Integrative Medicine Strategic Consultation

Tale of Two Health Systems:

I had an opportunity to engage with a health institution shortly after graduating from Dr. Andrew Weil's Integrative Medicine Fellowship as a residential fellow. During the fellowship, I availed myself to visiting, studying, and researching existing business models in the US.

Let's call that institution A which was a community based hospital with an integrative medicine center directly competing with world renown academic center also with an integrative medicine center.

Below were my recommendations:

• Utilize your strengths - multiple locations to set up programs which will in time reduce referral base to the academic program based integrative medicine

• Have function based i.e. integrative oncology, integrative pain management.

Institution A implemented my first recommendation and now integrative medicine and the institution, in my opinion, is synonymous with integrative health care in their region.

Institution B appears to have struggled in the beginning going through frequent leadership changes. The key word they used was "they needed an entrepreneur leadership." At the end, institution B appears to have overcome challenges using my second recommendation. I did not engage with institution B, but I was very impressed that they figured it out.

Today, both institutions have a sustainable integrative medicine program which is an accomplishment itself consider so many programs have gone out of business.