2017 | ISSUE 4 ON WELLNESS & EXPERIENCE · wellness and health management, starting with their own...

healthcare strategy

2017 | ISSUE 4

O N W E L L N E S S & E X P E R I E N C E

Healthcare Strategy Alert is produced in cooperation with Wax Custom Communications, Inc.

6 The Marketer’s Role in Customer Experience

8 Improving Physician Wellbeing

11 Food as Medicine2 LEADING THE WAY ON WELLNESS

It’s no secret that unhealthy behavior is a major contributor to healthcare costs. Tobacco use, poor diet, physical inactivity, and alcohol abuse

often lead to poor health. What’s more, many patients fail to follow providers’ instructions or take prescribed medications, so controllable conditions are not managed well and people don’t get better.

Healthcare executives can be leaders in changing those behaviors—and many are doing just that. In this issue, you’ll find examples of organizations that are leading the way in encouraging a focus on wellness and health management, starting with their own employees. The issue also examines successful models for improving physician wellbeing, strategies for creating a more engaging and healthful patient experience, and the growing interest in food as medicine.

With increased responsibility for managing population health and reducing readmissions, a focus on wellness and engagement is more important than ever. Read on … and let this issue serve as a guide for your own individual and organizational efforts.

TAKE NOTE ■

Plan to attend the 23rd Annual Healthcare Marketing & Physician Strategies Summit, April 30-May 2, 2018, in Salt Lake City, UT! Visit healthcarestrategy.com for more information.

[email protected]

JUDY NEIMAN, PresidentForum for Healthcare Strategists

HEALTH AND WELLNESS: A CALL TO ACTION

With growing attention to population health, it’s a perfect time for healthcare organizations to lead the way on health and wellness. And where better to start than with the organization’s own employees. By designing and implementing programs to incentivize employees to engage in and maintain healthy behaviors and better manage their health, they can set an example for other employers, consumers, and their communities. The result? Stronger workforces, reduced costs, and better health.

But improving employee health and wellness isn’t simple. “It is all about leadership in the ‘new normal’ while living in two realities—value-based care and fee-for-service. It requires total focus on the person/patient, an integrated care system, and interorganizational collaboration and coordination,” says Stephanie McCutcheon, Chief Executive Officer, Health Employer Exchange. “Well-designed initiatives are health management opportunities that can lead to improved health outcomes and significant cost reductions.”

TAKING THE

LEADON HEALTH

& WELLNESS

INSIDESTARTING ON THE

By Whitney J. Palmer

2 healthcare strategy ALERT ■ 2017 | Issue 4

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Sustainable employee wellness or wellbeing programs do share commonalities, McCutcheon continues. “Overall, they are innovative and transformative, and they follow methods that target quality, patient satisfaction, and cost reduction,” she says. “As leaders in advancing these programs, health systems should be learning from each other and replicating and scaling what works.” For the employer, the goals are to reduce the cost of chronic disease, avoid absenteeism, normalize work, and reduce avoidable inpatient returns, adds McCutcheon. And if healthcare organizations are successful in accomplishing those goals with their own employees, they can then potentially teach the process to others, reduce the burden of chronic disease both physically and economically in the U.S., and help to rein in spiraling healthcare costs.

“A significant portion of those costs are preventable,” says Eileen Sheil, Executive Director, Corporate Communications, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH. “They are related to conditions or behaviors—such as smoking, obesity, and chronic disease—that can be addressed with employee wellness programs that are user-friendly, make sense, and have clear goals.”

HIGHLIGHTING SUCCESS AT CLEVELAND CLINICCleveland Clinic has implemented multiple initiatives over the past 12 years, not only to transform but also sustain healthy behaviors. Programs targeting nutrition, physical activity, tobacco cessation, and stress management make it easy for employees to make healthy choices and more difficult to make unhealthy ones.

One such program is the Healthy Choice Program. Launched nine years ago, the program now boasts 36,578 participating employees and spouses.

Primary care physicians complete health assessments on individuals who opt into the program. Those with chronic conditions can choose a coordinated care program, and those who are healthy can commit to a six-month activity regimen of 10 monthly gym visits or 150,000 monthly steps.

