This review is specifically about Mikaela, one of their dietitians. I met with her twice, and it was a complete waste of my time. The TL;DR is that the information she provided was horribly misguided and showed her lack of knowledge in weight loss issues with someone who is in their 50s struggling to lose weight. She was also incredibly rude and condescending. During our first meeting, she spent a ridiculous amount of time reviewing a confusing chart that she had difficulty explaining when she could have bottom-lined it in a few minutes. That left only a short amount of time to discuss calorie/macro goals, so we had to schedule a second apt. since we only had time to discuss breakfast. She REALLY needs coaching on time management, to not be able to discuss essential items like a food plan in an initial meeting is unacceptable. During the second apt, she sent me the zoom link after our starting time -- which is extremely frustrating since there were technical issues. I usually sign in a few minutes early when I have a link to work through any issues. I wanted to get straight to the calorie/macro information. She wasn't at all prepared for the meeting and asked if I was the wrong height and weight and then said, "oh, that's someone else" After giving her the correct weight and answering other questions, she took several minutes to calculate a calorie goal -- I could have done this by Googling a similar chart. My goal with working with a dietitian is to have someone with enough knowledge to put context and details around this information. She gave me ridiculous numbers for maintenance and weight loss calories. I had an overall idea of how much I should be eating due to going to a weight loss spa and losing 35 lbs based on the plan they gave me. When I told her this, instead of asking insightful questions, she was completely condescending, TELLING me that the calorie range I stated could lead to muscle loss and that there are more important things than just the numbers on the scale. Well, for me, right now the number on the scale IS the most important thing, I'd like to get 20-30 libs off and then I can start thinking about incorporating a muscle building plan -- She was soooo disrespectful of my goals. She's a bit cocky for someone with only a year out of school under her I'm so disappointed since I've had a great experience with Dr. Dever a chiropractor and with Dr. Toth - an integrative dr. I've been an Aligned customer for 15+ years and this is my first bad experience. Mikaela gives Aligned a bad name.
Sep 2022
Aligned Modern Health means well but in the end it will just be a huge waste of time if you're seeing them for functional medicine. They make you fill out a ridiculous amount of paperwork that none of the providers end up looking at and just make you repeat it anyway. There's a ton of turn over there right now and I was bounced from one practitioner to another. The second was in the Elmhurst location and legitimately wasted my time and had nothing new to tell me during our meetings and would ask me what I would like to do to treat myself. As in I should be the one that is coming up with my own medical plan. It seriously is bonkers! Then was told they would "think about it and come up with a treatment plan." And this was 3 weeks ago--never heard a peep from them again, never scheduled a follow up and never gave me a treatment plan. But guess what they did do--remember to charge my insurance and bill me for the visit. Lmao. Acupuncture proved a waste of time as well. I went for months with zero improvements and then was told to just come once a week but only bc they wanted to bill my insurance not bc they actually thought I needed to--bc no where did I ever make an improvement. I just stopped going one day and never heard from them again. If you have complex issues stay clear of this place, no one is trained more than just the typical "drink water, make sure to keep your stress down, get enough sleep and exercise" type of advise. Huge waste of time.
Jun 2022
I came here for acupuncture and Melissa has been great but is unfortunately leaving the location. Acupuncture would get five stars. Reason for one star is the "functional medicine." One appointment + bloodwork would've cost me $524. They actually adjusted the $300 appointment cost after some back & forth - they were not upfront with costs on that / that my insurance ONLY covered the acupuncture so that was necessary - but before going for bloodwork, I asked for estimated costs in the tests that were being ordered. They don't check that for you - fine. Got the billing codes from them and called my insurance to make sure everything was covered. Most everything was, but I let the "doctor" (chiropractor Collin Gill with no medical qualifications) know that for a Vitamin D test, insurance would require a justification for ordering. A month later I have a $224 lab bill for that test and zero response from Aligned after multiple emails on whether or not Collin would be sending that justification to my insurance. I regret giving this a chance - feels so predatory in the upsells / suggestions, and I'd stick to holistic or integrative doctors with an MD + covered by insurance in the future. Sidenote - when I found out about the $300 bill, I then asked how much follow up appointments were and they initially told me $45-180 depending on the billing codes the doctor uses (???). Later they said $90 for 30 mins or $180 for an hour, which is a hard pass for someone who basically spouts the same medical advice you'd read on Reddit.
