Thursday, July 01, 1999
Center offers care outside medical mainstream
BY SUE MacDONALD
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Pastel-colored paint schemes resembling clouds cover the walls, and gently soothing world music wafts through the building. It's a different look for a different kind of medical center.
Patients coming to the newly opened Alliance Institute for Integrative Medicine in Kenwood can choose acupuncture treatments, massage therapy, a holistic form of Indian medicine known as Ayurveda, medicine, chiropractic care, reflexology, energy medicine and other therapies.
As a growing number of Americans look for health and healing outside the traditional doctor's office, the Health Alliance last week joined a Tristate trend that began in 1994 with the opening of hospital-sponsored holistic health/wellness centers.
The Health Alliance now also offers treatments outside the medical mainstream, and its directors, the husband-wife team of Drs. Steve and Sandi Amoils, have made it their mission to work hand-in-hand with traditional doctors while providing ancient healing techniques.
“It was really our dream to have a place like this where we can offer different therapies and have a place where we can teach other people,” Dr. Steve Amoils says.
The Alliance Integrative Medicine Center focuses more heavily on Ayurvedic medicine, an Indian form of healing that seeks to balance the body, than others in the Tristate, but its goal is the same: to offer supportive, mind-body-spirit treatments for problems that are difficult to treat under Western medicine standards. Such problems include chronic pain and chronic headaches, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, premenstrual problems, mitral valve prolapse and injuries.
In addition to treatment rooms, the center has a health library open to the public, Internet access to health information and a retail shop selling herbs, products and relaxation items. It is in the old Steinberg's store, 6400 Galbraith Road in Kenwood.
The Amoils trained in South Africa and studied healing methods around the world before opening a family practice in Cincinnati 11 years ago with an emphasis on alternative health.
“If we can restore balance to the body, we can get people to heal themselves,” Dr. Steve Amoils says. “Much of alternative health is to let people learn to heal themselves. ... You educate the body so it feels better, and after a while it quits becoming stress-able.”
Once people begin to understand how and why their bodies fail and produce symptoms, they learn better ways of maintaining health and preventing illness so they can stay symptom-free, he says.
The alliance center joins the Mercy Hospital system, which opened its first holistic center in 1994 and incorporated holistic health/wellness into its 1998 HealthPlex facilities in Fairfield and Anderson. TriHealth, the collaboration of Good Samaritan and Bethesda hospitals, launched its Healing Arts program in 1996 and established an Integrative Medicine program in 1998. The Franciscan hospitals, now merged with Mercy, opened a free-standing Wholistic Health Center in Mount Airy in 1995 and also offers programs at its fitness center at Franciscan-Hospital-Western Hills.
At Alliance Integrative Medicine, ill patients must be referred by their physicians so that the approaches mesh with traditional medical care, Dr. Steve Amoils says. Well patients can sign up for treatments on their own. Most services are paid for out-of-pocket because health plans do not cover such services.
Fees range from $35 a half hour for massage therapy or reflexology, $50 an hour for chiropractic treatment, $60 an hour for massage therapy, $160-$220 for physician consultation and $95-$160 for acupuncture consultation/treatment.
A five-week rejuvenation program, which can include a variety of different techniques, is $850. A one- to three-month pain relief program is $1,350, and a six-month comprehensive program, for people with chronic health problems, is $2,100-$2,400.
Dr. Steve Amoils says the center's goal is to provide a wide variety of treatments and the ability to study and compare different treatments to find out which ones work and which ones don't for particular problems.
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