FAQs
Frequently Asked Questions
Scheduling & Visits
Apollo Health Clinic is a comprehensive natural medicine direct care practice for adult men and women. We are a personal, friendly, results driven, customized treatment plan for your natural health needs. Our health practice offers patients the best care possible, with successful result based natural modalities for Chronic Illnesses, specifically Chronic Fatigue and Chronic Pain conditions.
Dr. Samuel Madeira has extensive experience successfully treating thousands of patients with complex Chronic health concerns, his use of natural medicine immediately sets Apollo Health Clinic apart from other clinics. Dr. Samuel Madeira has successfully and safely treated thousands of patients. He also has extensive training and education in Functional Medicine, Functional Endocrinology, Botanical Medicine, with an important focus in medical school on the use of herbal medicines for women suffering from PMS and Menopausal symptoms, as well as a focus in men’s health – beyond urology into Functional Endocrinology, and Chronic Pain approaches, beyond prescription medications and harmful cortisone joint injections, that have outcomes above 92% success!
The combination of his innovative, interactive approach to a treatment plan, allowing individuals to engage firsthand in their own personal health – Dr. Samuel Madeira responds to patients with transparency, availability and considers each individuals personal journey to achieve optimal lasting health.
Dr. Samuel Madeira created Apollo Health Clinic to combine the most innovative diagnostic methods and natural treatments resulting in optimal health, offering individuals Dr. and patient transparencies, benefiting personal health and not insurance companies.
A Naturopathic Physician looks at the whole person and complete physiology and biochemistry of their patient for the cause of malfunction. This comprehensive analysis leads to an individualized treatment plan for prevention and reversal of diseases. Naturopathic physicians use Medical Nutrition, Botanical Medicine, medications, detoxification therapies, injection therapies, hormone therapies, and a plethora of natural remedies to bring the body back into a state of optimal function so it can work the way it was designed to work. Once the obstacles to health are removed and natural medicines are given to address genetic weaknesses in a patient’s constitutional biochemistry and deficiences and excesses are brought into homeostatis, the patient will become healthy and the body will reset itself back to a state health and wellness.
Outcomes for patients include optimized weight, increased energy, fewer infections, better quality of sleep, improved digestive function, decreased pain and increased movement in joints, prevention of surgeries, weight loss, and fewer prescription medications, amoungst others.
Once the body is given what it needs, it can heal itself. Through various modalities, the right environment, and the removal of obstacles to health, (whether foods and dietary impedances, infections, toxins, or other obstacles to cure), the human body will come into balance once given the correct medicine to stimulate a state of equilibrium and health over a period of time.
Naturopathic physicians are licensed in Washington State as primary care physicians and can prescribe antibiotics, testosterone, bio-identical hormones, thyroid medication, certain pain medications (muscle relaxers & tylenol-3), and other medications.
Primarily, a medical doctor is trained in the use of pharmaceutical medications and surgery. This medical approach is best used for infectious diseases, trauma conditions, and necessary surgical procedures.
A Naturopathic doctor is trained to utilize natural medicines (from flower essences and herbal medicines to compounded hormone creams extracted from wild yams and plants for balancing hormones and compounded B12), hydrotherapy, nutritional medicine, and genetic testing to treat the whole person. Working in conjunction with the patient, a Naturopathic doctor creates an individualized care plan in order for patient to reach their health goals and mitigate risk factors.
Naturopathic medicine is the best solution for chronic conditions, such as Diabetes, Fatigue, Cardiovascular diseases, Menopause, Andropause, and Chronic Pain, and Gastrointestinal Conditions (Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), Irritable Bowel Disease (IBD), Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO), etc.).
Dr. Samuel Madeira graduated from Bastyr University in June 2012 and began working as a Naturopathic Doctor doing consultations at a local Integrative Pharmacy. While working there for a year he received extensive training on top brands of natural medicines (nutritional medicines and medicinal herbs). His second position was at a Men’s Low Testosterone concierge clinic in King County, Washington. He ran two out of four of their clinics and consulted over 3,000 male patients. Dr. Samuel Madeira averaged 20-30 patient visits per day for 5 days a week. He continued from the Low-T clinic, transitioning into a number of different clinics part-time and wrote about herbal remedies for men for the WishGarden Herbs blogs, an herbal medicine company based out of Boulder, Colorado.
