Who Visits CAM Practitioners?

Who Visits CAM Practitioners?

BOSTON--Insurance coverage of complementary andalternative medicine (CAM) may lead to an increased frequency of using thesetherapies, according to researchers at the Center for Alternative MedicineResearch and Education at Harvard's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.Results of the random telephone survey investigating who visits CAMpractitioners is published in the Feb. 11 issue of the Archives ofInternal Medicine (162, 3:281-87, 2002) (http://archinte.ama-assn.org).

According to researchers, U.S. patients made an estimated 629 million visitsto CAM practitioners in 1997. To determine the factors that led these patientsto visit CAM practitioners, researchers conducted a random telephone survey of2,055 U.S. households. Of these, an estimated 44 percent used at least one CAMtherapy in 1997, with 52 percent of those seeing at least one CAM practitionerthat year.

Patients who visited conventional medicine providers the most that same yearwere likely to visit a CAM practitioner as well. In addition, female patientsand those with diabetes, cancer or back and neck problems were most likely tovisit a CAM practitioner.

However, those with full or partial insurance coverage for CAM therapies weremost likely to make frequent visits to CAM practitioners (more than seven visitsper year). Frequent CAM users were also more likely to use the therapy foroverall wellness or for back and neck problems. A "conservativeextrapolation to national estimates" suggested that 8.9 percent of the U.S.population (17.5 million adults) accounted for more than three-quarters of the629 million visits to CAM providers in 1997. Researchers concluded that a smallminority of patients accounted for the majority of visits made to CAMpractitioners, and the extent of insurance coverage indicated who the frequentCAM users were.