Just before the pandemic, Norine Khalil, RD, along with two friends and fellow healthcare professionals, launched One Elephant, an integrative health clinic. The clinic brings together a diverse team of holistic health providers, including dietitians, naturopathic doctors, chiropractors, massage therapists, and mental health specialists.

Fast forward to today, and Norine is one of three dietitians on the growing team. As the demand for mental health support surged during COVID-19, the clinic’s psychotherapy services expanded, evolving from virtual care to in-person visits. The team works collaboratively to provide comprehensive care, addressing patients’ mental, emotional, nutritional, and physical needs.

This is also reflected in how the clinic was named. One Elephant is based on a parable of six blind men and an elephant, each of whom can feel a part of the animal, communicate what they’re experiencing, and come together and determine what it is. Norine says this represented the collaborative, integrative health approach — with a carefully hand-picked team. 

Led by women of color, diversity has been incredibly important to the One Elephant team. They have become well-known and integrated within their community, fostering a sense of belonging. Norine explains, "We want to be able to connect with people who don't feel seen in that sense."

We dove into the holistic approach Norine and her team use at One Elephant, including their patient care model, how they use That Clean Life in their nutrition services, and how they continue to attract and retain clients.

Patients first: Collaboration and integration

One Elephant provides end-to-end patient care through their collaborative team structure. If you’ve ever been a new patient at a provider’s office and needed to meet with multiple practitioners, you probably got tired of repeating the same information repeatedly. 

The One Elephant team has addressed this by offering new patients an integrative team visit upfront. This means that if you’re new to their care and meet the criteria of needing care from multiple providers, you’ll just meet with everyone first.

"Instead of them going from one to the next and having to walk through their story over and over again, they actually meet with two or three of us from the very beginning."

Norine says that in these cases, patients sit down with the appropriate providers, and the intake is done together. This way, they can address all the areas that the person’s concerns reflect. She notes, "Then, together, we come up with their comprehensive plan, and then they will touch base with each of us as needed throughout that journey."

Nutrition services at One Elephant

Norine and the other dietitians at One Elephant offer several ways for patients to receive nutrition support, each tailored to individual needs. 

First, they offer one-on-one support by way of nutrition counseling for conditions such as polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), thyroid issues, and hormonal health concerns. "We also support patients going through fertility and then pregnancy and postpartum support," says Norine. Other key areas they see are digestive health, weight management, food intolerances and sensitivities, allergies, cardiovascular health, and diabetes. 

The dietitians also provide grocery store tours for patients who want real-time guidance regarding healthier food choices and optimizing nutrition when meal planning. Norine notes that while these tours dwindled a bit during the pandemic, many people find them helpful, and they’ve increased in popularity again.

Read more about How to Design a Grocery Store Tour Session. 

Finally, they offer collaborative meal plan development. Many people struggle to plan healthy meals that fit their needs and preferences for themselves or their families, and Norine says the dietitians engage in this during most of their appointments. 

She notes that the nutrition services you’ll get through One Elephant are supported by That Clean Life nutrition planning software, which Norine says she used long before the clinic was founded. 

How using That Clean Life supports One Elephant clients

Before implementing That Clean Life at the suggestion of a naturopathic doctor, Norine remembers pulling out physical recipe books and using pen and paper to collect recipes and create client meal plans. 

She also recalls life before the ease of having a nutrient analysis available, saying:

"If I'm going to be totally honest, I feel like That Clean Life just solved all of my problems."

One of the most frequent ways she uses That Clean Life is to create recipe books or meal planning guides and structure meal plans for her patients. 

Ready-to-use templates.

When asked about her favorite templates, Norine says she really enjoys the "fast and easy" and "freezer-friendly" ones, as well as options geared toward kids to help parents prioritize nutrition during the back-to-school season or who have kids with special dietary needs. 

Healthy eating can often be inaccessible due to time constraints and requiring expensive cooking equipment. Including freezer-friendly and one-pan meals on their client’s nutrition plan with specific cooking time limits makes meal prep easy for them.

