As part of a concerted effort to address insurance denials within the chiropractic profession, the Foundation for Chiropractic Education and Research (FCER) is surveying doctors of chiropractic nationwide. The FCER Insurance Denial Survey, accessible at the foundation's Web site, www.fcer.org, is designed to tabulate insurance denial information specific to each state, and to assess overall trends in the U.S. Chiropractors can visit the site and take the survey, which takes approximately six minutes to complete, through Sept. 15, 2007.
"As you know, surveys have revealed that most doctors of chiropractic are experiencing major problems with insurance denials and the resulting reduced income," said Charles Herring, DC, FCER board member and facilitator for the project. "The first step in addressing this problem is to survey the profession regarding what they are actually experiencing in the field."
Survey respondents will receive the results, once tabulated, and results also will be shared with chiropractic state association leadership nationwide. According to the FCER, the foundation "will then work with practitioners, educators, organization leaders, insurance representatives and others to develop strategies and tactics to work more closely with insurers."
"The information will be invaluable," said Dr. Herring, adding that, "a by-product of the survey will be the identification of research topics that are critical to the chiropractic profession's success."
The FCER Insurance Denial Survey is the first project developed as part of the foundation's recently announced State of Research Initiative. The initiative, launched in cooperation with state associations, is designed to help educate clinicians, influence research agenda and establish practice-based research projects. The ultimate goal of the initiative is straightforward: to help doctors of chiropractic get paid by insurers for the services they provide on a daily basis. The American Chiropractic Association and several other national organizations are supporting the State of Research Initiative and its goals.
Many relevant diagnostic signs are not performed deliberately by the examiner or by the patient at the examiner’s direction. They are observed as the patient reacts to their condition. Fortin’s finger sign, Minor’s sign, and Vanzetti’s sign are three examples of this principle.
Spearheaded by burgeoning scientific and clinical research literature, psychedelics have reached a level of media coverage and popular interest that has not been seen for over half a century. By “psychedelics,” we are referring to the unique class of substances that includes psilocybin (the active compound found in so-called “magic mushrooms”), LSD, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), ayahuasca, 5-MeO-DMT, and mescaline – each of which occurs in the natural world (except for LSD, which is a semi-synthetic compound).
While working at the Lovelace Medical Center in Albuquerque, N.M., one of the primary care physicians stated that imaging every patient prior to receiving chiropractic was not medically necessary. It was at that point I reconsidered the need for the imaging of every patient to avoid malpractice.