Dr. Madeira was the Clinic Medical Director for two years at Pinnacle Integrative Health in Downtown Seattle, WA where he managed the Functional Medicine program there working with Chronically Ill adults with Chronic Fatigue, Chronic pain, and many other chronic conditions, and his patients were mostly female there. On an average day at Pinnacle Inegrative Health Dr. Madeira saw 12-18 patients per day.
Dr. Madeira launched his Apollo Health Clinic in May of 2015 in downtown Seattle, WA to combine his education and expertise in botanical medicine, hormone health for men and women and the treatment of chronic pain conditions using Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) Injections, Neural Therapy, and Prolotherapy that plague so many people today. Since starting his Naturopathic career, Dr. Samuel Madeira has seen over 10,000 patients with many different Chronic Illnesses.
Dr. Samuel Madeira specializes in endocrine disorders treating individuals with Functional Medicine and Lifestyle Medicine, Andropause (low libido, low energy, Erectile Dysfunction, etc.), Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH), Menopause, Perimenopause, PMS, Fatigue and Chronic Fatigue, Hypothyroidism (low thyroid); Acute and Chronic Pain and Injuries (Fibromyalgia, Osteoarthritis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Complex Pain Disorders), Autoimmune Diseases, Weight Loss and Body Weight Management, and Nutrition.
During your first visit Dr. Samuel Madeira will ask about and want to know your whole health story in detail. After your case is reviewed, a physical exam will take place where vital signs are measured and functional & conventional physical tests are performed. These tests are used to assess your adrenal health, calcium and magnesium levels, blood sugar levels and overall health. The results will inform what laboratory testing is ordered.
The second visit is a report of findings from the lab results and physical examination results, after which you will receive a treatment plan to begin care for your health concern(s). Please allow 75-90 minutes for the first visit and 45-60 minutes for the second visit and subsequent follow-up office visits.
It is recommended you bring the following to your first office visit:
- Driver’s license or Identification
- Insurance card and / or Liberty Healthshare card
- HSA Card
- Credit, Debit Card, Check or Cash to pay for your office visit
- Pen and Paper (or a tablet) to write down your treatment plan information – we will send you your treatment plan via Elation Passport Patient Portal, but we find that our patients remember things better when they record it
themselves and it engages you during your visits with us. - Questions for the doctor about your health & wellness
- Curiosity
- An Open Mind
- Willingness to learn, get well, & change your life & lifestyle
For male patients: Andropause, Erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, Fatigue, BPH, Chronic Fatigue, Muscle weakness, and Chronic Pain.
For female patients: Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS), Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD), Perimenopause, Menopause, Chronic Pain, Osteoarthritis, and Chronic Fatigue.
For all patients and all genders: Chronic Fatigue, Chornic Pain, Insomnia, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Diseases, High Cholesterole, Mood Disorders, Depression, Anxiety, Acute and Chronic Pain conditions, Sports Injuries, Weight management, Weight loss, Thyroid Conditions, and Gastrointestinal Complaints such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO), Diarrhea, Constipation, Irritable Bowel Disease (IBD)).
Apollo Health Clinic offers 15-minute discovery calls to all prospective patients. With an extended assessment of your health as well as your strong motivation and commitment to make lifestyle changes, the likelihood of being helped is great! Dr. Samuel Madeira asks all patients to meet him halfway for optimal results during their health and care at Apollo Health Clinic. You are the doctor of the future. We ask that you put forth your best efforts to achieve the results you crave.
With all of that said, if we cannot help you we will refer you out for other care as needed.
This depends on a number of factors, such as but not limited to: how healthy you are now, what your health goals are, and what you are willing and able to implement in your treatment plan now.
