Complementary and alternative medicine use among Veterans Affairs outpatients.

National surveys suggest that over one third of adults in the United States used some form of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in the past year. This large, multisite study was, conducted to ascertain past-year CAM use among patients receiving care at seven geographically diverse VAs, and to describe patient characteristics associated with CAM use. Participants included 30,723 patients receiving care at seven VA general internal medicine clinics in the VA Ambulatory Care Quality Improvement Project (ACQUIP), a multicenter, randomized, controlled, quality-improvement trial. Approximately one quarter of VA outpatients in this study used CAM within the past year. Demographic patterns of CAM use were similar to those in studies of the general U.S. population. As the only large-scale, multisite study of CAM use among VA primary care outpatients, this study adds to our understanding of CAM use in this population of conventional health care users, and may have practical implications for physicians and policy makers involved with their care. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)