Is Curing People a Bad Business Model?
Are you tired of being on the medical merry-go-round, with more medications, more procedures, more treatments? At Cormendi Health, our medical model is the opposite—our goal is to help you heal and move on with your life.
Is Curing People a Bad Business Model?
In April 2018, Goldman Sachs produced an internal report titled, “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” For better or worse, their conclusion was yes, and they advised investors to steer clear of gene therapies that have the potential to cure disease. Instead, they recommended that investors find opportunities in chronic disease management that generate recurring revenue, when patients come back for more treatment, whether it’s more medication, more injections, or more procedures.
As many others have commented over the last four years in regards to this report, I wish it were an April Fool’s joke, but it is not. And, unfortunately, the fact that they were serious is not at all surprising.
I worked at a major hospital system for eight years, in their center for integrative medicine. The center was not a bad place to work. I liked my colleagues. I had more freedom to practice from an integrative health perspective than most physicians ever do. I met a ton of wonderful people who came to see me as patients, and I learned a tremendous amount about medicine, people, healing, and business. And the Mind-Body Medicine portion of my practice ran at about 2% of what I did on an average week, which was consistently too low for someone whose mission is to spread the word about Mind-Body Medicine all over the world.
In the episode Saved by Sarno that I did with Curable’s Like Mind, Like Body podcast in 2017, I said that I had made the decision to leave the hospital to emphasize Mind-Body Medicine, but that I wasn’t sure there was a market for it. I worried that the treatment was too esoteric or too complicated, or that there just wasn’t strong interest in that aspect of medicine. And yet, when I set up my own practice (now Cormendi Health) several months later, the Mind-Body Medicine portion of what I did immediately jumped from 2% to 20%, then to 33% pre-pandemic, and to 66% now that we have the ability to reach people outside the state of Illinois. It wasn’t that the interest wasn’t there, it was that the interest wasn’t able to penetrate the force field of the major hospital system.
It may have been that the hospital was so big that even if my patients got through the phone tree, the person who answered the call may or may not have heard of me, TMS (Tension Myositis Syndrome), Mind-Body Medicine, or anything else that would have inspired confidence about my program there. In retrospect, though, it seems even more likely that the big hospital system just couldn’t support a program where people were cured. Learning about Mind-Body Medicine, understanding the true nature of pain, feeling good, and then managing on one’s own from there really, truly isn’t a business model that any other major health system can support. Their system only works when patients have to keep coming back for more prescriptions, more treatments, more procedures, and so on.
That brings up the obvious question: What about our system here at Cormendi Health. Is curing clients bad for our business model as well?
For starters, I’m happy to address the morality of the issue. As others have discussed before me, it’s ridiculous for Goldman Sachs to place corporate and individual profits above people’s health. As a society, we shouldn’t be looking to profit off of others’ misfortune; if we want a caring, coherent society, we need to be clear that any suffering is not OK and we should always be working to alleviate all suffering. If we have a treatment, genetic or otherwise, that will stop someone’s suffering for good, we have a moral imperative to figure out a way to provide that treatment. Withholding treatment for profit has no place in a caring, moral society.
That said, curing people is not bad for our business model here. When I worked at the hospital, being a caring, competent physician brought me more patients than I could fit into my schedule, so caring usually resulted in longer hours and more administrative time. I frequently said to myself (and others), “Someday, I really would love to work in a place where it made sense to be kind to people.” And so that’s how we’ve set that our care at Cormendi. Caring for people, listening to people’s stories, believing in the power of people to heal, seeing their strengths—these are all part of the core values on which Cormendi was created. We love caring for people in every sense of the word.
Because those are our core values, we rejoice in people’s recovery. One patient recently emailed us to say:
I have an appointment scheduled with Erica [Walker] next week. This would be the second appointment. I am doing so well I really don't feel that I need to continue :) I haven't had any pain since the last session. Both Dr. Stracks and Erica were the final little piece I needed. My heartfelt thanks to both of them! If I am ever in the position where I need to reach out, I will definitely return for appointments.
To which Erica responded, “Very nice. This is always very satisfying to hear. :)” We always rejoice when people are feeling well. The loss of a paying client is never a consideration.
Before you feel sorry for us (working in a profession where when we do our job, we get fired ), keep in mind that current estimates are that at least 1 in 3 Americans experience some sort of chronic pain. We at Cormendi have yet to see a fraction of a percentage of those people. We’ve learned enough and we have faith enough to know that every time a client messages us to say, “Thanks—and so long!” we’re not the only person that patient messages. That client, we know, has mentioned to friends and family members how well she’s doing, and those friends and family members may have mentioned it to their friends and family as well. One-third—one-third!—of the population in the United States has some pain issue they’re trying to work on, so people who are cured only need to tell three other people about their experience to reach someone who could use our care.
Every client who recovers and moves forward opens up a slot for someone else who needs it. Our goal is to help people heal and move on with their lives as quickly as possible. Because we get to be kind and caring, we keep open both the literal and the energetic space for people to find us and schedule an appointment so that they can get the help they need to end their pain and symptoms for good.
Curing people is the right business model for us and the only business model for us. Our primary concern here at Cormendi is your well-being. When we care about people, when we care about you, the business side works itself out in the end.
If you’re ready to find a different model of healing, click here for more information or to schedule an appointment.
