Because they have yet to pass national legislation protecting the chiropractic profession, Japanese DCs are in a similar situation that U.S. DCs faced. We were fortunate enough to be able to pass chiropractic licensure state by state. The DCs in Japan must accomplish this nationally, which has proved to be an extremely difficult task. And in spite of their efforts, Japanese DCs are currently faced with two chiropractic professions.
Correction to Landmark Healthcare Article
The February 23 issue of DC presented an article on the survey of alternative care by Landmark Healthcare. Part of the article was an interview with Kevin Buron, Landmark's vice president of sales and marketing. The following is the section of the interview with Mr. Buron that was inadvertently left out.
DC: So chiropractic would be one of the groups that has a good advantage, then?
KB: Yes. Chiropractic clearly has a significant advantage, especially when you tie that in with the amount of people using chiropractic, the amount of people saying that they would use it, and the amount of people who say it's important to them in making their health care decision. If you tie all those together, you can see a favorable outlook for chiropractic.
One of our focuses at Landmark is trying to work with alternative care programs like chiropractic and acupuncture to find ways to integrate them more into what we consider the continuum of health care. This way, it's not considered really alternative, but rather the treatment that is best suited to the particular condition. In many cases, alternative care is being used when the traditional system has not been effective. This does not allow the full value of these treatments to be realized.
One of the statistics I find interesting in the Landmark report is that 74% of the people were using alternative care therapies along with their traditional medical care. So people are using it in conjunction with medical care. Actually, in some ways the coordination numbers came out higher than I thought they would. And 63% of the people thought that the care would be beneficial to have more coordination between the medical provider and their alternative care provider.
If you'd like further information, or a copy of the Landmark Report on Public Perceptions of Alternative Care, call (916) 569-3326, or send an e-mail message to info-landmarkhealthcare.com.