Center for Complex Diseases
Specializing in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic
Encephalomyelitis, Dysautonomia, Long Covid, Mast Cell Activation, Autoimmune Diseases, Chronic Infections​
At the Center for Complex Diseases, we believe in the need to understand the interplay of the immune system, and its effect on patient health. Our personalized, multifaceted treatment aims to understand the myriad factors responsible for chronic complex diseases and design treatment plans based on patient history, laboratory data, and differential diagnosis.
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​All our doctors at CCD are working members of the U.S. Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) Clinical Coalition and part of the Guideline Committee. They have helped write the consensus recommendations published in the Mayo Clinic proceedings - https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(21)00513-9/fulltext
Our Doctors
Bela Chheda, MD
Dr. Chheda is a board-certified Infectious Disease and Internal Medicine physician with over two decades of clinical experience. She is a nationally recognized expert in complex chronic illnesses including Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), Long COVID, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, and Dysautonomia.
After completing her Internal Medicine residency at the University of Southern California (USC) in 2002, Dr. Chheda worked at Kaiser Permanente Urgent Care in San Rafael, CA. She went on to complete a fellowship in Infectious Diseases at USC Medical Centers, where she trained across several institutions including USC University Hospital, Los Angeles County Hospital, Norris Cancer Hospital, and the Rand Schrader HIV Clinic. She became board-certified in Infectious Diseases in 2005 and recertified in 2015.
From 2005 - 2016, Dr. Chheda practiced Infectious Diseases in the Easy Bay of California covering the hospitals of John Muir, Mt. Diablo, and Sutter Antioch. During this time, she began recognizing an increasing gap between patient diagnosis, and the limited explanations offered by traditional medicine for many chronic illnesses. An increasing number of patients with unexplained symptoms, lead her to expand her horizons into ME, and channel her energies into wanting to help these patients who were often misdiagnosed. In 2015, this led her to the Open Med Institute, where Dr. Chheda specialized in seeing patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Dr. Chheda's background in Infectious Diseases is particularly valuable in cases of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) which can be related to the complex interplay of infection and the immune system.
In 2017 Dr. Chheda and Dr. Kaufman together opened the Center for Complex Diseases. There is a focus on patients suffering from ME/CFS, Dysautonomia, Autoimmune Diseases, Chronic Infectious Diseases, Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth Syndromes, and Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. She is a member of the ME/CFS Collaborative Research Center at the Stanford University Genome Technology Center and an active participant in several national clinician networks that focus on ME/CFS, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, and Autoimmune Disease.
Dr. Chheda is currently a working member of the U.S. Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) Clinical Coalition and part of the Guideline Committee. She helped write the consensus recommendations that has been published in the Mayo Clinic proceedings - https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(21)00513-9/fulltext . She is also a member of the Long COVID Global Expert Panel and contributed to the Long COVID Clinical Evaluation Guidelines, published in Annals of Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobials.
She is currently involved in clinical research and serves as a study site lead for a low-dose rapamycin trial in ME/CFS, in collaboration with Simmaron Research.
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David Lyons Kaufman, MD
After earning a BFA from New York University School of the Arts in Filmmaking, an MA from Teachers College, Columbia University in Education, and his MD from New York Medical College, Dr. Kaufman completed his Internal Medicine Residency training at St. Vincent’s Hospital and Medical Center in New York City.
He began his Internal Medicine practice in Greenwich Village in NYC just as the epidemic that came to be known as HIV/AIDS exploded. With St. Vincent’s at the epicenter of this outbreak, he became deeply involved in the care of HIV positive patients and in the research aimed at discovering ways to treat both the opportunistic infections they were dying from and the virus that was causing the destruction of their immune systems.
As HIV/AIDS became a treatable chronic infection, the practice expanded to include more primary care/general internal medicine patients ranging from 18-105 years old. He also became involved in the diagnosis and treatment of a variety of chronic, often difficult to diagnose and manage conditions, such as Lyme disease, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Viral diseases, vitamin and nutrient deficiencies.
During the course of his 32 years in practice in NYC, he has been privileged to provide primary care to multiple family generations and to a widely diverse population of patients. He was responsible for and coordinated the full range of their care, both in the office, in the hospital, and with other consulting physicians.
In addition to his private medical practice, he was the Medical Director for one of the largest HIV Centers in the New York State, the Director for HIV Clinical Research at St. Vincent’s, and, for several years, Senior Vice President for Network Development at the 7 hospitals that made up the St. Vincent’s hospital system. As an Attending physician at St. Vincent’s and a teacher of medical students and residents both at the hospital and at the medical school, he received many accolades including being honored by the entire Medical Staff. Over his many years of practice he was consistently cited in the New York Magazine listing of Best Doctors in New York and has been recognized by the Castle Connolly listing of Top Doctors: New York Metro Area from 1998-2012.
In 2012, he moved to California and joined Open Medicine Institute where he was the Medical Director of the Open Medicine Clinic, managing the staff and providing the majority of clinical services to patients. In 2017, he opened a new clinic, the Center for Complex Diseases, with a focus on patients suffering from ME/CFS, Dysautonomia, Autoimmune Diseases, and Chronic Infectious Diseases including Tick borne diseases, Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth Syndromes, and Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. He is a member of the ME/CFS Collaborative Research Center at the Stanford University Genome Technology Center and an active participant in several national clinician networks that focus on ME/CFS, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, and Autoimmune Disease.
