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In 1997, patients made an estimated 629 million visits to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) providers; however, little is known about factors associated with visits to CAM providers.

To examine the effect of insurance coverage on frequency of use of CAM providers.

We conducted a nationally representative, random household telephone survey of 2055 adults.

The number of visits made to CAM providers.

An estimated 44% of the US population used at least 1 CAM therapy in 1997. Of those using CAM, 52% had seen at least 1 CAM provider in the last year. Among those who used a CAM therapy, factors independently associated with seeing a provider were having been in the upper quartile of visits to conventional providers in the last year (adjusted odds ratio [AOR], 2.00; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.33-3.01), female sex (AOR, 1.67; 95% CI …