FON: The Business of Personalized Medicine

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

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

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

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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

NIH (NCCIH) Releases 2012 Survey Results for Natural Health Approaches and Usage

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

Thorne Research Partners with Mayo Clinic to Study Supplements

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

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FON Therapeutics Is Now FON Consulting

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

7 Steps to Growing Your Integrative Medicine Practice in 2015

I want to ring in the New Year by offering 7 core approaches for exponentially increasing patient volume, boosting product sales and reinvigorating the bottom line! 1. Rethink Your Business/Clinic Model Delivering comprehensive individualized care within a third-party insurance reimbursement model and achieving positive patient outcomes yet suffering economically? Treading the relentless conventional internal medicine hamster wheel to dutifully snuff out chronic disease symptoms within 10 minute office visits? Sound

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

Evidence-Based Medicine in an Era of Personalized, Integrative Healthcare

In their Sep/Oct 2014 Explore guest editorial, authors Ben Kligler, MD, MPH and John Weeks present an evenhanded look at how evidence-based medicine (EBM), versus evidence-informed medicine, is applied in real-world clinical settings. Titled “Finding a Common Language–Resolving the Town and Gown Tension in Moving Toward Evidence-Informed Practice”, the article examines the endemic tension among conventional and integrative practitioners. The former who often delivers care (within 10 min clinical encounters)