BOSTON--Insurance coverage of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) may lead to an increased frequency of using these therapies, according to researchers at the Center for Alternative Medicine Research and Education at Harvard's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Results of the random telephone survey investigating who visits CAM practitioners is published in the Feb. 11 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine (162, 3:281-87, 2002) (http://archinte.ama-assn.org).
According to researchers, U.S. patients made an estimated 629 million visits to CAM practitioners in 1997. To determine the factors that led these patients to visit CAM practitioners, researchers conducted a random telephone survey of 2,055 U.S. households. Of these, an estimated 44 percent used at least one CAM therapy in 1997, with 52 percent of those seeing at least one CAM practitioner that year.
Patients who visited conventional medicine providers the most that same year were likely to visit a CAM practitioner as well. In addition, female patients and those with diabetes, cancer or back and neck problems were most likely to visit a CAM practitioner.
However, those with full or partial insurance coverage for CAM therapies were most likely to make frequent visits to CAM practitioners (more than seven visits per year). Frequent CAM users were also more likely to use the therapy for overall wellness or for back and neck problems. A "conservative extrapolation to national estimates" suggested that 8.9 percent of the U.S. population (17.5 million adults) accounted for more than three-quarters of the 629 million visits to CAM providers in 1997. Researchers concluded that a small minority of patients accounted for the majority of visits made to CAM practitioners, and the extent of insurance coverage indicated who the frequent CAM users were.
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