Principles embraced by the Members of the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine

1. Optimal Health is the primary goal of holistic medical practice. It is the conscious pursuit of the highest level of functioning and balance of the physical, environmental, mental, emotional, social and spiritual aspects of human experience, resulting in a dynamic state of being fully alive. This creates a condition of well-being regardless of the presence or absence of disease.
    
2. The Healing Power of Love. Holistic health care practitioners strive to meet the patient with grace, kindness, acceptance, and spirit without condition, as love is life's most powerful healer.
    
3. Whole Person. Holistic health care practitioners view people as the unity of body, mind, spirit and the systems in which they live.
    
4. Prevention and Treatment. Holistic health care practitioners promote health, prevent illness and help raise awareness of dis-ease in our lives rather than merely managing symptoms. A holistic approach relieves symptoms, modifies contributing factors, and enhances the patient’s life system to optimize future well-being.
    
5. Innate Healing Power. All people have innate powers of healing in their bodies, minds and spirits. Holistic health care practitioners evoke and help patients utilize these powers to affect the healing process.
    
6. Integration of Healing Systems. Holistic health care practitioners embrace a lifetime of learning about all safe and effective options in diagnosis and treatment. These options come from a variety of traditions, and are selected in order to best meet the unique needs of the patient. The realm of choices may include lifestyle modification and complementary approaches as well as conventional drugs and surgery.
    
7. Relationship-centered Care. The ideal practitioner-patient relationship is a partnership which encourages patient autonomy, and values the needs and insights of both parties. The quality of this relationship is an essential contributor to the healing process.
    
8. Individuality. Holistic health care practitioners focus patient care on the unique needs and nature of the person who has an illness rather than the illness that has the person. 
    
9. Teaching by Example. Holistic health care practitioners continually work toward the personal incorporation of the principles of holistic health, which then profoundly influence the quality of the healing relationship.
     
10. Learning Opportunities. All life experiences including birth, joy, suffering and the dying process are profound learning opportunities for both patients and health care practitioners.

The vision we hold for Everspring Health is one where healthcare returns to neighborhood clinics, where service is provided by practitioners who know clients personally and advocate for individuals in the pursuit of improved health and longevity. At Everspring Health we believe the application of client centered care is the single focus of first-line lifestyle, health and healing services. Our vision of a more appropriate model involves an integrative healthcare strategy where the first line of healthcare is primarily composed of therapies not procedures. Chronic disease care is the number one medical need worldwide, the system we have today developed during a time of acute care need and is not sufficient to meet the specific needs of the individual.

To effectively meet the modern need for care and pursue personalized quality of life an integrative healthcare model is the most accessible means of delivering high quality care. Integrative healthcare is the hub where all therapies, prescriptions, procedures and lifestyle components meet to create optimal outcomes. The most efficient model for delivering integrative healthcare is a model grounded in therapies and therapeutic strategies. Therapies like acupuncture, chiropractic, physical therapy and lifestyle development are leveraged because they have been developed to be dynamic to the needs of the individual yet grounded in the principles of health cultivation. Therapeutic strategies that always consider the spirit, mind and body in the practical pursuit of optimal health are the cornerstone of the Everspring Health service model.

Our model has been recognized as an emerging leader in integrative healthcare, demonstrating that a therapy centric model not only reduces much of the wasted spending but also reduces actual cost of service while, most importantly, improving personalized care at the same time. By utilizing a therapy first model healthcare can realistically become affordable, accessible, personalized care.

In general the modern healthcare model is a procedure model where the first line of service prescribes procedures or if a diagnosis is inconclusive requires procedures to further the diagnosis. The procedure first model is ideal for medical application where emergency, urgent or acute care is determined to be necessary. However, with regards to chronic disease in general not to mention preventive, rehabilitative and quality of life care specifically, the current model has generally proven to be costly, variably effective and marginal at best with regards to overall progression towards quality of life.

An integrative healthcare model on the other hand allows for a more appropriate non-emergency first line resource by allowing for personalized treatment protocols for subclinical as well as chronic conditions. A integrative model enables healthcare to remain affordable for clients and reduces much of the inflation we have seen in the system. Much of our confidence in this model stems from the four interrelated therapy based practice components that contribute to effective integrative healthcare.

• A true integrative healthcare model requires practitioners to engage with clients, to develop an effective client-practitioner relationship for improving quality of life - merging healthcare and wellness. Integrative healthcare improves the client-practitioner relationship via a better understanding the daily lives of individuals allowing for more complete diagnoses and better compliance.
• The second component of effective integrative healthcare involves the training of qualified therapists which includes more experience with hands on diagnostic skills and can lead to a more timely diagnosis. At the same time if procedures are deemed to be necessary to better understand the diagnosis we can still pursue those as needed.
• The third component is that integrative healthcare leverages therapies as a form of treatment as well as a means of furthering the diagnosis. Even if more program development is needed an integrative practitioner can more often than not make sure treatment is available before a client leaves the office while still gaining a better understanding of the diagnosis.
• The fourth and most significant component is that integrative healthcare must be personalized. Even if generalized protocols are used they are used after personal and genuine interaction between the client and the practitioner. The one-on-one relationship allows for greater accessibility for the client because personal concerns are recognized, strengths are embraced and limitations are accommodated.

By increasing time, improving diagnostics and most often offering treatment all in the same visit it is not hard to see the benefits of an integrative healthcare model.

Furthering our vision for a more appropriate model is our system and service integration including our team practice concept supported by an improved client-practitioner partnership via our cooperative business model. These design concepts enable us to utilize an integrative model to validate everyone involved including our practitioners. This last point is something that we believe to be diluted in the current healthcare environment, it is our belief that empowered practitioners, practitioners who are allowed to perform at their best, inherently provide better service and benefit most with regards to their own health and wellbeing.

The Everspring Model was developed to be aggressively dynamic and flexible so that we may be able to maintain our commitment for improving healthcare accessibility on a daily basis. We believe that client-centered integrative healthcare is one of our primary competitive advantages because our model enables us to appropriately serve the needs of each one of our clients.

Our values reflect our focus on quality of care; on the relationship between the practitioner and the client. It is our intention to provide access to high quality healthcare products and services, while maintaining our cooperative integrity through the internalization of six interdependent values.