The Integrative Model

What is Functional Integrative Medicine?

Functional Integrative Medicine is a systems-oriented approach to treatment and prevention that shifts the focus of medical practice from disease-centered to patient-centered in order to treat the whole person, rather than a collection of symptoms. Although started in the U.S, the practice of Functional Medicine is increasing as more physicians recognize the approach as an advance in medicine that better meets our current healthcare needs.

A Healing Partnership

Practitioners of Functional Integrative Medicine spend time getting to know their patients in order to understand how the complex interactions between genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors may influence an individual’s immediate and long-term health.  Working holistically, patients and practitioners engage in a therapeutic partnership to address the underlying, systemic causes of disease and to promote optimal health and well-being. Integrative medicine empowers patients to be actively engaged in their own healthcare, working with their physicians to consciously create better health on every level.

Is an Integrative Approach Right for You?

Anyone seeking treatment for a disease, or support in improving and maintaining health and wellness can benefit from the use of an integrative approach. Integrative practitioners pull from a broader base of medicinal knowledge- tapping into conventional wisdom, ancient healing practices, holistic and complementary methods to provide patients with more options for healing.  This inclusive approach appeals to patients who are seeking more than what Western or complementary methods can provide alone. Many patients choose integrative healthcare because they value its emphasis on relationship, patient education, and whole-person healing.  

The Raby Approach to Integrative Medicine

We base our practice on the Raby Integrative Medical Model developed and written by Dr. Raby, which controls and guides patients through the integrative process at the Raby Institute.  The model mandates constant, high-level communication between integrative practitioners and primary care physicians or sub-specialists. We continuously monitor the scope of services and limitations; code of conduct; standards of communication and referral patterns; and, finally, the outcomes of each discipline.

Principles of Integrative Medicine

• Healing Relationship: Creating a partnership between patients and practitioners in the healing process.
• Safe and Effective: Appropriate use of evidence-based conventional and integrative methods to facilitate the body’s innate healing response.
• Whole-Person Healing: Consideration of all factors that influence health, wellness, disease, and prevention including mind, spirit, community, and environment as well as body.
• Inclusive and Dynamic: A philosophy that neither rejects conventional medicine nor accepts alternative therapies universally, but is inquiry-based and open to exploring new paradigms of health and healing
• Gentle: Use of natural, effective, less-invasive interventions whenever possible.
• Optimal Health: Use of broader concepts of promotion of health and the prevention of illness as well as the treatment of disease.