Cost Effectiveness

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Cost Effectiveness of Chiropractic

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Cost-effective care is an emerging and important topic in today’s health care environment. The cost of health care in our country continues to rise, and all parties involved in paying for that care are becoming more and more interested in finding the best “bang for the buck” if you will. That includes patients, insurance companies, the government, etc. See the “lifestyle choices” research page for great ways you can contribute to the lessening of health care costs in our country. Below is some research showing how chiropractic can be a cost-effective choice for your health care needs.

“They found a large body of evidence suggesting that chiropractic management of low back pain is safer, more efficacious, more cost-effective, and more satisfying to patients than allopathic medical management. They concluded that a good case could be made for making chiropractic physicians the gatekeepers for the management of low back pain.”

-Horowitz, Alan D et al. “A New Gatekeeper for Back Pain.” Am J Man Care. Apr 1998;4:576 -579. (Referring to Manga et al. study commissioned by the Canadian government)

“When considering effectiveness and cost together, chiropractic physician care for low back pain and neck pain is highly cost effective, represents a good value in comparison to medical physician care and to widely accepted cost-effectiveness thresholds.”

-Choudhry, Niteesh and Arnold Milstein. “Do Chiropractic Physician Services for Treatment of Low Back and Neck Pain Improve the Value of Health Benefit Plans?” A report prepared for the Foundation for Chiropractic Progress. Oct 12, 2009. (Niteesh Choudhry, MD, PhD is out of Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA)

“Systematic access to managed chiropractic care not only may prove to be clinically beneficial but also may reduce overall health care costs.”

-Antonio P. Legorreta et al. “Comparative Analysis of Individuals With and Without Chiropractic Coverage.” Arch Intern Med. 2004;164:1985-1992.

“Clinical and cost utilization based on 70,274 member-months over a 7-year period demonstrated decreases of 60.2% in- hospital admissions, 59.0% hospital days, 62.0% outpatient surgeries and procedures, and 85% pharmaceutical costs when (chiropractic primary care was) compared with conventional medicine IPA (independent physician association) performance for the same health maintenance organization product in the same geography and time frame...the CAM-oriented PCPs (chiropractors) using a nonsurgical/ nonpharmaceutical approach demonstrated reductions in both clinical and cost utilization when compared with PCPs using conventional medicine alone.”

-Sarnat RL, Winterstein J, Cambron JA. “Clinical utilization and cost outcomes from an integrative medicine independent

physician association: an additional 3-year update.” J Manipulative Physiol Ther. 2007 May;30(4):263-9.