CF 200: The State Of Chiropractic Via ChiroUp & Chiropractic Economics

Today we’re going to talk about the state of chiropractic and we’re going to use a couple of more recent articles I’ve come across to do it. One from Chiropractic Economics and one from our friends at ChiroUp. It’s a good one today folks! But first, here’s that sweet sweet bumper music  

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  OK, we are back and you have found the Chiropractic Forward Podcast where we are making evidence-based chiropractic fun, profitable, and accessible while we make you and your patients better all the way around.  We’re the fun kind of research. Not the stuffy, high-brow kind of research. We’re research talk over a couple of beers. I’m Dr. Jeff Williams and I’m your host for the Chiropractic Forward podcast.   If you haven’t yet I have a few things you should do. 

• Go to Amazon and check our my book called The Remarkable Truth About Chiropractic: A Unique Journey Into The Research. It’s a great resource for your patient education and for you. It saves time in putting talks together or just staying current on research. It’s categorized into sections and it’s written in a way that is easy to understand for practitioner and patient. You have to check it out. Just search for it on Amazon. That’s the Remarkable Truth About Chiropractic by Jeff Williams. 


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You have found yourself smack dab in the middle of Episode #200 Now if you missed last week’s episode, we talked about Fear Avoidance & Opioids and Neuro Changes With Cannabis Use In Adolescence. Make sure you don’t miss that info. Keep up with the class. 

On the personal end of things…..

I just returned from Chicago from the American College of chiropractic consultants and the chiropractic forensic sciences conference.  It was great I got to hang out with my forward-thinking chiropractic alliance buddy Mr. Dr. Michael Massey. He was probably tired of me by the time we got done hanging out and I had to go home. Honestly, we were there from Wednesday night through Sunday morning. That’s a long time to be hanging out with someone. Hopefully, I didn’t talk his ear off.  But I learned a lot about him and his history. He’s gotten to do a lot of cool stuff and I enjoyed learning more about it. Here in Amarillo, you don’t get a lot of really cool opportunities.  For example, Dr. Massey has gotten to be on the NASCAR circuit treating the drivers.

He’s been on the Rodeo circuit. He’s a certified coder. Which, let’s be honest, that’s not that cool really but, very impressive.  He’s gotten to teach and speak all over and just has a very interesting background. If you don’t know about Dr. Michael Massey from down around the Athens and Chattanooga area of Tennessee and of Practice Mechanics fame, make sure you go check him out.  Practice Mechanics is his and Dr. Rob Pape’s mentoring and consulting group.  Go look into practice-mechanics.com.  As far as the conference itself, it happens the first weekend in October every single year. At the same hotel. The Marriott in Oak Brook Illinois which is basically Chicago.

Just about all of the people there are pretty darn impressive and they’re on both ends of the spectrum from working for the insurance company to working for chiropractors and defendants.  They’re expert witnesses. They’re independent medical examiners. And, yes, some even work for the insurance companies. I have to tell you meeting them humanizes them to an extent even if we may not agree with every opinion they may have.  Most of the continuing education I get through the years involves a 16-hour weekend. I typically end up with 80 to 100 hours a year. Sometimes more, sometimes a touch less. But it’s usually quite a few hours through my activities with the Texas Chiropractic Association.  We have more than one event and I usually go to more than one event every year. At least a couple of the events. Then I have the orthopedic hours. And then I have the other stuff I learn and take here and there. So, I’m usually in the 80-100 hours per year range. 

This weekend was 27 hours of continuing education. These folks are serious about getting some CEs in, man. Crazy. Thursday went from 8 am until 9 pm. Friday was 8-6, and Saturday was 8-4. One-hour lunches. Class…..all day….every day.  On this deal, what had happened was….as my long-time listeners know, I got Board Certified, which means a Diplomate, also known as a Fellowship…..I got that in the Neuromusculoskeletal Medicine program in 2019. Dr. James Lehman with the University of Bridgeport contacted me last year. He said, “‘Ya know…since you already have the Neuromusculoskeletal Fellowship, you can get your Forensic Fellowship a lot easier since it’s a subspecialty of the Neuromusculoskeletal specialty.” That’s about the time that I responded with, “What’s that?” I had no idea what Chiropractic Forensics was. I thought I might be solving some sort of murder mystery or something. Anyway, Dr. Lehman explained to me that it was to bolster experience and credentials in the medicolegal arena. 

The original Fellowship took 300 hours to complete. Since Forensics is a subspecialty of it, this second Fellowship was only 100 extra hours for me to complete.  How do you say no? Well, you don’t. I did it. I got through it. And here we are. Two Fellowships within about 3 years. Where the hell did that come from? When it came to classwork, I didn’t thrive in the classroom. I hated the classroom. Sitting there for hours on end day after day…..yeah. I struggled. I was just a B student at chiropractic school. Not an overachiever. Not an underachiever.  I swore I’d never take another class. Forever and ever amen. And then, things changed. I got into research and evidence and all that good stuff. Hell, I got into learning