Most patients at Apollo Health Clinic notice improvements within the first 3 months of care if they follow their treatment plan carefully. The Essentials Plan is the plan we recommend to all patients beginning care, and afterward you may move to a monthly membership plan for continous wellness care.
Apollo Health Clinic offers customized subscription plans for Direct Care focusing in Naturopathic Medicine. Once you have completed the Essentials Program, we offer you an affordable monthly membership dues. A typical plan for a patient costs about $150-397 per month depending on what is included in their care plan and what their health goals are. The base membership plan is $150 per month or $1,800 per year. An a la carte option for treatments can be added as prescribed by your doctor at Apollo Health Clinic.
We do not bill your insurance directly. However, Apollo Health Clinic is a out-of-network (OON) provider – not contracted with any insurance company. If you choose you can request a superbill and submit it to your health insurance. They will reimburse you based upon your insurance plan. Apollo Health Clinic and Dr. Madeira are not contracted with Medicare, since Naturopathic Doctors are not able to contract with Medicare at this time.
If this is a concern for you, please call your insurance company customer service number on the back of your insurance card prior to your first office visit to make sure they cover naturopathic medical visits when out-of-network, and what percentage they will cover. Otherwise, all of your care can be assumed not to be covered by insurance.
With that said, we suggest all our patients sign up with Liberty Healthcare, and / or contact Nick Metcalf at Omni Insurance or Marcus Vallaso at Vallaso Insurance Services to help them find the best health insurance option for their needs.
Working with a health insurance broker is free of charge for you and can potentially save you thousands of dollars on health insurance. It is recommended that you sign up for Liberty Healthshare, Health Insurance and look into a Health Savings Account for optimal health care options and latitude.
We highly recommend you at least have Liberty Healthshare or catastrophic insurance with a Heath Savings Account so you can be covered if you have an event where you need more care than what is provided at APollo Health Clinic.
A Superbill is an itemized invoice used by healthcare practitioners to reflect rendered services. The Superbill is information source for creation of a healthcare claim and will be submitted to payers (insurances, funds, programs, HSA) for reimbursement by the patients at our clinic. At Apollo Health Clinic, this is the method we use. You will receive superbills for office visits and you may submit them to your insurance company for reimbursement.
A deductible is a dollar amount your health insurer may require you to pay out-of-pocket each year before your health plan begins to pay for covered medical expenses. Typically, you have to pay $2k-$10k per year before most health insurance companies will pay for your expenses and even afterward you might have to pay 20% of your health costs. Call your insurance company to confirm.
Health insurance plans with deductibles that are $7,000 or greater qualify you for an Health Savings Account (HSA), which allows you to put money into an account that is income tax free and may rollover year-after-year. You can use your HSA for purchasing supplements, your Essentials Plan, procedural visits and ore at Apollo Health Clinic.
Another avenue to consider especially with health insurance deductibles rising every year, you may want to consider signing up with Liberty Healthshare as a way to subsidize your care at Apollo Health Clinic.
Billing & Insurance
You can pay for your membership with Debit Cards, Credit Cards, Cash, Check, Health Savings Accounts or Liberty Healthshare.
We also have Advanced Care Card now available. You can contact Advanced Care Card here.
Direct care medicine is a relationship between a patient and a physician where the patient pays an annual fee or retainer. This may or may not be in addition to other charges. In exchange for the retainer, doctors provide enhanced care (access via email, house calls, lower cost for labs and medications). Concierge physicians care for fewer patients than in a conventional practice, which offers them the ability to spend more time with their patients and deliver higher quality of care.
We spend about 60-90 minutes or more with patients per visit depending upon the visit and the patients needs each visit. I am available via phone, webcam for telemedicine consults, and email.
Direct care is when you pay your doctor directly for your medical care without the “middle man”, health insurance, in the way of offering you the best care you can get.
Here at Apollo Health Clinic, often patients start out in a packaged program and then move into an annual Wellness membership program after they complete their initial program, either the Essentials Program or the Elite Program. We are not practicing primary care, and recommend you have a primary care physician.
