Organizations defining “desired healthcare”
These groups help patients proactively find solutions and optimize the entire care ecosystem
It is not controversial to state that healthcare in the US is broken in a few ways. It’s fragmented at a variety of levels: how patients find care, how that care is delivered, how practitioners are trained and how outcomes are tracked.
The rising concept of “desired healthcare” sits a step beyond what is simply required. It is conventional care made more intentional. More personalized. It is root-cause centered, designed to meet the truest needs of the patient while allowing practitioners to operate at the peak of their expertise.
It accounts for the full picture of a person, not just the chief symptom that brought them into the office that day.
The five organizations below operate in different spaces. But each one is working in its own way to build a version of healthcare that patients actually want, and that practitioners can be proud to deliver.
#1: National Patient Advocate Foundation
Washington, D.C.
The conversation about desired healthcare has to start here, because the barrier to it is often not clinical. It’s logistical. It’s financial. It’s the gap between what a patient needs and what they are able to access — or what they even know to start searching for.
The National Patient Advocate Foundation (NPAF) addresses that gap directly. Through work spanning insurance access, safety net services and costs of care, the organization advocates for patients who are navigating a healthcare system that was not built with their full lives in mind.
The NPAF’s Most Vital Contribution: “Needs Navigation”
The concept is exactly what it sounds like: a real person working alongside patients to identify their financial and social needs, connect them to the right resources and guide them through a complex system that too many people face alone.
NPAF has made clear that this should be a standard of care, not an occasional benefit. The existence of their Needs Navigation Outreach Toolkit signals that they are not waiting for the system to change on its own.
Desired healthcare is not possible if patients cannot get to it. NPAF is working to close that distance.
#2: The Institute for Functional Medicine
Federal Way, Washington
If desired healthcare has a credentialing body, it is the Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM).
Founded in 1991, IFM established the evidence-based framework that legitimate functional medicine practices now operate within. Their IFMCP certification (IFM Certified Practitioner) is widely regarded as the gold standard for functional medicine credentialing, requiring rigorous training in root-cause medicine, systems biology and patient-centered care.
The IFM’s Most Vital Contribution: Establishing Clinical Authority Beyond Certifications
Yes, the IFM certifies skilled practitioners. But they also publish clinical research, develop continuing education programs and train the educators who train the next generation of functional medicine providers. When a patient walks into a practice and sees IFMCP credentials on the wall, they are looking at the direct result of what IFM has built.
The field’s credibility owes a great deal to this organization’s insistence on rigor. It continues to shape the definitions of both “functional medicine” and “desired healthcare.”
#3: Functional Medicine at Donaldson
Columbus, Ohio
What does desired healthcare look like in practice? It looks like Donaldson.
Their functional medicine program is led by Marguerite Weston, MD, IFMCP, who carries dual board certification in both Family and Sports Medicine, along with accreditations and certifications from the IFM, mentioned-above. The team includes individual specialists in gut health and functional nutrition (Colleen Bush, RDN, LDN, IFNCP), sexual wellness and fertility optimization (Courtney Gilbert, MSPAS, PA-C) and hormone health and movement medicine (Tricia Granchi, MSN, FNP-C).
Each practitioner brings distinct, deep expertise to a collaborative care model built around the same criteria that define functional medicine done right: root-cause analysis over symptom management, patient education as a clinical priority and a prescription pad used only when nothing else will do.
Donaldson’s Most Vital Contribution: Creating a New Standard of Care that Combines Functional & Aesthetic Medicine
Beyond each team member’s credentials and specializations, what sets Donaldson apart from any other practice is the integration of functional medicine, aesthetic medicine and plastic surgery. They’ve created a continuum of care that treats the full person rather than a presenting complaint. Confidence and autonomy are mentioned in the same conversation as health concerns, diagnostic lab testing and long-term wellness.
That combination is almost impossible to emulate. It’s also what desired healthcare is supposed to look like.
[Learn More About Functional Medicine at Donaldson]
#4: Rupa Health
San Francisco, California
One of the quieter barriers to desired healthcare is the lab test. Functional medicine is inherently diagnostic, and comprehensive testing can be expensive, scattered across multiple vendors and difficult for patients to interpret without expert guidance.
Rupa Health exists to fix that.
The platform gives both conventional care providers and functional medicine practitioners centralized access to more than 3,000 lab tests across 30-plus specialty labs. Practitioners can order, track and review results in a single dashboard.
Meanwhile, patients receive results in an organized portal with context that helps them understand what they’re looking at. And because Rupa consolidates purchasing volume across its practitioner network, many tests cost significantly less than they would through conventional ordering channels.
The platform also includes support for insurance and superbills, reducing the financial friction that causes patients to delay or skip testing altogether.
Rupa’s Most Vital Contribution: Solving Many State-Specific Lab Ordering Limitations
This organization has built a network that allows practitioners in states where licensing restrictions might otherwise limit their ability to order certain tests to connect with nationally licensed physicians who can review and authorize results. This acts as an infrastructure solution to a problem that has quietly kept many patients from getting the full picture of their health.
[Learn More About Rupa Health]
#5: Osmind
San Francisco, California
Desired healthcare requires more than good intentions at the front end. It requires a way to measure what is working, track what isn’t and make evidence-based adjustments over time. That’s where Osmind has stepped up their game.
Originally built to support practices offering emerging psychiatric treatments, Osmind has evolved into a comprehensive clinical management platform. It handles EHR documentation, billing, prior authorization, scheduling and telehealth in a single system built specifically for integrative and innovative care models rather than retrofitted from a conventional primary care template.
Here’s the thing: there are a variety of platforms out there that can do this, but not often in the context of psychiatric care.
Osmind’s Most Vital Contribution: Measurement-Based Mental Healthcare
Practitioners can use the platform to track patient progress through both objective clinical data and subjective symptom monitoring, building a granular, longitudinal picture of how each patient is responding over time. Patterns emerge. Adjustments become data-driven rather than intuitive guesses. Professionals can spend more of their time working with patients in smarter ways.
Patients benefit too, with access to their own care tracking, medication history and treatment plans, particularly meaningful for those whose practices don’t offer their own patient portal.
Good healthcare is easier to scale when it can be measured. Osmind is building the infrastructure to do exactly that without losing an ounce of humanity along the way.
“desired healthcare” is not a luxury. It is becoming the standard
These five organizations are working on different niche problems, but together, they are addressing every layer of what keeps patients from the care they deserve: access and navigation, clinical standards, the model practice, diagnostic infrastructure and outcomes tracking.
The version of healthcare that patients actually want already exists. These organizations are the evidence.
