Consumer Guide to Steamboat Bodyworks-Family Medicine

Family Medicine of Steamboat Springs

According to their ad, this practice consists of two medical doctors and one physician assistant, who are licensed with the State of Colorado.

Millie Flanigan, PA.0001325

Rosanne Iversen, DR.0031614

Phaedra Fegley, DR.0043109

This practice offers "complementary & alternative medicine". Consumers should be wary of practices of this nature, licensed medical practitioners combined with "complementary & alternative medicine", for several reasons.

 - Alternative medicine, generally considered low-quality healthcare, is any practice that claims to have healing benefits, but is not based on evidence or scientific method.

 - Complementary medicine, also considered to be low-quality healthcare, is generally described as alternative medicine used with conventional medicine to effect complementary treatment, but is not based on evidence or scientific method.

There cannot be two kinds of medicine – conventional and alternative. There is only medicine that has been adequately tested and medicine that has not, medicine that works and medicine that may or may not work. Once a treatment has been tested rigorously, it no longer matters whether it was considered alternative at the outset. If it is found to be reasonably safe and effective, it will be accepted. But assertions, speculation, and testimonials do not substitute for evidence. Alternative treatments should be subjected to scientific testing no less rigorous than that required for conventional treatments."[88]

                                                 Marcia Angell, former editor New England Journal of Medicine

- The scientific community criticizes alternative medicine as quackery and fraud, based on misleading statements and pseudoscience, and regards the promotion of alternative medicine as dangerous and unethical. 

 - Alternative therapies and products that have not been adequately tested can have harmful effects by themselves and can cause harmful effects when combined with conventional medicine.

 - Patients hold medical practitioners to higher standards than practitioners of alternative health. Patients trust medical practitioners to follow medical ethics, including consideration of; the best interests of the patient, outcome of treatments, evaluation of risks and benefits, cost and effectiveness of healthcare, and the dignity of the doctor-patient relationship.

 - Alternative healthcare is based on magical thinking, supernatural energies, superstition, and pseudoscience, and is not part of conventional, science-based healthcare.

 - Alternative health consumers and patients can expect two things; less than optimal or predictable outcomes and a drained bank account.

"there is really no such thing as alternative medicine, just medicine that works and medicine that doesn't"

Diamond, J. quoted in Dawkins 2003. (p. 36 in 2004 US ed. ISBN 0618335404).

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Yampa Valley Medical Associates, P.C.

There are no names listed for this organization. To find that out consumers have to go to the website where the names of the providers for this organization are revealed. All listed health care professionals are licensed and the organization appears to provide what consumers would expect from a health care facility; health care services, primary care physicians, internal medicine, family medicine, medical professionals.

Kevin Borgerding, MD, DR.0030900

Brian Harrington, MD, MPH (Master of Public Health), DR.0042159

Michelle Jimerson, MD, MPH (Master of Public Health), DR.0049508

Jennifer Kempers, MD, DR.0041633

Mark McCaulley, MD, FACP (Fellow of the American College of Physicians), DR.0023289

Lambert Orton, MD, DR.0017674

Charles Petersen, MD, DR.0047397

Sarah Hopfenbeck, MD, DR.0031777

Petra Chladek, PA-C (Physician Assistant-Certified), PA.0001359

Frankie Hannah, PA-C (Physician Assistant-Certifed), PA.0000802


For consumers, health care dollars are best spent on proven, science-based, conventional medicine.