TCM Residency

The integrative medicine discipline includes a host of traditional medicine practices — acupuncture, massage, acupressure, herbal medicine, nutrition, meditation, qi gong, tai chi and more — that weren’t even legal in the U.S. until the 1970s. Today, integrative medicine treatments like acupuncture have proved effective in areas such as pain management where, for example, they have been shown to reduce post-surgical pain and reduce the risk of pain medication-related addiction. They have also been proven to minimize the side effects of chemotherapy.

“Integrative medicine may enhance patient care quality and lower health care costs because it is less invasive, and it can be more efficient and more effective than Western-style medicine in some applications,” said ICIM faculty Dr. Alex Feng, LAc, OMD, PhD.

One of the challenges of bringing integrative medicine into the hospital environment is that most insurers – including Medicare and Medicaid – don’t cover these services. Without insurer reimbursement, funding is a challenge. Initially ICIM and ACMC were able to offer integrative medicine treatments by relying on 18 volunteer practitioners, who worked through ICIM, a nonprofit foundation.

One Highland inpatient who was referred for acupuncture said, “It was like a miracle! I think it was a key element in preparing me for the difficult treatments I received in the following days. I didn’t expect to be able to receive acupuncture at Highland!”

The Integrative Medicine outpatient clinic at Highland was initially designed and managed by Dr. Feng, Dr. Amy Matecki, Director of the International Center for Integrative Medicine (ICIM), and Dr. Charlene Ossler, RN, PhD, Executive Director of the ICIM. The program had support and championship by ACMC leaders Dr. Judith Wofsy, Dr. Colin Feeney, Dr. David Irwin, and Dr. Lyn Berry. The Thursday morning clinic served about a dozen patients at the K-6 Adult Services clinic each week. The inpatient program provided care to over 400 patients since 2011. The outpatient program was consistently booked for up to 1-2 months in advance. Both services were accessed through referrals from ACMC professional staff and the TCM students and staff used the same electronic medical record (EMR) as the allopathic staff. This increased communication and education of both disciplines – East and West..

Drs. Feng and Matecki are widely known integrative medicine specialists who established the first integrative medicine outpatient clinic and inpatient care at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center Comprehensive Cancer Center in 2004. They have run it there successfully since and built the program up to 3,000 patient visits per year.

The Pandemic halted the five-year expansion plan for the ICIM at ACMC. During the period of ICIM contracting with ACMC, we established the clinical value of integrative medicine by decreasing the length of hospital stays and reducing the cost of care while improving the quality of life for patients. The team envisions making the Highland program an international model that involves research and physician training components.

Highland’s internal medicine, pharmacy, surgery and nursing residents and practitioners were exposed to and trained on traditional Chinese medicine techniques. The residents have reacted positively to learning these complementary modalities. As one resident said, “We really want to learn quality of life measures and techniques from Traditional Chinese Medicine, which will help us to find the best way to minimize our patients’ suffering.”

With the new collaboration with Alta Bates Summit Medical; Center, ICIM will be offering the Integrative Medicine TCM in September, 2023 at a nonprofit private hospital setting.