President-elect Clinton Calls for Practice Guidelines

In the televised presidential debate on Thursday, October 15, 1992, candidate Bill Clinton revealed some of the important points of his health care reform:

"I've recommended that our doctors be given a set of national practice guidelines and that if they follow these guidelines, that raises the presumption that they didn't do anything wrong. ... I'm going to send a plan to do this within the first 100 days of my presidency."

These statements, combined with health care reforms in Florida and other states, point to the fact that practice guidelines will soon become mandatory at all levels. Fortunately, instead of the next president of the United States giving the chiropractic profession "a set of national practice guidelines," we will be sending him a copy of ours.

One can only wonder who would be developing these "national practice guidelines." Given the current political state of affairs, such government guidelines probably would not be written by members of the chiropractic profession. This is why we must strive to keep all national and state governmental decision makers well informed of the fact that the chiropractic profession is already complying with this mandate. A copy of the Mercy Guidelines will be sent to the president.

The remarks on practice guidelines made by Governor Clinton during the presidential debate came just prior to the Mercy Conference Guidelines being mailed to every chiropractor in the United States who is a NCMIC policyholder, OUM policyholder, or receives Dynamic Chiropractic. All 49,004 copies are being mailed beginning November 1, 1992 at the special fourth class rate. The enormous task of boxing, labeling, and mailing this many copies will require at least four weeks to complete. Ultimately, all copies should be received by the end of January assuming the normal holiday season postal delays.

Aspen Publishers, Inc. is the company who is publishing and mailing the Mercy Guidelines. They have shown their strong support of the chiropractic profession by producing the Mercy Guidelines at a cost that would allow for professionwide distribution. This, when combined with their willingness to take on such a monumental task, helped make this effort a reality. For that reason, several individuals within the Aspen organization should be mentioned.

Special thanks to Deborah Bowen-Leser, director of manufacturing and production; Laura Smith, book production manager; Ruth Bloom, managing editor of books; and Martha Sasser, previously Aspen's chiropractic acquisitions editor.

Additionally, the profession owes a debt of gratitude to those organizations who insured that their policyholders, members, clients, and customers received a copy of this most important chiropractic guidelines document:

National Chiropractic Mutual Insurance Company (NCMIC)
Foot Levelers, Inc.
OUM Group
California Chiropractic Association
Leander Health Technologies
Activator Methods
Motion Palpation Institute
Parker Chiropractic Resource Foundation
The Practice Resource Group
Synergy Visual Odyssey

Because the process of sending out the guidelines has been so arduous, a certain number of addresses will be out of date. If you have moved in the last few months, your copy of the Mercy Guidelines will be forwarded. Please alert your staff to accept the document when it comes to you.

The issue of chiropractic guidelines is one of the most important and controversial in our history. There has been a great deal of misunderstanding and misinformation. Please read this document carefully for yourself. If you have any information or an opinion that may be relevant to the document, there is only one mechanism available for you to voice your response in a manner that will be recorded for future consideration. Please use the method provided in "Appendix C" of the guidelines for all correspondence.