One-Man Show

any medical residents supplement their income with side gigs — moonlighting in an emergency room, say, or picking up extra shifts at an outpatient clinic. Thomas Jarman, MD, (Medicine ’22) took the idea a step further: He set up his own private practice.

Jarman, a third-year family medicine resident at TTUHSC Midland, launched Mint Medical Mint Medical last January. The small practice is almost entirely virtual; typically, Jarman sees a new patient initially in their home and then conducts subsequent telehealth visits.

His emphasis is lifestyle medicine — a focus on changes in diet, exercise, sleep and other factors that can prevent or ameliorate health concerns like high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes. Jarman’s residency at Midland includes training for board certification in lifestyle medicine.

Jarman also brings firsthand experience to his work. After growing up in Arizona, graduating from high school in Texas and studying neuroscience at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, he was in the process of applying to medical school when he started to be plagued by a “weird rash.” He spent several months looking for answers before a dermatologist gave him the news: He had celiac disease.

“I went home and sobbed,” he says, and then he began a long process of figuring out what he could and couldn’t eat. The lifestyle changes he eventually made — including switching to a mostly plant-based, whole-food diet, focusing on restorative sleep and getting more exercise — are similar to the ones he suggests now for his patients.

He likes meeting with patients online because it allows them flexibility to schedule appointments when it suits them, without having to miss work or find a babysitter. He uses a practice-management software called Healthie, which includes a phone app for his patients to use. Patients can also choose to automatically share health data — such as the steps recorded by their Fitbit or the readings from their continuous glucose monitor — with Jarman via the app.

Jarman will finish his residency in spring 2025 and plans to work for a traditional health care system. But he has gained immensely from his experience as a solo practitioner in a small, telemedicine-based practice.

“My dad told me when I started this, ‘Even if you don’t make a dime, just consider it as a real-life class,’” Jarman says. “I’ve learned a ton from it. And that’s probably more important than anything.”