The Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland where the Center for Functional Medicine opened Sept. 23, 2014.

Cleveland Clinic

When the head of the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic approached Dr. Mark Hyman about creating a department that would employ the doctors specialty of functional medicine, Hyman was typically blunt.

If I create a program there, it would cut the number of angioplasties and bypasses in half, and reduce hospital admissions, he told clinic CEO Toby Cosgrove.

And if slicing the number of cardiac procedures at the countrys top heart hospital wasnt alarming enough, Hyman warned that he would strive to take functional medicine to its ultimate end by teaching patients to care for themselves so they could avoid the hospital altogether.

Hire me and Ill do what I can to put you out of business, Hyman recalled of their meeting 22 months ago.

That was just what Cosgrove, a 74-year-old cardiac surgeon who earned a Bronze Star in Vietnam, wanted to hear. And he hired Hyman.

Toby was looking for innovation and he sees the future of medicine, Hyman said of the man who heads the nonprofit clinic that has been a leader for nearly a century in improving medical care.

In the United States, people spent more than $2.7 trillion annually on health care in 2011, more than 80 percent of which $2.16 trillion was spent on chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes and obesity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And for the most part, chronic conditions are managed with medications and procedures but not cured. Functional medicine doctors like Hyman take a different approach. Instead of soothing the symptoms, they try to identify and eradicate the root cause of the problem through a holistic approach in treatment.

We must consider new approaches to understanding and treating diseases, Cosgrove said. In his book, "The Cleveland Clinic Way," he writes that chronic diseases are now so prevalent and so costly that theyre threatening to destroy Americas broader economic health.

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