One thing I love about our office is our focus on the chiropractic adjustment. We do provide some additional therapies, including electric stimulation and mechanical traction, but those are complementary to the adjustment.
Without the adjustment, you won’t get better.
We’ve met patients that have been involved in car accidents in the past and went to “chiropractic” offices that did not provide the same kind of care that we offer. They received electric stimulation and heat therapy for several weeks until it was determined that they could be released from their care. That’s just not chiropractic care.
When we do our initial consultation and examination, we’re doing our best to evaluate what’s wrong. More importantly, we want to determine if chiropractic care is the right choice for this issue. If adjusting the problem won’t help, our office is just not the right fit and it’s important to us that you know that right away.
Occasionally, a patient will ask, “Why don’t you guys do _______________ ?” Or just “Why don’t you guys do more stuff?!”
It’s not that the other “stuff” out there isn’t helpful or necessary (depending on the condition). It’s more of a conscious decision by us to do what we’re best at. We only accept those patients for care that we sincerely believe we can help — with chiropractic adjustments.
If other services are needed, we will gladly refer you to those providers. We’ve managed to put together a solid network of providers we like and trust. We know that it can be daunting to get online and try to find the healthcare provider or service that you know you with which you’ll have good experience.
While many other aspects of your health are important as well, we want to do the service that you simply can’t take care of yourself. You can eat better, exercise more, buy a massage chair, drink more water, stretch and use a foam roller. However, you can’t effectively adjust yourself.
Does that mean we don’t think you should get a massage?
Not at all. Massage is great for you! Like chiropractic, its best when done consistently. We’ve debated about hiring a massage therapist for our office, but ultimately decided we needed the room to keep our patients happy with the little to no wait time for adjustments. We couldn’t have a room taken up for an hour for massage.
We also know some fantastic massage therapists that we can refer our patients to see! They would be impossible for us to hire for our office anyway, since they are already successful in their own offices. We’ll provide that information whenever you ask or when we feel that you really need to add in massage therapy to your health regimen.
What about nutritional consultations? Selling vitamins?
Vitamins and supplements are great – I take them myself! I also recommend them to others, just not a specific brand. I am more than happy to discuss with my patients what I take and what I’ve taken in the past. I’ll share the pros and cons and whether or not I thought a particular supplement was worth it and why I stopped (if I did).
The problem with selling the vitamins in the office is that I never want our patients to feel like we’re trying to “sell” our push stuff on them. We can say with conviction that a particular patient should start increasing their Vitamin C intake without selling it to them ourselves. They will trust that information we offer is sincere and not because we will make a financial profit.
What about doing more exercise? Physical rehabilitation?
We’re totally in favor of utilizing both for many types of conditions, we just believe that a lot of the exercises and movements can be done at home. The alternative would be for us to fill our office with a lot of exercises equipment and machines — and then watch you use them.
There are other facilities that are far more equipped. We would rather show you the stuff you can do at home and then refer you (if necessary) to the facility with the top-notch equipment and services available to meet your needs.
The bottom line, is that there’s no way for us to provide to our patients every single thing they could be doing to help themselves be healthier in one facility. I know people that have attempted to open such a facility, and it’s a tremendous undertaking.
What we can do is Chiropractic – and do it well. Our office runs efficiently and smoothly. We have listened to our patients over the years about what they liked and didn’t like about our office and other chiropractic offices they’ve been to. We took it to heart.
Feel free to discuss with us any questions you have about your care and how other types of treatments, therapies, and providers could benefit you.