How Pivio works

Pivio substantially reduces healthcare claims costs and improves engagement and productivity for its partners: 

  • Health Plans/Payers
  • Health & Hospital Systems
  • Employers
  • ACOs/Primary Care Providers

It achieves savings in the best way imaginable: by helping those with costly, chronic illnesses transform their health. 

The principle behind Pivio is simple: If members, employees, and patients stay well, healthcare costs stay low.

A powerful catalyst for behavior change.

Pivio provides an ecosystem of learning and support resources, focusing on the six key pillars of lifestyle medicine:

  • 1:1 coaching or group sessions facilitated by trained and certified health coaches 
  • User-friendly web application that serves as a hub and guides participants through the program 
  • Edutainment-style video content to teach participants how to apply lifestyle medicine to their daily lives and build lasting, healthy habits
  • Journal to track progress and reflect on the journey toward better health 
  • Cookbook and online meal planner with over 2,000 healthy, nutritious recipes
  • Educational materials (such as articles, fact sheets, and “explainer” videos) on topics related to lifestyle changes and healthy living
    • 12 core program videos
    • 18+ explainer videos
    • 10+ behavior change videos
    • 60+ fact sheets

Easy for Physicians, Life-Changing for Patients

Learn how Lifestyle Medicine Institute (LMI) can partner with you to launch Pivio within your practice.

Pivio partners receive a full turn key solution:

  • Marketing and communications tools to promote Pivio in your organization
  • Billing support leveraging reimbursement codes
  • Training for your facilitator or the option to use an LMI-trained facilitator
  • Administrative and operational support for implementation

Download our whitepaper “Pivot Point–Transforming our health-care system through personalized lifestyle medicine”.

The Pivio experience

Proven to improve health

Pivio addresses the root cause of chronic disease—lifestyle choices. It is built on the foundation of the Complete Health Improvement Program (CHIP), which is scientifically proven to prevent, treat, and reverse chronic disease through lifestyle changes. More than 40 peer-reviewed research papers document its effectiveness. 

By changing their lifestyles, participants get healthy—and stay healthy. Four years after starting a lifestyle medicine program from LMI (Lifestyle Medicine Institute—the company that brings you Pivio), the majority continue to show improvements in biometric markers.

For many participants, the program is a turning point. It empowers them to take charge of the way they live and reclaim their health. Most find the results so transforming, they stick with it for the long term—adopting it as a way of life.  

Over three decades, LMI has helped tens of thousands of participants worldwide to regain health and vitality. 

In 2020, Lifestyle Medicine Institute’s lifestyle medicine program was the first to earn the Certified Lifestyle Medicine Program designation from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine.

How lifestyle affects healthcare costs

Chronic diseases account for more than 80% of all health care costs. 

For every $1 your organization spends on a Lifestyle Medicine Institute lifestyle medicine program, it will save $2 in health claims costs.

SELF-INSURED EMPLOYERS SAVE ON HEALTH CARE CLAIM COSTS

If your organization assumes financial risk for the medical and prescription drug benefits it provides to employees, it will lower that risk by deploying Pivio.

Reduced health claim costs

Pivio can lower your organization’s expenses for medical and pharmacy claims. It helps employees with chronic illness—and those whose lifestyles place them at high risk of illness—to reduce their need for medical care and prescription medications. As their health improves, claims decrease.

Higher productivity

By preventing, treating, or even reversing disease, Pivio makes employees more productive. They take fewer sick days. Simply put, they get more done, which helps the organization’s bottom line.

Elevated morale

There are other benefits, too—assets that don’t show up on the balance sheet. Often Pivio participants become fiercely loyal to the organization that offered them the program. Their loyalty is an expression of gratitude for the gift of restored health. 

HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS LOWER COSTS AND SUPPORT HEALTHIER COMMUNITIES

Networks of clinics and hospitals that adopt Pivio strengthen the health of both employees and patients.

Reduced per-patient costs

For health care systems with risk-based payment models—those with a fixed per-patient budget—Pivio is an ideal solution to manage and keep utilization costs down. As chronically ill patients achieve better health through lifestyle changes, they need less medical care.

Reputation-building results

Because lifestyle medicine programs from LMI work so well in preventing, treating, and reversing chronic disease, health care systems that adopt them gain a reputation for achieving the best possible patient outcomes.

Community connections

Pivio brings people together. Patients and employees who take part in the program forge close bonds as they support one another’s achievements. 

