Blog | FON Consulting

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

Integrative Medicine Services: When Less is More

If you’re operating a small integrative or functional medicine clinic offering a substantial menu of ‘services’, you may inadvertently be undermining your capacity for meaningful engagement with existing and prospective clients (aka patients). In my post Go Deep, Then Wide: Building Integrative Health Practices, I posited that maximizing (business) growth by laser-focusing attention and keeping distractions at bay is essential. This is specifically true for clinical services and patient engagement.

New Report Chronicles Cost-Effectiveness of Integrative Medicine

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 Rand Corporation

Dr. Mark Hyman Assists Congressman Tim Ryan with Enrich Act—to Force Nutrition Education in Medical School

A note reached the Integrator via integrative cardiologist Mimi Guarneri, MD from author and functional medicine advocate Mark Hyman, MD. “I need your help on something,” wrote Hyman. “I have helped Congressman Tim Ryan introduce the ENRICH ACT into Congress to fund nutrition education in medical school! We need to get as many signatures on the petition now to get this passed!” The petition is here. A supportive article from

Dr. Don Berwick’s Institute for Health Improvement Promotes New Delivery Principles “Beyond The Triple Aim”

The most progressive forces in U.S. medicine have signed on and are promoting a new strategy for medicine and health in the United States. In a recent issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Institute for Health Improvement co-founder and former Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Don Berwick, MD published Change from the Inside Out: Healthcare Leaders Taking the Helm. They declare a set of eight

You Don’t Have to Be Smarter, Just Give Better Care

The key to success in holistic and functional medicine is simply to give better care than the other doctors in your area. Given how utterly dysfunctional mainstream medicine is, these days, it shouldn’t be hard, quipped Mark Menolascino, MD, at Holistic Primary Care’s 6th annual Heal Thy Practice conference. In the 15 years since he established his now-thriving functional medicine clinic in Jackson Hole, WY, Dr. Menolascino has learned a

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?

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 reimbursement program is involved.

Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Functional Medicine: A Test Kitchen for Healthcare’s Future

From the outside, there’s nothing about the Cleveland Clinic’s new Center for Functional Medicine that suggests a healthcare revolution in the making. Tucked away in a compact suite in the vast Miller Family Pavilion, the Center shares the same minimalist aesthetic, and no-nonsense atmosphere as the rest of the world-renowned hospital system. There are no curved walls, Zen fountains, or essential oil diffusers. In appearance, the Center for Functional Medicine

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