On our first episode, we’re exploring the concept of whole-person health and its potential benefit for both physician and patient well-being. Dr. Jeffrey Gladd joins us to give his point of view.

Hi, I’m Jeff Gladd. I am a medical doctor. I’m the chief medical officer at Fullscript, which is a technology platform for treatment planning and delivering whole person care at scale. I also run GladdMD Integrated Medicine, which is a private medical practice in Indiana.

A bit of background on me: I’m a trained family doctor and was doing the small town, family doctor thing my first couple years of practice. In the midst of clear burnout and poor health, I had this self-journey of whole-person care. I ended up recognizing the need to take better care of myself through nutrition and lifestyle. I lost 50 pounds and was able to successfully wean off of medication that I was taking for panic attack (that, probably not by coincidence, started in medical school). Ultimately, that inspired this journey to study more about the kind of care that I didn’t see much at all in medical school or training.

I also started taking that journey because as I started sharing that with patients and asking them about how they were taking care of themselves, a lot of eyes opened up. There was a lot of connection and desire to know more, and I wasn’t armed with that education. I went down this educational journey that led me to leaving—I was in a hospital practice at the time, and I left my hospital practice to start a private practice so I could focus on delivering this care to patients who wanted and needed it.

We certainly are seeing more and more airtime to this idea of whole-person health. It’s incredibly encouraging. I want that message to continue to resonate. The common definition is taking into account all aspects of a patient’s life—their physical health, mental health, emotional well-being, the social factors around their health that have such a big impact—and using all of that to create a comprehensive treatment plan and build that ongoing provider-patient relationship.

I think the essence of whole-person health is a complete paradigm shift away from how we were educated and how we’re plugged into the system of quick, disease management office visits. I feel passionate that whole-person care is putting health back into healthcare because we’re focusing on the root causes of the patient’s health concerns. We’re trying to connect the dots between those core, whole-person principles and why they may be contributing to a patient who feels unwell, or how we can optimize them for well-feeling patients to reach a higher level of health.

The data is clear on the growing incidence of chronic disease in this country and how impactful a healthy lifestyle can be on preventing or reversing chronic disease. But the latest stats show that only 3% to 4% of the population follows the basic premises of a healthy lifestyle.

To me, it’s imperative that we, as physicians and as a healthcare system, start adopting these whole-person care principles. It’s not just writing a semaglutide prescription. It has to be more than that. I still have patients who come to me today who say, “Well, my doctor says that my diet doesn’t matter. My doctor says that stress doesn’t impact my health.” It’s just false. As practitioners, we need to get this education and start building these conversations and care models into how we work with patients.

Many of the colleagues that I have in this whole-person care movement started the journey by being patients ourselves. The stats on provider burnout, those leaving healthcare—that’s scary stuff. The first step is to take a self-journey into whole-person care. Take time to go have some lab work done and have it interpreted through an optimal health lens. Connect the dots on how your nutrition, stress, mindfulness, sleep, etc. are impacting your health. Putting those pieces together and starting to take this journey takes an investment of time. But as practitioners, it’s really imperative to take care of yourselves. Having that inspiration, that aha moment of, “I didn’t realize how much better I would feel,” is the first step. Instead of trying this out on patients, go take this journey yourselves, and let’s see if we can’t build this whole-person care model with inspired physicians who feel and function better.

If we go all in on a value-based care model and deliver truly whole person care, I think we fall back in love with medicine. I don’t think there’s any better feeling than being able to connect with a patient, the patient being engaged, and the physician feeling like they’re part of this connective journey.

We must find scalable ways to assess patients from that whole-person lens and deliver treatment plans that allow them to take the journey. At Fullscript, we believe that a patient’s health journey is best guided with a practitioner. A recent McKinsey report shows 75% of patients today demand and want their healthcare experience to be collaborative with a provider. That just isn’t going to happen in these 5-minute office visits.

Patients want to partner in their health. With the bombardment of content, at-home lab testing, and health washing that patients are exposed to, they want a practitioner to help guide them. Our medical training doesn’t really arm us with the ability to have those conversations. This is why I call for practitioners to take these journeys ourselves and then have resources and understand the evidence behind certain recommendations. I think that’s what patients want.

To deliver value-based care at scale, from a healthcare ecosystem perspective and all the major stakeholders in healthcare, we need a greater investment in primary care. I’m not sure we’re seeing that yet, but if physicians can start connecting with our patients in this model and scale the delivery of that care, I think we can easily prove the value of that is worth investing in.

Ideally, we start building a collaborative ecosystem that allows us to scale whole-person health and keeps efficiency and balance in mind for the practitioners. We’re not going to get more hours out of our practitioners, so we have to find scalable solutions that allow practitioners to deliver this care.

I think technology has to be part of this. We must have technology that helps providers assess and deliver evidence-based, whole-person care at scale, and those technologies have to be integrated into the EHR platforms that they’re working on today. At Fullscript, we recognize the burden of delivering whole-person care at scale, and we’ve built a platform that has over 100,000 providers using it today, ensuring that there’s clinical quality and efficacy for their patients. Streamlined versions of care tools like this are going to be important for physicians.

For physicians, it’s overwhelming. They’re already burned out. Thinking about educating themselves and doing more seems overwhelming. But for the betterment of your career, your own personal health, and your connection to your loved ones, taking a personal journey is important.

I’ll use physicians who come to me as patients as an example. One of the most eye-opening experiences they have is doing a good blood panel to help them understand where some of their health focuses should be. Understanding that data, actioning evidence-based dietary changes, mindfulness changes, improving sleep appropriate supplementation, and then seeing that data change is an eye-opening experience.

It inspires them to an educational journey and learning more. Is there a conference dedicated to something they become passionate about? Is it online resources and further education?

I would encourage physicians not to just continue business as usual, because if you look at the stats, it’s not working for patients or physicians either. Let’s all rally in this whole-person focus and change healthcare together.

Thanks for listening. Stay tuned for next week’s episode to hear more. Follow PeerPOV: The Pulse on Medicine on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Amazon Music.

This transcript has been edited for readability.