Project for Integrative Health and the Triple Aim (PIHTA) - Knowledge Base
Reduce Per Capita Cost
This section focuses on the evidence of the impact of integrative health and medicine practices and disciplines on efforts to lower costs. Most are arranged by the stakeholder environment in which the study was undertaken, or in the case of Natural Products, the service (e.g., "Insurance" for study related to comparative costs of chiropractic care among Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee insures under two distinct benefit designs). Articles are presently organized on this page under these headings. As content becomes more extensive, all sections will contain more articles and resources to warrant separate pages on this site.
White Papers Associated with Integrative Professions and Organizations
Starting Place
An exceptional starting place for anyone not familiar with cost-effectiveness of complementary and integrative medicine is the following review that found 28 quality studies on effectiveness and led the lead author, RAND researcher Patricia Herman, PhD, ND, MS, to declare that it is time to stoop talking about there being no evidence of cost-effectiveness
Are Complementary therapies and integrative care cost-effective? A systematic review of economic evaluations.
Patricia Herman, Beth Poindexter, Claudia Witt, David Eisenberg
This comprehensive systematic review of 338 economic evaluations of integrative and complementary medicine shows that many CIM therapies are cost effective and when higher-quality studies are considered.