Boom in alternative medicine may make believers of HMOs

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Feb 26, 1996 | by Gayle M.B. Hanson

Health-maintenance organizations see the demand and know reduced stress means fewer doctor visits. Options such as acupuncture, massage and relaxation therapy soon may appear in medical plans.

There's no incense burning, crystal gazing or wind chimes ringing at Kaiser Permanente's Vallejo Medical Center in Northern California. But despite the lack of New Age ambiance, the nation's largest health-maintenance organization is charting a new course in health-care delivery by opening the country's first HMO -based alternative-medicine clinic.

"There's not another HMO in the country that has a clinic specifically set up for this purpose," says Ward Gypson III, who heads the pioneering clinic. "But the time has definitely come when alternative medicine is becoming a larger facet of medicine in general."

Indeed, a 1993 survey published in the New England Journal of medicine revealed that 34 percent of Americans polled had sought alterative care during that year. Those seeking services such as acupuncture, massage and relaxation therapy were doing so without consulting their physicians.

The son of a Manhattan physician, Gypson at first was skeptical about acupuncture, a traditional form of Chinese medicine in which practitioners stick their patients with slender needles to stimulate "chi," or energy points within the body. "When I first saw the doctors in the rehabilitation center using acupuncture, I wasn't convinced," Gypson tells Insight. "There's no way to scientifically measure chi. But then I learned the techniques myself and saw how successful they are." His clinic now sees about 400 patients per month for acupuncture and holds an acupressure class for another 70. Patients who take that class learn massage tools they can use for self-treatment.

Will other HMOs start looking at alternative medicine as viable treatment? "It's definitely a bottom-line issue," says Herbert Benson, director of the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Harvard Medical School. "You've got a situation where 60 to 90 percent of doctor visits are related to mind/body issues. Our data show that in HMOs, individuals who learn how to manage their stress reduce their number of visits from 35 to 50 percent. And that's money in the bank to a capitated system."

The Mind/Body Medical Institute receives about five calls a week from HMOs considering relaxation therapy. Oxford Health Plan, one of the largest HMOs in the Eastern United States, has set up an Alternative Medicine Division to explore the possibility of offering acupuncture, biofeedback and herbal treatment at its many clinics.

Interest in alternative medicine isn't restricted to HMOs. Blue Cross of Washington and Alaska plans to start offering patients the opportunity to visit acupuncturists as well as naturopaths, who practice a system of therapy that emphasizes a diet of organic foods and herbs to stimulate healing.

Despite the popularity of alternative medicine with the public, the medical community is not convinced. Some doctors consider it a fad that preys upon patients' gullibility. Ursula Good-enough, a Washington State University biologist, has called it the province of snake-oil salespeople. "Invariably, it has a lot do with belief," she has said. "I'm sure that if I went to the best swami in the world, it would do absolutely nothing for me."

But "belief" is the very basis of some alternative therapies that Benson uses with patients at his Harvard clinic. For 25 years, he has employed a combination of prayer and meditation to treat patients suffering from everything from high blood pressure to infertility. Benson maintains that "new" relaxation therapies have been around for thousands of years.

"I personally believe that we are wired for God as part of our genetic disposition," says Benson, whose forthcoming book, Timeless Healing, the Power and Biology of Belief, explores his use of prayer and meditation in a medical setting. "Medicine is really a three-legged stool. One leg is pharmaceutical. One leg is hospitalization. And the other leg is the mind/body leg. And for too long the medical community has just ignored it despite what our patients were saying. It's good to see that we're finally beginning to listen."