Setting Ethical Standards in a Field where Misinformation Thrives
By Dominique Perkins, Associate Editor, Arizona Physician
Photography by Noble Pictures, jeffnoblepictures.com
From Print Issue - Spring 2025
In today’s healthcare landscape, both physicians and patients face a constant barrage of media noise, marketing claims, and medical misinformation. Reliable information may be more accessible than ever—but only for those willing to wade through a sea of conflicting messages.
Tammy Penhollow, DO, cuts through the noise with evidence, education, and ethical leadership. Whether she’s treating patients in her clinic, creating content for her YouTube channel, or advising colleagues, her approach remains grounded in what’s proven, preventative, consistent, and holistic.
A FOUNDATION IN SERVICE
Dr. Penhollow is a Navy veteran, anesthesiologist and pain specialist. She is also the founder of Precision Regenerative Medicine in Scottsdale, Arizona, where she develops personalized, evidence-based treatment plans for musculoskeletal and spine conditions using regenerative orthobiologic techniques such as Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) and Bone Marrow Aspirate Concentrate (BMAC.
Her path to private practice began with a strong foundation in military service. After earning her Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine from the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine in Kirksville, MO as a U.S. Navy Health Professions Scholar, she interned at Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane, WA.
She then deployed to Kosovo as the solo physician for a 720-person US Naval Mobile Construction Battalion—an experience that required not only medical knowledge but resilience, independence, and adaptability. She later served as a general medical officer and instructor at the Navy’s Independent Duty Corpsman school, where she trained advanced corpsmen for front-line deployment with Marines, submarines, and special forces units. Her anesthesiology residency at the National Capital Consortium (Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval Medical Center) solidified her passion for pain medicine. Week after week, she saw plane after plane of wounded service members arrive.
“I must have placed thousands of nerve blocks, and hundreds of catheters,” she said. Following residency, she served as a staff anesthesiologist in Okinawa and Rota, Spain, and deployed to Djibouti in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.
“I opened and ran acute pain clinics to help prevent us from needing to send people back to the United States for care,” she said.
After her military service, Dr. Penhollow chose to sub-specialize in pain management and chose the Stanford University School of Medicine program for its biopsychosocial model—a multidisciplinary approach aligned with her philosophy.
“I like the integrative conferences where we would have physical therapy, occupational therapy, pain psych and the pain doctors there for each new patient, to look at everything from all of those angles,” she explained. But when she entered the traditional, insurance-based pain medicine world, she found it fundamentally misaligned with her values. Working in a high-volume orthopedic group, she felt constrained by a system that prioritized procedures over patient care.
“I felt like I was bartering—I would continue to do destructive procedures, and patients would continue to get opioid prescriptions,” she said.
“I know I don’t belong in that churn and burn sick care system, and I would rather quit medicine than be a part of that kind of pain medicine.”
So, she walked away. And, after a period of regrouping while practicing anesthesiology, she eventually launched her own private practice—on her own terms.
A PRACTICE BUILT ON ETHICS AND PRECISION
At Precision Regenerative Medicine, Dr. Penhollow has created a space where time, transparency, and trust take precedence. Her direct-pay model allows her to bypass the limitations of insurance and focus on whole-body treatment. She subleases a modest office and employs a single remote staffer to handle calls. Everything else she does herself.
“I’m able to spend the quality time with my patients that I believe they deserve, and that regenerative medicine requires, because it is a partnership,” she said.
She treats a range of injuries and conditions: from acute hamstring and quad tears in athletes to mild and advanced osteoarthritis, disc injuries, rotator cuff issues, and tendinopathies like tennis or golfer’s elbow. Traditional insurance often limits treatment to one region at a time, she explained, but pain rarely respects anatomical boundaries.
“If you have knee pain, you can’t not look up the chain to the hip and the spine,” she emphasized. “You can’t not look down the chain to the ankle.” “We also address inflammation, sleep, mood, all these things go together because this is whole-body treatment.”
Direct primary care and specialty care models are growing in popularity in response to an increasingly cumbersome healthcare system that has allowed insurance executives to dictate care, shunting the burden onto physicians and their patients.
For other physicians thinking of pursuing direct-pay models for their practice, Dr. Penhollow emphasized the importance of taking the time to prepare and build a foundation of savings or funding, so that you can make the switch all at once.
Attempts to make the change “gradually” leave physicians grappling with the inherent duplicity of a hybrid model, as they try to determine who and where to charge for what, and when. Finding mentors, building community, and considering multi-specialty collaborations can provide additional support.
REGENERATIVE ORTHOBIOLOGICS AS CONSTRUCTIVE CARE
Chronic pain affects over 51 million U.S. adults, with 17 million experiencing high-impact chronic pain that limits daily activity.
“Simply put, and I know this won’t win me friends,” Dr. Penhollow said, “traditional pain management is destructive.”
“Regenerative orthobiologics is constructive,” she emphasized. For example, radiofrequency ablation—a common pain treatment— can lead to nerve denervation, muscle atrophy, and spinal instability. Regenerative medicine aims to intervene early and optimize healing rather than mask symptoms.
While regenerative orthobiologic therapies such as Platelet Rich Plasma had their start in professional athletics, Dr. Penhollow’s patients range from athletes to grandparents to weekend warriors.
“I believe we’re all an athlete, we all have that within us,” she said. “Maybe it’s dormant, maybe it’s something you’re ready to reengage with, maybe you’re motivated by what’s going on in your life right now.”
