Functional Medicine MD Saves 8 Hours a Week — While Deepening Care

"Functional medicine patients are often at the end of their rope. They need someone who will actually listen. And now I can." — Dr. Roxanne Pero

About Dr. Pero

Dr. Roxanne Pero is a board-certified OB/GYN, lifestyle medicine physician, and functional medicine physician practicing at Alive and Well Health in Dallas.

She spent over a decade in traditional OB/GYN — delivering babies, managing women's health, seeing 25–30 patients a day — before deciding to slow down and go deeper.

The transition was personal. She knew what it felt like to need more from a physician than 15-minutes could offer. This drew her toward a different kind of medicine: one built on:

• Hour-long conversations
• Multi-system thinking
• Care that treats the whole person rather than the presenting symptom.

She is also, for the record, a mother of four.

The problem: Deeper care needs longer notes

When Dr. Pero transitioned to functional and integrative medicine, she cut her patient volume from 25–30 per day to a maximum of eight.

She gained time with each patient. And with that, came endless reams of documentation.

Functional medicine visits aren't checkboxes. They're conversations that span nutrition, sleep, stress, movement, supplements, trauma history, relationship dynamics, and chronic symptoms.

HPIs routinely run 1,500 words. A single visit might touch six or seven distinct diagnoses.

The EHR templates she'd relied on in OB/GYN wouldn't fit. So she built her own system: Google Docs  for every patient education protocol she'd ever researched and written, like:

• What to do for infertility workups
• How exercise affects certain conditions
• Supplement guidance
• Lifestyle interventions

It was over 500 pages. She'd cut and paste from it visit by visit, piecemeal, assembling customized plans by hand.

"I never thought it was possible for me to complete my charting the same day." — Dr. Roxanne Pero

After seeing 8 patients a day, she'd spend 3 more hours at the screen. She wanted that time for her kids. So she set her alarm for 4 AM.

"I was literally waking up at four o'clock in the morning and doing two to three hours of charting before I then got my day started and the kids going." — Dr. Roxanne Pero

She felt fulfilled. She also felt burned out — not by the patients, but by the documentation that followed every conversation.

Finding Freed

Dr. Pero found Freed through a colleague. Her team had noticed that her notes were unusually thorough and asked how she did it.

When she told them the answer was waking before dawn, they sent her Freed.

She expected a basic transcription tool — something she'd still have to heavily edit. It was much more.

"I was blown away. I just thought this was going to be like a transcription and then I was going to have to go in and pull out all of the things. But how it's so intuitive — especially for the assessment and plan — I love that." — Dr. Roxanne Pero

In four years of practicing integrative and functional medicine, she had never once finished her charting the same day. She does now.

What changes when you can be fully present

Time isn't the only benefit. Connection is what truly matters to Dr. Pero.

Her patients want a doctor who is genuinely, visibly there.

"When I have a patient who's coming in suffering from infertility, suffering from perimenopause, who hasn't been heard — I can actually look them in the eye. I can hold their hand. As long as I press 'capture conversation,' I don't have to worry about the computer."

In OB/GYN, she'd sit at a keyboard while patients shared things like sexual trauma, grief, and years of undiagnosed pain — experiences they'd never felt safe enough to share in a 15-minute appointment. Being in two places at once, even with the best intentions, gets in the way of that trust.

Freed removes the keyboard from the equation.

Built for complexity, not checklists

Standard medical documentation tools are built for standardized care. Functional medicine isn't standardized — and Dr. Pero doesn't want it to be.

"I pride myself on saying I don't have protocols. I don't have a one-size-fits-all. Every patient is super unique to me, and I want them to feel that way." — Dr. Roxanne Pero

What Freed produces for her isn't a filled-in template. It's a structured, diagnosis-specific assessment and plan that reflects the actual conversation — organized into clear bullet points for each condition discussed, in language the patient can understand.

That last part matters enormously. Patients who've spent years feeling confused or patronized by the medical system need to leave with real clarity about what comes next. Freed generates notes that are both clinically complete and patient-readable, automatically translating medical terminology into plain language when needed.

"That beautiful note the patient gets — they understand everything and they know what to do next. There's so much clarity for them." — Dr. Roxanne Pero

The 500-page Google doc is retired.

Getting time back

Eight patients a day, four days a week, two to three hours of charting each evening: the math on Dr. Pero's old schedule added up to a full workday lost every week to documentation.

That time is back. All of it.

"I literally thought I was a morning person. And now that I don't have to wake up at four o'clock in the morning, I realize — oh, it's kind of nice to sleep in. That was just an adaptive behavior." — Dr. Roxanne Pero

Now, she reads. She goes to Pilates. She's practicing what she preaches to her patients about sleep optimization, stress management, and making space for your own health.

"Freed has given me the opportunity to put myself back into the priority." — Dr. Roxanne Pero

Features for integrative and functional medicine

Assessment & plan generation

The hardest part of every functional medicine note — synthesizing a wide-ranging conversation into a clear, organized, diagnosis-specific plan — is what Freed does best for Dr. Pero.

It structures her thinking into bullet points per diagnosis, formatted for both clinical completeness and patient comprehension.

Multi-hour, multi-system visits

Functional and integrative medicine visits routinely run 45–60 minutes and span six or seven distinct conditions. Freed captures visits 3+ hours long, producing structured, diagnosis-aware notes, letters, and referrals that reflect that complexity.

EHR flexibility

Dr. Pero uses her EHR (Cerbo) for physical exam templates, where standardization makes sense. Freed handles everything dynamic: the HPI, the assessment, the plan. The two tools complement each other rather than compete.

Real connection. Real relief.

The humanity of medicine cannot be automated away. We don't want it to.

"Being able to hold a patient's hand. Being able to be vulnerable with a patient and cry with them and say, I understand, I've been there. Those are things AI is never going to be able to replace." — Dr. Roxanne Pero

Instead, Freed handles the documentation and admin that take over the job you love.

For a specialty built on depth, presence, and individualized care, you need documentation that fits. Freed, Dr. Pero says, is the first tool that matches the work/

Join Dr. Pero and other integrative and functional clinicians using Freed to deliver high-touch, human care without the burnout.

‍Try Freed for free and feel the difference. Want it for your practice? Chat with our team today.