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On the road to simpler care
Tuesday, October 02, 2001 By Gary Rotstein, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
America's hospitals are known for their sophisticated and expensive technology rather than simpler, personal methods of maintaining health, but the UPMC Health System may learn soon whether the latter may be easy to adopt.
In a series of programs starting this fall for both the public and the staffs of the 19 UPMC hospitals, courses will be established encouraging people to deal with stress, to stop smoking, to lose weight, improve nutrition and more.
The courses will be offered under the umbrella of the new UPMC Health Enhancement Program, an effort to broaden the hospitals' use of alternative, low-cost approaches to health care -- so long as they have some proven research behind them.
Larry Heinike, senior vice president of UPMC's hospital division, said institutions have offered preventive health courses to varying degrees up to now. Planning that began early this year determined it's time to take a more definitive, structured approach.
"When you look at the demographics of everybody marching into the Medicare-age population in the not-too-distant future, we're going to have to do something differently with the nation's health-care environment because we'll be overwhelmed.
"This is the kind of initiative that has some merit to do it in a research-based way, not just in a trendy way," said Heinike, who is also chief executive officer of UPMC Horizon Hospital in Greenville, Mercer County.
Dr. Bruce Rabin, an immunologist and researcher on stress, is medical director of the Health Enhancement Program. He said that in addition to classes for the public, more live music might be brought into hospitals as therapy for patients and meditation and other relaxation techniques promoted for staff to reduce stress.
In many cases, he said, existing hospital staff will be diverted from current duties to be instructors in the courses.
"If something is proven to be effective and safe and can influence health, it's not alternative or complementary -- it's a part of medicine," Rabin said of the intent to bring more personal approaches into the mainstream of hospital operations.
Part of the goal is to have people encourage one another as they take classes together for common health purposes. The classmates may then find a benefit to staying together even once the class term ends, and Rabin expects the hospitals to provide a means for them to do so. The courses will carry modest fees.
The program is being developed with a combination of seed money from the state, foundations and University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
Exact course schedules and locations have not been set, and not all hospitals will have all offerings. The information on what's available will be provided during the fall through an 800 number that will be publicized, and through physicians in the UPMC network.
Dr. Barry Bittman, a neurologist who is director of the Mind Body Wellness Center in Meadville, commended UPMC for taking a large step toward non-technological approaches. He has been an advocate of music therapy and other techniques sometimes considered out of the mainstream.
"They're doing it in a way that recreates the definition of medicine, so as to provide good solid medicine to people in the context of the mind, body and spirit," said Bittman, who is on the oversight and research committees for the new program.
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