Thrive Clinics in Southern Pines is expanding their services to offer primary care with a nutrition-centric, functional medicine approach covered by most insurance plans like Tricare, BCBS, Aetna, Cigna, United Healthcare, First Carolina Care and MedCost. To celebrate the launch, the company is waiving their sign-up fees until May. Choose between primary care, nutrition or a combination of both. Get treated like a real person with visits that last more than a few minutes and get to the root cause of common health issues like chronic pain, fatigue, weight gain, gut health issues, elevated blood sugar levels, and more. You’ll also get a personalized recovery plan you can actually stick to. Then, the care continues after consultation by helping you manage other health factors like sleep, stress levels, daily movement, toxin exposure, social support, and mindset.  “Challenges with metabolism, digestion, and hormones are extremely common, and these challenges have a major negative impact on overall wellness. Yet, few people feel supported with overcoming these challenges using traditional insurance-based care,” says founder Erin Skinner. The Thrive team collaborates to not just manage nutrition, but all key aspects of a patient’s health, including medications, screenings, referrals, and routine labs.

Thrive healthcare also includes additional services like custom supplement protocols, continuous glucose monitors, targeted physical assessments plus wellness apps and program support.  But Thrive isn’t just a healthcare provider. They get you because of their own personal experiences of being disappointed by the same broken system that keeps charging you another mortgage just to tell you you’re fine. “Cash pay specialty clinics are also usually ineffective because of cost or sustainability, and also because of a lack of truly root-cause care. In brief, it’s hard to get healthcare that actually helps you get healthier.  Our model is a solution to that problem,” adds Erin.

The Thrive team isn’t going to play symptom roulette and expect you to figure it all out on your own. They offer thoughtful responses to questions, ongoing accountability, nutrition education, motivation, and community. One pre-diabetes patient says her care team is “so encouraging, friendly, knowledgeable, and has really helped me figure out what is going on with me and my body.” Another patient with digestive problems calls her experience with Thrive “empowering. I had no idea just how poorly my confidence and self-worth has been tied to the gut issues I’ve been dealing with.” The Thrive team is made up of experienced physicians, nurse practitioners, registered dietitians, and support staff. Erin’s path to integrative nutrition and functional medicine began during her military service. She helped military aircrew and special forces optimize their performance through nutrition. Eventually, Erin co-created one of the nation’s first insurance-based functional medicine clinics, the Inspire Health Center. Her experience has made her an advocate for affordable, accessible healthcare. She’s also passionate about gastrointestinal-focused nutrition and a world-renowned expert who co-founded the Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO) Academy. The website offers courses and educational resources for food-focused healthcare professionals to increase their effectiveness at improving digestive health. Erin also translates the latest nutrition science into digestible bites for people to consume in her book the Bone Broth Miracle Diet and Empowered Nutrition Podcast.

Learn more and schedule with Thrive via their website. Access includes an annual health evaluation, monthly nutrition consults billed to your insurance, primary care visits as needed, unlimited messaging with the care team and choice of in-person or virtual visits.