HAMPTON, Va. (WAVY) — The new Mango Medical Direct Primary Care hopes to put patients first by restoring relationships between them and doctors.
Dr. Nzinga Teule-Hekima believes she was called to help others.
“Since I was two-years-old, I was this little girl running around as a toddler,” said Teule-Hekima, a board-certified family medical physician. “… People asked me, ‘What do you want to be? I want to be a doctor.’ That’s all I’ve ever imagined in my head that I would be. My family completely supported that dream. It just became stronger and stronger as I as I matured. It morphed into an idea and into a dream then into a calling.”
“Now I’m at the point where it’s a calling. I have clergy in my family — pastors and ministers. I feel the same way they feel, they were called to the pulpit. I was called to be a healer. That calling just inspires me to want to be a navigator, to want to be an advocate for my patients.”
Now after 20 years in healthcare, following a career as a medical director of a chronic disease medical practice, including the Peninsula District department director, she hopes to fill the gaps in the medical industry for those with or without insurance.
“It is just the doctor and the patient,” she said. “There is no one in-between. There is no third-party. Direct primary care physicians are not employees of the insurance company. They basically work on behalf of the patient, so the patient pays them versus the insurance company paying them.”
“When a patient’s paying them through the membership model, just like Netflix or going to the gym, they get exactly what they need and what they want, which is direct access to their physician.”
The office membership is $75 a month. The office, located at 23C South Mallory St. in Hampton, allows patients to avoid copays, long waiting rooms or waiting weeks for an appointment to be seen for less than 10 minutes.
“My patient appointments are anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes,” she said. “I have to tell them, take a deep breath and relax. You have a whole hour. You can tell me anything that you need to tell me, anything you think is relevant. I’m going to be asking you a lot of questions. I watch patients sit in that space and become and feel safe. They feel safe and they feel heard.”
She follows conventional medicine, a holistic approach or both, depending on the patient’s needs.
“Everybody’s health story is different and direct primary care allows for personalized medicine,” she said. “It allows you to create protocols and plans for the patient that’s sitting in front of you. Your protocol plan is going to be completely different than the next patient’s protocol plan. There may be some similarities, but it’s going to be definitely crafted and curated just for you. Having insurance does not dictate your care overall. That is very important because you want that care to be dictated by the two people in the equation, which is the patient and physician.”
She, along with Tanecia Willis the Mango Medical DPC nurse director, opened the first direct care primary care practice in Hampton.
“I am the first Black woman in the Hampton Roads area to open a DPC, not the first person of color, but that is meaningful for a lot of people who felt like they were unheard in other spaces,” Teule-Hekima said.
“To open this practice, it’s meaningful on so many different levels to help my sisters, to help Black women in this area, but without excluding anyone else,” she said.
“I call myself the doctor in your pocket,” she said. “I’m always available and there.”
To learn more, visit mangomedicaldpc.com.