CHI Health Care

Our Mission

CHI Health Care’s mission is to catalyze core change toward a comprehensive healthcare system that fosters optimal health for all populations.

Our Vision

Health and healing are the guiding forces in health care.

Our Journey

CHI Health Care, established in 2013, is a non-profit  501(c)(3) health care organization, that created and piloted a new model of care that challenged the traditional health system and its practices.

CHI was founded on the belief that health and wellness are best achieved by offering patients and their loved ones a comprehensive, team based, highly coordinated care. CHI piloted a model that is an intensively collaborative blending of high tech western medicine together with a wide array evidence based “high touch, low tech” healing disciplines, as well as nutrition and lifestyle education and coaching.  CHI’s team model included primary care, clinical psychology, naturopathic medicine, acupuncture, chiropractic, integrative nutrition, health coaching, massage therapy, yoga therapy, and energy healing. Integrated into our personalized care plans, these services were designed to heal and strengthen the mind, body, and spirit of each individual, while enhancing quality of life and helping each patient to achieve their personal health goals.

Importantly, CHI was piloted on the principle that health care is better served by a payment system that rewards quality of care and outcomes, better known as Value Based Care. This is different than the more common Fee for Service payment system which incentivizes high numbers of visits and procedures over quality and accountability.

The CHI Health Care model places a high priority on spending time with patients to truly get to know them. There is growing evidence that shows when practitioners build a strong, consistent relationship with their patients, health outcomes are markedly better. It takes time to get to know someone’s fears, hopes, goals, challenges, support systems, environment, and community. From this comprehensive perspective, optimal health is created through a patient/practitioner partnership  that inspires one toward health rather than dictates checklists about health in ways they may find alienating or impossible to follow.

We found our model could “bend the cost curve” of rising health care costs while at the same time our practitioners experienced less feelings of “burn out” and higher fulfillment. They could do more of what they were trained to do practicing in a way that was patient centered, relationship based, and highly collaborative.

The data we collected during our 6-year pilot demonstrated that 95% of patients were highly satisfied with our care and that our patients used fewer urgent care services, less prescription medication, and a had lower hospital admission and readmission rates compared to comparable conventional practices.

CHI Health Care is passionate about continuing its mission to transform healthcare.  We are moving forward with a wealth of information about how to implement and operationalize innovative models of care.  Now that our clinical pilot has ended,  we are focusing our time and energy on educating the policy makers and healthcare influencers about the need for broader access to like mind-minded models of care and payment reforms that necessary for these models to be sustainable.

Board of Directors

Ilana Bar-Levav, MD

Co-founder, CHI Health Care
Bethesda, MD

David Fogel, MD

Co-founder & President, CHI Health Care
Bethesda, MD

Tom Granatir

Sr. Vice President, American Board of Medical Specialties
Chicago, IL

Debbie Schwartz

Sr. V.P., Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Chevy Chase, MD

John Siegler, MBA

Managing Director, Cascadia Capital, LLC
Seattle, WA

CHI Team

David Fogel, M.D., Co-Founder and President of CHI Health Care

Dr. Fogel is board certified in Internal Medicine with additional specialty training in mind/body-focused individual and group psychotherapy. Early in his career he served in the National Health Service Corps and was on the staff of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine providing primary care to medically underserved inner city Baltimore residents.  In 2012, Dr. Fogel, together with his wife Ilana Bar-Levav M.D., co-founded CHI Health Care (formerly the Casey Health Institute), a public, non-profit, interdisciplinary Integrative primary care center in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. CHI Health Care piloted a six-year clinical practice program that pioneered a “conscious” model of healthcare using a highly collaborative team of practitioners consisting of Internal Medicine, Family Medicine, Acupuncture, Chiropractic, Naturopathic Medicine, Psychology, Massage, Reiki, Nutrition, and Yoga Therapy.   CHI Health Care was also on the national forefront of Integrative centers focused on incorporating value-based, population health business models that allow access to high quality, cost effective Integrative care across a broad socioeconomic spectrum of the community. The clinical arm of CHI Health Care closed in 2019 and the organization now works on health policy, advocacy, and Whole Health systems change “at scale”.  Dr. Fogel holds a B.A. from Hampshire College, is a graduate of The George Washington University School of Medicine, and completed his Internal Medicine residency at the Washington Hospital Center in downtown Washington D.C. He lives in the metropolitan Washington D.C. area with his wife. He has three grown children living in various parts of the globe, and one adorable grandson. 

