Questions to ask a longevity clinic before you pay

This field has grown quickly and the quality of it varies more than the marketing suggests. Almost every website in the category makes the same handful of claims, so the claims themselves have stopped being useful for telling practices apart.

These questions are more useful. Ask them here too.

Who is directing my care, and what are they licensed to do?

Find out whether a physician is running the clinical decisions or reviewing them afterwards, and find out what everyone else on the team is and is not permitted to do in your state. Both models exist and both can be run well, but you should know which one you are buying.

How much medicine have you practiced?

Certifications are purchasable and most of them are a weekend. Reps are not. Ask how many patients this doctor has personally cared for, in what settings, and over how many years, because recognizing that something is seriously wrong early is a skill that only comes from having seen it go wrong before.

What do you not treat?

A practice that cannot answer this quickly is a practice without a defined scope, and an undefined scope is where people get hurt. You want to hear a clear boundary and a referral relationship on the other side of it.

What does everything cost, including the parts that are not the membership?

Ask about the panels, the retesting, and anything you would be expected to buy through the practice. Ask specifically whether products are marked up.

How someone answers it tells you a great deal about how they will treat your money later.

What happens between visits?

Most plans fail in the gap, not in the appointment. Ask who follows up, how often, and whether anyone is accountable for the plan happening.

How will we know whether this is working?

You want a testing schedule and a set of markers agreed in advance, so that progress is something you can read.

What would make you tell me not to join?

The best answer to this is a specific one. A practice that has never turned anyone away has no criteria, and a practice with no criteria will take your money regardless of whether it can help you.

Who owns my data, and where does it go?

Ask what happens to your results, who else can see them, and what the practice does with them if you leave.