Episode 1: Why Integrative and Functional Medicine Nutrition Therapies?
The current health system is dysfunctional, not adequately serving patients or protecting healthcare providers. The health system within is also disintegrating with less focus on the patient, less time allotted to patient visits, increased time spent with the electronic health record, and uncertainty regarding the evidence base guiding clinical decision making. To compound, the cost of healthcare delivery in the United States is skyrocketing making this entire complex unsustainable.
To understand how the past led us to this moment in healthcare, an abbreviated review of medical history is presented; it is imperative to see how the transition from acute communicable diseases to the current epidemic of chronic noncommunicable diseases is taxing healthcare systems worldwide. To solve these problems changes are needed. This includes an emphasis on nutrition and lifestyle while incorporating interprofessional teams for solutions in chronic disease management. Most important is the need for new systems of care that will make the current acute care model obsolete.
We need to put the patients back in the center and value the healthcare team’s role, meet the patient’s demands, deliver personalized lifestyle medicine, and reimagine delivery systems and sites for chronic care delivery. The best of the current system will be retained with new ways designed to evaluate outcomes and build evidence for the proposed changes. There is a problem and we are looking for ways to rebuild.
