Integrator Blog News & Reports

Integration, by nature, asks us to open our peripheral visions. We are served to look at the whole of the field. We need to develop new fascia, new connectivity. Opportunities crop up in new places. The Integrator Blog News and Reports is meant to provide you with information, insights and tools to enhance integrated care in the environment you serve.

- John Weeks, publisher-editor

Update on a "Social Business" Model: The Working Class Acupuncture Clinic Had 448 Patient Visits Last Week

One of the Integrator's Top 10 for integrative practice for 2006 was Working Class Acupuncture. The Portland, Oregon-based business, controversial in the acupuncture community, promotes greater access to affordable acupuncture services through a business model in which acupuncture is delivered in a community room. Patients average $19 per visit. Now just 3-years-old, the clinic, which anchors a national network, had 448 patient visits in the final week of August 2008. Visits for the month were at over 1600, up 33% from the prior year, and quite likely the highest number of any acupuncture clinics in the United States. Co-founder Lisa Rohleder, LAc shares data on visits, salaries and expansion of this for-profit model which, on reading the work of Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, is a classic "social business." More ...
More ...

Columnist Bill Benda, MD: Tough Love on Who Owns "Integrative Medicine" and on Associated "MD-Bashing"

Bill Benda, MD, weighs in forcefully on the recent series of Integrator articles, guest columns and commentaries on who owns the term "integrative medicine" and some of the attendant name-calling. It's been a little ugly, seeing the disparate perceptions, hurt feelings and psycho-spiritual-economic rifts between the diverse parties with a stake in the integrative practice movement. Benda focuses on two points he feels must be made, once and for all, regarding "allopathically-centered integrative medicine" and the need to end "MD bashing" by naturopathic doctors and other complementary healthcare practitioners. Benda's addition to this difficult exchange reminded me of what may be the best therapeutic course for those wishing to take this healing seriously: the knowledge, skills and values in the 1994 Pew-Fetzer Task Force work on practitioner-to-practitioner relationships.
More ...

Toward an Integrated History of the Integrative Practice Movement

[From my Integrative Practitioner Online column] My recent participation in a forum of leaders of seven integrative practice-related organizations included some organized sharing of mission statements of these organizations via the work of Bill Benda, MD, the forum's moderator. We were struck by similarities. It reminded me that the separate histories or our various organizations also include a good deal of common ground in the timing of the founding of many or our organizations. Look at the organizational fecundity of the 1977-1988 period. More ...
More ...

Integrative Medicine and Integrated Health Care Round-up: August 1-15, 2008

A Medscape piece on pharma and medical professional organizations has its natural products parallels ... Integrative medicine programs at U Kansas and New Mexico expand to new clinical facilities ... Quinn assists U Kansas in establishing a unique fellowship program for an MD, DO or ND ... Pelletier's CHIP program adds Pfizer, Pepsi and GlaxoSmithKline as participating firms in exploring integrative medicine in employee health ... Boston's Integrative Medical Alliance teams with Tufts to give experience in complementary therapies to conventional health professions students, clinicians ... Rafal's "mind heals" program in Rhode Island ... Alexander technique expert Jean Louis Rodriguez shares a widely reported BMJ trial which could launch expanded interest in the little utilized but powerful patient-centered approach ... Big kudos: population-based, group-oriented mind-body program for adolescents led by James Gordon, MD shows positive outcomes in Kosovo ... Team co-led by Moshe Frenkel, MD publishes a dozen integrative oncology papers in Hematology/Oncology Clinics of North America ... Bethany Hayes, MD is looking for practitioners for True North Center ... More ...
More ...

Integrative Medicine and Integrated Healthcare Round-up: August 16-31, 2008

Data on total number of AOM students ... Hawaii med school opens complementary medicine center ... Ralph Snyderman, MD, a top influencer of medical school-based integrative medicine, tells academic medicine to "lead, follow or get out of the way" of what he calls "prospective health care" ... Bradly Jacobs, MD, MPH leaves a Revolution on the decline ... Physician staffing firm reports survey on MD views of CAM ... Delaware gets medical association's support in successful licensing campaign ... AHPA firms look good in JAMA study ... Integrative Medical Consortium formed of half-dozen other national professional associations ... Yoga leader Terri Kennedy selected for American Heart Association role ... Integrative program for the disabled seeks information on other models ... plus more More ...
More ...

Resources

Integrator Archive by Subject for January-June 2007
More ...

Integrator Archive by Subject for 2006: All Hot-linked
More ...