The Challenges of Establishing an Integrative Medicine Primary Care Clinic in Sydney, Australia

Abstract

Although many integrative medicine clinics fail to survive the first few years, after 4 years, this multidisciplinary primary care clinic had succeeded in establishing a viable health care service offering both integrative medicine and conventional, traditional, complementary, and alternative medicine. Finding the right mix of staff members and following up with evaluations to track progress are important.

Investigation into Factors Influencing Roles, Relationships, and Referrals in Integrative Medicine

“…8 Convergent beliefs regarding professionalism and philosophy are essential components within the integrative medicine setting. 10,13,18 Sharing a common philosophy that is aligned with beliefs and values surrounding primary health care delivery concedes trust in the other practitioners' professionalism and ability. This is an especially important concept for IM clinics, where medicolegal and ethical responsibilities are paramount in each practitioner's mind.…”

The Integrative Medicine Team—Is Biomedical Dominance Inevitable?

“…Management observed that the business model of the clinic required at least half the practitioners to be biomedical doctors. 24 One reason given was that the biomedical doctors were an important referral source for the less busy TCAM and allied-health practitioners. Comments from the staff questionnaire suggested that referrals within the clinic were mostly between the biomedical doctors and the TCAM and allied-health practitioners.…”

“…Patient preferences played a significant role in the development of the clinic. 24 The directors and practitioners in the clinic trialed different IM services such as implementing specialty health programs in which a group of practitioners worked together as an integrated team and offered joint consultations with more than one practitioner. However, there was little patient demand for these integrated health care services.…”

“…24 A mixed method approach was used to collect and analyze the data. The results and conclusions presented in this article are mostly drawn from a staff questionnaire but also include a review of the minutes taken of staff meetings, the authors' personal knowledge of the clinic's history and background, and other quantitative data routinely collect by the clinic.…”

“…The questionnaire was constructed by the first author as part of a team building exercise in the clinic. 24 In the questionnaire, the 15 respondents were asked to read the article by Boon et al 8 and comment about what style of team arrangement they thought the clinic was mostly providing. A description of patient-centered care was also given, 26 which accompanied questions about the provision of patient-centered care.…”