Lifestyle Medicine in an Academic/Hospital Context

The effective integration of lifestyle medicine into allopathic practices is an evolving necessity driven by limited resources and escalating costs. Efforts in the Florida Hospital system graduate medical education (GME) department to meet this challenge may be instructive to others. Efforts include the hiring of an experienced dietician with a focus on a whole food plant based diet and a patient engagement tool to identify areas where patients are ready to make change. Billing is done using existing finance structure with the goal of decreasing the overall cost of providing care within a Clinically Integrated Network (CIN) context. Additionally, one GME clinician's experience in clinical lifestyle based intervention identifies and comments on several practical clinical factors for bringing effective behavior change to individual patients: patient readiness, a knowledgeable health care provider, adequate time, as well as the effectiveness of the intervention.