Chiropractic by a good chiro helps save money & reduce spinal surgery

The cost of healthcare (which in reality is more about sickness care than health care) in Australia is huge. It is over $100 billion each year or 9.1% of the GDP. With everyone looking to reduce costs and the Abbott government being intent on charging more or slashing services in healthcare, it could be time for medicine to allow more integration with chiropractic as the results are a substantial reduction in costs, apart from the increase in quality of health. Here's where chiropractic comes in...

In the October 11, 2004 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine there was a study by the American Specialty Health Plans Inc of San Diego. This company provides employers with health insurance coverage for complementary medicine such as chiropractic.

How Much Can Chiropractic Reduce the Cost of Treating Back pain and Reduce Surgery?

The company compared 4 years of back pain claims from its 2 groups: 700,000 had coverage including chiropractic and 1,000,000 had the same coverage except it didn't include chiropractic. In any of the data sets from the claims (musculoskeletal care, low back pain care, total health care plan costs etc), the group covered by chiropractic had a lower overall cost then the group not covered by chiropractic. Specifically, chiropractic care:

• Reduced the cost of treating low back pain by 28%;

• Cut the cost of medical imaging (CT scan etc) by 37%;

• Reduced hospitalisations among back pain patients by 41%; and
  

• Reduced spinal surgeries by 32%.

That would be millions of dollars saved if patients were referred to chiropractors more by the medical profession. However, that doesn't stop individuals from seeking chiropractic care if they aren't referred by their GP as chiroprators are primary care practitioners. On a previous post "Sydney Chiropractor tells the tooth about your spine", I gave the statistics of how many people are carrying spinal injury and spinal degeneration without even having symptoms so it's obvious that there is a huge neccessity for chiropractic in our community of Sydney. Anyone can go directly to a chiropractor doctor when they want to know how chiropractic could be beneficial to their back pain, headache, lifting injury, sports injury, muscle spasm, sore hip, migraine, shoulder pain, knee pain, neck stiffness, disc injury, arthritis of the spine or even their overall complete health.

How Could we Spend the Savings from Chiropractors Sydney?

The millions saved could be spent for improving health education of the Australian population, whether it was how to use preventative health professions such as dentistry and chiropractic, how to have good nutrition for disease reduction or how to reduce dependence on drugs, cigarettes and alcohol. The age old quote of "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" is still very true to this day.Make sure that you have your complete health covered by having chiropractor cover in your private health insurance and more importantly - use your chiropractor's services! That's a key part of how you keep your body healthy and strong. Remember your spine is the backbone of your body and the backbone of any organisation or structure is one of the most important parts. We only get one spine so make sure you take care of yours.