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Sept. 18, 1895: Is There a Chiropractor in the House?

By John Wiens DC|September 18, 2009|Media|

An interesting perspective from Wired
This Week In Tech
Events that Shaped the Wired World
by Tony Long

September 18th, 1895: The first chiropractic adjustment is performed, and a new field of medicine is born, along with a healthy number of skeptics.

It was the age of the talented dilettante, and the world’s first chiropractor certainly qualified on that score. Daniel David Palmer, variously a beekeeper, school teacher and grocery store owner, dabbled in magnetic healing and mysticism on the side, while perusing the medical journals to keep abreast of developments in physiology. He began practicing magnetic healing during the 1880s, while living in Davenport, Iowa, but his big break came in 1895, when a deaf janitor with a back problem happily came his way.

Upon examination, Palmer located a lump in Harvey Lillard’s back. Palmer had already advanced the theory that spinal abnormalities caused most, if not all, diseases and conditions by virtue of disrupting normal nerve flow. When he performed an adjustment on Lillard, which involved the manual manipulation of the spine and surrounding joints, the man’s deafness vanished. Palmer knew he was onto something big.

Buoyed by this success, he founded the Palmer School of Chiropractic in 1897, which, by 1902, had unleashed 15 chiropractors on an unsuspecting world. The state of Iowa, meanwhile, was tightening up its laws regarding the practice of medicine without a license, and in 1906 Palmer took the fall.

Rather than pay a fine he elected to go to jail, but after 17 days of that, Palmer changed his mind and coughed up the dough. He then sold the school to his son, B.J., and lit out for the West Coast.

He established chiropractic schools in California and Oregon, as well as in Oklahoma.

Traditional medical practitioners tended to dismiss Palmer’s discipline. In a sense you couldn’t blame them, given Palmer’s sketchy past, his penchant for self-promotion and his habit of trumpeting chiropractic with a fervor approaching religious proselytizing. He also didn’t lack for brass. Here he is in a letter dated May 1911:

[W]e must have a religious head, one who is the founder, as did Christ, Mohammed, Jo[seph] Smith, Mrs. Eddy, Martin Luther and others who have founded religions. I am the fountain head. I am the founder of chiropractic in its science, in its art, in its philosophy and in its religious phase.

He also claimed to have answered the question, what is life?

It’s not hard to see why the more-staid docs wouldn’t be lining up to buy this guy drinks at the annual convention.

Palmer died in 1913, of typhoid fever. But chiropractic lived on and gradually shed most of its mystical, quasi-religious characteristics for a more holistic, yet science-based, philosophy. It remains, however, out on the fringe, and its effectiveness continues to be debated. Whatever chiropractic can or can’t do regarding the healing of disease, with an able chiropractor in charge spinal manipulation does appear effective in easing some forms of chronic back pain.

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For CAs: Introduction to a Rewarding Career

By Frank M. Painter|September 18, 2009|Chiropractic Assistant, Education, Practice Management|

For CAs: Introduction to a Rewarding Career

The Chiro.Org Blog

We would all like to thank Dr. Richard C. Schafer, DC, PhD, FICC for his lifetime commitment to the profession. In the future we will continue to add materials from RC’s copyrighted books for your use.

This is Chapter 1 from RC’s best-selling book:

“The Chiropractic Assistant”

These materials are provided as a service to our profession. There is no charge for individuals to copy and file these materials. However, they cannot be sold or used in any group or commercial venture without written permission from ACAPress.

Chapter I: Introduction to a Rewarding Career

To enter the health-care field as a chiropractic assistant is an adventure for the qualified individual. The nationwide trend in the primary care professions is not only to provide qualified health-care professionals but also to assure that assistants are qualified to carry out their duties and responsibilities in caring for the health needs of patients. To achieve this goal,

chiropractic physicians are encouraged to use assistants to increase personal efficiency, and
chiropractic organizations are encouraged to sponsor legislation establishing a nationwide accredited chiropractic assistants program.

All states and Puerto Rico have statutes recognizing and regulating the practice of chiropractic as an independent health service because the profession has proven its value as a public service. On foreign shores, the practice of chiropractic is officially recognized and regulated in Canada, Switzerland, Germany, New Zealand, Western Australia, Bolivia, and is acknowledged and accepted in the British Isles, South Africa, Rhodesia, Japan, France, Denmark, Belgium, Italy, and Egypt. Official recognition is being initiated in scores of other countries.

