately explained or resolved through conventional care, evaluated through a thorough clinical process that looks for what standard testing misses.
Skin health, including adult acne, eczema, and other skin conditions that have internal root causes involving gut health, hormonal balance, and systemic inflammation that topical treatment alone doesn’t address.
This is not an exhaustive list. The functional health approach is fundamentally about evaluating the individual rather than treating the diagnosis, which means the range of presentations that benefit from this kind of care is broad.
Transparency about cost is something True Health Clinic takes seriously, because one of the most frustrating aspects of navigating self-pay healthcare is not knowing what to expect financially before you commit to an appointment.
The free 15-minute phone consultation is genuinely free. It’s a no-commitment conversation designed to help you determine whether a functional health evaluation makes sense for where you are, and it gives Dr. Skidmore an opportunity to understand your situation before recommending a path forward. There is no charge for this call and no obligation to proceed.
New patient exam costs, follow-up appointment costs, and specialty testing costs are discussed transparently so you have a clear picture of what you’re investing before you proceed. Specialty testing is typically billed separately from the appointment itself and varies depending on what testing is clinically indicated for your specific situation, which is determined by your history and clinical picture rather than by a standard panel applied to everyone.
Many women find that the investment in a thorough functional health evaluation produces meaningful downstream savings by reducing the cycle of specialist referrals that don’t produce answers, multiple rounds of testing that misses the root cause, and ongoing symptom management costs for conditions that could have been addressed at the root from the beginning.
For women who have a Health Savings Account (HSA) or Flexible Spending Account (FSA), functional health care visits, specialty lab testing ordered by a licensed provider, and acupuncture are generally qualified medical expenses under IRS guidelines, regardless of whether those services are covered by insurance.
According to IRS Publication 502, qualified medical expenses include amounts paid for the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease. The determining factor is the nature and purpose of the expense, not whether it’s covered by a specific insurance plan. An extended functional health evaluation conducted by a licensed provider for the purpose of identifying and addressing chronic health conditions meets that definition.
This means women who have been contributing to an HSA or FSA and wondering how to use those funds meaningfully have a legitimate and worthwhile option in functional health care. If you have FSA funds approaching a year-end deadline, scheduling a functional health evaluation before those funds expire is a particularly practical use of money you’ve already set aside for healthcare.
The supplement piece of HSA eligibility is more nuanced and worth clarifying with your HSA administrator or a tax professional, since general wellness supplements typically don’t qualify while supplements recommended by a licensed provider to address a specific diagnosed condition may. A tax professional familiar with HSA rules can give you guidance specific to your situation.
The financial conversation about self-pay care tends to focus on what it costs, which is a legitimate consideration. But it’s worth also considering what self-pay functional health care provides that insurance-based conventional care frequently doesn’t.
Time. The extended appointments at True Health Clinic create space for the kind of thorough history-taking and clinical evaluation that complex women’s health presentations require. The time available in a standard insurance-based appointment is genuinely insufficient for this depth of evaluation, regardless of how capable or caring the provider is.
Thoroughness. Specialty testing that evaluates hormone function, gut health, thyroid function, nutrient status, and metabolic markers in ways that standard panels don’t provides a more complete clinical picture and identifies drivers of dysfunction that standard care misses. For women who have been told their labs are normal while continuing to feel significantly unwell, this level of testing often produces the first genuine answers they’ve received.
Personalization. A care plan built from what your testing actually shows in the context of your individual history looks different from a standard protocol applied to a diagnosis. The individualization of functional health care is one of its most clinically significant features, and it’s one that the time constraints and reimbursement structures of insurance-based care make genuinely difficult to achieve.
A genuine clinical relationship. The ongoing, longitudinal relationship between Dr. Skidmore and her patients, in which she knows their full health history, tracks their progress over time, and adjusts the care plan as the clinical picture evolves, is a different experience from episodic care with a rotating set of providers in a large conventional practice.
For women in Wichita and the surrounding areas of Kansas who are self-pay and have been wondering whether functional health care is financially accessible, the starting point is the free 15-minute phone consultation. That call costs nothing, requires no commitment, and gives you a clear picture of what a functional health evaluation at True Health Clinic would involve and what it would cost before you make any decision.
Not having insurance is not a reason to put your health on hold. For the kind of thorough, root cause women’s health care that True Health Clinic provides, insurance coverage was never part of the model to begin with.
Book Your Free 15-Minute Consultation
Note: This article is intended for educational purposes and should not be used to diagnose or treat any medical condition. If you’re experiencing symptoms discussed in this article, consult a qualified healthcare professional for personalized guidance.
| PHOTOGRAPHY BY lauragonzalezphotography.com | Made by a Peanut |