One Number Explains Just How Safe Chiropractic Is!
What are the side effects you've heard of?
I think we have all heard about chiropractors being good for back pain, neck pain, and headaches. Well, what side effects have you heard of? The scariest is that someone's cousin's uncle's son had a stroke and died. Other serious side effects include possible fracture, sprain, strain. Finally, the most common side effect I have heard reported is muscle soreness following an adjustment. That generally clears up on its own in a few hours.
What about other health care professionals and their side effects?
Well, if you watch TV, listen to radio, or read magazines, you've seen or heard a long list of side effects that come along with most prescription medications. I assume that almost everyone knows someone in their family or a close friend's family that has died during some type of surgery.
Which one is safer?
I really am not here to play a blame game with the modern medicine. In fact, I'm glad that we have such incredibly skilled MDs, DOs, PAs, NPs, RNs, and so on taking care of us when we're critically ill. I think everyone understands that with any medical procedure, there is some chance that we won't recover. It exists in all healing arts. So how can I have one number that proves how safe chiropractic is? It's my malpractice insurance premium.
This is an actual copy of my premium notice for my malpractice policy.
Okay, so what's the average cost of malpractice?
For healthcare providers, this varies based on the type of healthcare provider you are and where you practice. The Cunningham Medical Malpractice group looks to be something like the Progressive of the malpractice industry. Not only can you get a quote from them, they will tell you the average prices of malpractice insurance policies per specialty in each state from multiple providers. They have data as recent as 2014. You should definitely check them out here.
Cunningham provided data in Georgia showing that the cheapest specialty to insure was an Internal Medicine doctor. The cheapest average policy had an annual premium of just over $10,000 per year. The most expensive specialty to insure was an OB/GYN, and their average policy price was $67,608.
In Georgia, a mature, full-time practice Doctor of Chiropractic's malpractice policy right now, as you can see in the picture, is less than $1,600. Before my new practitioner discount, the mature policy is only about 2% of the cost to insure me as the average OB/GYN in Georgia. With my discount, I am paying only about .6% the cost to insure the average OB/GYN. That means that malpractice companies are able to cover all of the costs to defend chiropractors and possibly pay-out malpractice settlements and still make money by charging me .6% of what they would charge the doctor that delivers babies.
The proof for how safe we are is in the numbers, folks.
Yours in health,
Dr. William