“Extensive benefits are attractive, but many workers are also enticed to participate if they know the system really works,” says Kevin Kolus, Senior Communications Manager, Cleveland Clinic. To date, the program has helped the health system avoid $261 million in unnecessary healthcare expenditures and will save participants $20 million on their healthcare premiums in

healthcare strategy ALERT ■ 2017 | Issue 4 3

2018. The impact on health is evident as well: employees have collectively lost 240,000 pounds since 2009, 18,000 health plan members are working to manage chronic disease in coordinated care programming, and disease management participants have realized a 50 percent improvement in quality metrics.

Getting that message out is vital. Employees learn about colleague success stories via videos produced by Delos Cosgrove, MD, Cleveland Clinic’s Chief Executive Officer. Each year, Kolus says, his office produces four videos, each spotlighting an employee health success story to demonstrate the positive impact Healthy Choice makes.

“We try to reinforce, throughout all our messages, that employees should try and find all the angles to being healthier,” Kolus adds. “We encourage our employees to ‘walk the walk.’”

MANAGING HEALTHCARE IN-HOUSEA focus on employee wellness also translates into better care for patients. “Our employees care for the community, so the healthier they are, the better equipped they are to take care of others,” says Charlotte Perkins, Corporate Development Officer, University of Virginia (UVA) Health System, Charlottesville, VA. “We need to move outcomes for our employees to better serve the people.”

But it can be difficult for employees to jump-start healthy behaviors solo. Employee wellness programs make it easier and financially beneficial to mesh better health hygiene into daily activities.

To reach this goal, UVA uses a model created and tested at Bon Secours Virginia. Now in its second year and known as BeWell, the program operates similarly to an accountable care organization and has already led to a 17-percent healthcare cost reduction for participants.

Employees who participate in the program undergo healthcare screenings, complete a health risk assessment questionnaire, and agree to walk at least 10,000 steps daily. Screening results divide participants into low-risk, medium-risk, and high-risk categories, and they are paired with primary care doctors who conduct physicals to identify possible health improvement areas, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or weight reduction.

Participants are also coupled with one of 26 patient advocates to help them stay on track. Based on physical exam results and responses to two patient health questionnaires, advocates help employees establish attainable health goals.

“A doctor might say an employee must lose 100 pounds, but the patient advocate will help create a smart goal of starting with 30 pounds,” Perkins says. “They’ll help the employee choose an on-site or community gym, or they’ll help them set up an exercise plan if they can’t get to a gym.”

Advocates follow up monthly with low- and medium-risk employees and weekly with high-risk employees. Patient progress is recorded in the electronic medical record (EMR) and is assessed after 60 days. Collectively, Perkins says, 330 employees have already lost 5,000 pounds.

BeWell also provides medication assistance for UVA employees. Not only is this a lifesaver for people who otherwise might not be able to afford prescribed treatments, it also encourages more appropriate, and less costly, use of services. For example, one employee who couldn’t afford the $250 monthly cost of her inhaler frequently sought emergency department (ED) care. Through BeWell, she secured an inhaler for $15 monthly and no longer visited the ED.

Achieving the RIGHT PROGRAM DESIGN

To develop sustainable employee wellness programs, designers should address three key factors, according to Stephanie McCutcheon:

· Senior leadership buy-in: Engage senior medical and clinical integration groups to encourage physicians to align with the program. Their support shows employees that wellness is a facility priority.

· Privacy issues: HIPAA guarantees the privacy of employee health data. Be sure anyone who views EMRs to track employee performance has no control over employment decisions. Anyone else should only see de-identified data.

· Outline data analysis: Identify important data sources during program design, including which groups to follow and compare. This analysis shows program efficacy.


Additionally, through negotiations, UVA secured six healthcare plan-included behavioral health consultations for critical mental health services with licensed clinical social workers.

GROWING ENROLLMENT: THE ROLE OF MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONSEnrolling as many employees as possible is key to effective wellness programs—and internal communications and marketing play a critical role in spreading the word and bringing people in.

