An Analysis of Predictors of Conventional and Complementary Healthcare Use in Yorkshire

Abstract

Background Well-recognised trends in types of services used by patients exist within health service utilisation. One increasing area is complementary and alternative medicine (CAM); considered distinct from the use of health professionals working in conventional medicine. Little is known about the contribution of CAM and whether people using CAM with multiple comorbidities make correspondingly less use of conventional health services. Aims 1) To describe self-reported visits to conventional health professionals and CAM practitioners, and to identify predictors of such visits; 2) To quantify the effect of demographic, health-related and CAM service take-up factors on contact with health services delivered by conventional health professionals. Methods Data from 70,836 participants in the Yorkshire Health Study, a large-scale population-based cohort study, was analysed descriptively and inferentially to test for associations between variables. Results 3.5% of the cohort reported accessing CAM services in the previous three months. Level of contact with conventional health professionals was higher in those accessing practitioner-led CAM services (incidence rate ratio [IRR]=1.28; p<0.001.) Female gender, older age and increased incidence of mental and physical health conditions were also positively associated with the outcome. Conclusions Self-reported utilisation of CAM services was low. There is no evidence that CAM services are being used to replace contact with conventional health professionals. This contrasts with previous research suggesting that dissatisfaction with conventional medicine drives the utilization of practitioner-led CAM, which might imply substitution. It appears unlikely that state-provided access to CAM services would result in reduced demand on other services by patients with multi-morbidities.

Note:
Funding declaration: The Yorkshire Health Study was supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRC) Yorkshire and Humber (NIHR200166) and the University of Sheffield. No external funding was received to conduct this secondary analysis.

Conflict of Interests: None declared.

Keywords: Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), Population survey, Conventional medicine