This Virginia nurse practitioner is slyer than a fox

While traipsing through the forest of the World Wide Web, we stumbled into the den of Fox Family Direct Primary Care, located in Waynesboro, Virginia. The cute fox-themed sign featuring a stethoscope and a Google business profile listing it as a "family practice physician" might lead you to believe that this is the clinic of a foxy family medicine physician, but you're going to have to be wilier than that to outsmart the non-physician owner of this practice, nurse practitioner Mallory Fox.

Even on Ms. Fox's website, it's difficult for the general public to ascertain who "Dr. Fox" is and what her degrees and qualifications are without additional clicks. There's only a small navigation bar (that collapses into a smaller, hidden slide-down menu on mobile devices) with a link to "Meet Dr. Fox", and additional verbiage on the homepage about how Fox Family DPC "practice[s] traditional medicine the way it should be". How can a nurse practitioner legally and ethically claim to practice medicine? We must have missed the part where Ms. Fox went to medical school and obtained an MD/DO degree.

The Code of Virginia, § 54.1-2903 states that "No person regulated under this chapter shall use the title "Doctor" or the abbreviation "Dr." in writing or in advertising in connection with his practice unless he simultaneously uses words, initials, an abbreviation or designation, or other language that identifies the type of practice for which he is licensed." Perhaps the Virginia Department of Health Professions Enforcement Division and the Attorney General of Virginia would be interested in investigating further?

Only after clicking "Meet Dr. Fox" and scrolling past an obnoxiously large photo of herself, are we able to learn about Ms. Fox's qualifications.

A "two-year fellowship in Internal Medicine under a physician she values greatly"? What the fuck? The last time we checked, Internal Medicine is a medical specialty that requires medical school graduates (not NPs) to train in a three-year, ACGME-accredited internal medicine residency; internal medicine fellowships in subspecialties such as infectious disease, nephrology, cardiology, gastroenterology, etc. are only available to physicians who have successfully completed an IM residency. Needless to say, it's extremely disingenuous for a family nurse practitioner (FNP) to claim that they have any sort of fellowship training in a medical specialty such as Internal Medicine. In any case, we looked further into Ms. Fox's claim of being fellowship-trained, but we couldn't find a single scrap of electronic evidence indicating that any part of her educational and work history in Michigan or Virginia could be called a "fellowship".

If you're still looking to get outfoxed by Ms. Fox, the first thing to do is to take a gander at the membership options. Hilariously enough, membership includes "FREE use of oxygen". What a deal! Why stay outside and breathe the free public air when you can go inside NP Fox's office and breathe her indoor air for $150 a year?

Ms. Fox also peddles a wide range of other medically-questionable products and services, including "toxin exposure" evaluations (chronic Lyme disease enthusiasts will be pleased to see that both a special Lyme IV protocol and a "Lyme blend tincture" are on offer), "comprehensive gut health" evaluations, medically unnecessary IV infusions of the month, "daily protection kits" for "colds & illness", and grossly overpriced vitamins and supplements in the "Supplement Shoppe". But seriously, what in the actual fuck is in the "Bye Bye Bartonella Tincture"? We're not sure we want to know the answer.

And for the lovely girl foxes out there, our enterprising "doctor" will be more than happy to bleach your labia for only two and a half Benjamins!

One of the most troubling aspects of Ms. Fox's practice is all of the mental health services she claims to offer on her website. We don't know of any primary care physicians who would be comfortable doing complex mental health/psychiatric evaluations, ordering and interpreting GeneSight® testing, treatment of bipolar disorder, and even going so far as to offer therapy. These specialized activities fall squarely within the realm of psychiatry (as practiced by a board-eligible/board-certified psychiatrist) and trained therapist, NOT a family nurse practitioner such as Ms. Fox. Where are all the midlevel nurse practitioners vehemently arguing with each other about their scopes of practice when you need them? But no worries - according to the aforementioned biography, Ms. Fox's "passion" lies in utilizing education to improve mental health!

If you've developed cancer from reading everything above, don't worry - Ms. Fox treats that too. Why bother wasting more than a decade of your life learning medicine with four years of medical school, three years of ACGME-accredited internal medicine residency, and another three years in an ACGME-accredited fellowship in hematology/oncology when you can charge your patients 500 bucks a pop for a "comprehensive alternative care planning" appointment? How about an eye-watering $3,200 for "custom cancer fighting IV protocols"? Exactly what kind of cancer is she "fighting"? Why would anyone pay that much for a combination of vitamin C and alpha-lipoic acid, which has no FDA-approved indications for treating any diseases or conditions?

Naturally, then, we proceeded to ask ChatGPT how many oranges you can buy with $3,200. At the time of this writing, the average price of oranges in the US is around $1.60 per pound. If we assume that each orange weighs approximately 0.3 pounds (which is the average weight of a medium-sized orange), then the price of one orange would be approximately $0.48. So, with $3,200, you could buy 6,667 oranges. We're physicians, not fruit experts, but we're pretty damn sure that with almost 7,000 oranges, you'd be getting a lot more vitamin C than whatever Ms. Fox is peddling. Orange you glad you read this article?