FON: The Business of Integrative Health & Medicine
A practical baseline approach for any integrative healthcare provider wanting to engage self-insured companies in meaningful dialogue around the attributes of whole person care. Integrative health clinical modalities and approaches are still relatively unknown to corporate America. They need your help!
Integrative healthcare providers have been well positioned to provide quality corporate wellness programs and executive physicals for some time. Closely connected to this phenomenon, literally, is the largely overlooked fact that more than 100 million Americans today receive their healthcare benefits through self-insured companies.
In contrast to interruptive forms of advertising, content development allows integrative healthcare providers the opportunity to create thoughtfully crafted stories. Done right and targeted, storytelling engages. It has the profound power to connect on an emotional level.
The majority of hospital systems and cancer centers in major U.S. markets now offer an integrative medicine program of some shape or form.
Following these rules to activate the writing of your blog posts—even if you are not a prolific scribe—will help keep your writing focused.
On this blog I write almost entirely about the business of integrative medicine for FON, so you may not know that I am a longtime cancer survivor. In fact, my journey with malignant disease, which began 21 years ago, has shaped my life and career in the field of integrative healthcare.
Thought leadership in any industry is important, but in the medical world it is essential for success. If you aspire to influence colleagues, peers, administrative decision-makers or the public, you need to become a thought leader. If you aim to influence those in your field and beyond—and the consumer public at the national or international level—there is simply no other practical route to get there.
It never fails to amaze how this growing but still fragmented subset of medicine that is integrative healthcare is comprised of so many loosely affiliated groups and monikers. Here’s a partial list: Integrative Medicine, Functional Medicine, Holistic Medicine, Preventive Medicine, Lifestyle Medicine, Longevity Medicine, Naturopathy, Traditional Chinese Medicine and Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Chiropractic Medicine, Ayurvedic 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.
The Mountain Pose Medicine & Yoga Symposium took place in gorgeous Copper Mountain, Colorado August 22—26, 2012. The seminal gathering marked the first CME (continuing medical education) accredited program for yoga in the United States.