The numbers speak for themselves, boldly and powerfully. 8,000 integrative care outpatient visits. 14,500 integrative care inpatient visits. For virtually all of the emerging hospital-based integrative medicine programs in the United States, these figures would be wildly aspirational. For what is now the Penny George Institute for Health and Healing at Abbott Northwestern Hospital, these numbers are a record of service for 2007.

Behind the numbers is a vision born in the crucible of Penny George's relationship to cancer. In a September 26, 2008 press release in which the Allina Health System announced the naming of the Institute in her honor, Penny George, the human being-as-patient, is quoted this way:

“My journey of recovery from breast cancer illuminated for me the vast potential for healing that can accompany a life-threatening illness, as well as the ways in which current medical practices are shortchanging Americans.”

“Integrative medicine has the potential to fundamentally change the face of health care today. The Institute is a philosophical and clinical manifestation of that promise.”

"It is our hope that the Institute will become a national model for improving health care through the healing essence of integrative medicine.”

• Midwife to the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine In the late 1990s, the Georges helped pull together the academic programs in integrative medicine which were popping up here and there around the country. They helped corral these leaders into becoming the now influential Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine.
  

• Major research conferences When the first North American Research Conference on Complementary and Integrative Medicine proved a great success in May 2006, the Georges immediately stepped forward, while still onsite, and said, in effect: Let's do it again. If you're not planning to attend the May 12-5, 2009 conference in Minneapolis, consider it!

• Co-founding and chairing the Bravewell Collaborative of philanthropists Penny George and colleagues took note of the fact that a number of philanthropists in integrative medicine were emerging just as academic medical programs and hospital programs were popping up. Together they formed what is now the Bravewell Collaborative. Bravewell has made strategic investments is the conventional Consortium, in major media, in expanding integrative medicine fellowships, in clarifying best practices, in a practice-based research network, and most recently, a partnership with the Institute of Medicine to create a National Summit on Integrative Medicine and the Health of the Public. Penny George was a Bravewell co-founder and its founding chair.
  

• Respect for diverse practitioner types A psychologist by training, Penny George has also quietly been a voice for respecting the value of non-MD contributions to the integrative practice movement. The Georges supported a hopeful by ultimately short-lived multidisciplinary educational initiative developed by Pali Delevitt. The George Family Foundation was one of just three philanthropic entities in integrative medicine to support the multidisciplinary National Education Dialogue to Advance Integrated Health Care: Creating Common Ground. Nothing speaks more powerfully on this account than the continuous backing of Knutson, a holistic nurse, as the wise driver of the Health and Healing Institute inside Allina.