Good Samaritan Hospital and Emperors College Engage Cost/Care Project Looking at Broad, Trusting, Inpatient Look at Well-Integrated Acupuncture

Summary: Well-integrated acupuncture, as provided by licensed acupuncturists, is finally getting a test in inpatient care in a US hospital. Through relationships built between Los Angeles' Good Samaritan Hospital (GSH) and Emperors College of Traditional Oriental Medicine, Jeannette Painovich, LAc, DAOM will soon be managing a $218,500 research project. LAcs will practice side-by-side with conventional MDs and nurses in treating a whole array of critical conditions. Clinical, patient satisfaction and cost outcomes will be measured, with a particular focus on potential savings in the area of length of stay. A key element in the set-up is the acupuncture profession's new Doctor of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (DAOM) clinical doctorate, through which GSH will have its acupuncture clinicians. The project has more potential for impact on US health care than any dozen acupuncture RCTs.

Jeannette Painovich, LAc, DAOM

A Grant Built on Layers of Trust

The grant followed two years of acupuncture practice engaged through an inter-institutional relationship between Emperors College of Traditional Oriental Medicine and GSH. Through the "Acupuncture Residency Program," licensed acupuncturists who are students in the Emperors' Doctor of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (DAOM) program have provided care through GSH's Acute Rehabilitation Unit. Painovich has been the lead acupuncturist in that project.

• Lower average financial costs for critically ill inpatients
• Decreased average hospital stays
• Outcomes of quality of care surveys completed upon discharge
• A pilot study providing statistics and analysis on the effectiveness of acupuncture as an adjunct therapy
• A process and outcomes evaluation report.
  

Painovich credits a relationship she developed with Ron Greeno, MD, a GSH pulmonologist and hospitalist, for opening doors to getting the study rolling. The other key member of the team, beyond research methodologist Hermann, is GSH's chair for interdisciplinary practices, Jorge Minor, MD. Minor will foster the deeper integration of acupuncture into the hospital services which will allow the pilot to operate and be measured.
Painovich told the Integrator that she plans to have acupuncturists who are Chinese nationals, or US-trained LAcs with similar experience, as supervisors. She's looking for extensive in-hospital experience such as the Chinese nationals receive in their home country. 

• Potential cost benefits This study offers, even as a pilot, more potential for impacting today's healthcare than any dozen randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Want to impact health care? Follow the money - and show a positive difference.
  
• Relationships - Personal and Inter-Institutional  Note that the very possibility of the study was built on relationships. At the first line are those between individual clinicians  - Painovich and Greeno in particular. But note that these are based in an existing inter-institutional relationship between GSH and Emperors. Institutional commitment created, and supports, the individual commitments. Emperors' past president, David Solin Lee, deserves a nod for moving Emperors toward both developing a DAOM program and for forging the relationship with GSH.
  
• DAOM as a Tool for Building Relationships The program was built on the Doctor of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, DAOM, the licensed acupuncture profession's new clinical doctorate program. These programs, in which the students are already licensed practitioners, provide tremendous, low-cost research and clinical opportunities for conventional facilities located near them. Unfortunately, the DAOM is largely a West Coast phenomenon at this time.
  
• Limited Scope  Note also that the clinical scope of the project, despite a breadth of scope that is almost unimaginable amidst the conservatism of other hospitals, is yet a compromise. While the acupuncturist practitioners are empowered, they are not yet offering all of the whole practice potential of AOM. Traditional medicines, moxa and other physical medicine approaches are not part of the mix. While thus side-stepping the potential, adverse drug-herb interaction issues, we still won't be measuring the optimal value of TCM.