Hospitals are making room for alternative therapies

As hospitals elbow one another to attract patients, increasingly they're hoping to tap into Americans' interest in — and willingness to spend money on — complementary and alternative therapies such as acupuncture and massage.

According to a recent survey by the American Hospital Assn. and the Samueli Institute, a nonprofit research group focusing on complementary medicine, 42% of the 714 hospitals that responded offered at least one such therapy in 2010; five years earlier, only 27% of hospitals offered such treatments.

Experts say hospitals are embracing these therapies for many reasons, including a growing recognition that some integrative therapies, as they're also called, are very effective in certain instances.    More Read