Johnson Chiropractic Delivers Relieving Spine Care often in Less Time, with Less Cost
How well do you understand your spine and what it requires? Does your doctor? Does your insurer (ie, Medicare)? Johnson Chiropractic prides itself on knowing the spine of each of our Richmond chiropractic patients. Your Richmond chiropractor assesses your low back when there is low back pain, your neck when there’s neck pain, your neck when there is arm pain, your low back when there’s leg pain, your thoracic spine when there’s thoracic (and even neck and low back) pain. Your chiropractor ”gets” your spine. Sadly, sometimes your insurer doesn’t. The chiropractic profession strives to deliver the research to the insurers to cover essential treatment for your spine while your Richmond chiropractor endeavors to communicate clearly with your insurer for your best care and with you for your best clinical outcome: relief of pain.
YOUR INSURER
Administrators’ data does not tell the whole story about back pain. In one study that compared self-reported low back pain to data assembled by health groups that track low back pain via billing codes and the like found 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 based on data differed in a few areas – sex, health/behavior traits, and health care use – leading to an undervalued prevalence of low back pain. (1) Johnson Chiropractic knows how prevalent back pain is and how it affects our back pain patients like you.
YOUR BACK PAIN
In a study that specifically examined one influence on back pain - spinal stiffness - from the subjective patient angle and the objective testing angle revealed that these two measures do not correlate well either. At least in this comparison, actual input was from people: patients filling out questionnaires and doctors who filled out objective tests. These findings led the researchers to notice that while these two sources do not correlate well, each is valuable in the overall picture of the patient’s condition and care. (2) Your Richmond chiropractor uses this evidence to care for your spine.
YOUR CHIROPRACTOR
Your Richmond chiropractor is an evidence-based chiropractor. Evidence leads the spine relief treatment plan at Johnson Chiropractic. An interesting study of chiropractic students found that as each year of school passed they became less vitalistic and more evidence-based. (3) After 7 or so years in school, your chiropractor is prepared to take care of Richmond back pain and neck pain patients. The evidence of useful chiropractic spine care keeps expanding! Researchers report today of how the use of non-pharmacological pain management may prevent unnecessary use of opioids. Chiropractic is one type of non-drug pain management offering. In a study 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 found 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 aren’t bad trade-offs for the Medicare cost system and for the Medicare patient.
CONTACT Johnson Chiropractic
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 Richmond chiropractic care visit with Johnson Chiropractic. Your Richmond chiropractor knows your spine well and how to relieve it of pain: neck pain, arm pain, low back pain or leg pain.
