How well do you understand your spine and what it needs?
Does your physician? Does your insurer (ie,
Medicare)? Spinal Care Clinic prides itself on understanding the
spine of each of our Burlington and Hamilton chiropractic patients. Your Burlington and Hamilton
chiropractor assesses your low back when there’s
low back pain, your neck when there’s neck pain, your neck when you have arm pain, your low back when you have
leg pain, your thoracic spine when you have thoracic
(and even neck and low back) pain. Your chiropractor ”gets” your
spine. Unfortunately, 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 Burlington and Hamilton chiropractor strives
to communicate openly with your insurer for your optimal
care and with you for your best clinical outcome: back pain relief, neck pain relief, arm pain relief, leg pain relief,
etc.
YOUR INSURER
Administrators’ data does not tell the entire
story about back pain. In one study comparing
self-reported low back pain to data collected by
health administrations that track low back pain via billing codes
and such found that these two groups
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 undervalued prevalence of low back pain. (1)
Spinal Care Clinic 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 don’t correlate well either. At least in
this comparison, real input was from people: patients who
filled out questionnaires and doctors who filled out
objective tests. These findings led the researchers to note
that while these two sources don’t correlate well, each is
valuable in the whole general picture of the
patient’s condition and care. (2) Your Burlington and Hamilton chiropractor uses this evidence to care for your spine.
YOUR CHIROPRACTOR
Your Burlington and Hamilton chiropractor is an evidence-based
chiropractor. Evidence leads the spine relief treatment plan at
Spinal Care Clinic. A fascinating study of chiropractic
students found that with
each year of learning they became
less vitalistic and more evidence-based. (3) After 7 or so years in school,
your chiropractor is ready to take care of Burlington and Hamilton
back pain and neck pain patients. The evidence of beneficial chiropractic
spine care keeps growing! Researchers write today that the use of non-pharmacological pain management may inhibit
unnecessary use of opioids. Chiropractic is one such 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 utilize chiropractic are found
to have better clinical outcomes (faster recovery, fewer back
surgeries 12 months later, less opioid-associated
disability, fewer traumatic falls and injuries, slower declines in activities
of daily living and disability over time) at less cost (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 Spinal Care Clinic
Listen to this PODCAST
by Dr. Lee Hazen and Cheri Hazen RN on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr.
Michael Johnson as they described how non-pharmacological alleviating
treatment of back pain using the Cox® Technic System of Spinal
Pain Management and other non-drug approaches help.
Make a non-surgical Burlington and Hamilton
chiropractic care visit with Spinal Care Clinic. Know that
Spinal Care Clinic knows Burlington and Hamilton back pain, understands how it affects
you, and has a plan for its relief.