How well do you know your spine and what it needs?
Does your physician? Does your insurer (ie,
Medicare)? Minster Chiropractic Center prides itself on knowing the
spine of each of our Minster chiropractic patients. Your Minster
chiropractor examines your low back when there’s
low back pain, your neck when you have neck pain, your neck when you have arm pain, your low back when there is
leg pain, your thoracic spine when there is thoracic
(and even neck and low back) pain. Your chiropractor knows your
spine. Unfortunately, sometimes your insurer doesn’t.
The chiropractic profession endeavors to provide
the research to the insurers to cover essential treatment for
your spine while your Minster chiropractor strives
to communicate openly with your insurer for your optimal
care and with you for your optimal clinical outcome: relief of
pain.
YOUR INSURER
Administrators’ data doesn’t tell the entire
story about back pain. In a study that compared
self-reported low back pain to data collected by
health administrations that track low back pain via billing codes
and such discovered that these two sources
don’t agree. Self-reported data about low back
pain (21.2%) was higher than administration’s data (10.2%).
Characteristics of low back pain patients founded on data differed
in several areas – sex, health/behavior traits, and health care use
– leading to an underestimated prevalence of low back pain. (1)
Minster Chiropractic Center knows how prevalent back pain is and how it affects our back
pain patients like you.
YOUR BACK PAIN
In a study that specifically looked
at one influence on back pain - spinal stiffness - from the subjective
patient point of view and the objective testing angle revealed
that these two measures don’t correlate well either. At least in
this comparison, actual input was from people: patients who
filled out questionnaires and doctors who filled out
objective tests. These findings directed the researchers to observe
that while these two sources do not correlate well, each is
important in the whole general picture of the
patient’s condition and care. (2) Your Minster chiropractor uses this evidence to take care of your spine.
YOUR CHIROPRACTOR
Your Minster chiropractor is an evidence-based
chiropractor. Evidence guides the spine relief treatment plan at
Minster Chiropractic Center. An interesting study of chiropractic
students revealed how as each year of school passed the students became
less vitalistic and more evidence-based. (3) After 7 or so years in school,
your chiropractor is ready to take care of Minster
back pain and neck pain patients. The evidence of useful chiropractic
spine care keeps expanding! Researchers report today that the use of non-pharmacological pain management may prevent
unnecessary use of opioids. Chiropractic is one type of non-drug
pain management offering. In an
analysis of 101,221 spine pain patients, 1.55 to 2.03 times more non-chiropractic
patients got an opioid prescription than chiropractic patients. (4)
Further, Medicare beneficiary patients who use chiropractic are shown
to have better clinical outcomes (faster recovery, fewer back
surgeries a year later, less opioid-associated
disability, fewer traumatic falls and injuries, slower declines in activities
of daily living and disability over time) at less expense (fewer
medical doctors visits for low back pain, less opioid expense, less back-surgery
cost) with higher levels of satisfaction. (5) These are not
bad trade-offs for the Medicare cost system and for the Medicare patient.
CONTACT Minster Chiropractic Center
Listen to this PODCAST
by Dr. Lee Hazen and Cheri Hazen RN on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr.
Michael Johnson describing how non-pharmacological alleviating
treatment of back pain utilizing the Cox® Technic System of Spinal
Pain Management and other non-drug approaches help.
Schedule a non-surgical Minster
chiropractic care visit with Minster Chiropractic Center. Know that
Minster Chiropractic Center knows Minster back pain, understands how it affects
you, and has a plan for its relief.