For instance, at the start of BeWell’s second year, UVA’s marketing team launched a coordinated effort to grow program participation from 1,200 employees to 5,000. First, the team blasted email invites to all employees, announcing BeWell and the services and benefits offered. Additionally, employee spouses received direct mailers extending enrollment offers.

“In many cases, we received phone calls from wives who received the mail and wanted to participate,” Perkins says. “They also asked if their husbands had already enrolled. As a result of the effort, we achieved our enrollment goal and are now expanding enrollment to 10,000.”

Marketing can also help spread the word about a program’s financial incentives. Through communication efforts, UVA participants learned they would receive $250 for completing the healthcare screening, $250 for visiting their BeWell physician, and $500 for achieving their goals.

Adds Cleveland Clinic’s Sheil, “It’s also important to present a wellness program in a welcoming fashion. Marketing and communications professionals should craft compassionate, sensitive language that encourages participation. Doing so can be essential to avoiding failure.”

For example, Cleveland Clinic’s marketing department salvaged the organization’s first foray into a weight-reduction and management program when initial letters targeted any employee deemed overweight based on his or her medical records, including pregnant women. “The language wasn’t nuanced, and many recipients were offended,” Sheil explains. “By re-crafting the letter’s language and disseminating it to a more specific employee population, we were able to enroll more employees.”

STUMBLING BLOCKSEven though improving workforce health is a positive goal, barriers still exist to implementing successful programs

and convincing employees to participate. Among the most frequent challenges are:

Healthcare plan enrollment. Not all employees may be enrolled in the organization’s healthcare plan. If they aren’t enrolled in the plan, incentivizing them to improve their health behaviors can be difficult.

Program alignment. It can be difficult to ensure that parameters of healthcare plans align with wellness program goals. Programs are most effective when insurance plans can support the clinical and prescription services offered as incentives.

Physician perspective. Physicians often resist programs because they’re accustomed to concentrating on sick patients. Shifting the paradigm to focusing more on maintaining patient wellness can take time and encouragement.

Equal treatment for everyone. All participating employees must be held to the same standards. For example, to receive the benefits associated with smoking cessation, a housekeeper and a heart surgeon must fulfill the same requirements. Neither can be given preferential treatment or leniency based upon their position.

Scale. Expanding a wellness program to include more employees requires significant coordination between healthcare plans, community doctors, patient advocates, and EMR systems.

IT’S ALL ABOUT CULTUREChanging employee behaviors and setting health as a priority doesn’t happen overnight—it takes time, effort, and a commitment from the top down to creating a “wellness environment.” But, eventually, employees adopt healthier lifestyle choices and integrate them seamlessly into their daily activities.

“We’re constantly looking for ways to reach people to help them meet their goals,” concludes Kolus. “Now, we see people walking around campus, looking at the mile markers we’ve set up in hallways, taking the stairs or ‘free exercise equipment’ by choice. It’s clear we’ve made employee wellness part of the culture.” ■

SOURCES:Kevin Kolus, [email protected] McCutcheon, [email protected] Perkins, [email protected] Sheil, [email protected]


For healthcare organizations today, creating the optimal experience for patients is critical. That means building a brand synonymous with quality and compassion that simultaneously meets patient-reported needs—and marketers are uniquely qualified to get the job done. Ultimately, successful experience design addresses all the important points across a patient’s healthcare journey, says Christine Holt, Chief Experience Officer, Holy Redeemer Health System, Huntingdon Valley, PA. Efforts must touch on quality and safety, service delivery, and actions that exceed the bare minimum.

Holt refers to these as “Big E” experiences.

For example, at Holy Redeemer, through its “Life’s Calling” patient experience program, outpatients don’t navigate their appointments alone. Instead, thanks to a patient tracking system, in-person guides anticipate their arrival and walk them through the visit. Patients are brought to a living room, formerly called waiting rooms, or directed to coffee shops if their doctors are behind schedule. And, all financial transactions occur in conversation rooms rather than over counters or through sliding windows.

“The environment is more engaging and inspiring,” Holt says. “It’s a different way to treat patients. They’ve come to expect it, so it’s been one of our greatest successes.”

