Balance your energy for only $1 a minute!

I am not pleased. I am not pleased at all. Of course, hospitals need to make money, and in my part of the country, that's getting damned hard. More and more people are jobless, without insurance, and broke. Hospitals are focusing more on customer service---and that includes providing what the customer wants whether or not there is any evidence to support it. Orac maintains a database of such atrocities occurrences. This is from a table card at a large, local hospital.

ENERGY BALANCING

FOR PATIENTS


Energy Work is a calming technique
in which the body's energy field is
eased into relaxation.

$1 per minute (15 minutes=$15)

For an appointment call
Integrative Medicine at (redacted)

This service can be billed to your room.

Arghh!!! Here we are, well into the evidence-based revolution, and a hospital is offering the Reiki-equivalent of a 900 number. I wonder if they also try to drag it out. I can just see what's going to happen when I come in with my next kidney stone:

Pal: How is my energy field doing?

Obi Wan: I can't tell yet. You must continue.

Pal: How are you measuring the effect?

Obi Wan: I'm trained. You must continue.

Pal: Are you done yet?

Obi Wan (checking watch): I should be finished in another 45 seconds. You must continue.

Pal: Is this really gonna cost me 10 dollars?

Obi Wan: No. We're up to $15. Tip isn't included.

I really, really hope my patients aren't being offered this service. It seems to me that if anyone is claiming that this treatment has an effect, there must be a doctor's order for it. And this doctor ain't ordering any.

Tags

More like this

My post from Monday finally goaded me to do it. Yes, it's time to update the Academic Woo Aggregator. I've been far too remiss in doing so, and at least a couple of new candidates have come to my attention as I continue to keep my eye out for more. First, from the U.S. News & World Report…
Over the last couple of days, I've discussed "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) in terms of a meme upon which evolutionary forces are acting to select certain forms of woo over others in academia. Although, in my usual inimitable fashion, I probably carried the concept one step too far…
Medical therapies should be based upon science. That is a recurrent theme, indeed, the major theme, of this blog. Based on that simple thesis, I've spent the last decade examining "unconventional" treatments and evaluating the scientific basis (or, much more usually, the lack of a scientific basis…
Regular readers know that I've long been dismayed at the increasing infiltration of non-evidence-based "alternative" medical therapies into academic medical centers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). It's gotten such a foothold that it's even showing up in the mandatory medical curriculum in at least one…

Hmmm...how do you sue your "Integrative Medicine Energy Worker" for malpractice?

"Your energy work gave me MRSA!"

"But we didn't **do** anything."

"Ah ha!"