The goal for one of the newest doctors in town is to ensure her patients no longer need her.

Rayme Geidl is a family physician and a board-eligible bariatric doctor. She started working on the Palouse last August and began practicing bariatric medicine at Moscow Medical in April.

I dont want to just give patients a pill, Geidl said. I want to show them how we can give them a strategy to actually reverse the problem.

Bariatrics is known for weight loss, be it surgical or lifestyle. Geidl focuses on the lifestyle.

When patients come in, she first makes sure theyre on the same page. If simply losing weight is their goal but their medical data is clean, Geidl isnt the best option.

But patients who want to feel better, have more energy or increase their longevity - those patients, Geidl can work with. She can help people reduce medications related to diabetes, high blood pressure, joint pain or anything else that could be related to obesity.

I was seeing a lot of patients struggling with metabolic issues and body composition, and I realized I couldnt help them very well, Geidl, a Troy native and University of Idaho graduate, said. I didnt have the training. ... I was feeling inadequate as a doctor. I could prescribe medicine, and that could help make testing numbers better, but I wasnt solving the problem. I wasnt healing them, which is what I want to do.

So during her medical residency in Spokane, Geidl, who attended the University of Nevada medical school, began to investigate nutrition and bariatrics.

First, she attended continuing education conferences on nutrition beginning in 2008, then began to connect with bariatrics doctors - not surgeons - across the country through the American Society of Bariatric Physicians.

Its not a new idea, she said. I wanted to teach people and give them what they need and a strategy to reverse the problem. Im practicing the best medicine in my life because my patients dont need me.

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Gaining health to reduce care