By Glenn Sabin and Taylor Walsh
Originally published on FON Therapeutics
Reading the striking 80-plus-page report, Meeting the Nation’s Primary Care Needs, led by Dr. Michael S. Goldstein from UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research and John Weeks, executive director of Academic Consortium for Complementary and Alternative Health Care (ACCAHC), made clear to me that the tipping point for integrative medicine as the standard of care is nearing.
The Goldstein/Weeks report, published by ACCAHC, is responsive to innovative care structures emphasized in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) meant to address the state of primary care in America. With the provisions of the PPACA set for full enactment in January 2014, there is a lot of discussion about how the approximately 30 million newly insured Americans will access primary care. The looming question is: “Who will deliver it?”
But before we explore the potential impact of the PPACA and the implications of the Goldstein/Weeks whitepaper itself, let’s first examine some important facts surrounding primary care.