This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related articles  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • Complementary and Alternative Medicine  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Legorreta and colleagues¹ suggested that open access to chiropractic care could decrease health care expenditures for neuromusculoskeletal disorders because a chiropractor would be used as a substitute for traditional care, not as an add-on. They concluded that access to managed chiropractic care may be clinically beneficial. I believe, however, that this statement should not be made before 2 important questions are satisfactorily answered.

First, is access to chiropractor care independently associated with a lower cost? Patients in the 2 groups are extremely different: those without chiropractor coverage are older and sicker. The authors, however, try to compare the incomparable by summing up 21 comorbid conditions that are much more prevalent (19 parameters at P<.001) among those without chiropractor coverage into 1 comorbidity score, rather than adjusting for them one by one. Besides, they ignore other characteristics associated with increased cost including functional status and disability index (one can always . . . [Full Text of this Article]

AUTHOR INFORMATION
Tawee Tanvetyanon, MD

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

RELATED ARTICLES

Medical Costs Associated With Chiropractic Care—Reply
Antonio P. Legorreta
Arch Intern Med. 2005;165(11):1314.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Comparative Analysis of Individuals With and Without Chiropractic Coverage: Patient Characteristics, Utilization, and Costs
Antonio P. Legorreta, R. Douglas Metz, Craig F. Nelson, Saurabh Ray, Helen Oster Chernicoff, and Nicholas A. DiNubile
Arch Intern Med. 2004;164(18):1985-1992.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Influence of Socioeconomic and Cultural Factors on Racial Differences in Late-Stage Presentation of Breast Cancer
Donald R. Lannin, Holly F. Mathews, Jim Mitchell, Melvin S. Swanson, Frances H. Swanson, and Maxine S. Edwards
JAMA. 1998;279(22):1801-1807.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT