The Major Premise is a publication of the Georgia Council of Chiropractic. Opinions reflected in each article represent those of the author and may not reflect the official view of the GCC or its board of directors. Questions, feedback, or letters to the editor may be submitted by email, fax, or postal mail at the addresses below.
Your Georgia Council of Chiropractic (GCC) has monitored and been involved in every aspect of the legislative process as it pertains to HB 505. Thanks to the ongoing efforts of our legislative committee, we are constantly being updated on any law or proposed legislation that could possibly infringe upon our rights.
As previously stated in our last issue of the Major Premise, the GCC has expressed concerns about HB 505 relative to the Physical Therapists expanding scope of practice into primary access without the educational level of a doctor of physical therapy. We feel the bill is flawed and may expose the public to increased risk. For this reason we continue to oppose this legislation.
We have also been made aware that this bill has a possibility of being amended in the GA Senate to extend the practice of Physical Therapy into the realm of chiropractic via Spinal Manipulation. The GCC stands strongly opposed to any such amendments that extend the practice of physical therapy into chiropractic practice.
We urge all DCs in Georgia to contact their senators and express your opinion about this bill. Click here to find our who your senator is. Please note you will need the +4 of your home address zip code. Click here to look up your +4 zip code. Act Now!
Please rest assured that the GCC is ever vigilant in protecting our legal right to be able to take care of our patients on a daily basis!
Awais Butt, D.C.
President
Georgia Council of Chiropractic
Do We Really Need Another Prescriber?
by Bob Braile, D.C.
Unless you have been hiding on a deserted island the past few decades, it should not be news to you that the United States has a severe prescription drug problem. In June of 2013, the Mayo Clinic Proceedings published a study showing that 68.1 percent of the U.S. population is on a prescription medication at any given time. Over 51 percent of the population is on more than one, and over 21 percent on five or more.
Additionally, in 2011, the Office of the President of the United States issued a report titled “EPIDEMIC: RESPONDING TO AMERICA’S PRESCRIPTION DRUG ABUSE CRISIS.” The first line of this report states, “Prescription drug abuse is the Nation’s fastest-growing drug problem.”
The United States is the most drugged society in the history of the human race. Is it any wonder that our healthcare system is ranked 38th by the World Health Organization? It should also come as no surprise that the U.S. ranks last in most health measures, including longevity, when compared to the top industrialized nations, all of whom take less drugs than do we.
With these undisputed facts, and the hundreds of other studies showing that our society’s health is suffering due to overmedication, the question begs to be asked, “Do we really need another prescriber?”
With the aforementioned knowledge readily available, there are chiropractors who desire to join the ranks of the prescribers by expanding chiropractic licensure into pharmacology. At first, it was only fringe groups of disgruntled DCs who were grasping for straws in a misguided attempt to gain what they thought would be legitimacy. But now apparently, the American Chiropractic Association has jumped on the drug bandwagon with their latest resolutions forming a College of Pharmacology and Toxicology, and their “Six Key Elements of a Modern Chiropractic Act,” which calls for usage of the term “Chiropractic Medicine.”
The arguments for both these ACA moves paint a thin veil of public assistance. Groups advocating prescriptive rights in the past predominantly spoke of “practice rights,” as if giving drugs was some sort of an entitlement. However, the ACA language speaks of, “restrict patients’ access to chiropractic services,” and “discriminatory policies in reimbursement,” as reasoning for chiropractors giving drugs.
This reasoning lacks either any evidence or logic. With certain states, such as Florida, already having made such language changes, can anyone say with a straight face that reimbursement is better now than it was before the language change? Do we really believe that insurance companies will pay better once we add the word medicine to our practice act?
The argument behind the ACA’s College of Pharmacology and Toxicology also escapes reason. The first stated objective of ACA’s new college is, “To assist in the advancement of Chiropractic medicine as a science and healing art.” So immediately, we see the shift toward the word “medicine.” This also suggests that our profession will advance if we get into pharmacology. This is just totally false.
