FON: The Business of Personalized Medicine

Customer Service in the Age of Integrative and Functional Medicine

Consumers today expect responsiveness, authentic attention, and a high-quality experience—virtual or physical—from each and every one of their transactional relationships. This is non-negotiable. It’s a must-have. Does the end-to-end customer experience your organization delivers align with a service ethos that drives retention, ensures loyalty, and creates fervent word-of-mouth referrals? A Level of Customer Service and Convenience Unimaginable until Recently Take Amazon one-click purchasing, while at home in your pajamas, from

Quality Counts: A Clinician’s Guide to Supplement Quality

Quality: It’s a Clinical Issue Dietary supplements have become an integral part of American life—and American healthcare. Despite the recession, the supplement industry has grown steadily at 5%-6% per year–twice the rate of OTC drugs. According to a 2011 report from the National Center for Health Statistics, more than half of all U.S. adults regularly take supplements. A 2016 survey sponsored by the Council for Responsible Nutrition, puts the figure

Integrative Health’s Place in Medical School Curricula

The Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine & Health has grown to over 70 members comprising leading academic institutions, hospitals, and health systems. Its members are actively involved in clinical services, research, and educational programming specific to the field of integrative health and medicine. Is there any doubt that medical school curricula will follow this same trajectory? It’s actually been happening for some time, but only recently thrust into the news

Now, More Than Ever, Professional Dietary Supplement Quality Counts

By Erik Goldman Practitioner brands must deal with an absence of consensus on the criteria that define optimal quality. “Be prepared to compete on the battlefield of quality,” said nutrition industry consultant Michael D. Levin. Speaking at Holistic Primary Care’s 2017 Practitioner Channel Forum, Mr. Levin said he expects, “increased demand for transparency in all channels, but especially in the practitioner channel.” The quality imperative was a recurring theme throughout

Independent Contractor Physician—Kickback or Compensation?

ByMichael H. Cohen, JD If you’re a successful physician, chiropractor, acupuncturist, or other licensed healthcare provider, and you want to provide overflow patients to another practitioner you hire, is it a kickback if you pay that second practitioner as an independent contractor? Are payments to an independent contractor physician a kickback? Kickback Basics Let’s review some kickback basics, to start. Stark (or self-referral) arises when the physician refers patients to

Ultimate Guide: Using Community Events to Gain More Patients

Live presentations are the most powerful communication medium. Nothing touches people like an ‘in-person, living, breathing, experience’. Whether it’s sports, music or … yes, even health and medical information—LIVE (done well) will always engage more than books, television programs, or websites. Successful integrative and functional medicine solo practitioners, practices, and centers that know their stuff inside-out have an incredible amount of passion and confidence for their specialty, and share another

‘Educating’ is Most Effective Marketing Strategy for Integrative Health Providers

Medical providers, passionate about delivering health care, often cringe at the subject of marketing and advertising. After all, most didn’t invest years of education to learn about business and marketing—they studied to become healers. To most medical professionals, the concept of advertising to secure patients is anathema. Few physicians are taught the necessary business development aspects of growing a sustainable clinic or center during medical school. And getting one’s head

Behind The Decisions: The Anatomy of n of 1

It’s no secret that I have a deep passion for integrative oncology and a patient-centered, patient empowered approach to health creation. My purview is both wide and deep, on the business, political, scientific, and clinical aspects of oncology. Cancer is an incredibly delicate topic; nearly all of us are touched by its insidious reach—members of my own family have been heavily stricken by it. I have been a survivor (though

Politics and Birthing an Industry: All Rise

It comes as no surprise that many of us in the integrative health and medicine community feel somewhat anxious after the contentious, divisive, and ugly presidential election process. Since politics have always affected the speed of adoption of new policies that serve the greater good of ‘population health’, it has never been more important to remain proactive and diligent in advancing our collective goals. We—those positioned in myriad genres of