Definition: Direct care is direct – it addresses your needs without having insurance get in the way of your healthcare and your health results. Direct care is an alternative payment model of healthcare focusing on the doctor-patient relationship as the focus, not asking for insurance for permission to treat patients via pre-authorizations, and without the impediments of insurance dictating your care. Now you and your doctor dictate your care!
Apollo Health Clinic uses this payment model to offer the best care for the aforementioned conditions for patients, which are more chronic in nature benefit from the care and trust of a healing doctor patient-relationship. With insurance out of the equation and not governing your healthcare, we can now deliver you the absolute best care you desire from a physician.
As defined by Direct Primary Care:
“Direct Primary Care (DPC) is an innovative alternative payment model for primary care being embraced by patients, physicians, employers, payers and policymakers across the United States. The defining element of DPC is an enduring and trusting relationship between a patient and his or her primary care provider.
Empowering this relationship is the key to achieving superior health outcomes, lower costs and an enhanced patient experience. DPC fosters this relationship by focusing on five key tenets:
1. Service: The hallmark of DPC is adequate time spent between patient and physician, creating an enduring doctor-patient relationship. Supported by unfettered access to care, DPC enables unhurried interactions and frequent discussions to assess lifestyle choices and treatment decisions aimed at long-term health and wellbeing. DPC practices have extended hours, ready access to urgent care, and patient panel sizes small enough to support this commitment to service.
2. Patient Choice: Patients in DPC choose their own personal physician and are reactive partners in their healthcare. Empowered by accurate information at the point of care, patients are fully involved in making their own medical and financial choices. DPC patients have the right to transparent pricing, access, and availability of all services provided.
3. Elimination of Fee-For-Service: DPC eliminates undesired fee-for-service(FFS) incentives in primary care. These incentives distort healthcare decision-making by rewarding volume over value. This undermines the trust that supports the patient-provider relationship and rewards expensive and inappropriate testing, referral, and treatment. DPC replaces FFS with a simple flat monthly fee that covers comprehensive primary care services. Fees must be adequate to allow for appropriately sized patient panels to support this level of care so that DPC providers can resist the numerous other financial incentives that distortcare decisions and endanger the doctor-patient relationship.
4. Advocacy: DPC providers are committed advocates for patients within the healthcare system. They have time to make informed, appropriate referrals and support patient needs when they are outside of primary care. DPC providers accept the responsibility to be available to patients serving as patient guides. No matter where patients are in the system, physicians provide them with information about the quality, cost, and patient experience of care.
5. Stewardship: DPC providers believe that healthcare must provide more value to the patient and the system. Healthcare can, and must, be higher-performing, more patient-responsive, less invasive, and less expensive than it is today. The ultimate goal is health and wellbeing, not simply the treatment of disease.
“DPC providers are committed to ensuring that American healthcare delivers on these goals.”
Liberty Healthshare is
Affordable Cost Sharing for Healthcare expenses.
Health conscious individuals and families save an average of 40-60%!
Regain Control of Your Health Care
Medical cost sharing is a rapidly growing movement built on the time-tested tradition of sharing the burden of healthcare costs within a community.
Liberty Healthshare members share the commitment to value, prioritize and take personal responsibility for their health. In return, members are able to share medical costs together.
With Liberty Healthshare, individuals and families have the opportunity to lower their expenses AND improve the quality of their healthcare. Liberty members typically pay 40-60% less for their health expenses.
This program is designed to safeguard the doctor-patient relationship. As a Liberty Healthcare member, in addition to your visits here at Apollo Health Clinic, you may see any doctor or hospital you choose. We are thrilled that with Liberty Healthcare, they don’t have to fight with administrative bureaucracy in order to care for you.
Liberty Healthcare members invest in their health and pay less for health care.
When a physician contracts with health insurance companies, the patient’s health is dictated by the insurance company instead of the physician and the patient. By not contracting with insurance you now get access to the best care without your insurance dictating what you can receive for care and what you cannot receive for care as a healthcare consumer.
