Dr. Joshua John-Ram SchacterDr. Joshua Schacter, DO FAAOS, is America’s Holistic Orthopedic Surgeon, with nearly two decades of surgical expertise.

Embracing Functional Medicine In Healthcare

31 Dec 2023 · 1 min

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Dr. Joshua John-Ram Schacter argues that current healthcare incentives force clinicians to see more patients for less reimbursement, reducing time per patient and preventing adequate assessment before interventions. He advocates for functional medicine principles—identifying current risk factors to prevent downstream problems (e.g., joint replacements) and to improve patients' health span—but warns the reimbursement-driven environment makes spending that time difficult.

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We're in a system that is forcing us to see more and more patients for less and less reimbursement. The inevitable result is that we're not able to spend a satisfying, in my opinion, amount of time with our patients to determine their true health before we have an intervention or before we make any changes to their health scape. And that's where I think functional medicine principles are really important. Functional medicine really is looking to prevent downstream health issues by identifying risk factors today that can really make a huge difference when looking downstream at things like joint replacements. But we really can't spend that time with our patient in this environment. As we continue to have declining reimbursement, we have to continually see more and more people. Obviously, we can't spend the time with them to really get down and help people with their health span.