The interim director of Panhandle Health District told community members this week that he wants to conduct a five-year study on the quality and cost of "functional medicine" compared to "conventional medicine." 

"I have become increasingly convinced that there are strategies of healthcare, outside of allopathic medicine, that may, in fact, improve health for us all," Dr. Thomas Fletcher told about two dozen community members Tuesday night during a public forum on healthcare at the Kootenai County administration building. "What would that be? Naturopathy, acupuncture. It would be all kinds of strategies of healthcare delivery other than allopathic." 

Fletcher and Mike Baker, CEO of Heritage Health, discussed with attendees their visions for the future of healthcare in Kootenai County. 

For Fletcher, that includes collecting "quality data" that can be used to determine the efficacy of "functional medical interventions." He said he's submitted an application for a federal grant that would subsidize a "clinical demonstration project" hosted by PHD and involving multiple healthcare providers in the area. 

"We would take many thousands of patients and they would be treated in different cohort groups," he said. "Some people would be treated with conventional care and others would be treated with functional care." 

He said the project would "target" Medicaid recipients in rural areas and patients would choose which cohort they're in.

"It might be voodoo," he said. "But at this juncture, the hypothesis, the experiment, I believe is worth running because we're not doing well right now." 

Fletcher said PHD's function is for the "management of the commons," specifically "air, water and soil." He said public health institutions have become involved in private healthcare matters. 

"Say, a fertility clinic that's administered at Panhandle Health," he said. "A woman's fertility is private health." 

PHD provides family planning services that include counseling, education and access to birth control, according to its website. 

When a community member asked about Fletcher's belief in herd immunity — the idea that when enough people in an area have immunity to a disease, it no longer spreads easily — and the efficacy of vaccines, he expressed skepticism. 

"Herd immunity, no," he said. "Vaccines, maybe. Some of them." 

Baker took an optimistic view about the future of healthcare in North Idaho. 

"I think we have some things to be very, very excited about in this community," he said. 

He pointed to the Center for Healthy Living as an example. The project first brought Heritage Health's behavioral health and psychiatry services under one roof and will soon bring together medical, dental, pediatric, substance use treatment and pharmacy services. The model is designed to remove barriers to accessing primary care by eliminating the need to refer patients elsewhere. 

Baker said he experienced a "wake-up call" regarding barriers to healthcare when his daughter sought treatment for endometriosis, a condition where tissue that is similar to uterine tissue grows someplace else. He said his own family struggled to navigate the healthcare system and felt lost.

"I don't want anyone in this community to feel like they're not believed, that they're not heard, that they don't have a place to go where somebody will just trust them and walk alongside them," he said. 

Baker said he thinks the Center for Healthy Living can serve as an example for other communities. 

"I think we can lead the nation in what primary care looks like," he said. "The only way we do this is by partnering together."