Integrating Medical and Wellness Programs
Medicine and wellness do not necessarily go hand-in-hand in today’s medical environment. Health care providers and patients are beginning to realize that medicine’s mechanistic approach to healing is far from ideal. The average length of the patient-doctor exchange hovers between four and eight minutes, enough time to write a prescription but not enough time for a comprehensive health analysis.
Working within the prevailing paradigm, health care providers tend to focus on ailments rather than overall health. Health is described in terms of disease, when it’s actually a continuum containing various gradations of both health and illness. Treatments emphasize fixing disease manifestations rather than addressing the deeper causes of disease.
This approach is of limited value, particularly for addressing the chronic illnesses that cause most deaths. Heart disease, for example, may take decades to unfold. With the right kind of intervention, the evolution of such ailments can be slowed, if not thwarted.
Integrating medicine and wellness may require significant changes to the health care system. Physicians need view health as a holistic phenomenon rather than a technical science. Patients must be committed to long term health solutions rather than quick fixes such as prescription drugs.
Advocates of medicine and wellness integration are hopeful that change will come. They are looking to creative insurance policies that make room for preventative medicine and seeking alternative medical settings where patients can receive care that integrates mind and body: medical spas, health club facilities, and alternative models for primary care offices.
This video is from Consumer Health World, May 2007. Register now for the December conference in Washington DC. You will be able to purchase the conference multimedia from the May 2007 conference shortly.
Take a look at the new book by Dr. Bob Hoffman and Dr. Jason Deitch — “Discover Wellness…How staying healthy can make you rich.” It’s a bestseller on Amazon. com and at major bookstores nationwide.
It will startle your senses — we are facing medical bankruptcy if we don’t change our approach.
It’s a great, fast read with some real-life to-do’s…very energizing.