Saving Lives Before the Emergency: Former ER Doctors Launch Practice Focused on Prevention
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WAKA) —For years, they treated some of the most serious medical emergencies imaginable — heart attacks, strokes and gunshot wounds. But now, two former emergency room physicians are taking a different approach to health care. They’re trying to stop those emergencies before they ever happen.
After spending more than a decade treating life-threatening emergencies in hospitals in Detroit and Montgomery, Dr. A.J. Burandt began asking himself a difficult question: Why were so many patients returning to the emergency room with preventable illnesses?
Dr. A.J. Burandt, co-founder of Plotline Health, said, “We were seeing the same things over and over in the ER, same people with chronic illnesses, and just seeing their quality of life just not improve, and I kind of had a light bulb moment of, ‘We can do better.’”
That realization led Burandt and fellow physician Dr. Jeremy Rogers to launch Plotline Health — a concierge medical practice built around prevention rather than crisis care. Instead of waiting for symptoms to appear, the doctors use advanced testing, genetic screening and detailed imaging to identify health risks years before they become serious problems.
Dr. A.J. Burandt said, “It’s called ASCUD, but basically heart disease and strokes are the number one killer in the United States and the number one killer worldwide. It has been that way for a long time. It shouldn’t even be on the list of the top 10. We have the tools to diagnose it, treat it and prevent it, but still it’s number one. That tells you we’re missing something here.”
One of those tools is a sophisticated heart scan called a Clearly Coronary CTA that gives physicians an unusually detailed look inside a patient’s arteries.
Dr. Jeremy Rogers, co-founder of Plotline Health, said, “It lays out your coronary arteries in great detail, so you can see all the plaque buildup, you can see calcification buildup, you can see lesions that are potentially, we call it unstable, and you can check for any restrictions in flow and any blockages that you have. This is the kind of information that, historically, you’ve had heart catheterizations, which are invasive tests, to get the same kind of information. Now it’s available to anyone.”
The doctors said the goal is personalized medicine — focusing on the individual patient rather than broad population averages.
Dr. A.J. Burandt said, “Now, we’re starting to see people get sicker younger, and people just aren’t following the normal statistics that we’ve seen. So we kind of shift to this different style of medicine. We call it an N of one, where I care about you. I don’t care if you fit the mold of what you’re supposed to fit; I care about you. So that’s your genetic makeup, that’s your family history, that’s some very in-depth lab markers, that’s some very in-depth imaging to where we get a picture of you, and we’re not hoping you fit this box over here. We can tell you exactly, ‘Hey, this is what’s going on in you. This is what we need to worry about for you. This is what we need to do for you.’”
The physicians also help patients navigate the flood of health advice found online and on social media.
Dr. A.J. Burandt said, “Things are changing so quickly right now with AI and software and health care, and it’s almost impossible to keep up, and my goal is to bring to the table awareness of what’s out there to people, and things that are safe, things that are validated, things that are FDA-approved, things that have research behind them, not snake oil, because there’s a lot of that out there.”
The practice operates on a membership model because many of the advanced tests aren’t yet covered by insurance. You can find out more information about Plotline Health here.
