Part of the difficulties of our current health system, conventional, alternative, and integrative, is that all the many wonderful techniques and services are utilized in a fragmented, compartmentalized and over-specialized manner. All our current healthcare services focus on the endpoint instead of the underlying process that leads to the disease and symptoms.

The only way to get paid in our current system is to assign a diagnostic label (disease) to the symptom and then treat just those corresponding conditions. Instead, we need to create a new model of health assessment and screening that looks for the underlying process of dysfunction and alters the pathway of dysfunction so that the disease does not occur.

In addition to the fact that our current health insurance system primarily pays, almost exclusively, for disease diagnosis and treatment and not for wellness and prevention, our medical delivery system is educated and trained to think along this pathway as well. It is unfortunate that while our medical professionals are the most educated and trained for acute and crisis care medicine, emergency rooms everywhere are closing their doors because many patients, especially uninsured, wait until they have an acute crisis before seeking help, costing hospitals massive amounts.

Unfortunately, medical schools and physicians are not adequately trained in true Functional Medicine, or prevention and wellness, and as a result their practice of medicine becomes based more on symptom and disease management, usually with expensive drugs and surgery.

One other problem of our current healthcare system is that for the most part, almost all medical education and research by both private and government funded organizations is on symptom(disease) based supression, usually by drugs.

Fortunately, there is a non-profit organization, the Institute for Functional Medicine (see What is Functional Medicine?), dedicated to the training and education of health professionals for a new healthcare system.

In our proposed New Healthcare System based on true prevention and wellness, the business model will drastically change. Our new model will provide many innovative and cost-effective health evaluation and therapy methods from many disciplines--i.e., energy medicine, chiropractic, laser dentistry, naturopathy, nutrition, homeopathy, Functional Medicine, etc., to assess and treat both "healthy" patients, as well as those with disease, to alter and correct their pathways toward a disease-free state.

It is like fixing the brakes on a car before it crashes instead of waiting until after the accident to fix the problem. Which is more cost effective?

Insurance and other reimbursement programs, such as self insurance, HSA, and HRA plans, can be modified and combined to cover both acute/crisis care medicine as well as wellness and prevention based Functional Medicine. Innovative incentive plans can be created that will encourage individuals, employers, employees, and insurance companies to implement such plans and make improvements in preventable causes of disease, not just disease management.

Neighborhood wellness centers could be created as a first line of health defense and maintenance, and encourage participation through low or no fee regular wellness assessments. These can be staffed by specially trained wellness professionals who can refer patients to Functional Medical professionals as needed. Many of these community wellness centers could be funded by local non-profit organizations. Emergency rooms and hospitals can then focus on true emergencies, with assistance to stay open and be profitable.

This system could also be utilized and marketed on a universal scale to assess and treat employees of local businesses, to keep employees healthy, decreasing healthcare costs. Through incentives we will be able to guide and assist the employees to alter pathways in their health that may lead to potential serious problems. In many cases, this early evaluation may save lives and head off debilitating disease. In addition, many of the non-drug, non-surgical therapy options may restore health with little or no side effects or long-term care. The obvious benefit to the employer is substantial savings in healthcare costs and more productive employees with fewer missed work days.

One other aspect of our healthcare solution efforts has been working with non profit organizations and private foundations to provide this style of prevention, wellness, and functional medicine to local communities and those in need. This has the potential to assist federal, state, and local governments with providing quality care to all, thereby taking much of the financial burden off government alone. These non-profit projects will partner with schools and churches to help establish programs working with underprivileged children, helping to correct or alter their pathways of disease at the early stage.

There would also be a health restoration program for adults with advanced degenerative disease, thereby restoring valuable members of society while reducing healthcare costs. These programs have not only provided valuable, needed care to those less fortunate, but have produced research that has aided our corporate programs.

The creation of this new healthcare system is not designed to replace the current system, but to augment the system with an incentive-driven and funded wellness prevention model.

This also leads to the opportunity for investors who will see the vision of helping society and corporate America, while still making substantial profit in the new age of wellness, preventative, and Functional Medicine.

In addition, much of the non-profit, university, and government research programs could be directed toward wellness and prevention solutions instead of the drug-based focus that currently exists.

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