FON: THE BUSINESS OF INTEGRATIVE HEALTH & MEDICINE

Physician and Clinician Sales of Dietary Supplements: Legal View

By Michael H. Cohen, JD Sales of dietary supplements by physicians, acupuncturists, chiropractors, and other licensed professionals raise thorny legal issues. This can be confusing, because on one hand, “everybody does it”—i.e., sales of dietary supplements by clinicians such as medical doctors, is widespread in the industry. On the other hand, the American Medical Association actively discourages the practice through its ethics opinions, which explicitly prohibit such conflicts of interest between

Create Your Integrative Medicine Future: Overcome Fear, Do the Work

Are you running on the conventional primary care hamster wheel but would love shifting to a direct-pay concierge or hybrid model? Or looking to segue from private practice (solo or group) to a hospital system and launch an integrative health program? Your timing and opportunity for success has never been better, for the age of integrative health and medicine—and health creation itself—is upon us while its remaining skeptics are steadily

Anti-Kickback and Fee-Splitting Legal Issues When MDs (and others) Lease Space

By Michael H. Cohen, JD Many physicians, chiropractors, acupuncturists, and other healthcare practitioners want to know whether they are fee-splitting when they rent a room hourly from a medical practice or other healthcare facility or practitioner. The answer, of course, depends on the arrangement, including whether other aspects of it raise fee-splitting, Stark, or anti-kickback considerations. Let’s focus for now just on the hourly rental. The problem with this is that

Monitor and Manage Your Online Reputation—NOW!

 “Reputation management is the practice of building, preserving and rectifying the public’s perception of your integrative clinic or enterprise.” In today’s über-connected world with its crawling social media channels, blogs, chat rooms and physician rating websites, there’s just no good excuse for failing to monitor and manage your online reputation. That includes the auto-default excuse: I’m too busy. Slow to Build, Quick to Tarnish Left unattended, your online reputation can

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How to Get Paid Delivering Integrative Medicine

The future of evidence-based integrative healthcare delivery is limited to its economic feasibility, at both the consumer and practitioner level. This post focuses on the latter. Whether you are an MD, DO, ND, DC, LAc, LMT, dietician, nutritionist or practice one of a score of other integrative health disciplines, you need to get paid. It doesn’t matter if you run a small clinic as a solo practitioner or head up

The Evolution of Integrative Medicine Law and what the Future Portends

By Glenn Sabin Michael H. Cohen Attorney Michael H. Cohen, a thought leader in healthcare law, has a special affinity for and significant legal expertise in the field of integrative medicine. In his lecture (see video below) at Harvard Medical School 13 years ago, Cohen discussed the historical regulatory evolution of integrative practice, risk management strategies and key issues confronting providers at that time. I recently caught up with Cohen to

Social Media: Opportunity or Risk for Growing Integrative Medicine Practices?

By Glenn Sabin Today more integrative medicine professionals than ever are using social media sites like LinkedIn for peer-to-peer connections that span the globe and allow for the sharing of ideas. Facebook has over 2 billion monthly users. Twitter has over 300 million monthly users. While it’s hard to ignore this explosive growth, many integrative medicine clinics have not jumped on the social media train to engage current and prospective patients

5 Legal Issues Integrative Health Practitioners Need to Know for 2015

By Michael H. Cohen, JD With 2015 right around the corner, here are 5 legal and regulatory issues that integrative health practitioners need to know. 1. No Defined Legal Category Integrative medicine remains outside the bounds of a professional category defined by law—unlike, say, “physical therapy” or “psychology.” This means that the rest of healthcare law has to be borrowed, modified, or adapted to fit integrative health. For example, integrative medicine