| | Berwick's Exit from Medicare a Loss of a Brother-in-the-Trenches for Integrative Medicine | |
Summary: The forced exit of Don Berwick, MD as administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services was a double whammy for the emerging field of integrative medicine. Berwick's participation in a 2009 Institute of Medicine Summit on Integrative Medicine gave him a depth connection with the community. This deepened a philosophical alignment that he shared in his Basic Principles for Integrative Medicine. Berwick's more important contribution to the field may be his leadership in shifting the incentive structures in the payment system toward one that will support health.
The forced exit
of Don Berwick, MD as administrator of the Center for Medicare and
Medicaid Services was a double whammy for the emerging field of
integrative medicine.
Berwick is a knowledgeable advocate
of the core principles of integrative health care. Few policy leaders
are on record as such outspoken supporters. Yet the more profound loss
for integrative medicine is Berwick's promotion of what he called the "majestic thing" known as Obamacare.
 Donald Berwick, MD
-
Place the patient at the center.
- Individualize care.
- Welcome family and loved ones.
- Maximize healing influences within care.
- Maximize healing influences outside of care.
- Rely on sophisticated, disciplined evidence.
- Use all relevant capacities - waste nothing.
- Connect helping influences with each other.
Nothing in Berwick's prescription will jar the multidisciplinary
multitude of integrative health advocates. Patient-centered? Much to the
dismay of the dominant school of medicine, patients arguably created
the complementary and alternative medicine movement. Berwick's list is
enshrined in the definition of integrative medicine endorsed by the 51 medical schools in the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine.
Yet the deeper impact for integrative medicine's health-creating
orientation is Berwick's promotion of payment and delivery methods that
mimic incentives in government-directed systems. The very structures
that provoke the ire of Republicans who gave Berwick his pink slip
support integrative medicine.
A growing cadre of integrative medicine professionals recognizes the
acronym jungle of the emerging ACOs (Accountable Care Organizations) and
PCMHs (Patient Centered Medical Homes) as a fertile host for
mushrooming use of integrative care.
Ira Zunin, MD, MPH, MBA is the founder of the 40 practitioner Manakai O Malama PCMH-integrative hybrid in Honolulu. Zunin explains in an interview
that linking electronic medical records with local hospitals
immediately facilitated referrals for his acupuncturists, massage
therapists and naturopathic doctors.
Zunin says the more significant friend to integrative medicine in the
PCMH is the break from fee-for-service. He explains: "You have
unassigned dollars that aren't directly connected to a provider or a
procedure or a code. Payment plays into the hand of integrative
practice. You can use the dollars from an integrative perspective."
Zunin adds: "The PCMH model is supposed to help the whole person, in
his or her community. We [in integrative medicine] have always been
looking at everything with a bigger tool set, with a focus on health.
We're oriented to this model. We're oriented to teams."
Tom Trompeter, CEO of Healthpoint,
agrees with Zunin. For 15 years, his growing network of 10
federally-qualified health centers in the Seattle-area has had
naturopathic doctors, acupuncturists, massage therapists practicing
alongside their medical doctors, nurses, nutritionists and clinical
psychologists. In a recent interview, Trompeter told me in an interview
how the PCMH is a "break from the paradigm of a physician owning a
patient." He says this opens the door to team care and "the team
approach opens the door for diversity" of providers and services. "To
use a well-worn term," Trompeter adds, "our approach is holistic."
When I spoke recently with David Moen, MD, the executive medical director with Minnesota's Fairview Health Services,
he echoed Trompeter: "Many of today's costs are associated with a lack
of a holistic, integrated approach." The new outcomes focus of ACOs is
ready made for integrative medicine: "The movement is toward more
holistic measurements of health and well-being." Moen spoke readily of
the "good evidence that some integrative therapies help a patient's
ability to cope." He adds: "Integrative medicine supports
self-efficacy."
These new structures won't disappear with Berwick's exit. In fact,
Moen and others believe that the shift toward ACOs and PCMHs will
continue regardless of any negative judgment by the courts on the
Obama-Pelosi reform.
Moving huge agendas, whether to advance integrative health philosophy
and practice or to restructure the incentives in the system, is not
movement of furniture. Manifesting the principles Berwick outlines for
integrative medicine require culture change. Anyone engaged in such
sometimes Sisyphian work knows that advocacy from the top is not merely
critically important. It is necessary. This is as true for leaders of
new ACOs and PCMHs as it is for integrative medicine's line-workers.
With Berwick running CMS, the person in the bully-pulpit of the nation's
most powerful payment system was integrative medicine's
brother-in-the-trenches. Berwick has a chest full of medals for valor in
campaigns to transform our reactive, wasteful system to one organized
around keeping people healthy.
Berwick will be missed in ways most of us have not yet begun to imagine.
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for inclusion in a future Your Comments Forum.
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