A new RAND report, Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Professions or Modalities? examines the state of CAM/integrative practice and the barriers they face to greater use and to reimbursement, and offers options for resolving some of them.
The report sub-title points to the important areas where those barriers present difficulty: “Policy Implications for Coverage, Licensure, Scope of Practice, Institutional Privileges, and Research.”


Among the report highlights:
Employers have high incentive to improve individual health * CAM professions must educate patients, conventional providers, employers and policymakers about care options and potential benefits * All providers need to work in multi-professional, multimodal teams * CAM professions must work collaboratively toward mutual goals * Significant barriers remain to incorporation of the professions in federal and state laws and regulations.