Another of the stated objectives talks about educational programs at chiropractic colleges. Part of this section reads, “…meaningful use criteria relating to drug-drug and drug-allergy interactions, maintain an active medication list, maintain an active medication allergy list and to implement and maintain drug formulary checks.” This is curious language as any recommendations related to medications are outside of the scope of chiropractic practice. Therefore, a change in scope would be needed to make these classes relevant. Ah, therein lies the true intent.
The ACA’s plan does not mention the new responsibility or increased liability we would be subject to if we are required to maintain such drug records. The idea also does not take into account the huge increase in exposure and resultant increased malpractice insurance premium rates all DCs will have to pay.
The ACA’s plan, thinly hidden, is to first embrace the term “chiropractic medicine” legislatively in our practice acts, such as in Florida. Step two is to offer courses that teach pharmacology, thus to say we have the training. Then finally, step three is to go to the state legislatures with the argument that we are already called chiropractic medicine, and we have the training in pharmaceuticals, so we deserve a full prescriptive scope of practice. The logic of the plan, not the reasoning, seems to make sense, IF your goal was ultimately to get drugs into chiropractic.
But there is still one elephant in the room. Our society does not need another prescriber. In fact, the valid argument can be made that if the pharmaceutical industry gets ahold of chiropractic, the way it has medicine, any semblance of chiropractic’s unique offering will vanish forever. If nothing else, the public deserves to have a healthcare provider who is not bought and paid for by big pharma.
I’m sure there are some chiropractic colleges that would relish the idea of pharmaceutical giants cutting checks for millions of dollars to their institutions. But with those thirty pieces of silver would be the loss of any resemblance of a chiropractic subluxation based education.
If a chiropractor truly wants to incorporate drugs into their practice, why not just go to medical school and get the degree? Why try to drag the public’s last good hope for a non-drug approach into the jaws of big pharma? Are we so selfish that for a perceived short term gain, we hurt the public good forever?
Chiropractic offers an alternative to the madness and carnage we are seeing in a drug-first society. I’m all for learning about the horrors of a drug dependent society. Yes, let’s have courses on that. But I have serious reservations that the ACA’s College of Pharmacology and Toxicology has as its educational goal the preservation of chiropractic as a drugless approach to health.
In the end, the arguments do not come down to any public need, for none exists. The underlying rationale is money, or in this case, the perception that money will come if we head down this crooked path. To that I can only say, “What profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul.”
Happy Spring!
Here's what's blooming at the GCC
The GCC has a new online service portal to better serve our members, Georgia chiropractors, students, and others interested in the GCC. This new online portal is ready and waiting for you to use, all you need to do is create a login ID and password for your account. Please click the link below to setup your online profile, edit your contact information, and open the door to all the benefits and services available via this new online portal, including discounts on our many events, seminars, and more. If you have any questions or need assistance setting up your account, contact the GCC office at 678-667-4567.
I DO love being a chiropractor. Just knowing that I have the ability to locate and remove an impediment to a person’s ability to express their health and their life as fully as possible is both awe-inspiring and humbling at the same time.
In these 15 years of practice, I’ve had the opportunity to work with folks with so many different challenges. It’s run the gamut from back pain and migraines to high blood pressure to constipation, seizures and ear infections. Of course, Chiropractic is not a treatment for any of those conditions or ANY medical condition, for that matter. We know that the ONE thing that the chiropractor DOES do is to locate and correct vertebral subluxation. And when we DO what chiropractors were meant to do, people’s lives improve.
One of the things I appreciate most about Chiropractic is the awareness that everyone has the innate potential for better health and performance. Helping folks realize that their innate potential for expressing more life IS in my mind the greatest part of my job as a chiropractor. AND realizing this fact helps my members make better life decisions, increasing my value as their chiropractor.
One of the greatest benefits (to ME as a chiropractor) of adjusting a high school football and basketball team for five years was having kids get on the table EVERY week to get checked for subluxation whether they had symptoms or not. And having a teenager tell you that they not only feel better but PLAY better when they get adjusted is powerful confirmation that you’re on the right track.