For so long, she adds, the healthcare experience has been underwhelming, impersonal, and disjointed. Individualizing an encounter can create patient loyalty and a positive buzz when patients share their stories.

So what are the keys to creating exceptional, individualized experiences? Following are some tips.

PATIENT VOICE MATTERS“The best patient experiences are designed with patient wants and desires in mind,” says Selima Khan, Vice President, Marketing Communications, Memorial Healthcare System (MHS), Hollywood, FL. “The voice of the customer is Marketing 101. You have to listen to people in real time to really understand what it means to move through their journey.”

To maximize the positive impact, hospitals and health systems must engage customers through a variety of channels, including social media, focus groups, or surveys. “It’s the best way to determine their understanding of what healthcare quality is and what changes they’d like to see,” says Khan.

MHS, as part of its “Deeper Caring and Smarter Healthcare” vision, used customer voice through a long-established Patient and Family Advisory Group to completely design the new Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital six years ago. By working side-by-side with families, MHS turned its children’s hospital into a healthcare space focused on the “power of play” so “kids focus

THE MARKETER’S ROLE IN CUSTOMER EXPERIENCEBy Whitney J. Palmer


on being kids,” says Khan. Each floor is devoted to a different theme: sports, arts, games, and dreams. The result, Khan adds, is a facility where children feel comfortable and safe while receiving needed healthcare services.

Listening to patients is also a core tenet of Holy Redeemer’s experience focus. “We treat our patients holistically, getting to know their preferences and interests,” says Holt. “Staff members gather each patient’s story, learning more about his or her life, likes, and dislikes. It’s all about creating that ‘above-and-beyond’ experience for everyone.”

For example, staff members routinely find out inpatients’ favorite foods, flowers, music, or colors to make hospital stays more pleasant. “It creates more personalized encounters and a better individual experience,” Holt explains.

It’s also important to listen to what patients say following a hospital experience, particularly when they express dissatisfaction. “As story-sharing venues, social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter can be minefields if patients are unhappy,” Khan says. “Be sure to monitor online presences to pinpoint patients who’ve had negative experiences, and contact them offline to address their concerns and grievances.”

TRANSPARENCY IS KEYThe cost of healthcare services also factors heavily into how satisfied patients are with experiences. “Waiting for bills can be scary and frustrating,” says Khan. “Taking away ambiguity and providing direct access to pricing manages expectations and gives the patient more control.”

As a way to assist patients, MHS began publishing its self-pay data in 2016, showing patients the out-of-pocket expenses for health services. Pricing with insurance data is forthcoming, with web prototypes already in the works. Next year, MHS plans to launch an Amazon-esque patient experience website with quality and safety data, pricing, and patient reviews.

“It’s an ambitious journey, but it’s a forward-thinking one, led from the top,” says Khan. “We didn’t want to only publish quality and safety metrics in a meaningful manner. We wanted to connect it with information about our pricing and patient experiences. So, we’re developing a one-stop platform to answer a variety of patient questions. It’s a bridge-builder that translates vital information from healthcare speak to language consumers understand.”

EMPLOYEES ARE INTEGRALEmployee involvement is also crucial in experience-design programs. Without employee engagement, many initiatives would fall flat, says Holt.

“The biggest challenge is cultural change,” she adds. “But, we’ve looked at the services we provide, given our employees the right trainings, and have determined how to produce a great experience for our patients.”

To build a compassionate staff, Holy Redeemer launched its Spark Experience Center in 2016. As part of this effort, employees audition for their jobs, and successful candidates demonstrate—through improvisation—their abilities to connect and create sustainable relationships with patients.

Additionally, managers and staff attend the one- to two-day Experience University, where they participate in interactive role-play and learn strategies for creating the most personalized experiences for individual patients.

Employee newsletters or emails can also keep staff motivated to stick with a patient-centered focus. For example, MHS disseminates its monthly employee newsletter systemwide, letting staff share their success stories beyond their immediate colleagues. MHS leadership also sends out a weekly email, highlighting patient testimonials with positive feedback.

“Employees get excited to see these stories—to learn how these successes are cultivated and how to build upon them,” Khan says.

