Remember the little old grey haired lady who had just paid for a hamburger, took one look at the burger and said, "Where's the beef?"
As a consumer she paid the price for the product, but the product was insufficient, inadequate and undesirable.
Ray Kroc's McDonalds has been grinding them out for 39 years. Taco Bell is celebrating their 32nd year in business. At the turn of the century Henry Ford created the first mass produced automobiles. Take a close look at McDonald's, Taco Bell, and the automobile industry. The public can tell you about McDonald's hamburgers, Taco Bell's tacos, and Fords.
September 18, 1895, D.D. Palmer gave the "first" adjustment to Harvey Lillard. It worked. Chiropractic is 100 years old, older than the auto industry, McDonald's and Taco Bell. Yet we are still falling short in getting the word out.
Efficacy means "effective" or "power to produce an effect." In plain English, chiropractic works. What's the problem? Why aren't we educating the public? Where's the beef?
Many of the new patients that come into a chiropractic office have been alienated by the medical/drug beliefs that all disease can be cured by drugs or surgery. It is our responsibility to re-educate these patients to the principle of natural health and wellness.
Health care is in a crisis. Consumer costs for health care continues to increase; 80 percent of health care costs are spent on crisis care. In 1990, General Motors paid $3.2 billion (more than it spent on steel) to provide medical coverage for its 1.9 million employees, dependents and retirees (Time, Nov. 1991).
"The embarrassment of our ignorance about the efficacy of health care practices is both hard for us to admit and hard for our patients to accept. It is difficult to face the disillusionment of the patients and the anger of the payers who ask: 'But how could this be? I thought you knew what you were doing.'" (Ronald Berwick, MD, Harvard Medical School.)
"We don't know what we are doing in medicine." (David Eddy, MD, director of the Center for Health Policy Research, Duke University.)
In 1992, 425 billion patient visits were made to alternative health care practitioners (DCs, acupuncturists, osteopaths, homeopaths and herbalists). The efficacy of chiropractic is being proven every day in your office. Research will continue to validate chiropractic.
Dr. Huber Rosomoff, neurosurgeon at the Univ. of Miami, decided after 15 years of surgery on several thousand patients with leg and back pain that "disc herniation, even when clearly visible through imaging, was seldom the real cause of pain ... and that 99 percent of back pain patients did not need surgery."
P. Frettig, MD, orthopedic surgeon, testified in the federal Wilk et al. anti-trust trial that hospitals in Chicago utilizing chiropractic care released back pain patients in half the time, compared to hospitals that did not use chiropractic.
Richard Wolf, MD, compiled workers' compensation studies in California which indicated chiropractic care was twice as effective in returning patients to work.
In 1895, Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen discovered a new kind of light, the x-ray, and psychiatry was just beginning to unravel some of the intricacies of mental illness. Chiropractic, x-ray, psychiatry: all about 100 years old. Which of the three is the most accepted and recognized today? Is it news to you that it isn't chiropractic?
What's the problem? Where's the beef? Again, isn't it our responsibility to educate our patients and the general public about the efficacy of chiropractic and how it works? If we don't, who will? If it is not done, where will chiropractic be in another 100 years?
About the author: DeAna Warren is an Atlanta based trainer and motivator with more than 23 years experience in research, development and training in the chiropractic office.
