The Inpatient Lifestyle Medicine Consultation Service

Abstract

Lifestyle medicine is a clinical service line within a sponsoring health system that includes inpatient and outpatient programs of care. There is a growing evidence base supporting many options of inpatient lifestyle medicine available to the treatment team to facilitate implementation and improve clinical outcomes. This effort focuses on patients in the midst of acute care, and also in the context of multiple and oftentimes-concurrent prevention modalities in a chronic care model. Broad categories of such interventions include dietary, physical activity, behavioral, mind-body, and spiritual interventions. Notwithstanding knowledge gaps, challenges to optimizing inpatient lifestyle medicine include a recalcitrant healthcare culture (including poor health of many hospital staff and professionals), inadequate patient education, and incomplete infrastructure. Developing a clinically and economically successful inpatient lifestyle medicine consultation service that focuses on the prevention of chronic disease should be a priority for healthcare systems, medical centers, hospitals, and other inpatient facilities.