Like anything that starts with a grass roots movement, it eventually starts to divide. Most functional medicine clinics started in a grass roots, boot-strapping fashion. As you grow, you will face a dilemma.
Your clinic operates inside two parallel economies:
- One built on outcomes
- One built on optics
Both are growing. Both influence patient expectations. Both shape the future of your clinic.
But they run on different incentives—and they’re beginning to pull practitioners, patients, and the industry itself in different directions.
The Outcomes Economy
This is the world most of us practitioners actually live in.
It’s the exam room.
It’s the follow-up visits.
It’s the messy middle between intention and implementation.
The primary currency here is not attention. It’s change over time.
Health improves slowly. Behavior shifts unevenly. Systems rebuild with friction. And progress often looks nonlinear before it looks successful.
In the outcomes economy:
- Results are tied to patient readiness and participation
- Care requires iteration, not just insight
- Protocols evolve as the person evolves
- Responsibility is shared, not outsourced
This work is deeply human. And deeply complex.
It’s also labor intensive. Difficult to scale. Hard to package. And often resistant to clean, compelling narratives.
A practitioner can spend months helping a patient rebuild sleep, stabilize blood sugar, and increase capacity—only for that transformation to look underwhelming compared to a 30-second “before and after” story online.
The outcomes economy produces real health change. But it rarely produces immediate visibility.
The Optics Economy
Running alongside it is a second, faster-moving system.
This one is built on messaging, authority signals, and attention.
Ideas travel faster than outcomes. Certainty travels faster than nuance. And simplified frameworks travel farther than complex systems.
In the optics economy:
- Messaging is prioritized over longitudinal data
- Confidence is rewarded more than accuracy
- Clarity outperforms complexity
- Personal brands often outpace clinical infrastructure
This economy is not inherently deceptive. In many ways, it’s necessary.
It introduces people to functional medicine.
It translates complicated ideas into accessible language.
It gives practitioners a way to grow and reach new audiences.
But it operates on compressed timelines.
The algorithm favors the immediate.
Biology operates on the gradual.
And that tension matters.
Because while optics can accelerate awareness, it can also distort expectations.
The Practitioner Experience
Most clinicians now operate at the intersection of both economies.
They’re trying to:
- Deliver nuanced, individualized care
- Communicate it clearly enough to attract patients
- Compete in a landscape shaped by simplified (often times, over simplified) messaging
This creates a quiet but persistent strain.
There’s pressure to sound more certain than reality allows.
Pressure to package complexity into promises.
Pressure to keep up with voices that appear to move faster and speak louder.
Meanwhile, the day-to-day clinical reality remains unchanged:
- Patients struggle with implementation
- Progress takes time
- Outcomes depend on factors outside the practitioner’s control
When optics begin to outpace outcomes, practitioners feel it as:
- Burnout
- Cynicism
- Or withdrawal from visibility altogether
None of those responses solve the structural issue. They simply reflect it.
The Patient Experience
Patients are increasingly shaped by the optics economy before they ever enter a clinic.
They arrive expecting:
- Clear root-cause identification
- Linear improvement
- Fast resolution
Then they encounter the outcomes economy:
- Trial and error
- Behavioral resistance
- Systems that take time to rebuild
This mismatch can create:
- Frustration
- Dropout
- Loss of trust
Not because functional medicine doesn’t work—but because the expectations were set in a different economy than the care itself.
The Risk to Your Clinic
The danger is not that optics exists. The danger is when optics detaches from outcomes.
When that happens:
- Messaging drifts from reality
- Expectations distort
- Practitioner credibility erodes
And eventually, patients begin to question the entire model.
Functional medicine has always positioned itself as a systems-based alternative to symptom management.
But systems require alignment. This isn’t just physiologically. It’s about your messaging and story telling too.
If the incentives shaping how care is communicated are different from the incentives shaping how care is delivered, the gap widens over time.
And gaps like that don’t stay hidden. They show up in patient results, practitioner sustainability, and public trust.
The Path Forward
This isn’t a call to reject visibility, marketing, or growth.
Both economies are necessary.
Optics brings awareness.
Outcomes produce change.
The future of your clinic depends on reconnecting them.
That means:
- Messaging grounded in clinical reality
- Expectations aligned with physiological timelines
- Growth strategies that support—not replace—care delivery
The next phase of your clinic won’t be defined by who has the most followers or the most protocols.
It will be defined by who can align:
- Communication with reality
- Growth with sustainability
- Visibility with responsibility
A Different Way to Think About the Divide
Your clinic no longer has to be divided by philosophy or modality.
It’s divided by incentive structures.
One economy is built around patient outcomes.
The other is built around perceived authority.
Both will continue to exist.
Both will continue to grow.
And neither is going away.
The real question isn’t which one wins.
It’s whether the two stay connected.
Because when optics reflects outcomes, the field grows with integrity.
When optics drifts too far from outcomes, expectations distort, practitioners burn out, and trust erodes.
This is where marketing—real marketing, responsible marketing—matters more than most practitioners realize.
Marketing isn’t just about lead flow.
It’s about alignment.
Alignment between:
- What you say and what actually happens in care
- What patients expect and what physiology requires
- How your practice grows and how your systems sustain that growth
When marketing is disconnected from clinical reality, it creates short-term attention and long-term friction.
When marketing is grounded in the realities of implementation, behavior change, and systems-based care, it does something different.
It attracts the right patients.
Sets accurate expectations.
And allows practitioners to grow without compromising the integrity of their work.
This is the work that matters in the current phase of functional medicine—not just getting louder, but getting clearer.
For practitioners thinking seriously about the future of this field, it’s worth paying attention to who is helping bridge that gap.
If you’re building a functional or integrative practice and want your messaging to reflect the depth, responsibility, and reality of the care you deliver, take some time to explore what Functional Medicine Marketing is doing.
Because in an industry now shaped by two competing economies, the practices that thrive long term will be the ones whose marketing is aligned with outcomes—not just optics.
This article was written by Dr. Kurt Perkins. If you’d like to learn more about marketing for functional medicine clinics, click the link.