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Well, Well
Opened about a year and a half ago, St. Joseph's is in the pretty much nowhere town of Port Matilda, about a half-hour drive from Pennsylvania State University's main campus in State College. Many guests come simply for pampering, with regular spa treatments, others in search of life transformations.
Treatments include acupressure and other "healing massages," exercise and diet programs, laser treatment to increase range of motion and provide pain relief for ailments such as carpal tunnel syndrome and sports injuries. You can get just a facial, or treatments said to be good for autism, or others for arthritis.
  Canyon Ranch operates two resort spas, including this one in Lenox, Mass. (Canyon Ranch) 
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Set the controls to high on the resistance pool, where you swim in place as the current passes you by, and you can get a 6 mph swim -- an Olympic-training-level cardiovascular workout. But if you're recovering from an injury, the staff will oversee a gentle, rehabilitative workout.
Take a sauna in steam infused with essential oils just because it feels good, or ease your aching back with a readjustment by the on-call chiropractor. If your problem is emotional or spiritual, they have programs for that, too.
A Range of Services
I found St. Joseph's at SpaFinders.com, in the "medical/wellness" listings. This category includes spas whose medical services may be limited to a couple of alternative therapies with an Eastern or New Age bent -- for instance, maybe nutritional advice and some relaxation techniques such as yoga. At the other end of the spectrum, your wellness spa vacation could include a huge range of mainstream medical treatments delivered by board-certified doctors, sports therapists and nutritionists, complemented by naturopathic experts trained in Chinese medicine, massage therapists who can both pamper and treat your ailments, and maybe a mental health expert.
Take, for example, Canyon Ranch, which operates resorts in Tucson and in Lenox, Mass. Each facility employs seven board-certified physicians, and the company has hired Richard Carmona, who until recently was U.S. surgeon general, as CEO of medical services. Canyon Ranch has state-of-the-art medical equipment, in addition to treatment facilities manned by Chinese herbalists, acupuncturists and other specialists in alternative and preventive care.
"People come for different reasons," Canyon Ranch spokeswoman Erinn Figg says. "Some come just to get spa treatments and lie by the pool, others to lose weight or stop smoking or recover after breast cancer surgery. We partner with the Cleveland Clinic, one of the top heart specialty hospitals in the world. Professional athletes who want to enhance performance come for evaluation and training from physiologists." A full medical exam can include a bone density scan, Pap test and a full body scan for measuring lean body mass.
Some procedures, particularly those that are mainstream, such as a Pap test, may be covered by health insurance, but it's up to you to pay, then fill out the insurance paperwork that might bring some reimbursement.
Closer to home, you can find the extreme end of thoroughness in the medical spa field at the Medical Spa at Nova in Ashburn, about a 10-minute drive from Dulles International Airport. The spa, with massage therapists and health and fitness experts, is connected to medical offices housing physicians with numerous specialities and a naturopathic practitioner trained in Chinese medicine. Those offices are in turn connected to an urgent care center.
"At one end of the building we might be treating a cardiac arrest, and at the other end one person is getting a therapeutic massage and another person is getting a facial," says medical director Grace Keenan, an internist.
As is common in such advanced medical spas, alternative and mainstream treatments are integrated, so a neurologist might send a patient with headaches to the acupuncturist, or the gastroenterologist might consult with the naturopath about herbal treatments.
St. Joseph Institute falls somewhere in the middle of the continuum. Sheetz and her husband, Michael Campbell, are searching for a medical director. Under the supervision of a doctor, their alternative therapies will become "integrative" -- a combination of both mainstream and alternative. That will allow them, Campbell says, to take on a wider variety of complicated medical issues.
