The Cost-Effectiveness of Chiropractic

The Chiro.Org Blog


John’s recent post on the de-listing of chiropractic generated a lot of interest and comments from DCs, MDs and RMTs.

In the USA, Chiropractic has been included in several managed care programs, and a recent review of 70,274 member-months over a 7-year period within an IPA demonstrated:

  • decreases of 60.2% in-hospital admissions,
  • 59.0% less hospital days,
  • 62.0% less outpatient surgeries and procedures, and
  • 83% less pharmaceutical costs when patients were seen by a DC rather than an MD for the same complaint!

The authors concluded that:

“this clearly demonstrates that chiropractic nonsurgical nonpharmaceutical approaches generates reductions in both clinical and cost utilization when compared with PCPs using conventional medicine alone.”So, Alberta, Canada may save some money that won’t be paid to the chiropractors, but inevitably will lose much more money in the long run.

The Cost-Effectiveness of Chiropractic Page contains many more prospective studies going back to 1985 that demonstrate the cost savings associated with chiropractic care.

There’s a lot more like this in our LINKS Seection