Alternative Care Gets Less Fringey

Bill George and I are having a hard time agreeing on terms. The former CEO and chairman of Medtronic found that acupuncture and healing-touch treatments reduced his anxiety and eliminated nausea and pain before and after his two recent surgeries at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis. But when I call these techniques “complementary and alternative medicine,” as doctors do, he bristles.

“I believe what Abbott Northwestern does is integrative medicine,” George says. “I consider alternative therapies to be limited to fringe elements.” (George and his wife, Penny, have given Abbott $2.5 million to help fund the hospital’s Institute for Health and Healing, which describes itself as a provider of integrative medicine on an inpatient and outpatient basis.)

Our conversation illustrates the tension that still surrounds complementary medicine as it moves away from “the fringe” and enters the doctor’s office. Call it holistic, alternative, or integrative, no one questions the popularity of this kind of care, which includes everything from provider-based therapies like chiropractic treatments to self-administered herbal supplements like St. John’s wort. Some 36 percent of adults in the United States turn to these alternative therapies, most often using them in conjunction with conventional Western medicine to treat chronic aches and pains, colds, anxiety or depression, and gastrointestinal and sleeping problems. Already in 1997, according to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health, health care consumers in the U.S. were spending as much as $47 billion on alternative therapies, much of that out of pocket.

Growing consumer interest is one reason Congress established the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine and, through it, began funding clinical trials on everything from the safety of herbal supplements to the effectiveness of massage therapy. Many medical doctors and others trained in conventional health care have questioned the safety and efficacy of alternative therapies. But more and more, these treatments are options that mainstream clinics, hospitals, and insurers integrate into the care they provide and cover.

Care Meets Caring

What does this mean for you as a patient? More of a “whole person” approach to care that attempts to harness the power of your mind and spirit to help heal your body—a connection that conventional medicine has ignored for too long, says Dr. Brent Bauer, director of the complementary and integrative medicine program at the Mayo Clinic.

“Seeing someone who takes the time to listen to you, to ask about your family, your diet, is very appealing, because that’s what medicine used to do,” he says.

In a hospital setting, complementary-care therapists primarily provide various means of reassuring human contact and relaxation, such as massage or music therapy, to help patients manage the side effects of other procedures and drugs. “Our areas of greatest referral are around pain management, anxiety, nausea, and sleeplessness,” says Lori Knutson, RN, director of Abbott Northwestern’s Institute for Health and Healing. “We’re being pressured by the consumer to figure out different ways of dealing with things that conventional medicine doesn’t necessarily know how to take care of.”

Abbott’s inpatient integrative care program, started in 2003, consists of a team from each of the hospital’s “centers of excellence”—the cardiac care program, for instance—headed by a nurse clinician who is also trained in practices such as guided imagery, aromatherapy, and acupressure. That nurse partners with an acupuncturist, massage therapist, and music therapist. Together with physicians and patients, the team decides who could best benefit from these therapies. Patients can also request complementary therapies. Abbott patients who use the therapies give them a 98 percent satisfaction rating, Knutson says.