Cattaneo & Stroud, Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of the new Stanford Complementary Medicine Clinic in Palo Alto, California. This clinic, founded and directed by Dr. David Spiegel, was developed pursuant to a business plan developed by Cattaneo & Stroud, Inc. The project included extensive interviews with Stanford faculty and staff, focus groups of staff and patients, and research on successful business and reimbursement models nationally. The planning process took into consideration the unique challenges of the academic medical center setting.

The Stanford Complementary Medicine Clinic is dedicated to helping patients live better by providing techniques for coping with stress, pain and anxiety associated with medical illness and its treatment. Many patients with health problems, ranging from common headaches and arthritis to life-threatening illnesses such as cancer and cardiovascular disease, seek to combine traditional medical care with complementary methods to ensure their emotional as well as physical well-being is addressed. The Clinic seeks to integrate the advanced medical services offered by Stanford with the complementary, support services through open communication and collaboration between the Clinic’s staff and the patient’s physician.

Services offered by the Clinic include:

• Comprehensive evaluation of patients and treatment planning.
• Treatments with demonstrated efficacy, provided by highly trained professionals.
• Complementary techniques that are integrated with medical treatment.

The clinic’s staff includes physicians, nurses, clinical psychologists, social workers, massage therapists, and others who are experienced in caring for patients with serious illnesses. Services include:

• Comprehensive evaluation and treatment planning.
• Applied psychophysiology and biofeedback.
• Heart health groups.
• Hypnosis.
• Massage therapy.
• Medical acupuncture.
• Mindfulness-meditation-based stress reduction.
• Therapeutic cancer support groups.

The clinic is directed by Dr. David Spiegel, Professor, Department of Psychiatry, who is nationally recognized for his innovative work in hypnosis and the value of support groups to breast cancer patients. The business plan and clinic development process is chronicled in an article authored by Dr. Spiegel, Penny Stroud of Cattaneo & Stroud, Inc., and Ann Fyfe of Stanford Health Services that was recently published under the title “Complementary Medicine” in the Western Journal of Medicine, April 1998, Volume 168, No. 4. The article states, in summary, that for an institution such as Stanford, such a program offers multiple advantages, including:

1. The opportunity to extend research into the efficacy mechanisms and cost- effectiveness of novel or unconventional interventions.
2. The opportunity to provide better overall management of patients with chronic and serious medical illness.
3. The opportunity to focus the attention of the health care system on the coping aspects of illness.
4. The opportunity to pay attention to coping and caring as well as cure.

We at Cattaneo & Stroud, Inc. are always pleased to see the programs we help plan become realities. We look forward to following the start-up and maturation of a program that is breaking new ground in both academic and clinical medicine.