Patients whose GP knows complementary medicine tend to have lower costs and live longer

The study "Patients whose GP knows complementary medicine tend to have lower costs and live longer " by  Peter Kooreman  and Erik W. Baars has just been published in European Journal of Health Economics.  You can Download this study.

Health economists have largely ignored complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) as an area of research, although both clinical experiences and several empirical studies suggest cost-effectiveness of complementary and alternative medicine.

Patients whose GP has additional complementary and alternative medicine training have 0-30% lower healthcare costs and mortality rates, depending on age groups and type of CAM. The lower costs result from fewer hospital stays and fewer prescription drugs. .

A dataset from a Dutch health insurer was used containing quarterly information on healthcare costs (care by general practitioner (GP), hospital care, pharmaceutical care, and paramedic care), dates of birth and death, gender and 6-digit postcode of all approximately 150,000 insurees, for the years 2006-2009. Data from 1913 conventional GPs were compared with data from 79 GPs with additional CAM training in acupuncture (25), homeopathy (28), and anthroposophic medicine (26).