IT’S A NEW CULTUREThe pivot to a more customer-centered focus is a continual paradigm shift in healthcare, and the concentration on high-quality experiences will continue to shape its delivery. With their expertise in market research, social media, and transparency initiatives, marketers should be at the helm, says Khan.

“There is opportunity to impact experience at every turn, from the digital front door to appointment scheduling, the valet, registration, bedside, discharge, and collections,” she adds. “As marketers, we must seek to understand the consumer, patient, or family member at whatever stage they are at in their healthcare journey and strive to exceed their experience expectations every time.” ■

SOURCES:Christine Holt, [email protected] Khan, [email protected]


At HCA HealthONE The Medical Center of Aurora (TMCA), Aurora, CO, a structured Physician Wellbeing program has had a significant impact on physician satisfaction and retention, as well as quality, safety, and patient experience.

“In our 2012 Physician Satisfaction Survey, we were at 62 percent excellent as a Place to Practice, which put us in the 50th percentile nationally,” says Dianne McCallister, MD, Chief Medical Officer, TMCA. “When I arrived in 2013, my CEO and I started systematically implementing our Physician Wellbeing program. In one year, we moved our score to 79.7 percent excellent. We saw double-digit increases in every question across our survey.”

Hospital-acquired infections declined as well, and physician turnover decreased by 5 percent. “For first-year physicians, we cut turnover in half,” adds McCallister.

THE ELEMENTS OF A STRUCTURED APPROACHAs a co-founder of the Coalition for Physician Wellbeing, McCallister has been studying what keeps physicians engaged since 2002. The Coalition has identified four key components of wellbeing—Business and Quality, Culture, Learning, and Resilience—and those components form the basis of TMCA’s program (Figure 1).

Business and Quality. Not surprisingly, physicians want to work for organizations that score well on quality of care, service to patients, and operational efficiency. “Doctors take patient care very seriously,” says McCallister. “They don’t want to put their patients in a hospital that they don’t think provides quality care. Operational efficiency is also important because there are only so many ‘clicks’ you can put on somebody’s workday before you make it untenable to get the work done.”

The Business and Quality component also includes physicians having a voice in getting problems solved. To that end, TMCA

formed a Physician Connection Team. “This is a group of director- or manager-level people who round on a representative cohort of the physician community in all major specialties,” McCallister explains. The team asks three questions:

1. What is working well? This question helps orient the physician to the “good” and gives the organization feedback on what to keep. “Physicians are trained in critical thinking; it’s what makes us good at what we do,” McCallister says. “We can spot the problem. But a sense of gratitude and noticing what’s working right is essential to physician wellbeing.”

2. Is there someone I can recognize for you? The team member conducting rounds follows up with a thank-you note to whomever the doctor recognizes. “This does two things,” McCallister explains. “First, it creates bonding between the physician and the team member recognized. Second, the physician usually hears back from the person they recognized, which creates closed-loop communication.”

3. What’s one thing we could do to make your work at our facility better? “I’ve been doing this now for seven years, and we find doctors ask for very practical things,” says McCallister. “For example, a physician told us that the chairs were broken in the dictation area on his floor. We immediately looked not just at that floor, but at all dictation areas and, sure enough, there were 40 broken chairs across the facility. We bought new chairs and immediately communicated that to all of our physicians.”

That’s a simple problem with a simple fix, but the process can be applied to larger issues as well. “We have a one-call process for bringing issues to the attention of the administration team,” says McCallister. “Any physician can advise us of any issue, 24 hours a day, through our hotline. And we have a commitment, by policy, for a senior executive to follow up within 48 hours to let the physician know how we’re resolving the issue.”

Physician burnout has reached crisis level, and has serious implications for quality, safety, and patient experience, now and in the future. By addressing the underlying causes of burnout, health systems can improve physician wellbeing, which will translate into better patient care.

IMPROVING PHYSICIAN WELLBEINGA Structured Approach


McCallister adds that EMR support is key to everything TMCA does. “Two people are dedicated to medical staff support,” she explains. “We also solicit input at every level from physician advisory groups and our 24/7 Help Desk. In addition, our HCA Division and National resources are creating new interfaces that are smartphone and tablet capable.”

