Customized, Comprehensive, and Compassionate Healthcare
Christopher Cooper, MD, MPH, draws from his personal and academic experiences in the healthcare field to develop a big-picture perspective of high-quality and compassionate patient care. This understanding coupled with a sincere concern for the individual’s whole-person well-being and his desire to build genuine and respectful relationships with patients are the reasons he established South Carolina My Care, a concierge internal medical practice, in the heart of Lexington.
With more than two decades of experience in the healthcare field – as a registered nurse, a medical school and public health student, and an accredited physician – Dr. Christopher Cooper opened South Carolina (SC) My Care, a concierge healthcare practice, to better meet the patient needs of the local community. A South Carolina native, Dr. Cooper says, “I chose here; I live here. I was born at Lexington Medical Center and grew up in West Columbia and Orangeburg and moved back here after residency, so this was my community and my home.”
After working as a hospitalist at Lexington Medical Center, “I was looking to take care of friends, family, and people in my community and didn’t want to do the assembly-line medicine of 20-30 patients a day,” says Dr. Cooper, “so I was looking around at different business models and felt like the concierge model was perfect.”
“It stemmed from me just wanting to help people,” he adds, “and I needed to figure out a way to do what I was already naturally doing in a way that made sense in a more organized way.”
Established in October 2021, SC My Care has a patient-centric focus that intentionally and attentively revolves around the needs of Dr. Cooper’s clientele. With a kindly bedside manner, this internal medicine physician endeavors to build a close and confidential doctor-patient relationship with those in his care. To illustrate the concierge approach, he explains, “Instead of an hour in the waiting room and five minutes with the doctor, we flip it around, and no more than five minutes in the waiting room and [then] spend an hour with the doctor.”
Furthermore, when specific issues arise, instead of applying the common approach of completely shifting the case to a specialist, Dr. Cooper prefers to “oversee and manage everything and then rely on the subspecialists more for recommendations. If we are consulting other physicians, it is because we want an added perspective or another opinion, or they are doing a procedure or something that I cannot personally do (like a colonoscopy or heart catheterization).”
In addition to conventional internal medicine, which involves preventing, diagnosing, and treating illnesses in adults, SC My Care also partners with South Carolina Elite Physicians at the same location to offer “aesthetics like Botox and fillers,” explains Dr. Cooper. “We have a medical weight loss program with Ozempic and Mounjaro medicines, a hormone optimization program, a ketamine infusion program, and we also provide intravenous [IV] fluids, hydration, vitamins, minerals.”
“We’re always growing, evolving, always making sure we are honing in on quality and efficiency, clinically and administratively,” he says. One of the practice’s most recent developments has been the opening of a new office at 201 Caughman Farm Lane in Lexington, and the opening of a second satellite “medical spa” facility in North Myrtle Beach is underway.
Dr. Cooper describes his comprehensive approach as “whole person” healthcare, and to model his method, he has thoughtfully developed a unique diagram that illustrates the “biological, psychological, and spiritual” and “functional, social, and emotional wellbeing” components that make up a human being.
He explains, “I teach my patients to look at their lives and analyze each of those individual areas of wellbeing and to help me find, as a team with them, areas that they can improve. It’s very much a partnership with my patients,” he continues. “We work together – whatever’s going on in their life, is my job to help them find help where they need it.”
When explaining the motivation be-hind his humanity-centered perspective, Dr. Cooper recalls life-altering moments that occurred while he was working as a nurse and later studying in medical school. “I’ve had a couple of people that our paths just have seemed to randomly cross, and I was able to help guide them into deeper spiritual walks and help them in ways that were life-changing,” he says.
“I truly believe for me,” he concludes, “the meaning of life is just love and relationships. All we have is the moment, and life is so precious, to know that people are willing to trust me and want to share their lives with me, being able to know the families, to be a part of people’s lives – that is such an honor, and I am always amazed at that.”
Dr. Cooper invites potential patients to consider his services, “if someone is looking for relationship, family, love – not just being a number, but being treated like a person. I want people to feel at home when they are here and take care of whatever we need to take care of, and I think that is the way it should be. We meet a lot of people who say, ‘Oh, I’ve never really heard of this before, but this is awesome.’”
SC My Care
201 Caughman Farm Lane
Lexington, SC 29072
(803) 771-1993