The doctor has availability in two months.  Your local chiropractor will see you today.

How many of us have had this happen? As a marketing tool, lobbyists would have us believe that waiting for medical appointments does not happen here in the USA.

The truth is, this always happens even if you require immediate attention for a distressing heal problem.  Most of us want to avoid the horror show known as today’s E.R. so we need a better option.

Part of the problem is that our system which is now run mostly by huge corporations would like us to simply go to their urgent care where we are seen either by a doctor who does not know us or by a nurse practitioner who is highly skilled at 40 or so common conditions.

Primary care would have prevented most of this but the underfunding of primary care has resulted in many of these doctors retiring or finally selling their practices to large corporations who move patients like widgets through the system.

Primary care is now a pecking order of urgent care, a 15-minute visit with your primary doctor in a few months who will then send you to all the specialists in the system they work for. The hospital system cashes checks for every visit to another specialist and every test they order in the system, often at inflated prices.

There are still doctors who want to practice primary care and will spend the time even though they may not be reimbursed for it but they are a dying breed. Many specialists would also like to be more holistic but are not allowed to under the corporate care models they work in.

If you are in pain and have aching joints, the medical primary care model will rarely send you to a chiropractor, yet supposedly many doctors say they would like to refer you but do not know how to. The truth is, in the corporate models, they are incentivised not to and developing a relationship with a chiropractor or any doctor is as simple as making a phone call or meeting for coffee or lunch.

Chiropractic is primary care for the musculoskeletal system, and usually without the wait.

It is unusual for our offices to ever tell someone to see us in a week or 2 or longer.  There is an advantage the public often does not understand to visiting a highly skilled underused healthcare provider.

The urgent care model is basically either dosing the same treatments to everyone to keep you out of the system.  The irony is, that many of these conditions will self-resolve anyway and those that are truly urgent are referred to the local ER. Since most of us have little confidence in our bodies to self-resolve problems, having a healthcare professional can reduce the likelihood of our problem worsening.

Where they fail is their poor training of the musculoskeletal system.  When healthcare professionals don’t know, they test.   So when your elbow or wrist hurts, take an x-ray even in the absence of trauma. This does not follow anyone’s best practices model.

The irony is that chiropractic care is often not included in this model currently, making it much easier to visit a chiropractor often on the day you find yourself in pain.  Need care urgently for what hurts, the chiropractor can often fit you in their schedule.

The chiropractic primary care model.

The chiropractic primary care model, sometimes called primary spine has doctors of chiropractic starting with a deep history of your main complaint and then other problems.  This allows us to connect the dots to fully understand if your current problem or past problems were related.  This is a true primary care approach to care.

Have stomach problems also? Patients are often surprised that after years of problems and medical tests that offer few insights, their problems resided in the musculoskeletal system.

Have a bad knee that was replaced and were told the other one is going as well?  Patients are often surprised at how the chiropractic approach found their knee problem was related to a bad back, neck and their plantar fasciitis and the doctor improved all of those problems with the chiropractic holistic approach to care.

Sometimes, vertigo and balance issues are really related to your gait, and you will see it during a treadmill evaluation.  This low tech but highly effective approach prevents falls and resolves many conditions that are due to years of poor adaptation.

As with every profession, finding the right person is challenging.  Finding the right chiropractor can make the difference in the care you receive when you need it for years to come.   Your family will benefit greatly by having a more holistic point of view on their health problems and the hand picked referrals that the chiropractor often makes into the medical system.  This is what primary care used to be and its available now in your local chiropractors office.

Tired of waiting for a medical appointment for what makes us feel ill?   Maybe its time to consider chiropractic first, without the wait.  Need help now?  Book online here.