Company to Provide Web of Wellness

Posted on 8.1.12

Story by TIM W. JACKSON

Bill Brackney comes to the world of holistic health care from the user side. “I’m not a practitioner or a doctor,” he stresses. In fact, in his “real job,” Bill flies all over the world as a private concierge on corporate jets.

“I just appreciate holistic and integrative care and have used it my entire life,” he adds. Bill found that trying to navigate through the world of natural health was time-consuming and frustrating, so he began Asheville Natural Wellness.

In his global travels he realized that Asheville is seen as a healing center. “It seemed logical to capitalize on that and build a business model based on that perception,” Bill says.

The primary aspect of the company is its website, which went live on January 30 of this year. “We looked at the issues of liability and credibility,” Bill says. “We wanted to offer a list of member practitioners who are credible and who can be trusted by the client or patient.”

The company requires its members to follow a code of ethics to ensure that they adhere to high quality professional standards at all times. According to its website, “this protects clients and helps ensure high quality care and the reputation of Asheville Natural Wellness and all the professionals in our network.”

Potential members are also checked out by the company’s standards and practices committee, which does a site visit, reference check, and verifies credentials before it accepts any practitioner. Each member has to have a track record of at least two years in practice.

Bill says, though, that creating a valuable list of credible member practitioners is just one part of the website. It also acts as a clearinghouse of information about healing therapies and modalities.

“It can be overwhelming,” Bill says of the choices for integrative care. “What are these things? What do they do? What do they treat? We try to answer those questions.” Users can research everything from acupuncture to zero balancing and nearly 30 more types of therapies in between. After you’ve read about each possibility, the site then offers a list of area practitioners of that therapy. Some of the practitioners also offer special deals on the site: $10 off a Reiki treatment, for example, or $30 off a massage.

Another purpose of the website is to connect holistic health practitioners to traditional medical personnel. “There really has been no way to connect traditionally trained doctors and RNs to credible practitioners of healing therapies,” Bill says. “We wanted to connect those so the two camps could refer patients and clients back and forth in a web of wellness.” Bill says the early results are positive with significant stakeholders on each side jumping on board.

The revenue streams for the company come from membership fees from practitioners, which Bill says “is one whole dollar a day,” along with advertising obtained from the website and donations.

Bill is optimistic about the future of Asheville Natural Wellness. “We hope to partner with others for palliative and hospice care,” he says. “And we want to partner with other businesses with the highest levels of integrity to add to that web of wellness. We can partner with organic farms, restaurants that serve local organic food, B&B’s that offer healthful meals. We have lots of possibilities.”

Bill says, too, that he hopes to take Asheville Natural Wellness into other markets. “This is a model that can be duplicated all over the country,” he says. “We’re just getting started.”

For more on Asheville Natural Wellness, visit ashevillenaturalwellness.com.