Asante clinic will stretch boundaries

http://www.mailtribune.com/archive/2006/0219/local/stories/15local.htm

By JOHN DARLINGfor the Mail Tribune
In a departure from conventional medicine, Asante in April will open an "integrative health" center offering increasingly popular health care alternatives, such as acupuncture, meditation, massage, yoga, herbal supplements, guided visualization, esthetician (skin treatments), nutrition and exercise.
The Triune Integrative Medicine Clinic, 916 Town Center Drive in Medford, will be owned and operated by Asante, Dr. Robin Miller and nurse practitioner Deirdre Goldberg — and will use only scientifically proven alternative therapies, combined with traditional medicine, said Scott Kelly, Asante’s vice president for marketing, business and development.
"Integrative medicine means therapies that integrate body, mind and spirit," said Kelly, noting that many patients already use alternatives but don’t tell physicians. "This gives patients the best of both worlds, developing a treatment plan that includes the patients’ primary care physician."
The clinic will focus on therapies that lower stress (meditation, visualization and yoga), decrease obesity (diet, exercise and vitamin and mineral supplements) and employ techniques from other cultures — such as acupuncture, said Miller, a Medford physician, television health commentator and graduate of health author Andrew Weil’s Integrative Medicine program at the University of Arizona.
The clinic plans to offer classes to the public — and will avoid fad and possibly dangerous alternative therapies, such as hydrogen peroxide injections or magnetotherapy, Miller added.
While this will be the first clinic in the Rogue Valley to integrate conventional and alternative techniques, said Miller, it’s already being done in major hospitals, including Oregon Health Science University in Portland, Stanford, Cedars- Sinai and UCLA.
"It’s not as big a departure you may think," said Kelly, "and Robin and Deidre will steer the clinic from an orientation of many years in conventional medicine. They will do an hour to an hour-and-a-half intake to develop a treatment plan. If the patient has cancer or heart disease, the plan will integrate with the oncologist or cardiologist, so the patient, for example, doesn’t use supplements that are contraindicated with pharmaceuticals."
The idea for the integrative clinic came from Asante and its board, said Miller. It is based on surveys that show up to 48 percent of Americans use a complementary therapy, but few inform their physicians, said Goldberg, an Ashland nurse and former teacher at OHSU.
"Conventional medicine is changing (to include complementary techniques) because the public has found a lot of them helpful and because research has backed that up," said Goldberg.
However, noted Kelly, "if a patient comes in with a bad urinary tract infection and they’ve been trying alternatives, we’re going to say you need antibiotics now. We’ll take the conservative approach."
The clinic is open to anyone, "especially people frustrated with the system as it is now, or people who are frustrated because they don’t know what’s wrong with them or people who are fine and just want to set up a wellness program," said Miller, adding that if services are not available on-site, patients will be referred out to physicians, including chiropractors and other healers.
Asante owns 65 percent of the clinic, Miller owns 25 percent and Goldberg owns 10 percent. Asante sponsored Miller as a fellow in the alternative training with Weil, who is also a medical doctor.
"He opened my eyes. He opened up so many new avenues," Miller said of the Arizona author’s program. "I felt trapped in traditional medicine — that it had nothing else to offer. I’d lost my love for medicine, but found it again. He’s been very controversial, but he’s never backed down and now he’s the national leader of the integrative medicine movement. He didn’t just teach me to think outside the box, but he tore the box down."
The 2,200-square-foot clinic is slated to open mid-April.