Dr. Samuel Madeira is a naturopathic physician who specializes in Functional Medicine, Anti-Aging & Functional Endocrinology as well as Natural Approaches to Gastroenterology, Cardiology and Orthopedics.
Typically are patients suffer from Chronic Fatigue, Chronic Joint or Spinal Pain, with co-comitant digest problems. You do not have to have all these conditions to see us, however here’s a more complete list below
Conditions I commonly treat include but are not limited to:
For female patients: Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS), Premenstrual Dystrophic Disorder (PMDD), Perimenopause, Menopause, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Chronic Pain, & Gastrointestinal complaints.
For male patients: Chronic Fatigue, Andropause, Erectile Dysfunction, Gastrointestinal Problems, and Chronic Pain.
For all patients and all genders: Fatigue, Insomnia, Diabetes, Cardiovascular diseases, Mood Disorders, Depression, Anxiety, Acute and Chronic Pain conditions (joint and muscle pains), Sports Injuries, Weight management, Weight loss, Thyroid Conditions, and Gastrointestinal Complaints (Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO), Diarrhea, Constipation, Irritable Bowel Disease).
Botanical Medicines, Functional Medicine, Neural Therapy, Neural Prolotherapy / Perineural Injection Therapy, , Hormone Replacement Therapy for Men and Women, Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT), Biofeedback Therapy, and Nutritional Medicine.
Dr. Samuel Madeira offers phone consultations or webcam consults for all patients. he can call in a prescription to any pharmacy if you need a medication and with an additional fee, you can schedule a house call with Dr. Samuel Madeira, if you’d like home calls we recommend you sign-up for our Apollo Elite program. We will need to meet with you in-office prior to any home calls to make sure you get a full physical exam in person, and qualify you for home visits.
Many individuals are not big fans of injections thanks to the myths sold by movies in Hollywood, but a Perineural Injection Treatment/Neural Prolotherapy treatment is not a typical injection. The treatment consists of subcutaneous, small injections, so it is more like having multiple small bug bites with cold fluids entering – that being the dextrose solution. After the procedure, the injection pain disappears almost immediately. The goal of each treatment is to have you walk out of the consultation room with no pain.
This all depends on how long you have had the pain for, the individual circumstances, and the exact body part being treated. Typically, 85% of people resolve their pain completely with this treatment, with many more experiencing a dramatic improvement.
Perineural Injection Therapy (PIT) is a very effective treatment for chronic pain. With an experienced practitioner, many people find that once they have completed a course of treatment their symptoms disappear and don’t return.
Yes. Most people do become pain-free permanently. The aim of each treatment session is to get you pain-free there in the consultation room (with as few treatments as possible); that is how practitioners know they are targeting the correct nerves. After each session you should be pain-free for anywhere from four hours to four days! The treatments are accumulative and build upon each other so with every session, you remain pain-free afterwards for consecutive longer periods of time until your pain is no longer there, which is why you need multiple treatments.
Many people become pain free after about 8 treatments. Treatments can be spaced from one week to four weeks from the last treatment. In certain circumstances your practitioner may suggest more or less frequent treatments. Most patients benefit from weekly treatments initially and as they improve they can receive treatments every month.
If you are on prescribed medication, discuss this with the prescribing practitioner. You can certainly stop your pain medication when you are pain free, but it is better to decrease the dose carefully and slowly to avoid withdrawal symptoms. Always discuss decreasing and ceasing your prescription medications with your prescribing practitioner appropriately.
The treatment is extremely safe with few side effects. It is extremely safe and even safe for pregnant women. Minor localized bruising near the injection sites may occur occasionally. No allergic reactions have yet been observed to compounded 5% Dextrose, the medication injected. It has been estimated that one in 300,000 injections may result in infection – in other words, it is an extremely low risk to get an infection from the injection. It is still recommended to wash the area and keep it clean after your treatment, as with all injections.
