In 2007, adults in the U.S. spent $33.9 billion on visits to CAM practitioners and purchases of CAM products, classes, and materials. Nearly 2/3 of the total costs that adults spent on CAM were for self-care purchases of CAM products, classes, and materials during the past 12 months, compared with about 1/3 spent on practitioner visits. 38 million adults made an estimated 354 million visits to practitioners of CAM. About 3/4 of both visits to CAM practitioners and total costs spent on CAM practitioners were associated with manipulative and body-based therapies. A total of 44% of all out-of-pocket costs for CAM, or about $14.8 billion, was spent on the purchase of non-vitamin, non-mineral, natural products. Charts and tables.
Integration of complementary and alternative medicine therapies (CAM) with conventional medicine is occurring in hospitals and physicians offices, health maintenance organizations (HMOs) are covering CAM therapies, insurance coverage for CAM is increasing, and integrative medicine centers and clinics are being established, many with close ties to medical schools and teaching hospitals. In determining what care to provide, the goal should be comprehensive care that uses the best scientific evidence available regarding benefits and harm, encourages a focus on healing, recognizes the importance of compassion and caring, emphasizes the centrality of relationship-based care, encourages patients to share in decision making about therapeutic options, and promotes choices in care that can include complementary therapies where appropriate. Numerous approaches to delivering integrative medicine have evolved. Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the United States identifies an urgent need for health systems research that focuses on identifying the elements of these models, the outcomes of care delivered in these models, and whether these models are cost-effective when compared to conventional practice settings. It outlines areas of research in convention and CAM therapies, ways of integrating these therapies, development of curriculum that provides further education to health professionals, and an amendment of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act to improve quality, accurate labeling, research into use of supplements, incentives for privately funded research into their efficacy, and consumer protection against all potential hazards.
Integration of complementary and alternative medicine therapies (CAM) with conventional medicine is occurring in hospitals and physicians offices, health maintenance organizations (HMOs) are covering CAM therapies, insurance coverage for CAM is increasing, and integrative medicine centers and clinics are being established, many with close ties to medical schools and teaching hospitals. In determining what care to provide, the goal should be comprehensive care that uses the best scientific evidence available regarding benefits and harm, encourages a focus on healing, recognizes the importance of compassion and caring, emphasizes the centrality of relationship-based care, encourages patients to share in decision making about therapeutic options, and promotes choices in care that can include complementary therapies where appropriate. Numerous approaches to delivering integrative medicine have evolved. Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the United States identifies an urgent need for health systems research that focuses on identifying the elements of these models, the outcomes of care delivered in these models, and whether these models are cost-effective when compared to conventional practice settings. It outlines areas of research in convention and CAM therapies, ways of integrating these therapies, development of curriculum that provides further education to health professionals, and an amendment of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act to improve quality, accurate labeling, research into use of supplements, incentives for privately funded research into their efficacy, and consumer protection against all potential hazards.
Researching Complementary and Alternative Medicine provides a valuable and timely resource for those looking to understand, initiate and expand CAM research. This collection brings together leading international CAM researchers with backgrounds and expertise in a variety of areas including health social science, qualitative methodology, general practice, health services research and public health. Drawing upon their own research work and experience, the contributors explain and review core methods and research issues pertinent to contemporary CAM and its future development. Topics discussed include: the use and limitation of evidence in CAM research the issues facing practitioners (GPs, therapists, nurses, etc) who wish to conduct research how and why qualitative methods should be combined alongside quantitative methods to help explore CAM how the randomised control trial (RCT) method relates to CAM the future direction of CAM research in terms of public health and policy-related agendas. Researching Complementary and Alternative Medicine is essential reading for students, academics and researchers in CAM, health studies, medicine, nursing, medical sociology and public health. It will also appeal to CAM and allied health practitioners.
Stepping back from the immediate demands of policy-making, this book creates a complex and informative picture of the different social forces at play in the integration of CAM with orthodox medicine.
Rising medical costs have become a national issue in the U.S. (Hulme and Long 2005, Seifert and Rukavina 2006, Wright and Rogers 2011) and medical debt and medical bankruptcy have become more common (Seifert and Rukavina 2006, Wright and Rogers 2011). Meanwhile, CAM use has increased in the U.S. (Ben-Ary et al. 2011, Ditte et al. 2011, Dolder et al. 2003, and Wetzel et al. 2003). This study used qualitative methods to identify how rising medical costs and the rise in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use were affecting participants. Particularly, data were collected in order to identify whether participants were utilizing CAM to combat rising medical costs. This study also explored how participant interactions and attitudes influenced their health and healing behaviors. These topics were explored from the perspective of participants with various social roles within and outside of the health care industry: consumers, physicians, nurses, and a CAM practitioner. Despite the fact that CAM is typically outside of the health care industry, which is considered the norm, most of the participants recognized the legitimacy and effectiveness of CAM. Even medical professionals, who are educated in the dominance of the health care industry and traditional Western medicine, had positive views of CAM use. Participants also described that they, or others, were utilizing CAM as tool in order to combat negative aspects of the health care industry. The negative aspects that were described by participants were medical expenses, overmedication, somatic therapies, and difficulties in communicating. Although not every one of these issues was overtly related to costs, many responses reflected a cost component. Thus, CAM is utilized by participants as a tool to combat negative aspects of the health care industry---especially medical costs. Despite the fact that CAM can be utilized in this way, CAM is not fully integrated into the health care industry. The exclusion, or rarity, of CAM use within the industry is most likely a business decision by corporate elites in the industry to maintain control and profitability---decisions which profoundly influence the health of the population.
The rapid growth of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) demands that the public, the medical world, social scientists, the media, and governments pay attention. People are questioning the limits of what modern medicine can accomplish and seeking additional ways to manage their health. While many are enthusiastically adopting complementary and alternative forms of medicine, others are more sceptical. Physicians' attitudes are in transition, and governments are pondering where this increasingly important phenomenon fits into the health care system. The challenge is to keep pace with the changing ways that people view health and illness, take reposibility for themselves, and incorporate CAM into their health care. This text brings together for the first time a wide range of leading North American and European social scientists to identify who uses CAM, why they use it, and how they find out about it. Presenting research from psychology, sociology, anthropology and public health, they alert us to the current context of CAM use and provide new models and techniques for understanding its future place in health care.
This book explores the challenging issues associated with complementary and alternative medicine in the context of the social, political and cultural influences that shape people's health. Divided clearly into three sections, this book: sets out the general context of social change, consumption and debate around the rise of public interest in CAM argues for and against different classifications of CAM critically assesses the importance of ethics and values to CAM practice and how these inform what practitioners do focuses on the question of what people want, the changing and contested nature of health, and the nature of personal and social factors associated with the use of CAM, leading to a focus on 'therapeutic relationships' examines the diversity of settings in which CAM takes place and the social, political and economic milieu in which CAM is provided and used. Together with its accompanying text, Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Structures and Safeguards, it forms the core text for the Open University course K221 Perspectives on Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
