FON: The Business of Personalized Medicine

The Absurd Economics of Nutrition and Exercise

It’s fair to say that, to a large extent, America has long fostered a culture and environment conducive to physical inactivity and nutritional-based disease. With today’s prevailing science clearly showing that teaching and practicing lifestyle medicine significantly decreases the top chronic health conditions plaguing society—i.e., diabetes, obesity, heart disease and certain cancers—moving more firmly in this healthier, logical direction would subsequently trigger a vast increase in human productivity and output,

Dietary Supplements: Harmful or Essential? Cutting Through the Unrelenting Rhetoric

What a firestorm! Ever since Dr. Paul Offit’s book, “Do you Believe in Magic: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine” was released last summer, there’s been a burst of new negative dietary supplement study results and position papers. Editorials, featuring provocative headlines such as: Enough is Enough: Stop Wasting Money on Vitamin and Mineral Supplements and Don’t Take Your Vitamins, have been published in prominent medical journals and major

[Case Study] Negotiating Your Career in Integrative Health and Medicine

Managing a busy consultancy, I work on wide-ranging projects with a diverse collection of medical providers, administrators and small business owners. I always find working with mid-career physicians seeking to reposition their professional futures an especially rewarding assignment. Typically well-trained and board certified, these integrative, functional and lifestyle medicine practitioners possess ample clinical experience but often feel frustrated, trapped within conventional medical delivery models that just feel inadequate. I’ve never consciously

Grow Your ‘List’ to Grow Your Integrative Health Business

Whether you run an integrative or functional medicine practice, or market other services or products related to the field, building an email subscriber list is critical to the health of your organization. The Gold is in The List Growing your ‘list’ grows your integrative health business because no digital marketing strategy provides a higher return on investment than email marketing. It is the most direct and effective method to actively

9 Ways to Earn Your Patient’s Lifetime Value

Acquiring patients (and clients) is one thing—and not always so easy—but the holy grail of medical practices and all brands is customer retention, achieved by securing customer loyalty, in turn, driving patient lifetime value. According to Wikipedia, customer lifetime value—what we’ll refer to as patient lifetime value (PLV)—predicts net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a customer. Though extraordinarily important, it’s often overlooked by most integrative and functional

The Best Social Media Networks to Grow Your Integrative Medicine Practice

I am often asked: What are the best social media networks in which to grow an integrative or functional medicine practice and position a brand? And I answer: The ones where your current and prospective patients and clients spend the most time, and… The social media networks that you like the most, and can fit into the daily mix of priorities Then I continue with the why, my own examples,

SEO Magic: 7 Ways for New Clients to Find Your Integrative Health Practice

You may have aspirations to draw patients to your integrative or functional medicine clinic from across the country, and attract an international following but, for most practices, being ‘discovered’ by and serving the local community is goal one. Whether yours is an established practice, or you are relatively new on the scene, it’s critical to take ‘ownership’ of your local market. And for that, you need to make it easy

Disruptive Functional Medicine Innovation Drives Value-Based Future at Cleveland Clinic

By Taylor Walsh and Glenn Sabin “The instinct of every leader is to frame disruption as a threat—even if it constitutes an extraordinary opportunity for growth by reaching more people more affordably. If today’s hospitals set up focused-hospitals to disrupt themselves…the evolution can be profitable rather than painful.” ~Clayton Christensen,The Innovator’s Prescription, 2009¹ Christensen, one of the nation’s leading authorities on disruptive innovation in business, wrote those words at a time after the

Institution-Based Integrative Medicine: Current Economic Challenges and Opportunities

I recently heard from the clinical director of a major academic integrative medicine program based in a large, progressive institution. His program is one of the originals with a steady following of patients. But the program had a problem: it was losing money. It’s the typical story of 90-minute comprehensive new-patient consults, and extensive follow-ups; appointments that require time to hear a patient’s story and explore root causes, as opposed