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Dr. Kaufman is currently a working member of the U.S. Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) Clinical Coalition and part of the Guideline Committee. He helped write the consensus recommendations that has been published in the Mayo Clinic proceedings.
Ilene Ruhoy, MD
Dr. Ilene Ruhoy is a board-certified neurologist and an environmental toxicologist who specializes in chronic and complex illness. She graduated from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and completed her residency in neurology at the University of Washington where she also did additional fellowship training in neuromuscular disorders. She earned a PhD in Environmental Toxicology at the University of Nevada, working directly with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on her dissertation topic of 'Pharmaceutical Residues in the Water.' Dr. Ruhoy also completed a fellowship in Integrative Medicine with Dr. Andrew Weil at the University of Arizona.
Dr. Ruhoy's interests include connective tissues disorders such as EDS, autoimmune neurological disorders, neuromuscular disorders, intracranial vascular and pressure disorders, infection associated neurological conditions such as Long Covid, MECFS, and PANS/PANDAS, traumatic and inflammatory brain injury, mitochondrial disease, neurodegeneration, and exposure illness.
In addition to her private practice in Seattle, WA, Dr. Ruhoy also serves as the Medical Director of the Chiari EDS Center at Mount Sinai South and has become a well sought after speaker on the role of connective tissue in neurological disease. She is currently a co-editor of the special issue of Neurology and Connective Tissue for Frontiers in Neurology. Dr. Ruhoy has also been a co-editor of Integrative Neurology published by Oxford Press and a co-editor of Preventive Neurology, of the Seminars in Neurology series. She is the Chair of the Neurology Working Committee for the EDS Society and is also a part of the Neurology Working Group for the national apheresis organization, AFSA. She has been part of many chronic illness committees and serves on the boards of several organizations that focus on patients with EDS and chronic neurological disease.
Dr. Ruhoy is currently accepting new patients by MD/DO referral only.
Our Policies
PLEASE READ OUR CLINIC POLICIES
Our goal at the Center for Complex Diseases is to provide you with the highest level of personalized care. We are committed to helping you achieve optimum health. We understand that these disorders that cause chronic illness include a large number of symptoms, which may be severe and disabling. However, precisely because they are chronic illnesses with complex symptoms, it will take time, testing, patience and trials of many different treatment approaches to achieve improvement. We will do our best to help you accomplish your healthcare and wellness goals.
Please note that our practice is designed to provide chronic disease management, not acute care. If you have a new symptom(s), you should be evaluated by your primary care provider, in order to be sure that you do not have a new, unrelated problem. If you have worsening and/or severe acute symptoms, you should call 911 or be evaluated by the nearest urgent care facility or emergency department.
Insurance
Center for Complex Diseases does not contract with any insurance companies. We deeply regret the negative impact this will have on patients. The current health care model in the United States simply does not provide for appropriate reimbursement given the amount of time and level of care that we provide for our patients with chronic complex illnesses. Under the current insurance based health care system, most internal medicine doctors schedule 45-60 minutes for a new patient and see 4 or more follow up patients an hour. Conversely, at CCD, a new patient visit is generally scheduled as 90 min of face-to-face time, plus extensive additional time devoted to review of records prior to the visit and preparation of records and test orders after the visit. Most new patient visits, therefore, involve about 4 hours of physician time. We will provide you with a billing summary that you may submit to your insurance company for possible reimbursement. At least partial reimbursement may be possible if you have out-of-network coverage.
Our Fee schedule incorporates the actual time you spend with your physician, the time your physician spends reviewing your medical records and labs, and the time post-visit preparing chart notes, ordering tests, and writing treatment protocols. For example, on average, a routine follow up consultation includes at least 30-45 minutes spent with your physician and at least 15-45 additional minutes charting, ordering new tests, researching, and preparing protocol updates.
First follow up visit
The time varies depending on the complexity of your case and how much education we were able to cover in the first visit. This first follow up usually takes about 60-90 minutes face to face with the patient.
Review and analysis (in the context of your personal clinical situation) of laboratory results and other studies ordered at the initial consultation will be done during this visit, as well as a discussion of any symptom changes based on treatments that may have been initiated at the initial visit. This is followed by a discussion of diagnoses and additional treatment recommendations, as well as disease education. Additional tests are often ordered based on the results from the initial visit as well as any changes that may have occurred, and to monitor effects of treatment.
Follow up visits - continuity of care
Given the complexity of the illness we expect patients to have follow up visits at a minimum of every 1-4 months.
We cannot guarantee your health will improve as a result of our care. Because of the chronic complex illnesses our patients present with, we pursue an extensive diagnostic work up and strive to find treatments, both conventional and novel, that may lead to an improvement in quality of life. This is always our goal, but, as with everything in medicine (and life), nothing is 100% successful.
Our Clinic
Address
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2500 Hospital Dr, Suite 4b
Mountain View, CA 94040
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2206 Queen Anne Ave N, Suite 303
Seattle, WA 98109
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Phone Number
(650) 447-3001
Business Hours
Monday to Friday
9 AM to 5 PM
Saturday and Sunday
Closed
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