Culture. “Unwell physicians burn out other physicians, so it’s very important that all physicians be held to the same standards and understand expectations,” says McCallister. At TMCA, physicians are accountable for a set of Shared Standards, and all are treated equally, independent of their revenue generation.

Onboarding to the mission, vision, and values of the organization is key to setting expectations. “Then, if physicians have behavior issues, we initiate a ‘search and rescue effort’ to help them align with our culture,” says McCallister. “A subcommittee of our Peer Review process takes every report of physician behavior issues and either trends it or meets with the physician, finding and providing the help the physician needs.

The committee has revolutionized the way behavior is accepted here, and our nurses have noted the change.”

Good communication is also essential. “I look for tools that solve the greatest number of needs,” notes McCallister. “For instance, one program we’ve found to be very effective not only communicates important hospital news, but also includes breaking medical news by specialty with the opportunity for free CME, so it addresses our commitment to the Quality and Learning components of wellbeing too.”

Learning. “Physicians love to learn,” says McCallister. “So, if the organization values learning and makes it available and accessible, this very much enhances physician wellbeing.” That means finding ways to bring education to physicians who aren’t able to attend in-person CME via outreach and online solutions.

Physician leadership training is very important as well. “Business thought process and medical thought process are diametrically opposite,” says McCallister. “If physicians don’t understand how business decisions are made, they do not partner and align as well.”

Figure 1

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“Not surprisingly, physicians want to work for organizations that score well on quality of care, service topatients, and operational efficiency.”


Resilience. “Resilience is the ability to spring back despite the situation you find yourself in,” says McCallister. “It’s not making things perfect.” Factors that contribute to resilience include recognition of work well done, self-awareness development for the physician, a community for the physician to belong to, and feedback to help the physician understand how he or she fits in that community.

One way TMCA builds resilience is through its thank-you note program. “It is surprising how seldom the physicians we depend on the most receive thanks for their efforts,” says McCallister. “Recognizing that, we established a program for deliberately capturing the good things physicians have done and then acknowledging those things with thank-you notes from our executive team and other leaders.” The notes are handwritten and are sent to physicians’ homes.

“Response from physicians has been tremendously positive,” notes McCallister. “I had one physician leader call me at 6:30 in the morning to tell me how much he appreciated the note he had received and how no one had really thanked him before.”

TMCA also offers resilience training for physicians. “One of the most powerful tools for improving physician wellbeing is having facilitated discussions among physicians. That’s what this program does, and it’s very effective in changing culture,” says McCallister.

THE RESULTS“As healthcare executives, we are always looking for the numbers that prove that the tactics we’re using are appropriate and achieve results,” says McCallister. The Physician Wellbeing program has delivered: on its 2016 Physician Satisfaction Survey, TMCA scored 82 percent as a Best Place to Practice and ranked in the top decile nationwide in terms of physician engagement and alignment. Additionally, TMCA was named the only 2016 Top General Hospital in Colorado by The Leapfrog Group.

“We are humans first and physicians second,” concludes McCallister. “Understanding that you are cared about is really important, and that shows in the improvements we’ve seen in physician satisfaction, engagement, and quality of care.” ■

This article was adapted from a recent webinar hosted by Private Health News/MedNews Plus, "CMOs on Physician Burnout: Why Physician Wellbeing is Critical to Healthcare Leaders."

By Susan EmersonSenior Vice President, Strategic Planning & Business DevelopmentPrivate Health News/MedNews Plus

[email protected]

According to the 2017 Medscape Physician Lifestyle Survey, the overall rate of physician burnout has reached 51 percent, up from 46 percent in 2015 and 40 percent in 2013. The figure is based on Medscape’s survey of more than 14,000 doctors from over 30 specialties. The survey defined burnout as having feelings of cynicism, a low sense of personal accomplishment, and a loss of enthusiasm for work.

