How Healing Works: Can Health and Well-Being Be Created within Our Current Healthcare System?

Sobering statistics:  The United States is currently first in healthcare spending per capita, but 37th in health, according to the World Health Organization. Patients with advanced illness make up 5% of the population, but account for 50% of our medical costs.

An integrated health system could treat the other 95%, and keep them healthier longer, according to Wayne Jonas, MD, executive director of Samueli Integrative Health Programs. Wellness is a journey, and Dr. Jonas points to evidence that the best outcomes occur when person-centered care takes precedence over patient-centered care.

“The most powerful way to transform healthcare, your patients’ lives, and your own practice is to fill your medical bag with tools for healing,” says Jonas. “Patients have to expect it, providers have to know how to deliver it, and the insurers and other groups have to cover it.”

Dr. Jonas has been a pioneer in the field of integrative medicine for decades, and believes that traditional medicine doctors need to orchestrate healthcare plans and educate patients how they can be the agents of their own healing, starting with HOPE notes (Healing-Oriented Practices and Environments). This means integrating conventional, complementary, and alternative medicines, as well as self-care.

“Healing is not just the physical body, we are not just physical beings.  We’re social and emotional, we’re behavioral, we’re spiritual and mental,” Jonas emphasizes.

Jonas asks patients to create a PHI, or personal health inventory. When patients help develop their own healthcare plan, they are more invested in the outcome, and noncompliance becomes less of a factor. 

• Why do you want to be healthy?
• What are you doing now to improve your health and well-being?
• What are the personal determinants of health you need and are ready to improve?

These kinds of questions allow the healthcare provider to reframe the conversation to address what really matters to the patient. This is already being done at Whole Health Centers of Excellence, launched by the Veterans’ Health Administration (VA) in 2018.  At these 18 centers, patients set goals and healthcare providers aim to empower, equip, and treat.

“If in fact health care is not producing health, then what are we paying for?” asks Jonas, “And why are we paying for it?”