American College of Lifestyle Medicine Adds Unique Dietitian Telemedicine Platform Wellory to its Corporate Roundtable


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The American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) has announced the addition of unique national telemedicine platform Wellory to its Lifestyle Medicine Corporate Roundtable, a group of thought leaders and industry professionals who explore effective clinical innovations, activate marketing strategies, accelerate reimbursement and policy adoption, and pursue research and demonstrations of lifestyle medicine in practice. ACLM launched its Corporate Roundtable in 2016 and it now includes nearly 50 active member organizations in the lifestyle medicine ecosystem.

Lifestyle medicine is a medical specialty that uses therapeutic lifestyle interventions as a primary modality to treat chronic conditions including, but not limited to, cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, and obesity. Lifestyle medicine certified clinicians are trained to apply evidence-based, whole-person, prescriptive lifestyle change to treat and, when used intensively, often reverse such conditions. Applying the six pillars of lifestyle medicine—a whole food, plant-predominant eating pattern, physical activity, restorative sleep, stress management, avoidance of risky substances and positive social connections— also provides effective prevention for these conditions.

Many people, even those with significant healthcare experience, are surprised to learn that the Affordable Care Act guarantees coverage of nutrition counseling with a credentialed provider for individuals diagnosed with, or at risk of, a chronic disease. This care is highly effective for many people, leading to better outcomes at lower cost than pharmaceutical or procedural interventions.

Wellory’s platform meets a significant unmet need for accessible dietitian support for individuals covered by many major insurance plans. Wellory simplifies the delivery of nutrition care for both patients and registered dietitians (RDs) by making it easy to utilize existing ACA provisions mandating coverage for Medical Nutrition Therapy. For registered dietitian clinicians, Wellory handles the administrative tasks of patient scheduling, hosting secure telemedicine visits, and billing insurance. For patients, Wellory makes accessing individualized nutrition care simple by matching a patient to an RD, verifying benefits eligibility, and providing a platform for engagement even beyond clinician visits.

Wellory believes that nutrition is at the heart of a comprehensive chronic condition treatment strategy and is eliminating the barriers to access the best nutrition care possible.

“Wellory believes, as ACLM does, that evidence-based lifestyle therapeutic intervention is the foundation to address chronic disease, especially the power of food as medicine,” said ACLM President Beth Frates, MD, FACLM, DipABLM. “They provide simple access to highly effective nutrition counseling, supporting the core lifestyle medicine pillar of a whole food, plant-based dietary pattern and potentially reducing the burden of diet-related disease for Americans. ACLM welcomes Wellory to our Corporate Roundtable.”

“We’re so excited to partner with ACLM to further our shared mission of improving utilization of nutrition care as a key part of every patient’s care plan, and to further our goal to support millions of Americans, starting with covered lives through Aetna, Cigna and Medicare,” said Wellory CEO and Co-founder Emily Hochman. “We look forward to working with the forward-thinking employers, health plans, and individual physicians associated with ACLM and its Corporate Roundtable to bring virtual nutrition care to millions of eligible Americans.”

ABOUT WELLORY: Wellory brings a new approach and new access to nutrition care for employer-sponsored benefits plans, chronic condition providers, the telemedicine industry and health insurers. For nutrition providers, Wellory’s platform handles patient scheduling, hosts secure telemedicine visits, and bills insurance. For patients, Wellory matches a patient to a registered dietitian, verifies benefits eligibility, and provides a platform for engagement even beyond clinician visits. Wellory believes that nutrition is at the heart of a comprehensive chronic condition management strategy, and is eliminating the barriers to access board-certified, top quality nutrition care.

ABOUT ACLM — The American College of Lifestyle Medicine is the nation’s medical professional society advancing lifestyle medicine as the foundation for a redesigned, value-based and equitable healthcare delivery system, leading to whole person health. ACLM educates, equips, empowers and supports its members through quality, evidence- based education, certification and research to identify and eradicate the root cause of chronic disease, with a clinical outcome goal of health restoration as opposed to disease management.

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