Why Can’t You Refer Me to a Chiropractor?

“You wouldn’t ask your rabbi how often you should go to confession, would you?”

Many insurance plans cover chiropractic. Neurosurgeons don’t usually operate on neck or back pain patients with moderate symptoms unless they have first tried physical therapy or chiropractic. So I make the referral to a chiropractor for people who want to go that route. But I never suggest a particular chiropractor.

This is why:

I know what a physical therapist does. We speak the same language, understand the human body and its afflictions the same way. Chiropractic is a different belief system, which obviously helps a lot of patients, but I don’t quite know what they do and how it works.

I explain this difference by saying “You wouldn’t ask your rabbi how often you should go to confession, would you?” All religions serve the same purpose, but each one does it differently.

What makes this even more complicated is that there are wide variations in what chiropractors do. The traditional terms I learned years ago are “straights” and “mixers”. I worry about the mixers. They use unapproved, mysterious devices to diagnose and locate disease. I know of one, who diagnoses Lyme disease without blood tests and “treats” it without prescription medications (which chiropractors are not licensed to prescribe) and so on.

But because I am a PCP and insurance companies often require a PCP referral, I oblige when a patient wants to see a chiropractor. I just don't want the responsibility of selecting one.