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Controversial doctor agrees to quit UPMC Shadyside
Saturday, February 12, 2000 By Christopher Snowbeck, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
The controversial program director of the region's largest hospital-based alternative medicine clinic has agreed to resign in the midst of an investigation by the UPMC Health System.
Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona, who came to the Center for Complementary Medicine at UPMC Shadyside in 1997 and was the subject of critical articles published last year in a national anti-quackery journal, will continue seeing patients at the center through July. He could leave as soon as May, though, to pursue a job opportunity.
Jane Duffield, spokeswoman for UPMC, said the investigation into all aspects of alternative medicine at the health system is continuing. Until the study is complete, UPMC officials can't specifically say what the future holds for the Shadyside center.
"We do understand that complementary medicine has achieved a great following and we in fact have more than one center of complementary medicine within the system," Duffield said. "UPMC embraces all forms of medicine that are evidenced-based."
Duffield noted that despite the resignation, which was finalized a week ago, Mehl-Madrona will present a series of lectures at UPMC Shadyside this spring.
Mehl-Madrona, who was profiled in the Post-Gazette last Sunday, said he is talking with two different academic medical centers about running complementary medicine centers like the one he is leaving at UPMC. He says the new centers would be backed by more resources than he found here. As part of his agreement to resign, Mehl-Madrona agreed not to talk specifically about why he was leaving UPMC.
"It wasn't because of anything I did wrong," he said. "It's not because of any patient mishaps or patient complaints. It has nothing to do with my clinical care."
The Shadyside center is part of a movement by mainstream doctors and hospitals to offer alternative treatment options, such as acupuncture, biofeedback and relaxation techniques. These approaches to healing have long existed outside of mainstream medicine and many doctors question whether they are backed by good science.
But Mehl-Madrona and others maintain there is evidence to support their use and continued study.
Mehl-Madrona's critics also questioned whether the doctor's participation in sweat lodges, an American Indian purification and prayer ceremony, was appropriate for a scientific healer. Mehl-Madrona is Cherokee-Lakota and performed the ceremonies on his own time, not while at the UPMC center.
Dr. Adriana M. Selvaggio, a kidney specialist at UPMC Shadyside, said UPMC was losing a talented doctor with Mehl-Madrona's departure.
Selvaggio referred patients to the complementary medicine center and consulted with Mehl-Madrona on cases.
She worked in the emergency department with Mehl-Madrona as well.
"Some of us are very sad about this because we were really fond of him and found his work here, both his traditional work and his complementary work, quite excellent," Selvaggio said. "When patients see him they feel helped, they feel supported. As a physician, how could I not want that?"
Dr. Dennis Meisner, president of the medical staff at UPMC Shadyside and a cancer doctor, said he was sympathetic toward Mehl-Madrona and the complementary medicine movement.
"Fifty percent of all Americans who have cancer take some form of alternative medicine treatment and if you don't address that, if you don't talk with your patients about this, you're ignoring the real world," Meisner said.
Meisner said most doctors at UPMC Shadyside and at other hospitals are opposed to alternative medicine. Shadyside was trying to respond to patients' interest in alternative medicine and he believes the center was appropriately supervised.
"People that chose to promote alternative medicine are always going to be under fire wherever they go," Meisner said. "It's just a tough lot."
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