Patient visits to a hospital-based alternative medicine clinic from 1997 through 2002: experience from an integrated healthcare system.

Objective: Efforts to integrate complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) into conventional healthcare systems raise questions about expected levels of CAM use and its cost in an integrated system. This paper documents actual patient usage of a hospital-based alternative medicine clinic that has been operating on a conventional healthcare campus since 1993.

Setting: Hennepin Faculty Associates (HFA) is a multispecialty physician organization serving the Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC), a public teaching hospital in downtown Minneapolis.

Recommendations and guidelines regarding the preferred research protocol for investigating the impact of an optimal healing environment on patients with substance abuse.

The addictive disorders affect every aspect of a person's life, and thus the most effective interventions are those that address many or all of these issues. Although the initial evaluation and intake process for addiction assessment is lengthy, this process does give the practitioner an opportunity to provide what can be considered an optimal healing environment (OHE) in treating the addictive disorders. In addition to our traditional medical treatment modalities of pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy, many complementary and alternative treatment modalities address and provide additional support for the holistic approach to treatment and recovery.