Medicine’s Wellness Conundrum–The New Yorker
This article discusses the rising commingling of medicine and wellness at hospitals–and how patients and doctors don’t always see eye to eye. Patients demand alternative therapies–touch treatments, mental support and stress-reduction, nutritional advice, etc.–that address them in a more human, holistic way. Far more hospitals now have a wellness facility of some kind, and cancer patients in particular are demanding services that fall under the aegis of wellness. For some physicians, offering more fringe approaches such as homeopathy or reiki alarms them, while other doctors support the new wellness interventions if they do no harm and don’t replace medical care. The author concludes that the way forward means cultivating a new attitude that accepts that patients have a range of needs when it comes to their health and wellbeing.
Want To Be a More Holistic Healthcare Company? Add Some Ginger–TechCrunch
This details the merger of the meditation app, Headspace, with Ginger, which connects people to mental health resources, escalating them from text-based support to therapists and psychiatrists. The acquisition helps Headspace pursue clinical validation to grow its employee benefit program and is just one example of the future: more integrative approaches to mental health.
Keep an Eye on Wall Street’s Clean Medicine Experiment–The Wall Street Journal
“Clean” ingredients have of course shaken up markets from beauty to household cleaners, and now the startup, Genexa, is bringing those principles to over-the-counter medications–eliminating artificial ingredients while using the same active ingredients as big-name competitors. They’ve already started selling “clean” pain and fever medicine for children in major retailers—and adult products are about to launch. A long list of celebrity investors is backing them and this article argues that Pharma and Wall Street should take notice.
We Could All Use a Health Coach–The New York Times
More doctors now argue that health/wellness coaching should be an integral component of primary care, because coaches give people the human, ongoing support to better manage chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension; they give patients the tools and confidence they need to participate more fully in their own wellbeing; and they expand the pursuit of health beyond the 12 minutes you get with a doctor visit. More insurance companies are covering wellness coaches–and more need to be trained.