A new medical initiative plans to expand care, especially through holistic approaches, to serve Islanders who experience health issues caused by ticks.
Martha’s Vineyard Medical announced Tuesday that the practice will open the Tick Center, a specialty center for patients who suffer from tick-borne illnesses and alpha-gal syndrome, in May. The aim of the center is to provide tools to manage symptoms, immune dysfunction, nutritional challenges, and impacts to a person’s quality of life.
“The Tick Center pairs clinical medicine with a coordinated team of integrative health providers, offering a model of whole-patient care for tick-related health conditions not previously available on the Vineyard,” a press release from Martha’s Vineyard Medical said.
Plans for this center come as tick-borne conditions increasingly become a public health crisis on the Island, where the press release said nearly half of alpha-gal tests are positive; alpha-gal is an allergy to mammalian products like meat and dairy, triggered by the bite of a lone star tick.
This new medical initiative also corresponds to other efforts, such as those by Tick Free MV, to reduce the number of tick-borne diseases and allergies on Martha’s Vineyard, especially through management of the Island’s abundant deer population, and the state Department of Public Health’s decision to make alpha-gal a reportable condition. Deer often serve as hosts for ticks, and are seen as a vector through which tick-borne conditions spread.
It was also revealed in a candidate forum for the town of Chilmark on Monday that Martha’s Vineyard Hospital purchased the Medical Office Building at 449 State Road, West Tisbury, that it plans to use, in part, as a tick clinic this summer.
“The building is currently undergoing renovations and the Department of Public Health approval process, and we anticipate opening before the summer season begins,” Claire Seguin, president and COO for Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, said in a statement. “This location will offer Express Care, a tick-bite clinic, as well as ophthalmology and audiology services. We are pleased to expand access to state-of-the-art care for up-Island communities.”
Led by Dr. Gerald Yukevich, medical director at Martha’s Vineyard Medical, as well as integrative health providers Katie Friedman and Aubrey Stimola Ryan, the Tick Center, located at 364 State Road, Vineyard Haven, is an assemblage of partners that can offer specialized care for patients with tick-borne illnesses and allergies, especially for alpha-gal patients.
“An increasing number of people are living with chronic tick-borne illnesses or alpha-gal syndrome,” Jeff Levy, CEO of Martha’s Vineyard Medical, said in the release. “At the Tick Center, we are rethinking what care can look like, utilizing a functional, whole-patient approach that integrates clinical medicine with nutrition, mindfulness, medication safety, and other supportive protocols. Our goal is to set a national standard for coordinated, whole-patient care for those suffering from these long-term conditions.”
“The Tick Center starts where Martha’s Vineyard Medical ends,” Levy told The Times.
Martha’s Vineyard Medical’s Tick Center can treat people who have a rash, and can make a diagnosis and prescribe medication, like doxycycline. But the idea is that the center can pick up where traditional clinical medicine drops off and treat long-term symptoms and the “whole patient,” Levy said.
A single prescription or dietary restriction can’t always fully address a lot of these tick-borne ailments, Yukevich said in the release. But the center will coordinate an approach between conventional medicine and integrative therapies, he added. They will be able to care for patients of nine tick-borne conditions, such as Lyme disease, tularemia, and babesiosis.
Services will include “clinical evaluation and diagnosis, specialty laboratory testing through TickReport and Labcorp, individualized care planning, nutritional counseling, auricular acupuncture, medication safety, and ingredient transparency for patients,” the press release said. It will also mean mindfulness and stress support from providers such as owner of Wholesome MV Jason Mazar-Kelly, known as YogiJay to many. Other partners for the center include Vineyard Complementary Medicine, Vineyard Nutrition, Pill Clarity, which helps patients identify medication ingredients and find allergen-free options, and Labcorp.
All feedback and data points about a patient can be shared across the center’s electronic record to all providers, and a brief monthly questionnaire called the THRIVE Index can track how patients in the center function “across the physical, emotional, and daily-life domains most affected by these conditions,” the center’s website reads.
Martha’s Vineyard Medical, formerly Vineyard Medical Care, has expertise on care for tick-borne illnesses and allergies. It was under Michael Loberg, who formerly ran the practice as Vineyard Medical Care, that the Martha’s Vineyard Tick-Borne Disease Initiative as well as the MV Tick Fund were founded. Levy wanted to “extend this legacy,” the press release said, through expanded services and the new Tick Center.
To schedule an appointment or learn more, people can email tickcenter@mvmed.org or visit mvmed.org/tickcenter. Appointments can be scheduled for May, and no referral is needed. It is a cash-pay practice; the center doesn’t bill insurance directly, but can provide a bill upon request to submit for potential out-of-network reimbursement.