Chiropractic cost effectiveness
When we look at chiropractic cost effectiveness, one of the things we need to do is review chiropractic cost effectiveness in the past, to how it is today. It wasn’t that long ago when medical doctors actually made house calls. House calls were very popular in the 50’s and 60’s. Today that practice has gone. it is almost completely extinct. Not too long ago most people didn’t have healthcare insurance. In today’s world, many medical doctors are not accepting patients if they do not have insurance. Chiropractic is totally different. Chiropractic visits can range as low as $50. If a person does not have healthcare insurance, care is often less than someone’s co-payment. The afford health care act or Obama care the government has done much research on cost effectiveness of different branches of medicine.
The challenge that we’ve found is that most low back problems are mechanical and nature. Being mechanical and nature, they actually need to be addressed by motion. Unfortunately, if a person goes to their medical doctor, the first line of defense is generally a prescription. Anti-inflammatories, pain killers, and even muscle relaxers do absolutely nothing for mechanical problems with lack of motion. If someone takes an anti-inflammatory, sure the inflammation will go down temporarily. They may even feel better temporarily. However address the cause of the mechanical issue still remains neglected. By the time a patient is done with a handful of visits with their primary doctor for their back pain, between the office visits, possible imaging, and prescriptions, usually their fees are an excess of $1000. The thing that’s interesting with chiropractic care, including treatment, and evaluations, most patients are feeling better after they expand $250 to $500 out of their pocket. So when we compare first line medical care towards chiropractic for back pain, medical care is generally four times as expensive and 80% less effective. A recent study by researchers and a team of medical professions published in the journal of manipulative and physiological therapeutics.concluded that chiropractic care is the most cost effective options when compared to other types of medical interventions. Other studies of chiropractic care have found the same results. So let’s look at how that affects you. These studies confirmed with patients and chiropractors already know that if you need treatment for neck pain, back pain, or other pain issues, seeing a chiropractor instead of a primary care physician, will often result in health care savings. To repeat that, the cost comparison between primary care doctors and conservative chiropractic care will almost always save a patient money. When considering chiropractic, make sure the chiropractor you approach always does a complete physical examination and consultation before any treatment occurs. X-rays may or may not be warranted. There’s a lot of confusion on why people actually need x-rays when under chiropractic care. A person may think, “well I didn’t fall, I didn’t get into a car accident, I just kinda woke up stiff, I’m sure nothing is broken, why do I need x-rays?” Well let’s think about that rationally, if someone did fall, or get into a car accident, or a new injury, it would make sense that they would most likely need x-rays to rule out a fracture. However, that is quite rare. In over 22 years of practice, I’ve only seen a handful of fractures that were acute, meaning brand new. The alarms are more severe when someone says “I’m not sure what happened, I just woke up stiff” or “I bent over and couldn’t get back up” without a major history of low back problems. This sends up an alarm to the primary doctors treating the patient because if someone’s neck goes out or neck gets twisted without an accident or injury, it is most commonly a sign of severe joint degeneration from a previous injury that the patient is unaware of. These are much more serious and have to be addressed more carefully. That’s why sometimes, x-rays are warranted in patients cases. But before that happens, a doctor will always do a examination and consultation with you. At our office, at the Proadjuster Chiropractic clinic, Dr. Maggio treats all of his patients as carefully and precisely as he would with his own family members. That means doing the best possible evaluation to determine if chiropractic care is right for you or if you need other options.
We look forward to taking care of you in the future.