One of the largest Catholic health care systems in the country, Mercy, offers a full spectrum of medical services to more than 3 million patients in 33 hospitals and nearly 700 outpatient locations in four states. And back in 2001, that included a small integrative medicine practice in St. Louis that offered chiropractic and a few other alternative medicine services.
Michelle Smith, DC, a 2000 Logan graduate, joined Mercy in 2002 to lead its Integrative Medicine and Therapy Services division. While the Sisters of Mercy were strong supporters of integrative medicine, Smith said there was a healthy dose of skepticism about it among the physicians in charge of medical care.
“We have to get approval from the Medical Executive Council for each service or treatment option we want to introduce,” she said. “When I started, there were only two physicians on the council who were supportive of the program.”
The program started with chiropractic, acupuncture and massage therapy. Smith said the skepticism toward alternative medicine slowly started to change as physicians saw better outcomes among their patients who were referred to integrative care.
“It grew on its own through increased physician support and success,” Smith said, adding that Integrative Medicine now has 40 employees, including five Logan graduates, and four outpatient locations in the St. Louis metropolitan area.
Smith added more services to the practice, including auriculotherapy, healing touch, reflexology, guided imagery, aromatherapy and nutrition counseling. Integrative Medicine also expanded to the inpatient setting, starting with therapies for cancer patients to help manage pain, nausea and anxiety.
“We kept track of outcomes with the oncology patients, looking at pre- and post- pain levels, anxiety levels and nausea,” Smith said. “We saw phenomenal outcomes in oncology, and that group of physicians shared those results with other Mercy physicians.”
When Mercy opened its 328,000-square foot Heart and Vascular Hospital in 2006, Smith said the cardiovascular group specifically requested the Integrative Medicine department have a presence at the hospital. In a few years, Smith had helped expand the department from a small office offering a few services to four locations throughout the St. Louis region and services in multiple inpatient departments.
This diversity of work attracted Deborah Ducar, DC, a 2002 Logan graduate and current Active Release Technique instructor, to Mercy in 2005. Using Mercy’s resources and the electronic medical record system, Ducar can see what the physician, physical therapist or medical oncologist has done and work with them collaboratively.
“With this model, you have so many more options to help your patients,” Ducar said. “Here, I have an entire network of people I can work with. It’s not just a referral system.”
It wasn’t always that way when Smith started at Mercy 11 years ago. She remembers a lot of adversity toward Integrative Medicine. Now, however, the opposite is true.
“The last time I had to present at the Medical Executive Council, more than three years ago, I had more physicians in support of the services than physicians against the services.”