Andrew Shubov, M.D.

Internal Medicine/Integrative Medicine/Los Angeles

Integrative medicine has remained largely out of reach for hospitalized patients. Not for want of evidence, but for want of a model a hospital can sustain.

Reimbursement for acupuncture and related modalities is inconsistent across payers, which leaves program viability resting on subsidies most institutions will not extend. So the field has settled into the outpatient clinic, positioned as wellness and evaluated on satisfaction. Meanwhile the patients who stand to gain the most, high utilizers carrying chronic pain syndromes, complex comorbidity, and substantial readmission risk, are admitted, treated, discharged, and admitted again without ever encountering it.

Palliative care met the same wall two decades ago and went through it. Not by winning a reimbursement argument, but by demonstrating institutional value: shorter stays, fewer readmissions, results a hospital will fund regardless of payer mix. Inpatient integrative medicine is at that same juncture now, and it is beginning to assemble the same kind of case.

My work is building that case and the services that generate it. An inpatient consult service is a different proposition from an outpatient wellness offering. It is staffed by clinicians credentialed through the medical staff, embedded in the care of admitted patients, governed by explicit selection criteria, and instrumented from the first day of operation. Length of stay, thirty-day readmission, and opioid utilization are captured in a structured registry running alongside the medical record, because these are the outcomes on which hospitals actually make decisions.

In a published retrospective study at UCLA Santa Monica Hospital, thirty-day readmission among patients seen by the inpatient integrative medicine consult service was 4.6%, compared with 33.0% before the consult was available. The study was observational, and the design carries the limits that implies. A quasi-randomized controlled trial at UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center is currently under analysis.

What that evidence cannot yet answer is the question that determines whether any of this matters at scale: whether the model travels. Whether it can be stood up at an institution with no existing East-West medicine infrastructure, and whether the outcomes that drive adoption decisions can be captured rigorously during a real-world implementation rather than reconstructed afterward.

Appointment

Health Sciences Associate Clinical ProfessorDirector of Inpatient Integrative Medicine, UCLA Center for East-West Medicine

2015–present

Certification & Training

2015
Diplomate, American Board of Integrative Medicine
2013
Diplomate, American Board of Internal Medicine
2013–15
Post-Graduate Fellowship, East-West MedicineUCLA Center for East-West Medicine
2010–13
Internship and Residency, Internal MedicineCedars-Sinai Medical Center / West Los Angeles VA
2010
Doctor of MedicineKeck School of Medicine, University of Southern California

Selected Publications

Inpatient readmissions

Pintas S, Zhang A, James KJ, Lee RM, Shubov A. Effect of inpatient integrative medicine consultation on 30-day readmission rates: a retrospective observational study at a major U.S. academic hospital. Journal of Integrative and Complementary Medicine. 2022;28(3):241–249. doi:10.1089/jicm.2021.0155

The primary published evidence for the inpatient consult model’s effect on readmission.

Randomized trial · first author · in preparation

Shubov A, Smith CN, Golshan S, Shekhtman T, Kao LK, Chen J, et al., Saxe G. Modified Qing Fei Pai Du Tang for treatment of active COVID-19 infection: a randomized clinical trial. Manuscript under review.

Dual-center randomized controlled trial of a classical herbal formula in active infection.

Health care utilization

Zhang A, Chu A, Yoo S, Shubov A. Effects of intensive outpatient integrative medicine on health care utilization on high utilizer patients at a major academic health system. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. 2021;27(9):803–806. doi:10.1089/acm.2021.0087

Utilization outcomes in the high-utilizer population the inpatient model is designed to reach.

  1. Saxe G, Smith CN, Golshan S, Shekhtman T, Bair ZJ, Beathard C, Davis RA, MacElhern L, Shubov A, Slater D, Kao LK, Senowitz P, Wilson S. Polypore mushroom mycelia as an adjunct to COVID-19 vaccination: a randomized clinical trial. BMC Immunology. 2026;27(1):24. doi:10.1186/s12865-026-00809-9
  2. Diep C, Karibe H, Goddard G, Phan Y, Shubov A. Acupuncture and transcutaneous electrical acupoint stimulation do not suppress gag reflex. Medical Acupuncture. 2021;33(5):353–357. doi:10.1089/acu.2021.0008
  3. Shubov A, Kao L, Hui K. Abdominal pain after resolution of autoimmune pancreatitis: the use of acupuncture for the myofascial sequelae of visceral disease. Medical Acupuncture. 2016;28(6):355–358. doi:10.1089/acu.2016.1195
  4. Liou K, Shubov A, Taw LB. More than a gut feeling: an integrative East-West approach to managing severe abdominal pain associated with irritable bowel syndrome. Proceedings of UCLA Healthcare. 2015;19.
  5. Shubov A, Taw L. Treatment of posttraumatic abdominal autonomic neuropathy manifesting as functional dyspepsia and chronic constipation: an integrative East-West approach. Global Advances in Health and Medicine. 2015;4(4):56–60. doi:10.7453/gahmj.2014.081

Book Chapter

  1. Shubov A, Taw LB. Acupuncture for gastrointestinal disorders. In: Integrative Gastroenterology. 2nd ed. Weil Integrative Medicine Library. Oxford University Press; 2019. doi:10.1093/med/9780190933043.003.0011

Coverage

  1. Slomski A. Trials test mushrooms and herbs as anti–COVID-19 agents. JAMA. 2021;326:1997–1999.
Correspondence

9440 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 301
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
(310) 887-1305
info@shubovmd.com