Tracy Bowen, Consultant, CHI Health Care:

Tracy is a seasoned nonprofit executive with a successful background building and managing partner coalitions. During her career leading and advising organizations, she has developed proven skills in coalition building, advocacy, government affairs, public relations, communications, strategic planning, human resources, board and organizational development, fundraising and financial management. Tracy is currently a Consultant with CHI Health Care, and previously served as Executive Director for the Integrative Health Policy Consortium. Tracy’s passion to be engaged with health care transformation was sparked by her experiences during her first early career as an emergency medical technician and has been nurtured through her lifelong commitment to integrative and holistic health.  Tracy has worked independently as a consultant and strategic advisor for numerous organizations, including Center for a New American Dream, Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, Sustainable Water Resources Roundtable, and Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure. Tracy served 12 years as Executive Director of the Alice Ferguson Foundation, growing the organization ten-fold and launching the highly successful multi-sector, cross-jurisdictional Trash Free Potomac Watershed Initiative through which she was able to get 5 state governors and 167 local and national legislators to work together on cleaning up the Potomac Watershed. She also initiated the development of the Potomac Watershed Study Center, an environmental education complex designed to meet the Living Building Challenge. Tracy began her tenure in Washington, D.C. working in electoral politics, fundraising and public relations with U.S. Senator Carl Levin, the Podesta Associates, and many national and local electoral campaigns. Tracy holds a B.A. in International Relations from Michigan State University’s James Madison College and a Nonprofit Management Certificate from Georgetown University.

Margaret Chesney, Ph.D., Advisor, CHI Health Care; Professor of Medicine at UCSF

Dr. Chesney is Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Medicine at UCSF, and former director of the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine. She was the first Deputy Director and served as the Acting Director of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She serves as a volunteer advisor to CHI Health Care. Margaret’s interest in policy began when health promotion programs she developed with funding from the NIH, which showed major reductions in risk and improved health status, were not implemented. To learn how to translate research into practice, she went to Washington, DC and served as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Advancing Health, supported by the MacArthur and Robert Wood Johnson Foundations. She then worked two years as a Senior Advisor focusing on policy at the NIH Office for Research on Women’s Health. While at NCCIH, she also served as a Senior Advisor to the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research. Since returning to UCSF, she has since continued her health promotion and disease prevention research, focusing on health and well-being across the lifespan, particularly in women, seniors, Veterans, and the underserved.  Dr. Chesney is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and has served as president of the Society for Health Psychology, Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research and American Psychosomatic Society.  She recently served as Chair of the Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine and Health, and currently serves as an advisor on policy and health systems change to the Integrative Health Policy Consortium.

Mary Jo Hoeksema, Consultant, CHI Health Care

Mary Jo is the Director of Government Affairs for the Population Association of America and Association of Population Centers. In addition to representing PAA and APC, Ms. Hoeksema has co-directed The Census Project since 2008. Since 2020, Ms. Hoeksema has been serving as an advisor to the Integrative Health Policy Consortium. Prior to 2004, Ms. Hoeksema worked at the National Institutes of Health for approximately 10 years, as the Legislative Officer at the National Institute on Aging, Legislative Officer at the (former) National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and as the Special Assistant to the Director of the NIH Office of Policy of Extramural Research Administration. Ms. Hoeksema served as a Legislative Assistant for Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro and Legislative Correspondent for U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman. Ms. Hoeksema has a Master of Public Administration from the George Washington University and is a former Presidential Management Fellow. She is the current president of the Association of Public Data Users and Former Chair of the Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts Associates Board and Board member (2006-2012).

Sandy Wiggins, Consultant, CHI Health Care; Chief Learning Officer, Future Tide Partners

Sandy currently serves as Chief Learning Officer for Future Tide Partners, an initiative of Rising Tide Capital with a mission to equip individuals and institutions to shift culture, policy, and capital towards an inclusive, flourishing future economy. He is also Principal of Consilience LLC, a national consultancy with a mission to foster environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable communities. He has been a pioneer and central figure in the global green building movement, the local economies movement, and the impact investment movement.  His skilled facilitation has given birth to sustainability plans for municipalities and institutions, institutional impact investment plans, regional public policy initiatives and sustainable local economic development plans.  Sandy served as Chair of BALLE (now CommonFuture.co) through a decade of transformation and growth. He is also Past Chair of the U.S. Green Building Council (usgbc.org), Founding Chair of the Green Business Certification Institute (gbci.org) and Founding Chair of the Philadelphia based Green Building United (greenbuildingunited.org). He is also a certified breathworker, psycho-spiritual facilitator and meditation teacher.