Acupuncture Meets the Hospital: Integrative Pain Medicine | Dr. Bonakdar

Robert Bonakdar, MD — Director of Pain Management at the Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine in La Jolla — joins brother doctors Dr. Erik Lundquist and Dr. Davin Lundquist (fellow Occidental College alums) to share how he built an insurance-based integrative pain program inside a major health system — and kept it thriving for 25 years with acupuncture, biofeedback, and nutrition working alongside conventional care. In this episode: • From house calls in Tehran to a fellowship across Asia: the journey that convinced him Eastern and Western medicine belong in the same hospital • The labyrinth-walk flyer that changed everything — showing up post-call to an event he couldn't explain and leaving with a fellowship invented on the spot • "High-tech, high-touch": why imaging revenue is what keeps the yoga classes, acupuncturists, and mind-body therapists paid • Staying insurance-based on purpose — "integrative medicine should be for everyone," not a $1,200 cash consult • The oversight model: supervising acupuncturists and biofeedback therapists as the billing MD — and why the one-man band is a formula for burnout • What Taiwan's health card system gets right, gut-brain medicine for migraine, and staving off burnout with morning Tai Chi and light-bulb moments Learn more about Dr. Bonakdar: https://www.scripps.org/physicians/59... — The Root Cause: Business of Medicine is hosted by brother doctors Dr. Erik Lundquist and Dr. Davin Lundquist — real conversations about leaving the conventional model and building a practice, and a life, around root-cause medicine. 🎧 Listen to the podcast: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0YlRaeP... All platforms: https://trcbom.transistor.fm/ 👉 Subscribe for new episodes every week.