Having practiced and studied Chiropractic for several years now, I understand that EVERYONE is better off without vertebral subluxation. Even more, I believe that EVERYONE deserves to have access to Chiropractic care regardless of age or condition, whether infant or geriatric, and with or without symptoms. The only diagnosis needed is the presence of vertebral subluxation.
That’s why I love practicing in Georgia, and why I belong to and support the Georgia Council of Chiropractic. The GCC is dedicated to protecting our right to practice chiropractic, and the right of EVERY Georgia citizen to receive chiropractic care. It’s a privilege that far too many of us take for granted. Without the GCC, we could very easily lose our ability to legally check infants, children, and asymptomatic families for subluxation. So, I’ll close this out by simply asking, I mean urging, that you to join the GCC. The future of Chiropractic in Georgia could depend on it.
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ICA Responds to Member Questions on New ACA
"College of Chiropractic Pharmacology" Proposal
March 4, 2015, Falls Church, Virginia: International Chiropractors Association (ICA) members from around the world have been contacting the ICA in unprecedented numbers expressing concern and in many instances outright dismay and opposition to a new effort recently taken by the American Chiropractic Association (ACA), to establish a College of Chiropractic Pharmacology and Toxicology, and to promote the term "Chiropractic medicine." ICA's leadership has expressed similar concerns as it is now clear that there are forces at work within some organizations, actively promoting the incorporation of drugs into the scope of chiropractic practice. This is in clear contravention of the statement that the organizations that comprise The Chiropractic Summit--including the ACA--adopted at Seattle, Washington on November 7, 2013, which reads:
The drug issue is a non-issue because no chiropractic organization in the Summit promotes the inclusion of prescription drug rights and all chiropractic organizations in the Summit support the drug-free approach to health care.
It is in this context and out of grave concern for the future of the chiropractic profession and the protection of the public that ICA has chosen to offer a statement of opposition to this paradigm-changing action.
"For nearly a century the ICA has advocated clear lines of distinction between the health care professions. Chiropractic is a drugless health care discipline. Adding drugs to our profession would make it simply another branch of medicine," said ICA President Dr. Michael S. McLean. "Does our society really need another drug-dispensing profession?"
"Unique among chiropractic organizations, ICA has acted on a wide range of fronts, legislative, legal and in the media, maintaining a no-compromise policy on the issue of drugs in chiropractic, to preserve this unique and highly positive aspect of chiropractic. We will do the same here, and urge the ACA members to reconsider this action."
ICA holds that the public is entitled to one truly drug-free system of health care and doctors of chiropractic are fully trained and qualified to fill that role with proven clinical and cost effectiveness. For more than a century, the marketplace has sustained and supported chiropractic on the basis of its unique, drugless approach to health and healing. This is especially crucial at a time when our society at-large is recognizing the alarming complexities, costs and complications of a drug-based approach to treatment and the trend is strongly in the direction of a minimalist approach regarding drugs, and with good reason.
ICA looks forward to presenting the host of issues and concerns that make this Pharmaceutical "College" proposal so problematic and inherently destructive and will keep the membership and the profession fully informed as this effort develops. To join ICA for this initiative, please go to www.chiropractic.org.
GCC Classifieds
Associate Wanted - Incredible opportunity for an on purpose Chiropractor who can communicate lifetime family wellness. This practice is a 3 year old 100% cash practice in Milledgeville, GA. Associate will be fully trained in a proven system to see high volume with little headaches. Must be a good and confident adjustor who enjoys doing group reports and workshops and is eager to build an amazing practice where future ownership will be available if desired. Looking to start ASAP. Please send email with CV attached to: drted@pclakeoconee.com.
