BACKGROUND: Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use has steadily increased globally over the past two decades and is increasingly playing a role in the healthcare system in the United States. CAM practice-based effectiveness research requires an understanding of the settings in which CAM practitioners provide services. This paper describes and quantifies practice environment characteristics for a cross-sectional sample of doctors of chiropractic (DCs), licensed acupuncturists (LAcs), and licensed massage therapists (LMTs) in the United States. METHODS: Using a cross-sectional telephone survey of DCs (n = 32), LAcs (n = 70), and LMTs (n = 184) in the Tucson, AZ metropolitan area, we collected data about each location where practitioners work, as well as measures on practitioner and practice characteristics including: patient volume, number of locations where practitioners worked, CAM practitioner types working at each location, and business models of practice. RESULTS: The majority of practitioners reported having one practice location (93.8% of DCs, 80% of LAcs and 59.8% of LMTs) where they treat patients. Patient volume/week was related to practitioner type; DCs saw 83.13 (SD = 49.29) patients/week, LAcs saw 22.29 (SD = 16.88) patients/week, and LMTs saw 14.21 (SD =10.25) patients per week. Practitioners completed surveys for N = 388 practice locations. Many CAM practices were found to be multidisciplinary and/or have more than one practitioner: 9/35 (25.7%) chiropractic practices, 24/87 (27.6%) acupuncture practices, and 141/266 (53.0%) massage practices. Practice business models across CAM practitioner types were heterogeneous, e.g. sole proprietor, employee, partner, and independent contractor. CONCLUSIONS: CAM practices vary across and within disciplines in ways that can significantly impact design and implementation of practice-based research. CAM research and intervention programs need to be mindful of the heterogeneity of CAM practices in order to create appropriate interventions, study designs, and implementation plans.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/610277 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Floden, Lysbeth, Howerter, Amy, Matthews, Eva, Nichter, Mark, Cunningham, James K., Ritenbaugh, Cheryl, Gordon, Judith S., Muramoto, Myra L. |
| Contributors | Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Arizona College of Medicine, School of Anthropology, University of Arizona |
| Publisher | BioMed Central Ltd |
| Source Sets | University of Arizona |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article |
| Rights | © 2015 Floden et al.; licensee BioMed Central. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) |
| Relation | http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6882/15/140 |
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