FON: The Business of Personalized Medicine

Integrative Health: Names, Nomenclature, Trends—Where We Are Headed

In 2012, I wrote a piece describing the integrative health community as being one camp comprising many tents. The article discussed the various sub-groups within the field, including: integrative medicine, functional medicine, holistic medicine, restorative medicine, and lifestyle medicine. I posited then, with numerous ‘tents’ falling under the integrative health camp, that newbie (integrative) health consumers often have difficulty clearly differentiating between numerous names and the nomenclature, thus creating a

Ruth Westreich Sponsors John Weeks’ The Integrator Blog: Why it Matters

My friend and colleague John Weeks recently announced that philanthropist and integrative medicine strategist Ruth Westreich made a generous two-year commitment to sponsor The Integrator Blog. This news largely flew under the radar. It shouldn’t have. Weeks’ steadfast publication of The Integrator Blog has been enormously helpful to the integrative health and medicine field for many years. Several years ago when I was planning the launch of FON, and ‘going

Improving the Health of the Integrative Health Enterprise

My recent posts on why integrative and functional medicine practices often fail, and how to go about mastering a ‘sales funnel’ to build patient volume, elicited a lot of positive feedback—as much as any articles I’ve written over the last few years. Could this be because more folks within the integrative health community are recognizing that integrative clinical prowess that is not equally matched to persistent business acumen does not

7 Critical Steps to Mastering Your Integrative and Functional Medicine Sales Funnel

Yes, I know, the very notion of you, a clinician, reading about a ‘sales funnel’ in connection to the delivery of medicine makes you cringe. But I’m a marketing and business development guy who focuses on these things, and I’m convinced these seven steps will help your practice thrive. I think we can readily agree that any enterprise, including integrative, functional, and concierge medicine practices, requires a steady flow of

New Report Chronicles Cost-Effectiveness of Integrative Medicine

By Taylor Walsh In 2012 the most experienced researcher of the costs and benefits of complementary and integrative care stated: “I’m tired of this talk that there is no evidence for cost-effectiveness of complementary and integrative medicine. There is evidence. We need to move onto phase two and look at how transferable these findings are. We can take this evidence and run.” This was Dr. Patricia Herman, ND, PhD of the

image of PBS-series-on-Cancer cover

An Integrative Oncology Patient’s Thoughts on ‘Cancer: Emperor of All Maladies’

As a 24-year cancer survivor I watched Cancer: Emperor of all Maladies with mixed emotions. From this patient’s perspective, the film is all about the ‘tumor’ and treats the host, aka the patient, as almost an irrelevant, disconnected entity. Ken Burns is the preeminent documentarian of our time. His own mother succumbed to metastatic breast cancer when he was only 11. His latest work, Cancer, produced by Barak Goodman and

Do Online Coupons for Integrative Medicine Services Violate Stark and Fee-Splitting Laws?

By Michael H. Cohen, JD Many integrative practitioners and online enterprises want to know whether Stark, anti-kickback, and fee-splitting laws are violated by business arrangements that offer online coupons or web-based coupons to customers. Let’s break this question down a bit for analysis. First, Stark self-referral law is on the federal level. We are only interested in federal law if Medicare Medicaid (Medi-Cal in California) or another federally funded health care

Opportunities for Academic and Hospital-based Integrative Medicine in a Value-Based World

(Special thanks to Taylor Walsh and John Weeks for their contributions to this article.) A colleague recently asked for an example of an economically sustainable academic medical center fully ‘integrated’ across specialties and service lines. Regrettably, after thinking long and hard, I couldn’t come up with even one fitting that description. However, there do appear to be a few seemingly profitable outlier programs featuring direct-pay models for consults and super

concierge medicine business plan, image of a plan written on a journal

START UP: Writing a Concierge Medicine Practice Business Plan

By Michael Tetreault Have you ever thought about starting a direct-pay medical practice or other variation of a private medical practice? Well, whether you are concerned about the Affordable Care Act, looming Medicare cuts or a board certified physician curious about what the next few years in your practice will look like, there are a few things to consider before investing the time, money and energy to bring your direct-pay