Welcome
Dr. Hope McIntyre has been board certified in Family Practice since 1994 and has focused on Lyme and other tick borne diseases since 2010.
She grew up in Palmyra, Pennsylvania and attended Penn State University where she earned a bachelors degree in Pre-medicine. She earned her MD degree from Hahnemann University in Philadelphia, PA (now called MCP/Hahnemann at Drexel). She then completed a three year residency in Family Practice with the Harrisburg Family Practice Residency Program at the Harrisburg Hospital in Harrisburg, PA (unfortunately, this excellent program no longer exists). While working at Parkview Medical Group from 1994 until 2010, she saw many cases of acute Lyme disease and noticed that many of her patients became chronically ill after acute Lyme disease even if they received what was considered the standard treatment. After several family members developed Lyme disease, she did her first one week ILADS (International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society) training with Dr. Ann Corson in 2006. She then began treating chronic Lyme disease as part of her family practice but soon realized that it was not possible to treat complex Lyme disease patients effectively in the 10-15 minute time slots allowed a family physician. |
In 2010 she did a second one week ILADS training with Dr. Charles Ray Jones in New Haven, CT, to learn more about the treatment of pediatric Lyme disease. She then left behind her practice of 16 years to focus on Lyme disease full time, sharing office space with the well-known Dr. Kenneth Singleton, author of The Lyme Disease Solution (published in 2008). In January of 2017 she moved her practice back to Mount Airy, Maryland under the name Lyme Hope, LLC.
As a family physician, she treats patients of all ages and has a special interest in the treatment of children with Lyme disease who are under served in the state of Maryland (many of the doctors who treat Lyme are specialists in internal medicine and so are trained in the treatment of adults but not children).
Although her focus is Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases, she also enjoys doing consultations on any patient with medically unexplained symptoms. She feels her role as a physician is to figure out what is wrong with each patient and how to help them, not just whether they have Lyme disease. Her current practice structure allows her to spend more time with each patient which makes a more thorough history and examination possible. Her time as a family physician gave her valuable experience with diagnosis and treatment of many conditions. It also taught her when to refer patients to a specialist, and (more importantly) which specialists to recommend.
As a family physician, she treats patients of all ages and has a special interest in the treatment of children with Lyme disease who are under served in the state of Maryland (many of the doctors who treat Lyme are specialists in internal medicine and so are trained in the treatment of adults but not children).
Although her focus is Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases, she also enjoys doing consultations on any patient with medically unexplained symptoms. She feels her role as a physician is to figure out what is wrong with each patient and how to help them, not just whether they have Lyme disease. Her current practice structure allows her to spend more time with each patient which makes a more thorough history and examination possible. Her time as a family physician gave her valuable experience with diagnosis and treatment of many conditions. It also taught her when to refer patients to a specialist, and (more importantly) which specialists to recommend.