Note: While most doctors of chiropractic are males, the number of female practitioners is growing. Likewise, while the majority of chiropractic assistants are female, an increasing number of males are assuming the role of chiropractic assistant. For the sake of simplicity and not sexual bias, the pronoun “he” is used throughout this program when referring to the doctor of chiropractic, and the pronoun “she” is used when referring to the chiropractic assistant. This is solely to avoid the redundant “he or she” or “he/she” when referring to the doctor or assistant. (more…)

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ANJC Files Class Action Suit Against Aetna; Joins Class Action Against Blue Cross/Blue Shield

By Frank M. Painter|September 13, 2009|News|

Association of NJ Chiropractors Brings Class Action Suit against Aetna for Post Payment Audit Practices

The Association of New Jersey Chiropractors (ANJC), one of the largest chiropractic state associations in the nation, today announced that it has filed a lawsuit against Aetna seeking nationwide relief on behalf of chiropractors and other healthcare professionals.

The ANJC retained the law firm of Buttaci & Leardi, LLC, in concert with the renowned class action law firm of Pomerantz Haudek Grossman & Gross LLP, to investigate and file the lawsuit, which challenges Aetna s improper recoupment demands on chiropractors and other healthcare providers. The action alleges that Aetna s post-payment audit process is violative of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 ( ERISA ), and further alleges that Aetna s post-payment audit process and its pre-payment claim review process violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act ( RICO ). The action also attacks Aetna s clinical policy bulletins that are used to deny services retroactively. (more…)

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Palmer Center for Chiropractic Research receives $1.3 million federal grant award

By John Wiens DC|September 10, 2009|News|

Source Quad-Cities Online
Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2009

Palmer Receives HRSA Grant Award to Study Co-Management of Older Adults With Low Back Pain by M.D.s and D.C.s

(Davenport, IOWA) The U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) has awarded a three-year grant for approximately $1.3 million to the Palmer Center for Chiropractic Research (PCCR) for a study called Co-Management of Older Adults With Low Back Pain by Medical Doctors and Doctors of Chiropractic. Throughout this project, PCCR researchers will be collaborating with researchers at the Genesis Quad Cities Family Medicine Residency Program; the College of Public Health at the University of Iowa; the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine; the University of Iowa Center on Aging; and the College of Health Professions at Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, Pa. (more…)

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Pilot study finds chiropractic care, physical therapy may reduce costs

By John Wiens DC|September 10, 2009|News|

Source Risk and Insurance Online

Individuals with musculoskeletal disorders who received chiropractic care or physical therapy had lower health care costs and were less likely to have surgery than employees who did not receive those services, according to a recent report.

The findings come from a one-year pilot program designed by Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield to measure patient quality of care. Researchers concluded that significant clinical outcomes and health care cost reductions were attributable to the use of chiropractic and other physical medicine services. Overall, 89 percent of all individuals receiving physical medicine services reported improvement of at least 30 percent within 30 days.

The 2008 pilot — an ongoing quality improvement program for Iowa and South Dakota physical medicine providers — analyzed data on care provided by 238 chiropractors, physical therapists and occupational therapists to 5,500 Wellmark members with MSDs. Wellmark utilized Triad Healthcare to help administer the program and collaborated with the company to collect data and measure outcomes. Triad also analyzed the chiropractic and physical therapy utilization data for the pilot and has continued to administer the program in 2009.

Supporters of chiropractic treatment praised the findings, saying that the cost-effectiveness of the method has been documented in several studies.

Glenn Manceaux, president of the American Chiropractic Association, pointed to a study published in a 2005 issue of the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics that found chiropractic and medical care have comparable costs for treating chronic low-back pain, with chiropractic care producing significantly better outcomes. In addition, a study published in a 2003 edition of Spine medical journal found that manual manipulation provides better short-term relief of chronic spinal pain than a variety of medications, he said.

“Especially during the health care reform debate, it’s important that chiropractic and other conservative care methods are taken into serious consideration as a cost-effective alternative to the utilization of expensive surgery and hospital-based care,” he said.

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Let’s Talk Supplements: Part II

By Frank M. Painter|September 8, 2009|Nutrition|

Let’s Talk Supplements: Part II

The Chiro.Org Blog

In the last year there has been a disappointing series of nutritional studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. JAMA was rabidly opposed to supplementation until 2002, when they finally published an excellent article that proposed that taking supplements could reduce the risk of chronic disease. [1] That article was right on the money. This recent group of articles challenges those findings, but you will soon find that they were all seriously flawed. Let’s review these clinical trials, and consider how asking the wrong question can yield the wrong answers, and how that process generates negative bias against supplementation. The first study we will discuss is the:

Physicians’ Health Study II (more…)

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