FON: The Business of Personalized Medicine

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

Are Physician Online Dietary Supplement Sales Legal?

By Michael H. Cohen, JD Are physician online dietary supplement sales, kickbacks or fee-splitting? The Challenge of Physician Online Dietary Supplement Sales Can physicians, chiropractors, acupuncturists, and other healthcare licensees create a legally defensible contractual arrangement with a dietary supplement manufacturer or distributor, in which the healthcare clinician receives a discount, rebate, or commission when referring a patient for online purchase of the manufacturer’s dietary supplements? Let’s take Singularity Supplements, a

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

The Rise of Integrative Health and Medicine, image of book cover.

[New e-book] 120 Milestones Mark the “Rise” of Integrative Health and Medicine

Free e-Book Chronicles the Field’s Convergence in Health Creation Silver Spring, Maryland: A confluence of multiple streams over five decades has empowered the emergence of integrative health and medicine as the coming model for health care’s future. An outline of the field’s rich history is captured for the first time in “The Rise of Integrative Health and Medicine: The Milestones—1963 to Present.” The beautifully illustrated and designed book of over

Open Letter to Joe Biden: We Need a Cancer ‘Prevention’ Moonshot

Dear Vice President Biden: Your Cancer Moonshot initiative is commendable, with its core goals to make more therapies available to more patients, while supporting improvements to prevent cancer, and detect it earlier. The core elements of the Cancer Moonshot from a research and drug discovery standpoint are sound, but the overarching framework lacks a critical keystone. Let me explain. Our continued approach to cancer as a ‘war’ is misguided. Our