PHYSICIANS ACHIEVE GOALS IN PATIENTS’ PLANS OF CARE

As a physician, Pivio can help you optimize patient outcomes by addressing lifestyle issues that underlie many chronic illnesses. 

Effective treatment

Pharmacological solutions to chronic disease are costly, have many side effects and often can fail to yield the desired clinical results. CHIP sets patients on the road to better health and wellbeing by addressing the root cause of chronic disease – lifestyle.

Easy to implement

CHIP offers a turnkey solution that’s easy to integrate into your practice. You can simply refer patients and monitor their progress at appointments.

After you become a partner

As a Pivio partner, your organization can realize savings on healthcare costs within months. Participants see cost savings, too. Lifestyle Medicine Institute (LMI) works with you to scale the program to the ideal size, so your organization will see the greatest possible financial and clinical benefit. 

A Lifestyle Medicine Institute client solutions and engagement manager supports your organization.

Your client solutions and engagement manager is dedicated to helping you launch and run your program successfully. They will guide you in reaching out to individuals who could benefit the most from participation.

They will also work with you to establish the Pivio Joint Operating Council. The Council will team up with you to set program goals and strategies, implement the Pivio program, and provide ongoing operational and marketing support as follows:

  • Strategize how to build awareness of the program within your organization
  • Brainstorm recruiting and enrollment tactics to fill Pivio cohorts
  • Share best practices for activating Pivio
  • Review an operational check list of items that needs to be addressed before launch

You and Lifestyle Medicine Institute together determine who should be your program’s qualified facilitator.

For the cohort-based program, the facilitator organizes and runs the group sessions for program participants. Lifestyle Medicine Institute (LMI) will train and certify an individual within your organization to run the program. Alternatively, LMI can provide a facilitator. 

LMI teaches facilitators about lifestyle medicine and provides techniques to keep participants engaged and advancing toward their goals.


Each participant completes health status assessments and biometric testing within the first week of the program.

Initial assessments and bloodwork  provide a baseline measurement of each participant’s health status. Among values tested are the following:

  • Total, HDL (Total to HDL ratio), and LDL cholesterol
  • Triglycerides
  • Fasting plasma glucose
  • Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c)
  • C-reactive protein
  • Blood pressure
  • Resting heart rate
  • Weight
  • Waist circumference
  • Body mass index (BMI)

Results of biometric tests and an accompanying health status assessment identify areas where participants need to focus their efforts to improve their health.


Participants begin the Pivio journey.

For the cohort-based program, participants meet every week—for a total of 12 weeks and 18 sessions—as a group with a facilitator. They learn lifestyle-changing techniques, receive support for modifying behaviors, ask questions, and discuss their progress. They take steps to change habits in 6 targeted areas

Pivio’s educational resources guide participants through the program, keep them engaged, and position them for success. 

Each cohort becomes a close-knit community, with individuals supporting their peers’ achievements.


Recheck biometrics in 10 weeks.

Measure how participants’ health has improved. As participants progress in the Pivio program, they will continue to see gains in their health. At the same time, they will develop lasting habits that keep them healthier for years to come.


Launch another Pivio cohort.

More than 85% of participants in a Lifestyle Medicine Institute program are so satisfied with their results, they recommend the program to their colleagues.

Profile of success: Lee Health

Community-owned health system in Southwest Florida

Average after 12 months, 28 participants

Savings on medical claims:

$2,500 saved per participant

$1.85 saved for every dollar invested

Weight loss:

17.1 lbs.

Body mass index:

6.7 point improvement

LDL cholesterol:

20.7 point reduction

Total cholesterol:

27.7 point reduction

Blood pressure:

Below 120/80

Program investment

Investing in Pivio is an affordable way to manage healthcare costs. At the same time, the program helps employees and patients prevent, treat, or assist in the reversal of many chronic diseases.

Components of the Pivio investment 

  • Intellectual property license
  • Administrative support
  • Laboratory tests 
  • Program facilitation (can be provided either by your organization or by a trained behavior change health coach from Lifestyle Medicine Institute)
  • Facilitator training (if your organization chooses to have its own staff trained and certified to run Pivio programs)

More information

Want more proof of Lifestyle Medicine Institute’s results?

Published scientific papers deliver statistics and case studies about the program’s success. Review them to find out more about how Lifestyle Medicine Institute’s methods prevent, treat, and assist in the reversal of chronic diseases—and help organizations reduce costs.

Find out how your organization can activate Pivio.