Not every patient is a candidate for regenerative treatment. Dr. Penhollow described the ideal patient for her practice as someone who wants to be an engaged and active participant. Some patients may expect medical treatment to be a simple matter of an office visit, a procedure, and a prescription. But cell regeneration takes preparation and time, and holistic healing can’t be short-changed. “This is not magic,” Dr. Penhollow says. “It takes hard work; it takes changes to your lifestyle. You need to commit.”
LIVING THE PHILOSOPHY
Dr. Penhollow doesn’t just advocate for whole-body wellness, she lives it. An avid hiker, gardener, and yogi, she stays active not just to maintain health, but to stay grounded and energized in her work. Outside the clinic, she’s also a French-trained home chef and an aspiring sommelier, constantly exploring new ways to bring joy, creativity, and connection into her life.
Balancing her personal and professional world isn’t just a goal, it’s part of the same philosophy she shares with her patients: that healing and health come from intention, movement, and meaning.
“For me, it’s about doing things I love with people I love, and that balances the intensity of the business,” she said.
FIGHTING MISINFORMATION, AND DEFINING THE FIELD
With regenerative medicine gaining popularity, the field has also become vulnerable to hype and exploitation. Misinformation and scam treatments proliferate online, endangering patients and discrediting legitimate practitioners.
Dr. Penhollow is working to raise the bar. She’s not just pushing back against misinformation— she’s actively shaping the future of the field. She is an advisory board member of The Orthobiologic Institute (TOBI). She also teaches hands-on labs to physicians learning bone marrow aspiration, lectures to both medical audiences and the general public, and addresses often-overlooked topics like menopause-related frozen shoulder and musculoskeletal health in women.
“My mission is to define regenerative medicine through innovation, integrity, and individualized care,” she said. She also stays active in teaching as an instructor in anesthesiology for the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, and as a supplemental consultant for the Department of Anesthesiology & Perioperative Medicine at Mayo Clinic Phoenix.
In addition to clinical care and medical education, she runs an educational YouTube channel to help patients understand the science of regenerative medicine, vet providers, and make safe choices.
“Precision medicine and orthobiologics isn’t just about offering the treatments,” Dr. Penhollow said. “It’s about setting the ethical standard in a field where misinformation thrives.”
Social media use has become a ubiquitous and necessary element of both personal and professional life but speaking up on these platforms can still be intimidating. Physicians are subjected to additional scrutiny as they face ethical, licensing, and legal risks with their channels.
These risks can be mitigated through a variety of safeguards and strategies, and the potential benefits for education and professional development make it a risk worth taking. Dr. Penhollow began her own YouTube journey as a continuation of her educational efforts, because she knew that online was a space where she could reach the most potential patients.
She encourages more physicians to join her in the digital space. “We have the authority, we have the training, but we often don’t have the reach,” she noted.
“We should be the ones they are listening to,” she said. “Physicians should be the ones who drown out the hype, the ones in front of people scrolling on Reddit and Facebook.”
She recommends that physicians interested in joining the digital fight against misinformation find a mentor to help them navigate the unfamiliar landscape.
“I have a coach, and she has 175 thousand followers, and she is making quite a bit of waves in the industry, and she is known as the expert,” she said. She echoed the much-shared advice: do it scared. “You just need to start. We don’t go with perfectionism, we start,” she said. “Patients enjoy seeing a human rather than a robot, particularly in the time of AI.”
THE FUTURE OF REGENERATIVE MEDICINE
One of the most exciting developments in regenerative medicine today for Dr. Penhollow is the ability to customize PRP and BMAC injections based on patient biology and data. Both PRP and BMAC are alternate therapies designed to harness the body’s naturally occurring healing processes. Patient blood or bone marrow fluid is drawn and processed, concentrating growth factors, proteins, and platelets that can then be re-injected to accelerate healing and reduce inflammation.
Evidence shows that the optimal platelet count for large-joint PRP is around 10 billion. For BMAC, the target is 4,500 colony forming units per fibroblast. Using advanced testing, Dr. Penhollow can establish a patient’s baseline and calculate exactly how much blood, or bone marrow, to draw to reach that target.
Technique matters, from the size of the syringe to the draw speed and depth. So does delivery.
“You can’t overstate the importance of treatments by somebody who’s well-trained, collecting enough blood or bone marrow with outstanding technique, and then delivering it with fluoroscopy or ultrasound guidance,” Dr. Penhollow emphasized.
These new developments in the field enable physicians to customize effective treatments for their patients with increased accuracy and more reliable results.
You can say to the patient, “given all the findings about you, given my results based on all the data that’s collected, I can predict this type of outcome for you,” Dr. Penhollow said. “And I think that’s exciting.”
​
She’s also keeping a close eye on treatments involving cultured mesenchymal stem cells, still in the earlier stages of research and development.
“I think it’s going to allow us to reach people with more severe injuries,” she explained. “So, I think that’s really exciting, coming down the pipeline.”
​
A CALLING BEYOND THE CLINIC
For Dr. Penhollow, medicine is more than a profession, it’s a calling that demands precision, courage, and conviction. Whether she’s treating a patient, mentoring a peer, or standing at a podium, she brings the same unflinching dedication to evidence-based care and ethical integrity.
In a healthcare landscape too often shaped by profit-driven systems and misinformation, she has chosen a different path—one built on transparency, trust, and truth. She’s not only building a practice that reflects her values; she’s helping shape an entire field so that others can do the same.
“Because patients deserve more than the hype, they deserve results backed by science,” Dr. Penhollow said.
Dr. Penhollow’s story is a reminder that meaningful change doesn’t come from waiting. It comes from showing up, speaking out, and doing the hard work every day. â–
​
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dominique Perkins serves as Associate Editor for Arizona Physician.