About Healing Centers United™

Healing Centers United™ is a 501c(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to serving healing centers and the public as a networking body and information clearinghouse.

Our Mission is connecting healing centers so the public is better served in receiving holistically oriented healing services.

We provide networking opportunities and informational resources to people involved in the healing industry, most notably practitioners and staff working in healing centers, consumers of healing services, and the interested public.

Healing Centers United focuses on healing organizations rather than individual practitioners for several reasons. First, consumers often don’t know which therapy or modality would best suit them at a particular time. While there may be information about particular practices, it may be difficult to find, hard to understand, or there may be questions about the credibility of the information. Healing centers address this concern by directing people to the most appropriate therapies and by providing clear information and the opportunity to speak with different practitioners.

Second, consumers often don’t know how to evaluate and select individual practitioners, even if they do know what therapies they are looking for. Centers presumably know more about the appropriate credentials and licenses for each type of practitioner, how to check for compliance and proper certification, and how to evaluate quality of care.

Third, offering a variety of therapies in one location provides the consumer with one stop shopping and the possibility of team based care, cross-referrals, and triaging to appropriate therapies/caregivers when entering the system. Consumers can get information about the different modalities and be directed to the most appropriate services for them at any particular time.

Finally, from the healing centers’ perspective, there is no centralized place for them to come together and exchange information, learn from one another, and offer each other support and encouragement. Practitioners and staff in healing centers face significantly different issues and challenges than solo practitioners or conventional medical practice groups. HCU addresses the specific concerns of running a group practice with a holistic orientation.

Our emphasis on fulfilling the networking, informational, and visibility needs of healing centers themselves distinguishes HCU from other organizations. Interviews and discussions with people involved in healing centers indicate they are eager to share information with one another and offer each other encouragement. They are looking for a venue in which to share opinions and ideas and have expressed a need for resources addressing some of the common challenges in running their centers such as: cash flow, getting reimbursements from insurance companies, structuring relationships with practitioners (contractual vs. salaried employees for example), creating a team based approach to patient care, marketing, and other general business issues.

While there are resources dealing with clinical issues healing centers face, there is not a source they can turn to for resources dealing with the business development issues. The need and desire for collaboration among healing centers is beginning to be met by organizations and conferences which are surfacing in the industry. The organizations and conferences that come closest to our mission are focusing on bringing practitioners, not healing centers, together or sharing clinical information with healing centers. We differ by bringing practitioners and staff specifically involved with healing centers together, and focusing on operational (business) rather than clinical issues.

HCU Board of Advisors
Keith Berndtson, MD, Integrative Care Centers, IL
Alison Shariatzadeh, Chicago, IL

HCU Board of Directors
Elizabeth A. Rosenthal, who is also the Founder and Executive Director
Melissa Burke
Richard Bolton

How HCU began…

As a consumer of holistically oriented services, I became very excited in the early 1990s as I began hearing about the formation of more and more healing centers. Because I wanted to know where I could go if I ever became ill, I researched and wrote Where to Go When You’re Hurting: A Healing Resource Guide. One of the reasons I wrote this book, which contains a directory of healing related organizations, was that there was no central place to find out about various kinds of healing centers. HCU was designed specifically to fill that gap by providing a searchable database on its website for consumers to find healing centers meeting their specific needs.

There was also a need for an organization that would bring healing centers together so they could connect with each other, learn from each other, and dialogue about issues important to their development. HCU is designed to fill that gap as well, by providing a structure for members to connect and converse with each other.

In the early part of my life, I thought I wanted to manage a community healing center. In 1983 I did a summer internship at the Berkeley Holistic Health Center to learn more about how healing centers function. I later received a Masters degree in Public Health from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MBA and PhD from the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business. (For more about my background visit www.LovingLivingLife.com )

I found that I loved business, organizing, and implementing creative solutions, and I loved the healing community. Rather than being involved with a single center, I wanted to fill this need I saw for a networking association and information clearinghouse for healing centers and their clients, and potential clients. Thus, the creation of Healing Centers United™.

After meeting with people in healing centers to find out what they needed and desired, I began talking with people from a variety of backgrounds about how best to birth this entity. We are currently in the process of putting our board of directors together, filing the legal organizational papers and applying for 501c3 status. [Note: In April 2006 we received our 501c3 designation!] As the organization and website develop, we want and are depending on feedback from healing centers and consumers. We have a blog on the website which is a place to record and reflect on HCU’s development, as a grassroots movement. If you have an opinion, we want to hear it. We welcome your thoughts and ask that you consider making a donation to support HCU’s mission of making more holistically healing services more available and credible.