Every VIM physician practices Health Management Medicine.
Whoever you work with, the core is the same: a comprehensive baseline, a living plan, your capacity tracked as a vital sign, and a physician who knows your priorities as well as your physiology.
You choose one physician, but you get the thinking of all of them. VIM's doctors practice as a consortium, comparing notes and sharpening each other's judgment, so your plan carries the expertise of the whole group.
What differs is the individual. So choosing care at VIM is two steps: first the model, then the physician who fits you. Here’s Melissa’s way:
Stanford. Brigham & Women's. Mass General.
- Board-certified in Gastroenterology; Diplomate, American Board of Internal Medicine
- Medical degree, Stanford University School of Medicine
- Internal medicine residency and gastroenterology fellowship, Brigham and Women's Hospital
- Master of Public Health in Clinical Effectiveness, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
- Gastroenterologist, Salem Hospital (Mass General Brigham). 17 years in community practice
- 24 years in gastroenterology, caring for patients across the full range of digestive and liver disease
A letter from Melissa
Curiosity has never been enough for me on its own. I found that out early in Nova Scotia studying sea urchins. I loved the science, but I was alone in a lab, and I kept spending my free time volunteering at a literacy program, teaching adults and children to read. I'm not a science-for-science's-sake person. I need the work to reach someone.
Medicine gave me that, and gastroenterology gave me a version of it I could stay curious in: a field where I could continue to learn and care for people whose daily lives were shaped by their illness. I've spent the last seventeen years in community practice at Salem Hospital, and I'm proud of the impact I've been able to have. But patients have asked me to be their primary care physician for years, and for years I've said no, because the system I work in doesn't give me the time to do it well. What I eventually understood is that they weren't really asking me to manage their blood pressure. They were asking for someone in their corner, looking at the whole person.
Some of this I've learned from the other side of the exam room. A few years ago I had to advocate hard for my own care during perimenopause, and pushing for the right treatment is what led, indirectly, to a diagnosis of endometrial cancer. It was caught early, treated, and it's behind me now. My own doctor is excellent, and she moved quickly once we knew. But I had to know enough to ask in the first place. That's the part I can't stop thinking about. I had the training to advocate for myself. Most people have some knowledge, and they need a bit more to know what to want. You don't know how good you can feel until you know there's another option. And sometimes you don't even know that you don't feel well, because you've gotten so used to feeling that way.
What I want is the time to do the work properly: to understand where someone actually is, to tell them what their options are, and to help them figure out what they want for themselves. Not a list of everything they could be doing, but a clear sense of the two things that matter most right now, and permission to let the rest wait. My patients have always wanted that.
I finally have a place built for it.
— Melissa.
Whole-person care, with a specialist's depth
You can't ask for a better outcome than the one you know about.
Continuous care for chronic conditions
IBD, IBS, fatty liver, and cirrhosis are managed between appointments, not at them. Nutrition, sleep, and movement are part of the treatment, delivered alongside GI-focused nutritionists and pelvic floor physical therapists rather than referred out.
Women's health through the transitions
The years after childbirth and the perimenopause and menopause years are two of the most consequential stretches in a woman's health, and two of the least attended. Melissa has spent her career caring largely for women, and she takes symptoms seriously enough to investigate them.
The reasoning, not just the recommendation
Trained in clinical effectiveness, Melissa can tell you what the evidence actually supports and what it doesn't. She lays out the options and what changes if you dial something up or down, so the decision is yours to make rather than yours to accept.
Melissa might be your health manager if…
- You've been told everything looks normal, and you still don't feel well. You want a physician who treats that as a starting point worth investigating rather than a conversation that's finished.
- You're managing something ongoing. IBD, IBS, fatty liver, or cirrhosis are lived with daily and reviewed occasionally. You want the reverse: care that's continuous, with nutrition, sleep, and movement treated as part of the plan.
- You're in a transition and want it taken seriously. The postpartum years, the perimenopause and menopause transition. You want someone who investigates symptoms instead of waiting for them to pass.
- You don't entirely know what to ask for yet. You don't need to arrive with a protocol or a reading list.
You need to understand what your options actually are, and Melissa would rather teach you that than hand you a plan.