Industry Veterans Pool Talent and Networks to Revolutionize Healthcare
December 2, 2019 12:00 PM CST
ST. Louis, Missouri – MindBody Talent today announced five integrated service lines and a broad talent network created to fuel a long-overdue revolution in healthcare. The services are designed to provide comprehensive support to medical practitioners and practices that are committed to the fields of Functional, Integrative and Lifestyle Medicine.
Wellness Industry Definitions and Stats
“Functional”, “Integrative” and “Lifestyle Medicine” are terms commonly used to describe the fields of healthcare that are focused on identifying and treating the root causes of illness and disease with the goal of restoring sustainable health. Collectively, those fields form the basis of the industry defined as, “Wellness”.
According to the Global Wellness Institute, the Wellness market was a $4.2 trillion global industry in 2017 and is on a pace of further rapid growth. Research from Statistica and other sources project that the U.S. share of the Wellness market will be in the range of $179 billion by 2020.
MindBody Talent Mission to Fuel a Wellness Revolution
Given the size and momentum of the Wellness industry, MindBody Talent was created to coordinate and catalyze growth for Wellness practices and practitioners, as well as for the patients they serve. Its goal is to fuel a wellness revolution, but that goal comes with a range of daunting industry challenges.
Despite the size and projected growth of the Wellness industry, the founders of MindBody Talent recognize a major gap that they seek to address with their company, including its range of services and talent network. “There are a lot of very talented and innovative professionals in the field of Wellness”, said Robin Stewart, CEO and co-founder of MindBody Talent. “But those professionals, as well as the industry overall, lack a coordinating force and foundational support system for those practitioners and their practices. MindBody Talent’s five service lines were each designed to provide essential elements of that support system, as well as supplying that coordinating force.”
Ms. Stewart went on to describe the challenges that MindBody Talent seeks to address, “The Wellness industry is fighting a difficult battle on two fronts. One front is the Western medicine ‘allopathic’ approach to healthcare that is fueled by the massive pharmaceutical and insurance industries. Those industries represent over two trillion dollars of momentum behind a medical approach that focuses on treating symptoms with pharmaceutical drugs and surgery. The second battle front is the embedded mindset of several generations of patients and their caregivers who have been conditioned to believe solely in the allopathic approach.”
Battling $2 Trillion of Momentum and Generations of Mindset
MindBody Talent’s other co-founder and COO, Richard Hoffmann, further outlines the metrics of the challenges, as well as the company’s approach to the revolution. “For almost 70 years, we have been receiving a progressive volume of brainwashing telling us that taking drugs and undergoing surgeries as prescribed by allopathic doctors is the right way to manage health. That ‘diagnose and prescribe’ approach to treating illness has resulted in Americans taking higher quantities and more complex combinations of prescription drugs than any country in the world”, said Hoffmann. “Drug prescriptions in the U.S. rose 85 percent between 1997 and 2016, from 2.4 billion to 4.5 billion a year. That growth continues unabated. Meanwhile, our population is suffering from unprecedented epidemics of diseases that include obesity, autism, dementia, diabetes, cancer, depression and a range of autoimmune disorders, as well as drug addictions, overdoses and contraindications. A growing body of research is showing that excessive prescribing and use of pharmaceutical drugs is causing or worsening the diseases they were originally intended to fix”, added Hoffmann.
A recent study by researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine says that medical errors should rank as the third leading cause of death in the United States. According to the study and its base of research, medical mistakes that can lead to death range from surgical complications that go unrecognized to mix-ups with the doses or types of medications patients receive. The Johns Hopkins study estimates that more than 250,000 Americans die each year from medical errors. On the CDC’s official list, that would rank just behind heart disease and cancer, which each took about 600,000 lives in 2014, and in front of respiratory disease, which caused about 150,000 deaths. The authors of the Johns Hopkins study urged, in an open letter to the CDC, to immediately add medical errors to its annual list reporting the top causes of death. These statistics don’t even begin to account for the myriad of health problems caused by pharmaceutical drug overuse, side-effects, adverse reactions and unforeseen contraindications. They also don’t consider that the medical errors caused by excessive use of prescription drugs may also be contributing to the first two leading causes of death.
Urgent Need for a Wellness Revolution
“The current system of healthcare in the west has created a major cyclical problem for patients and our overall state of health”, Hoffmann explains. “Aggressive pharmaceutical marketing, medical school curricula and insurance company policies oriented around the ‘diagnose and prescribe’ model of illness management, and medical practice profitability models that force physicians to spend minimal time with patients have collectively created a broken model for truth ‘health’ care. We’re in desperate need of a systemic change.”
“The root of the term ‘revolution’ means to ‘turn around’ or to ‘roll back’”, Hoffmann continued. “Through the framework of services from MindBody Talent, we’re supporting a nationwide network of Wellness industry practitioners and practices in their quest to return us to the methods and practices that worked for thousands of years in the management of illness and the restoration of health. Our clients and partners in our talent network are mining and honoring ancient wisdom that was largely discarded with the advent of modern science and the development of the pharmaceutical medicine industry. They are charting paths that honor the old while embracing the new in blended models that work for our modern life and times.”
Near-Term and Long-Term Vision for a Return to Health
“Our driving passion is to return our country to a state of wellness and vitality. In the long run, that requires driving fundamental changes to the pharmaceutical and insurance industries that currently perpetuate the focus on treating symptoms with drugs and surgeries”, summarized Robin Stewart. “In the short term, MindBody Talent is aggressively moving in that direction by focusing on the Wellness practices and practitioners who treat the root causes of complex diseases and chronic illness. We’re taking a grassroots approach that puts patient health first by supporting the Wellness professionals and caregivers who serve on the front lines of this critical Revolution”, Stewart emphasized.
Five Categories of Service for Wellness Industry Practices and Practitioners
MindBody Talent’s service lines can be activated individually or in combination to fuel the effectiveness of Wellness practices and the growth of patient panels for Wellness practitioners. The range of easily plug-and-play services include:
- Senior and Mid-Level Recruitment
- Education, Training and Coaching
- Strategic Management Consulting
- Wellness Branding and Marketing
- Smart-Practice Technology Solutions
Utilized individually or collectively, MindBody Talent’s services provide a framework of support for Wellness practices that function as stand-alone entities or within Functional, Integrative, or Lifestyle segments of enlightened hospitals, spas, wellness centers or senior living communities. The leverage enabled by MindBody Talent’s network and database of practitioners provides the ability to drive major change within the Wellness Revolution.
About MindBody Talent
MindBody Talent is a rare collaboration of seasoned professionals from the fields of Healthcare, Health Sciences, Hospitality, Wellness and Senior Living. Through a platform of integrated services, we blend our experiences in traditional western medicine, eastern health philosophies and native wisdom into a focus on Functional, Integrative and Lifestyle Medicine problem-solving. Our client base and talent pools include a nationwide network of Wellness industry practitioners, medical practices, hospitals, wellness centers and forward-leaning senior living communities. Our driving passion is to unite the best talent on the planet into the next generation of Mind-Body Wellness for the communities we serve.