Of the more than $35 billion dollars spent on ambulatory, nonphysician (non-MD) services in 1987, chiropractic accounted for almost 10 percent. But for that money, chiropractors provided over 17 percent of the total patient contacts:
Nursing - 16.6%
Lab - 20.8%
Physical Therapy - 13.3%
Speech Therapy - .9%
Mental Health - 9.6%
Optometry - 1.2%
Chiropractic - 9.8%
Podiatry - 2.5%
Other - 25.3%
Patient Contacts:
Nursing - 17.3%
Lab - 6.6%
Physical Therapy - 7.4%
Speech Therapy - 1.2%
Mental Health - 9.8%
Optometry - 1.1%
Chiropractic - 17.6%
Podiatry - 2.6%
Other - 36.4%
How is it that physical therapy accounted for over 13 percent of the $35 billion, while only providing about 7 percent of the services, while chiropractors accounted for less than 10 percent of those dollars and providing over 17% of the services?
----------------- SOURCE: Nichols, L. Nonphysician health care providers: use of ambulatory services, expenditures, and sources of payment (AHCPR Pub. No. 96-0013). National Medical Expenditure Survey Research Findings 27. Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, Rockville, MD: Public Health Service, Jan. 1996.
Back pain? Blame the psoas. Seems as if everybody wants to dive headfirst into their psoas at the first sign of trouble with the lumbopelvic-hip region. Perhaps no other muscle is blamed more for causing problems than the psoas. Yes, it is an important stabilizer of the lumbar spine, but it shouldn't be the only one on which you focus. There is another big player on the scene: the iliacus.
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