If you’re starting a chiropractic education soon, you’ve perhaps been too busy to keep up with news about the chiropractic profession. Sure, you know an ever-increasing number of doctors of chiropractic are being recognized to admit and treat patients in hospitals. You also know patient satisfaction with chiropractic treatments for musculoskeletal conditions is very high – topping 95% in some surveys. Now, new proposed legislation offers more excellent news.
Introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2021, the Chiropractic Medicare Coverage Modernization Act increases Medicare coverage of services by chiropractors to the full extent of their state licensure.
Medicare Part B (which covers outpatient services) will typically cover chiropractic services that are considered medically necessary for the treatment of a specific condition. These services must be performed by a licensed chiropractor who accepts Medicare assignment, and they must be documented as necessary and reasonable by the chiropractor.
Chiropractic care includes includes
There’s certainly nothing easy about becoming a chiropractor, however. Chiropractic education is high-level, and the classwork and labs are comprehensive. The degree requires more than 4,200 clock hours in school, accomplished in a year-round, trimester format that’s completed in less than four years.
Still, chiropractic alumni consistently say their choice of chiropractic education was worthwhile. They saw the devotion and passion of their instructors. They appreciated learning about the chiropractic perspective, which sees better health outcomes involving biological, psychological, and social factors instead of exclusively biomedical.
Finally, they saw how better health over one’s lifetime is through highly personalized care that includes
Dr. Whitney Haase, practicing in Elkhorn, Neb., knows that finding the source of pain is essential.
“If you don’t assess everything, there’s a good chance that you might totally miss the driving factor,” Dr. Haase says. “I had a patient who initially came in with knee pain. After the exam, we determined that it was just a very unique low back disc referral pattern. So we treated her low back, and that knee got better.”
When he was a young man, Jon Petrick was in a car accident, leaving him with an upper cervical and a lumbar issue.
“I went to many different doctors,” he recalls. “I was not given a prognosis that I was willing to live with.”
Petrick was recommended to a Doctor of Chiropractic. After a series of assessments and treatments, he finally found pain relief.
“After a short period, a lot of the physical problems that I was having started to go away,” Petrick says, “the headaches, the neck pain…even the numbness and tingling I was experiencing in my right arm. I saw how much his patients loved and adored him, and I just said, ‘I want to be that. Chiropractic is exactly what I want to do.’”
How’d that determination to serve people turn out? Dr. Jon Petrick, a 1999 chiropractic college graduate, owns a practice in the Las Vegas area.
Because of patient satisfaction with chiropractic, the increasing use of medical specialists in healthcare, and the rise in musculoskeletal conditions due to sedentary lifestyles, the need for chiropractors will rise 10% through 2031.
The data site Salary.com places the salary for experienced doctors of chiropractic with an established patient base at $90,962 to $154,245.
Plus, here are more facts answering the question, “Why the doctor of chiropractic?”
For a comprehensive look at chiropractic, review this report: Chiropractic: A Safe and Cost Effective Approach to Health.
Cleveland University-Kansas City (CUKC) is a private, nonprofit, healthcare-focused university in Overland Park, Kansas, the largest city within the Kansas City metro. Most students complete their Doctor of Chiropractic degree (D.C.) in 3.3 years through our year-round trimester schedule.
Points of distinction for our College of Chiropractic include:
Click here to receive detailed information, and click here to receive this free eBook: Your Complete Guide to the Chiropractic Profession.
