FON: The Business of Integrative Health & Medicine
So here we are. There’s roughly just shy of $10 billion dollars left in the Prevention and Public Health Fund, and according to top health economists, some of these so-called preventive services save lives and treasure, and others not so much. Now is the time to redefine what we call preventive medicine by combining the useful screenings and educational interventions that are proven to effectively save lives and money, and incorporate the basic tenets of integrative health and lifestyle medicine to promote health.
Notably, the list of 25 initial PCORI awards includes two that are CAM or integrative health focused. One is Evaluation of a Patient-Centered Risk Stratification Method for Improving Primary Care for Back Pain. The second is led by University of Pittsburgh researcher Michael Schneider, DC, PhD: A Comparison of Non-Surgical Treatment Methods for Patients with Lumbar Spinal Stenosis.
Section 2706 of the Affordable Care Act prevents health insurance plans from capriciously excluding a range of integrative health practitioners from coverage, based solely on licensure. While HHS Secretary Sibelius moves forward to ensure its implementation, the AMA contemplates what actions they may take to upend this landmark non-discrimination language.
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.
The majority of hospital systems and cancer centers in major U.S. markets now offer an integrative medicine program of some shape or form.
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.
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.
The answer—the so-called magic bullet—has always been prevention. This is why the principles of integrative medicine are destined to become the new standard of care. The long-term alternative to wellness, holistic, preventive and lifestyle medicine—the tenets of integrative medicine—is clearly a very sick, insolvent country.
Well, that depends on who you ask. Those within the integrative healthcare field and the disbelieving skeptics alike, offer quite divergent views.
I recently caught up with attorney Michael H. Cohen to get a current perspective on all things integrative health from his modern legal lens.
