Alternative medicine is an expanding field in American’s health care landscape. It is estimated that the number of visits to alternative medicine practitioners increased from 427 million in 1990 to 629 million in 1997. Approximately $27 billion were spent on alternative medicine therapies by 42% of American health care consumers, with an additional three to four billion dollars spent on herbal supplements. The growing realization that some alternative medicine practices may be beneficial to public health has led to further research to find what practices may be integrated with more traditional medicine. Health care consumers, purchasers, providers, and the government have expressed an interest in bringing more alternative medicine practices into the mainstream. It is of interest to examine how the health care market, and in particular managed care, has been affected by the emergence of alternative medicine. Following are 5 websites and 5 journals listed in order of usefulness to this topic and ease of use. The websites have been assigned a rating of 1-5 stars, with 1 star being poor and 5 stars being excellent.

National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine *****

This website is posted by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) of the National Institutes of Health. NCCAM is a government sponsored organization that conducts and supports research and training in alternative medicine therapies. The purpose of this website is to spread information about complementary and alternative medicine to practitioners and the public. The website describes new therapies and research. The News and Events subsite is an especially informative section about new health care policy developments. This website is rather extensive but offers a great overview of alternative medicine.

Center for the Advancement of Health *****

The Center for the Advancement of Health promotes the integration of behavioral approaches to health care. The purpose of this website is to help health plan administrators find the most effective and proven behavioral health strategies to incorporate into their standard patient care and to offer consumers and purchasers information on how well health plans deliver care that utilizes behavioral approaches. This website is extremely helpful and easy to use. There are many useful links and the Center’s journal is also available on the website.

CNN Alternative Medicine News ****

This is a great website for current developments in alternative medicine. It is updated regularly and offers information about new treatments, drugs, research, policy changes, and other health care market and insurance topics related to alternative medicine. It is very easy to use and the new stories are generally very informative.

The Powerful Patient: Alternative Medicine ****

This website is helpful for health care consumers in learning about types of coverage for alternative medicine services that may be covered by their health plans and managed care plans. There are numerous links for consumers to alternative medicine sites and health plan sites. This website is very helpful, concise, and easy to use.

Oakwood Complementary and Alternative Medicine Center ***

The Oakwood Complementary and Alternative Medicine Center aims to provide health care professionals with news and reports of research in the field of complementary and alternative medicine. This information is intended to assist in the improving patient care. This is good site for health care providers because the Center only promotes alternative medicine practices that are proven to be effective and useful. The Center also assists health care providers in learning how to integrate alternative medicine into standard practice. This website is easy to use and has many useful links to numerous types of alternative medicine practices.

Health Behavior Change in Managed Care Initiative

This is a full report published by the Center for the Advancement of Health on a 1999 study funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This study examines how efforts to change health related behaviors are viewed and acted upon in managed care settings. This study offers important information that can direct health care consumers, providers, purchasers, plans, and researchers to pursue approaches to integrating alternative practices. The report is quite lengthy but it is well subdivided which makes for easier readability.

Alternative Medicine: Is It Ready to Join the Mainstream?

This article is an address by the Executive Director of the Center for the Advancement of Health to the Harvard Medical School in 1995. It talks about the concerns that the field of alternative medicine will need to address in order to be more integrated with traditional medicine; and to be more acceptable to the public and health care providers and purchasers, especially in the managed care setting.

Senate Address by Director of NCCAM, 3/28/2000

This address was given before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, HHS, Education, and Related Agencies. The Director of NCCAM talks about the growth of alternative medicine and the recent Congressional approvals for increasing funding to NCCAM and the Office of Alternative Medicine for research on the safety and effectiveness of alternative medicine practices. The address discusses several issues that are relevant to the role of alternative medicine in today’s health care environment.

Alternative Medicine -- The Risks of Untested and Unregulated Remedies

This article offers a great overview of alternative medicine and its role in health care. More and more managed care plans are offering coverage of alternative medicine services and some states even require it. However, the authors argue that there is not enough testing of alternative medicine. They make an argument for more testing of alternative medicine practices that should be as stringent and science-based as testing of traditional medical practices.

What Role for Chiropractic in Health Care?

This article addresses the question of whether chiropractic should be considered mainstream or alternative medicine. An increasing number of managed care organizations offer coverage for chiropractic services because of its widespread popularity. The author examines whether chiropractic is an effective treatment in terms of health outcome and cost.