Help Wanted - Associate Position- Associate Chiropractor Needed (Metro Atlanta) Assess a patient's medical condition by reviewing his or her medical history, listening to the patient's concerns, and performing a physical examination. Analyze the patient's posture and spine. Provide musculoskeletal therapy, which involves adjusting a patient's spinal column and other joints by hand. Conduct additional diagnostic tests, including evaluating a patient's posture or taking x rays. Provide additional treatments, such as applying heat or cold to a patient's injured areas. Advise patients on health and lifestyle issues, such as exercise and sleep habits. Refer patients to other medical specialists if needed. Tiffany Jenkinstiffany@aicaorthospine.comwww.askaica.com
QUALIFIED, EXPERIENCED RELIEF DOCTOR - Available to fit your practice needs. Experienced in most techniques. Taught Thompson and Upper Cervical at Life. Over 30 years in practice. Well versed in Gonstead, Activator and Cox flexion-distraction. PT certified. Carry own malpractice insurance. Excellent references. When you need a competent, trustworthy D.C. to keep your doors open, Call: 678-481-0186 or email Dr. Elliott Segal at docelliott@bellsouth.net.
Practice for Sale - Practice for Sale. Duluth, GA. Beautiful 25 year, fully equipped, turn key practice/office in ideal location by hospital. Avg last 4 years collections $235,000. Doctor retiring and offers smooth transition for new doctor. Price reduced to sell/Negotiable. Dr. Tom Morgan 770-748-6084. volumedc@aol.com
Practice for Sale - Practice for Sale. Life grad. 30 year practice. Turn key on very busy Pleasant Hill Road in Lilburn, GA. Great location, building also for sale. Doctor leaving practice. Call 770-827-2913. kenhorowitz@gmail.com
Office Space Available - Chiropractic Office Space available near the West Cobb Marietta Avenues. High Traffic Area. Large potential for growth. Excellent office for principled chiropractor. Full spine, toggle and drop tables available. Off premise access to x-rays. Space available Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sundays. Rent determined by number of days needed. Call: 770-362-6430.
Independent Contractor - MARIETTA/WEST COBB space available for true independent contractor. Private office/adjusting room. Share reception, x-rays, physiotherapy, copier, fax, internet, etc. Great for start up or downsizing chiropractor or any other health related practitioner. High visibility Kroger Shopping Center, 1.5 miles west of the Marietta Square. $750 per month. Call Dr Joe at 770-421-1340 and visit our web site at www.martinichiropracticcenter.com
Help Wanted - Associate Position- Incredible opportunity for an on purpose Chiropractor who can communicate lifetime family wellness. This practice is a 17 year old 100% cash practice at beautiful Lake Oconee, GA. Associate will be fully trained in a proven system to see high volume with little headaches. Associate must be a good and confident adjustor who enjoys doing group reports and workshops. Future ownership will be available if desired. Looking to start ASAP. Please send resume to onpurposechiro@outlook.com.
Help Wanted - Independent Contractor- Independent contractor doctor position available in established subluxation-based practice in Lilburn, GA. Dr. Phil McWilliams. 770-381-6522 or mchirop@bellsouth.net.
Help Wanted - Experienced Chiropractic Assistant - Marietta Chiropractor looking for experienced Chiropractic Assistant. Call Dr. Krantz at 770-928-2663.
Chiropractic Employment Agency - America's chiropractic employment agency is MMA. Providing quality, caring, experienced, dependable doctors since 1989. Daily and monthly reasonable rates. If you are a doctor who needs relief or an associate in your clinic, or you want to be an associate or coverage doctor, call 1-800-501-6111. See our website www.mmachiropractors.com.
Place your ad here. Call 678-667-4567 for ad rates and details. GCC Members place ads free, just email your text to info@georgiachiropractic.org.
GCC Sponsors & Partners...
GEORGIA COUNCIL OF CHIROPRACTIC, INC.
PO Box 4245, Marietta, GA 30061 | Ph: 678-667-4567 | Fax: 678-845-6787
info@georgiachiropractic.org | www.georgiachiropractic.org
That’s why I love practicing in Georgia, and why I belong to and support the Georgia Council of Chiropractic. The GCC is dedicated to protecting our right to practice chiropractic, and the right of EVERY Georgia citizen to receive chiropractic care. It’s a privilege that far too many of us take for granted. Without the GCC, we could very easily lose our ability to legally check infants, children, and asymptomatic families for subluxation. So, I’ll close this out by simply asking, I mean urging, that you to 
