OBJECTIVES: To describe the pattern of use of alternative therapy, healthcare spending, and health-related quality of life in Chinese osteoarthritis (OA) patients in Hong Kong. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective, cross-sectional study of 547 adult Chinese patients in Hong Kong who have been diagnosed as having OA. We defined the alternative therapy as 1 of the 11 therapies outlined in international publications. OA patients who used alternative therapies and those who did not were compared for their socio-economic status, disease profile, personal healthcare spending, and quality of life. Quality of life was measured using a Health Utility Index based upon SF-36 health surveys. We further investigated the association between the use of alternative therapies and personal healthcare spending, and its association with the Health Utility Index, in multivariate regressions controlling for socio-economic variables, years of OA, and the severity of OA. RESULTS: Of the 547 OA patients, 219 (38.2%) had used 1 or more of the 11 alternative therapies for OA. The most commonly used therapies, (and the percentage of patients who used them), were acupuncture (21.4%), exercise (12%), herbal remedy (5.9%), lifestyle diets (5.8%), energy healing (4.4%), and chiropractic manipulation (3.8%). On average, payment for alternative therapies constitutes 5% of the overall personal healthcare spending, and 29% of the out-of-pocket payments. CONCLUSION: The use of alternative therapies was statistically significantly associated with higher personal healthcare spending, after adjusting for socioeconomic variables, years of OA and severity of OA. The use of alternative therapies was not significantly associated with an improvement in quality of life in the regression analysis.