Five years ago, Married to Medicine‘s Dr. Contessa Metcalfe dreamt of opening her own practice, and now that she and Dr. Scott Metcalfe bought a building in Atlanta, their clinic is finally becoming a reality.
“We are expanding our mobile business,” Dr. Contessa exclusively explained in an interview with The Daily Dish. “I’m just super excited about what the future holds. I mean, I’m exhausted, ’cause it’s so much work, but I think people will love to see that.”
Indeed, as viewers saw during Season 12, Episode 2, the road to renovating the clinic has been a long, bumpy, and expensive one (more on that below). Even so, Contessa added that their clinic will be worth all the effort when she and Dr. Scott can share their integrative approach to medicine with their patients.
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“I don’t know if, on television, people understand that non-traditional medicine also works,” she said. “And so, I think one of the other things that we’re doing in our practice is we are showing that we also really believe in some maybe non-traditional ways of practicing. But it’s so helpful for our patients.”
Dr. Contessa continued, “We listen to patients, and we try to think outside of the box in our practice, and we always put patients first. And so, I think this season that people will see, ‘Oh wow, she offers that? I didn’t know that.’ So, maybe look to us when you have not had successes by just doing everything the strict, traditional way.”
Details on Dr. Contessa Metcalfe’s clinic renovations
The husband-and-wife duo stopped by to check on the renovation progress at their integrative and functional medicine clinic, during Married to Med‘s Dec. 7 episode. As Dr. Contessa explained in a confessional, they purchased the building for $1.2 million in late 2023 after outgrowing their “successful” former practice.
Once complete, she teased that the 4,000-square-foot building will feature a boardroom, exam rooms, a procedure room, and a full kitchen. Up until that point, however, she and Dr. Scott had already spent “$400,000 and counting” on renovations, with no clear end date in sight.
After going over some flooring samples, their interior designer estimated that it would still take another two months finish the projects — much to the doctors’ frustration. As Dr. Scott claimed, they’d been hearing incorrect timeframe projections for several months, and the contractor had “already exceeded” their total estimate.
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Dr. Contessa, for her part, tried to see the silver lining, though, pointing out that even if they spend $1.8 million total on the building purchase and upgrades, the clinic would still be “worth double” what they invested. Meanwhile, Dr. Scott chimed in that he still hoped to keep their total expenditure under $1.5 million, but his wife scoffed at the suggestion.
“You haven’t been doing the math. … It costs what it costs,” Contessa responded, revealing that they both had to “cash out 401Ks and everything” to fund the project. “Everything costs money. Every single thing.”Â
Why Dr. Contessa Metcalfe was frustrated by clinic construction “delays”
According to Dr. Contessa, the construction-related delays in opening her clinic to the public had impacted her professional life in multiple ways, too.
“We actually moved out of our old space,” she told the interior designer in the episode. “We’re kind of working, like, you know, full-time in other jobs, because we don’t have a home either. We kind of are homeless [ourselves] for our clinic.”
Further describing her “grind,” Dr. Contessa detailed how she had to leave the house by 5 or 6:00 a.m. every day, and was “basically” working two full-time jobs, at that point.Â
As she also elaborated in a confessional, “Every day I’m losing more and more patients. And ultimately, if this keeps up where I can’t promise them a date by which they can come see me, they’re going to move on.”
Plus, Toya Bush-Harris and Dr. Eugene Harris had expressed interest in renting space in the building, and the Metcalfes had been unable to provide them with an accurate estimated opening date, too.
Contessa concluded, “These delays are killing me. But at some point, you hit a wall.”
In the meantime, get a sneak peek at what else is ahead for Dr. Contessa on Married to Medicine Season 12.
— Additional reporting by Stephanie Gomulka
