Naturopathic Medicine, Prescribing Rights & The Hard Road to a Better Health Care System

Last year, Hawaii naturopaths won a major victory when the state legislature expanded their independent prescribing authority. No sooner had the ink dried then the Hawaii Medical Assocation, with blessings from the AMA, sought to repeal the new law. The opposition is troubling given the dire shortage of primary care MDs in Hawaii and many other states. [ ...Login to Read More]

Primary Care Gains, While Specialists Feel Recession’s Bite

While it’s hardly a boom time, primary care groups showed slight to significant gains in total revenue during the first year of the recession, while most specialist groups showed losses.

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New Survey Shows Physicians Groups Prefer Medicare to Privates

Doctors may not exactly love Medicare, but a new survey shows they prefer it to the big private insurance plans when it comes to matters like payer communications, contract negotiation, payment processing, and overall satisfaction. [ ...Login to Read More]

Heal Thy Practice 2010: Platforms for Preventive Health Care

For too many physicians, primary care practice feels like a shoe that just doesn’t fit. Like bewitched sisters in the children’s story, Cinderella, they’re cutting off parts of their feet in order to fit the shoes they believe they must wear.

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Corporate Wellness Programs Help Employees But Leave Doctors in the Dark

The nation’s big corporations are going to great lengths to get employees to exercise, lose weight, eat better and quit smoking. But all-too-often these corporate wellness programs don’t engage employees' physicians.

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Institute of Medicine's Summit on Integrative Medicine: Revolution! Reform! Reimbursement?

Revolution and reform were major themes at the Institute of Medicine's historic Summit on Integrative Medicine and the Public Health. But it's another "R" word reimbursement that will determine what a reformed, integrated system will really deliver. IOM delegates called for a radical shift toward prevention and "wellness" but no one is sure how that transformation will be financed.

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Natural Medicine & Healthcare Reform: Taking Our Places, Raising Our Voices

Health policy experts are concerned that health care reform efforts could be stymied by a severe lack of primary care doctors. The problem could be attenuated if those presiding over reform would allow the thousands of licensed or license-eligible naturopaths and other holistic non-MD practitioners help to shape and then participate in a reformed health care system.

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IDA Medical Foundation Seeks to "Democratize" Prevention

Cutting edge early risk detection tests and preventive medicine have become the privilege of the wealthy. Dr. James Ehrlich, a pioneer in cardiovascular risk assessment, hopes to change that with his new Identify Disease in Advance Foundation, which will bring state-of-the-art preventive medicine to people who can least afford it but would most benefit from it.

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From "Health Care" to Healthful Caring

The US spends 99 cents of its health care dollar on end-stage treatment and hardly a penny on prevention; as a result we're facing an unprecedented burden of chronic disease that claims lives and threatens our economic future. Some of the best minds in medicine are now working to put proactive prevention at the center of American medicine.

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University of Arizona's Integrative Medicine in Residency: A Dream Realized

A new 250-hour integrative medicine residency training curriculum developed at the University of Arizona’s Program in Integrative Medicine, is being implemented at 8 major medical centers across the country, a major step forward for holistic health care education.

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