This is the private medical practice of Nixi Cat, DO, currently offering services as a sole proprietor, doing business under my full legal name of Nixi Cat. My New York state medical license number is 301921 and my NPI is 1154828010. 

I’m a Board Certified (ABFM) Family Medicine physician, currently providing care to a small panel of established patients, primarily via telemedicine. New patients may be accepted on a case by case basis. 

Telemedicine allows me to provide convenient treatment of certain medical and behavioral health conditions via telemedicine visits. Some of the conditions managed for current patients are: anxiety, depression, ADHD, insomnia, nutritional/metabolic health, substance use disorder. These are all conditions which can be diagnosed and assessed primarily through taking a thorough history (asking the right questions) and which require only very limited or no physical examination.

Some conditions are not appropriate for treatment via telemedicine alone. For instance, if a comprehensive physical exam is needed, I would recommend that a patient see someone in-person instead. 

 I am only licensed in New York at this time. It isn’t fair, but my patients must be currently physically located within the borders of New York state at the time of our visit. If I can see palm trees in the background, please let’s reschedule for when you will be back in New York. =)   

My apologies, but no. I have practiced full service primary care medicine in the past, but that is not a service that I can offer at this time. I can collaborate with a patient’s primary care physician, therapist, or other members of the care team, but as a solo physician with a telehealth-focused practice, I am not able to offer the full spectrum of preventative care and chronic medical management that a good primary care physician can provide. I strongly encourage patients to establish a relationship with a primary care physician in their community. My intent is to be a supplemental resource that is supportive of, rather than a replacement for, comprehensive primary care. 

 Yes, when that is the appropriate treatment for the condition we are working on together. Controlled substances are controlled for a reason. They have inherent risks and need to be used cautiously, to be used only as prescribed, and to be protected from theft/loss/diversion. I care very much about my patients and will work with them to mitigate the risks of these substances when they are clinically indicated. 

Regarding full agonist opiate pain medication specifically, I do not believe that I can safely prescribe these medicines via telemedicine only. Chronic pain deserves a more comprehensive approach that is difficult to deliver even in a full-service in-person primary care clinic. It would be reckless to routinely offer these medications via this setting. I do think that there is a role for buprenorphine in chronic pain, and because of the remarkable safety profile of this medication, I am open to discussing this as an option that would be possible in some circumstances. 

 Currently, I am not yet able to accept insurance. I’m asking patients to pay what they choose for visits, recommending $100 per visit. My intent is to make the care as affordable as possible while still being able to operate as a viable business. “Pay what you choose” is in lieu of offering a sliding scale.

It is important to me that if one of my patients finds themselves in a tough spot, that should not prevent them from being able to meet with their doctor and get care that they need. I may need to amend this policy once I am set up to accept some insurance, but I will always act with integrity and transparency, as patients have come to expect from me. 

I can provide an invoice that could be used for reimbursement from a health savings account, etc. 

Links coming soon!

As a solo private practice physician, it’s just me for now. Eventually, I may incorporate an answering service, but I’m not in any hurry to do that. In every corporate medical practice I’ve ever been a part of, there were layers of intermediaries that made it impossible for patients to ever reach the doctors when they needed us. The whole point of this practice is to get away from all the interference of third parties in the physician-patient relationship. 

That said, my cell phone number is 412-657-0382

My new business email address is doctor@nixicat.com

I don’t sell any physical products. 

In general, the visit fee is compensation for my time and medical evaluation. Paying for a visit is not a guarantee that you will receive a prescription of any kind, let alone a specific prescription. It has happened in the past that I have met with patients who believed that paying for a visit meant that they would be able to order medications off a menu. That kind of practice is called a pill-mill and that is not what I am operating. In general, the policy is that if you book a visit, you are paying for the visit, for me to take my time to listen to you, take your concerns seriously, and talk through some options for treatment.  Refunds are not generally appropriate if that service was provided, regardless of the outcome of the visit. 

We can usually find a path forward that is mutually agreeable, even if it isn’t always exactly what the patient had in mind before the conversation. Patients trust me to be an expert about disorders and treatments, and I trust the patient to be an expert about their own body and mind, and so we have to work together to reach the plan of care through shared decision making. 

In extreme circumstances, if this kind of therapeutic collaboration is not possible, it may be necessary to decline to continue the therapeutic relationship, and to discharge the patient from the practice. Even in such a situation, the best interest of the patient must always be what guides me. I will only discharge a patient if I believe that continuing with their care would be more likely to cause more harm than benefit.  

Life happens. Alarms don’t always go off. Meetings run long. There are a lot of reasons that a patient may not be able to attend their visit as scheduled. At this time, there is no fee to cancel or reschedule a visit. If it happens a lot, we can have an adult conversation about that and come up with solutions that work for us both.

There are times when I will be the one who is late to an appointment, maybe by several minutes. I will attempt to be as respectful of your time as you are of mine, and use various strategies to prevent this from happening often. Most importantly, I will avoid overbooking the schedule, and will try to ensure that there is enough time to have important conversations without always needing to run over into the next person’s time.