You've heard us talk about Wellness Villages, where we work with physicians, wellness practitioners, and spas to join forces, acquire a building and manage and market a Wellness Village™. This business model allows several businesses and practices to operate independently with a unified front. One administration, one reception, one back office, one retail area and one lab supported by several treatment rooms. The tenants own the building and benefit by the synergy and co-marketing and referral efforts of their neighbors who happen to be complementary and integrative health practices and spas and wellness/fitness facilities. Neat concept right? This not only supports the concierge (membership) medical practice, it also helps the spa become a preventive/integrative healthcare service provider versus a pampering/luxury service. Synergistic, cost effective, and real estate ownership. Sounds like a way to lower health care costs to me.

We're thinking in similar directions with common vision. The fusion of medicine and spa is happening via Integrative Medicine. It's happening now and we as an industry have the opportunity to be a big component of it. The trends are heading in that direction and we need to move with it.

Pampering and mindful healing isn't dead. This and hospitality needs to find a way to play nicely together and find their way into medical practices. We don't need any more surly, indifferent medical practices. We need our medical practices to be more inviting and warm. They need to look (and feel) more like spas and spas need to look and feel more like medical practices. The fusion promises to be interesting. The bigger guys are already doing it. Take a look at the Cleveland Clinic and California Health & Longevity for ideas.

I think the primary medicine centers around the well being of the patient and away from the industry concept of present medical world.In it the patient enjoys the happiness of health and the doctor enjoys the pleasure in helping the patient to get it.Industry lacks both these elements.

The key, central issue is whether health care is considered (and incentivized as) sickness treatment or whether "health care" is perceived by patients, providers, and payers alike as encouraging/supporting (paying for) maintenance of wellness, prevention of illness, and restoration of health & function [wellness] when people are sick.

Imagine if healthcare – the system – paid for (and therefore had a strong incentive to achieve) wellness – a positive outcome, rather than, as currently stands, health care providers are paid for (and therefore encouraged to) "perform" sickness care – a behavior not an outcome. Were this to happen, the entire healthcare paradigm would shift and the only remaining problem would be the massive, unnecessary bureaucracy that consumes roughly 40% of ALL, repeat all, healthcare dollars.