Your access to Complementary and Alternative medicine (CAM) therapies – also known as “Integrative Medicine” - in Ontario is being put at risk by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO).  If urgent action is not taken, critical services offered by physicians will no longer be available to you. 

CAM includes a holistic approach to health, often combining tools from both conventional medicine with natural remedies and therapies. Examples include (but are not limited to):

• Natural supplements
• Off-label use of prescription drugs
• Nutritional IV Therapy
• Acupuncture
• Traditional Chinese Medicine
• Bioidentical Hormones

The CPSO has proposed a new CAM policy that will severely limit the availability of CAM therapies and the practice of integrative medicine offered by medical doctors in Ontario. If the CPSO’s new policy is passed in its proposed form, Ontario will have the most restrictive CAM regulatory framework of all the provinces and territories in Canada. It will be harder for physicians to integrate CAM treatments into their practices without the fear of being disciplined by the CPSO.  Doctors who currently practice integrative medicine will be forced to change their practice or leave Ontario. The result: you will be denied access to treatment options that you may need and want. 

We call upon the CPSO to forgo the proposed revisions that will make it harder for Integrative Medicine physicians to use CAM treatments, including by:  

• Removing the increased evidentiary requirements for CAM treatments, such that physicians will continue to be able to use CAM treatments that are ‘informed’ by evidence that includes clinical observations and patient outcomes, to allow more room for patient preferences and values in the medical therapy decision-making process.
• Removing derogatory language in the policy which suggests that physicians who offer CAM therapies are more likely to exploit patients.
• Permitting physicians to offer patients modalities of treatment that they have the knowledge, skill, and judgement to use and which are within their clinical scope of competence. Patients have the right to access information on or recommendations for any relevant health treatments, not just those limited to a physician's "conventional scope of practice".
• Removing language that imposes overly burdensome documentation requirements on physicians using CAM treatments so that physicians can spend more time talking to patients than documenting.
• Correcting statements in the policy which sensationalize the risks of harm from CAM therapies. Patients demand the right to a clear and unbiased discussion with their physician about the benefits and risks of both CAM and conventional medical therapies.

We call upon the CPSO to add concerned patients and integrative medicine physicians to its CAM policy working group to help create a more balanced policy.

Ontario Patients for Integrative Medicine www.onpim.ca