West Virginia Gets New Comprehensive Law

On March 14, 1998, the West Virginia legislature passed a bill to amend article 16, chapter 30 of the state's 1931 chiropractic act. The bill became law on April 1.

The bill stipulates a number of regulations designed to protect chiropractic practice, and the public:

• "No person ... may perform or authorize a spinal manipulation or spinal adjustment without having first receive a minimum of four hundred hours of classroom instruction in spinal manipulation and a minimum of eight hundred hours of supervised clinical training at a facility where spinal manipulation or spinal adjusting is a primary method of treatment.


• "Any chiropractor properly qualified ... may engage in the use of physiotherapeutic devices, physiotherapeutic modalities, physical therapy and physical therapy techniques.


• "Any chiropractor ... may use any instrument or procedure for the purpose of diagnosis and analysis of disease or abnormalities: provided the person is trained to perform the procedures and use the instruments through a chiropractic college approved by the Council on Chiropractic Education.


• "The title of chiropractors shall be doctor of chiropractic and is designated by the letters D.C. The titles D.C., doctor of chiropractic, chiropractor, chiropractic physician are interpreted as the same.


• "A doctor of chiropractic duly licensed under this article is presumed to be competent to testify before the circuit courts of this state or in any other state administrative proceeding as an expert witness."


• An IME physician must have a West Virginia chiropractic license to perform an IME on a West Virginia patient.


• "Doctors of chiropractic shall observe and are subject to all state and municipal rules in regard to the control of infectious diseases, and to any and all other matters pertaining to public health.


• "Electrodiagnostic devices include, but are not limited to: videofluoroscopy and diagnostic ultrasound, including needle and surface electromyography, nerve conduction velocity studies, somatosensory testing and neuromuscular junction testing.

The West Virginia bill assures a strong legal foundation for chiropractic practice in the state, and gives the state chiropractic board broad administrative and disciplinary powers.

By requiring 1,200 hours of training in spinal manipulation, the state is protecting the public and chiropractors from the unqualified intrusion of MDs, DOs, and PTs who take weekend adjusting seminars and on Monday are doing spinal manipulations on patients.

The West Virginia chiropractic law is a blueprint for other states to assure and protect the practice of chiropractic.