Burnout rates were highest for:

· Emergency medicine (59 percent)· Obstetrics and gynecology (56 percent)· Family medicine, internal medicine, and infectious disease

specialties (tied with 55 percent)

Specialties with the lowest rates included:

· Diabetes and endocrinology (46 percent)· Pathology, ophthalmology, and allergy and immunology

(tied with 43 percent)· Psychiatry and mental health (42 percent)

Burnout was also more prevalent among female physicians (55 percent) than male physicians (45 percent), but rates appear to be leveling off for both, according to Medscape.

Contributors to Burnout

Physicians identified the following as the top four contributors to burnout, based on a 7-point scale ranging from “does not contribute at all” to “significantly contributes”:

· Too many bureaucratic tasks (5.3)· Spending too many hours at work (4.7)· Feeling like just a cog in a wheel (4.6)· Increasing computerization of practice (EHRs) (4.5)

Sources: The Advisory Board Daily Briefing, Jan. 13, 2017, and Peckham, C. "Medscape Lifestyle Report 2017: Race and Ethnicity, Bias and Burnout," Medscape.com, Jan. 11, 2017.

HOW PREVALENT IS PHYSICIAN BURNOUT?


Integrative care, in some form, has been around for decades, pairing traditional medicine with other treatments to care for your mind, body, and spirit. For the millions who have embraced integrative care, there has been a realization that food is a key to good health.

Now there is a rapidly growing “food as medicine” movement that is being adopted by physicians and consumers alike. Investors are joining the movement as they recognize that nutrition can prevent, limit, or reverse disease. Here are four organizations on the front edge of the movement.

1. DAYTWO HEALTH (DAYTWO.COM)DayTwo offers personalized nutrition insights and recommendations based on the premise that health starts in the gut microbiome. The trillions of bacteria that live in the gut differ wildly across individuals and are responsible for individual responses to food. DayTwo sequences the DNA of a person’s gut microbiome to produce a unique nutrition profile, one that rates thousands of different foods and food combinations on the microbiome analysis and lifestyle factors, ultimately allowing people to choose foods they like that won’t increase their blood sugar.

2. EATLOVE (EATLOVE.IS) EatLove was founded on the premise that “food is the medicine we eat three times a day.” Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, EatLove personalizes meal plans, taking into consideration a person’s individual health goals, medical conditions, and taste preferences. In fact, on-demand meal plans are generated based on 3 million data points to fit the individual’s health needs, and each individual receives step-by-step instructions, grocery lists, and daily reminders to complete the plan.

3. INSTITUTE OF FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE (IFM.ORG)The Institute of Functional Medicine leads and catalyzes efforts to accelerate the adoption of functional medicine, which focuses on

determining how and why illness occurs and addressing the root causes of disease for each individual. Institute members include providers, educators, payers, industry leaders, regulators, and influencers. The Institute launched the groundbreaking Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, and is partnering with a number of other organizations, including academic medical centers, universities, technology organizations, and international partners, to further expand the practice of functional medicine.

4. PARSLEY HEALTH (PARSLEYHEALTH.COM)Parsley Health was founded in 2015 by Robin Berzin, MD, a physician, digital health expert, and leader in functional medicine who believes that medicine should put nutrition, wellness, and prevention on the front lines of healthcare, while simultaneously making care smart and data-driven. Parsley Health treats the root causes of illness via nutrition, lifestyle changes, advanced testing, proven supplements, prescription drugs, and referrals to top specialists. Company data indicates success in addressing chronic illness while lowering the need for prescription drugs and specialists, all with a more personalized approach. ■

Disclaimer: The above descriptions are drawn from company websites. They are provided for information only and do not constitute endorsement of any product, service, or company by Healthcare Strategy Alert or the Forum for Healthcare Strategists.

FOOD AS MEDICINE 4 RESOURCES


Wax Custom Communications Contact: Amanda [email protected] (305) 350-5700

healthcare strategy

PublisherJudith S. Neiman

[email protected]

EditorDebbie Reczynski

[email protected]

Contributing WriterWhitney J. Palmer

[email protected]

Director of Member and Conference ServicesJennifer Pense

[email protected]

Director of Business DevelopmentDaniel Neiman

[email protected]

Membership and Faculty LiaisonKrista Attreau

[email protected]

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