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

Invited Voices: The Legacy of NIH NCCAM Director Stephen Straus, MD (1947- 2007)
If one were to chose the single individual who has had the most significant influence on the evolution of the complementary and integrative medicine dialogue over the past decade, one would be hard pressed to top that of Stephen Straus, MD. Straus, who was selected to direct the NIH National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine when it was founded, had a profound impact on how roughly $700-million of NIH funds were spent. Straus died on May 14, 2007 following a multi-year battle with brain cancer. The Integrator invited some who knew Straus to share reflections on the man, and his tenure with NCCAM. Here is a sampling from Brian Berman, MD, Susan Folkman, PhD, Carlo Calabrese, ND, MPH, Adi Haramati, PhD, Ted Kaptchuk, OMD, Kathi Kemper, MD, MPH and, from across the Atlantic, George Lewith, MD, PhD. More …

Your Comments: Do the CPT and ICD Codes Fit with Integrative/Naturopathic Practices - Drs. May and Milliman Play "Stump the Chump"
Can integrative medical practices be appropriately reflected and billed using the American Medical Association's CPT codes and the ICD diagnostic codes? Or is whole-person care bastardized by jamming it into that system? This Your Comments article is a thoughtful exchange between two professionals with significant experience in 3rd party payment. Among the commentators is Bruce Milliman, ND, a member of an advisory panel to the AMA's CPT coding committee. Milliman asserts that a good deal of whole person practice can fit the CPT/ICD structure. He invited others to challenge him, saying "stump the chump." Robert May, ND, who spent a good deal of the last decade as an executive working in complementary medicine managed care, decided to take Milliman up on the challenge. I sent May's comments to Milliman for his responses. Was the chump stumped? More …

Your Comments: Integrator FDA Report Stimulates Huge Array of Links, Thanks, Blasts and Queries
The Integrator Special Report on the FDA's Guidance for the Industry on Complementary and Alternative Medicine stimulated more response than any other Integrator article thus far. Response ranged from thanks to reprimand. Some blasted the Integrator for allowing the FDA's Phillip Chao to speak. Others credited the Integrator with bringing a modicum of reason to a hugely politicized and polarized environment. Here is a sampling of comments. I share these with Integrator readers in part to show the wildness of response, and also to bask briefly in the satisfaction of having provided a service. Thanks to the Integrator sponsors and contributors who make the work possible. More …

Visibility: Donna Karan Brings Glamour to Integrative Medicine, Supplements Suffer in the Media, Chiropractic Campaign
Is there a healing power in glamour? Donna Karan is creating a huge New York City event which brings together cultural and integrative medicine luminaries and will test a postulate about whether committed glitz can rocket the integrative health movement. Who wouldn't want to be hanging out with Susan Sarandon, Laurie Anderson, Annie Liebowitz and Uma Thurman? But alas, while integrative medicine may be arriving as a glamour do, the distinct CAM disciplines appear to remain a glamour don't ... Meantime, in more familiar trenches, an analysis by the Dietary Supplement Education Alliance shows a negative trend in media reports on supplements ... The high-end PR campaign of the Foundation for Chiropractic Progress - which successfully brought the ICA and ACA into one tent - moves forward with a little unifying glitz of its own, former Stanford University gymnast and Ms. Fitness USA Sara Harding. More …

The Business Case for Hospital Integration: Some Perspectives from the 5th Annual AHA/Health Forum Conference
The attendance at the Health Forum/American Hospital Association's annual conference, Integrative Medicine for Healthcare Organizations, jumped 58% this year, from 160 to 260. These attended a meeting which recognized that mission alone can only move hospital integration of complementary and alternative services so far. What is needed is a business case to support the integration. This year Health Forum partnered with the Samueli Institute, which has establishing the business case as a core goal. Here are some perspectives on money and integration which came forward at the meeting ... including a health system CEO's perspective that we may need a government mandate. More …

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