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
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
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
By Erik Goldman 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
(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
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
The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), along with the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just released results from its 2012 National Health Interview Survey on the usage of complementary and integrative products and modalities among adults and children. Some interesting findings include: • 2012 overall usage is about the same, once
Source: Thorne Research Thorne Research Inc. a leader in developing and manufacturing pure high quality nutritional supplements entered a new dietary supplement clinical study agreement with Mayo Clinic. Starting in January 2015 Thorne Research and Mayo Clinic began conducting a series of randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials on a number of dietary supplements under a master clinical study agreement. Working with physicians and PhD scientists trials will be conducted at Mayo
At the beginning of the New Year FON was ‘rebranded.’ FON’s (Force of Nature) company name was derived by a Harvard dean who also happens to be my long-time oncologist. That story can be read here. How ‘Therapeutics’ Came to Be I initially envisioned FON Therapeutics as an intellectual property (IP) repository for unique nutraceutical formulations and integrative oncology research incubator. However, with incredible support from a team of IP