Health Care

Policy-related issues of health care and the proliferation of integrative medicine, including examples of best practice models.

• East Meets West: How Integrative Medicine is Changing Health Care
  A marriage of conventional Western medicine with other healing modalities, including complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), integrative medicine (IM) neither rejects conventional medicine nor uncritically embraces alternative therapies. Rather, IM can be described as a practice that "cherry picks" the best and scientifically supported therapies of both systems. This article offers a look into IM and what it means for the future of health care.
  
• Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare
  Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare, produced and directed by Matthew Heineman and Susan Froemke, highlights the current cost and unsustainability of healthcare, but also the potential solution of a more integrative, high-touch, and low-cost intervention.
  
• The ACCAHC on "Meeting the Nation's Primary Care Needs"
  Michael Goldstein, PhD, from the Fielding School of Public Health at UCLA and Mr. John Weeks, Executive Director of the Academic Consortium for Complementary and Alternative Health Care (ACCAHC), address the need for more primary care providers in the March 2013 white paper "Meeting the Nation's Primary Care Needs."
  
• Human Capital Blog on Strengthening Integrative and Preventive Medical Education in 2013
  Jamila Williams, MD, MPH and Sangita Chakrabarty, MD, MSPH, FACOEM emphasize the complementarity of preventive and Integrative Medicine, and showcases an institution that is striving to improve programs in the education of these fields in 2013.
  
• David Mercier, LAc on Inclusion of Licensed Acupuncturists in Medicare
  David Mercier, LAc of Shore Health Center for Integrative Medicine and John Weeks of The Integrator Blog offer their insights on the significance of including licensed acupuncturists in Medicare.
  
• Acupuncture One Step Closer to Medicare Inclusion
  In February 2013, over 25,000 Americans have signed the White House petition to recognize acupuncturists as a healthcare providers and for acupuncture treatments to be eligible for reimbursement under Medicare.
  
• Treating the Health Care Crisis: Complementary and Alternative Medicine for the Affordable Care Act
  This summary by Dr. Ryan Abbott, MD, JD, MTOM, an associate professor at Southwestern Law School, covers an article published in the DePaul Journal of Health Care that argues that the health care reform law has not done enough to integrate CAM. The article advocates for a system of limited intellectual property protection to incentivize new CAM-based research and development.
  
• A Review of Cost-Effectiveness of Complementary and Integrative Medicine
  A review published by the British Medical Journal Open uncovers the cost effectiveness of complementary and integrative medical (CIM) approaches in more than two dozen high-quality studies.
  
• More Americans Turning to Acupuncture for Cost-Effective Treatment
  Evidence shows that as medical costs rise, more Americans are turning to acupuncture as a cost-effective alternative to traditional Western medicine. This article investigates the discrepancy between consumer demand and lack of insurance coverage.
  
• Acupuncture is an “Essential Health Benefit” in California for 2014
  Breaking news: Acupuncture will be considered an “essential health benefit” in California and will be covered by individual and small group health plans starting in 2014.