Powerful filters.

Being able to pull and filter appropriate recipes to show clients how they might look in a week has proven beneficial. Norine says, "I do a lot of Mediterranean filters, especially when I'm working with some of my cardiovascular patients or diabetes or even the menopause patients." She also filters for macronutrients, for example, when a patient needs to get 20 grams of protein per meal, which makes meal planning much easier and faster. 

EHR integration.

That Clean Life is also working on integrating with other platforms to help providers and teams offer an even more cohesive and collaborative approach to patient care — such as with Practice Better. Migration services are available if practitioners want assistance moving things over. 

Learn more about migrating your EHR to Practice Better.

Delivering meal plans.

To ensure her clients' meal plans and recommendations stay in one place, Norine says, "I export it, and then I give it to them just in PDF form because it just gets added to their nutrition care plan and our electronic medical record system." She sends clients her visit notes and meal plan together so they have everything. Norine has also used the Sharing tool to share the meal plan link directly with clients. 

Client attraction strategies

To attract new clients to the clinic, One Elephant has focused on two key strategies: investing in advertising and building a strong referral network.

Investing in ads.

One of the most impactful ways One Elephant has been able to expand its reach and gain more client attraction is by investing in larger-scale ads for its clinic. 

Norine notes that investing in getting themselves seen has been really important because "It's a very oversaturated world out there, and sometimes someone's searching for somebody in the health world, and they just want to be able to see what comes up first when they're Googling." If One Elephant can be in that first list of search results, then they’re more likely to gain new client attention. 

Building community and a referral network.

From there, Norine emphasizes the importance of building their presence within the local community and creating meaningful connections with people, including other health professionals. This way, when they provide referrals, they know who the patient will speak to on a more personal level, reflecting the importance of community building. 

Download The Ultimate Guide to Attracting Clients in Your Private Practice to optimize your marketing strategy.

Client retention strategies 

When clients have completed their one-on-one services, the One Elephant team wants to ensure they don’t disappear. Having an ongoing relationship with clients is important, especially if they want to pursue additional support down the road. 

Newsletter engagement.

Norine notes that the clinic newsletter is one of the biggest ways they stay in touch with and retain clients. "It’s also just a way to give back to the community that we have," she says. "And if somebody has gotten to a point where they feel really good about their health, but they're still wanting to learn, [the newsletters] are great ways to just keep them within the community and have them learning as well."

Clinic support and transfer.

Client retention strategies are also in place within the clinic itself. If a patient completes their work with one provider but another concern arises, they can easily be transferred to the appropriate provider on the team for continued support in another area. 

"We have patients that have been with us since the very beginning, but when we look at their journey through the clinic, they started with one provider and now they've made their way [to another]. It still feels like a success, even if it's not with you. I don't feel any kind of way if somebody's worked with me, and I feel like they're in a good spot, and now they're seeing somebody else."

The clinic takes great pride in offering someone a different experience even within the same discipline — and it builds trust with their clients.

Word-of-mouth referrals.

Another point of pride for the One Elephant team is their impressive clinic retention rate. Norine shared:

"Our clinic retention across all disciplines is over 80%. It's something we're proud of, but it also speaks to the connection our practitioners have with patients. Many of our new patients also come from word-of-mouth referrals, which is really encouraging as it shows that the work we are doing here is truly impacting people."

This high retention and strong referral base reflect the meaningful relationships the team builds with their patients, further solidifying the clinic's reputation for exceptional, personalized care.

Exceptional holistic health care through inclusion

As has been demonstrated by One Elephant, growing a successful clinic requires team collaboration in providing excellent client care. This team’s emphasis on diversity, inclusion, and ensuring that every client feels seen and valued has been key in their ability to successfully help others and grow their presence. And the addition of That Clean Life has been invaluable in ensuring their client's nutrition needs and preferences are always met. 

Ready to explore how That Clean Life can improve your practice's efficiency and quality of care? Check it out here.