A descriptive analysis of an integrative medicine clinic

To evaluate and describe an integrative medicine clinic including its patients; their presenting problems, medical objectives, treatment recommendations; whether recommendations were recalled and adhered to; and patients' self-reported health outcomes.

A prospective cohort study of 160 new clinic patients were treated using a wide range of integrative medicine therapies. Patients were interviewed at intervals of 1, 3, and 6 months after their initial visit.

The study was conducted at the Institute for Health and Healing clinic, at California Pacific Medical Center located in San Francisco, CA.

The subjects were new clinic patients seeking care for a variety of symptoms and diagnoses.

Patients presented with an average of 4.0 symptoms and 2.9 diagnoses; physicians recommended 9.5 "treatments" per patient.

At 6-month follow-up, symptom intensity decreased from 6.5 to 4.2 (on a 10-point scale; p < 0.005); and 57% of the patients had made "substantial" progress or had completely achieved their health objectives (p < 0.005). The Short Form 12 (SF-12) measure of mental and physical functioning improved significantly from baseline to one month (p = 0.05; p = 0.001, respectively) and maintained this improvement at 3 (p = 0.01; p = 0.01) and 6 months (p = 0.001; p = .001). At 1-month follow-up, patients recalled 57% of the actionable statements from the physician without a prompt and they followed 55% of all recommendations well (90% or above). Over the follow-up period, patients increasingly attributed the reductions in symptoms (p = 0.01) and achieving their health objectives (p = 0.01) to the treatment plan. Self-reported measures of days ill and days missed at work/school did not differ significantly from the year before coming to the clinic.

The results indicate that patients can recall and follow a complex treatment regimen. Subjective and objective measures of patients' health status improved after one month and this effect was sustained or improved further at 6 months follow-up. Further study is needed to determine whether patients' improvement was the result of the treatment regimen.