This review is specifically about Mikaela, one of their dietitians. I met with her twice, and it was a complete waste of my time. The TL;DR is that the information she provided was horribly misguided and showed her lack of knowledge in weight loss issues with someone who is in their 50s struggling to lose weight. She was also incredibly rude and condescending. During our first meeting, she spent a ridiculous amount of time reviewing a confusing chart that she had difficulty explaining when she could have bottom-lined it in a few minutes. That left only a short amount of time to discuss calorie/macro goals, so we had to schedule a second apt. since we only had time to discuss breakfast. She REALLY needs coaching on time management, to not be able to discuss essential items like a food plan in an initial meeting is unacceptable. During the second apt, she sent me the zoom link after our starting time -- which is extremely frustrating since there were technical issues. I usually sign in a few minutes early when I have a link to work through any issues. I wanted to get straight to the calorie/macro information. She wasn't at all prepared for the meeting and asked if I was the wrong height and weight and then said, "oh, that's someone else" After giving her the correct weight and answering other questions, she took several minutes to calculate a calorie goal -- I could have done this by Googling a similar chart. My goal with working with a dietitian is to have someone with enough knowledge to put context and details around this information. She gave me ridiculous numbers for maintenance and weight loss calories. I had an overall idea of how much I should be eating due to going to a weight loss spa and losing 35 lbs based on the plan they gave me. When I told her this, instead of asking insightful questions, she was completely condescending, TELLING me that the calorie range I stated could lead to muscle loss and that there are more important things than just the numbers on the scale. Well, for me, right now the number on the scale IS the most important thing, I'd like to get 20-30 libs off and then I can start thinking about incorporating a muscle building plan -- She was soooo disrespectful of my goals. She's a bit cocky for someone with only a year out of school under her I'm so disappointed since I've had a great experience with Dr. Dever a chiropractor and with Dr. Toth - an integrative dr. I've been an Aligned customer for 15+ years and this is my first bad experience. Mikaela gives Aligned a bad name.
Aligned Modern Health means well but in the end it will just be a huge waste of time if you're seeing them for functional medicine. They make you fill out a ridiculous amount of paperwork that none of the providers end up looking at and just make you repeat it anyway. There's a ton of turn over there right now and I was bounced from one practitioner to another. The second was in the Elmhurst location and legitimately wasted my time and had nothing new to tell me during our meetings and would ask me what I would like to do to treat myself. As in I should be the one that is coming up with my own medical plan. It seriously is bonkers! Then was told they would "think about it and come up with a treatment plan." And this was 3 weeks ago--never heard a peep from them again, never scheduled a follow up and never gave me a treatment plan. But guess what they did do--remember to charge my insurance and bill me for the visit. Lmao. Acupuncture proved a waste of time as well. I went for months with zero improvements and then was told to just come once a week but only bc they wanted to bill my insurance not bc they actually thought I needed to--bc no where did I ever make an improvement. I just stopped going one day and never heard from them again. If you have complex issues stay clear of this place, no one is trained more than just the typical "drink water, make sure to keep your stress down, get enough sleep and exercise" type of advise. Huge waste of time.
I came here for acupuncture and Melissa has been great but is unfortunately leaving the location. Acupuncture would get five stars. Reason for one star is the "functional medicine." One appointment + bloodwork would've cost me $524. They actually adjusted the $300 appointment cost after some back & forth - they were not upfront with costs on that / that my insurance ONLY covered the acupuncture so that was necessary - but before going for bloodwork, I asked for estimated costs in the tests that were being ordered. They don't check that for you - fine. Got the billing codes from them and called my insurance to make sure everything was covered. Most everything was, but I let the "doctor" (chiropractor Collin Gill with no medical qualifications) know that for a Vitamin D test, insurance would require a justification for ordering. A month later I have a $224 lab bill for that test and zero response from Aligned after multiple emails on whether or not Collin would be sending that justification to my insurance. I regret giving this a chance - feels so predatory in the upsells / suggestions, and I'd stick to holistic or integrative doctors with an MD + covered by insurance in the future. Sidenote - when I found out about the $300 bill, I then asked how much follow up appointments were and they initially told me $45-180 depending on the billing codes the doctor uses (???). Later they said $90 for 30 mins or $180 for an hour, which is a hard pass for someone who basically spouts the same medical advice you'd read on Reddit.