HOLISTIC HEALTH: WHOLE-BODY APPROACH TO WELL-BEING

If you long for a healthcare provider who knows you, your family and your healthcare story, you’re not alone. Both providers and patients pine for a more meaningful doctor-patient relationship. Fortunately, the healthcare system is moving toward a more patient-centered approach focused on prevention as opposed to procedures. Direct primary care and functional medicine practices like Traverse City’s Table Health are championing the movement by offering cost-effective, transparent and relationship-based care.

- Laurel Sutherland

Functional Medicine: Caring for the Whole Person

The philosophy behind functional medicine is the antidote to transactional, pharmaceutical-driven medicine. It aims to keep biologic systems in balance by treating the mind, body and spirit. Driven by developing a long-term relationship between the healthcare provider and patient, functional medicine focuses on the underlying cause of disease rather than symptoms alone. For example, it may focus on stress management or diet to remedy gut dysfunction rather than prescriptions that provide short-term comfort.

“We want to return to a time when the family doctor truly knew their patients and their patient’s families and incorporate modern conveniences and technology,” says Table Health Operations Manager Christine Straley.

Direct Primary Care: A Model for Flexible, Affordable Care

This way of taking care of people is new in the healthcare insurance world, but it isn’t new to medicine. Table Health uses the functional medicine approach in a direct primary care (DPC) model. DPC is an alternative to traditional fee-for-service third party-payer billing and effectively allows providers to spend more time with patients and keep costs transparent.