Letter to the editor: It takes teamwork to reduce workers' compensation costs

Lynne Haggerman has written very good articles for the Business Journal, which for sure have been very helpful to your readers. In your issue dated May 20-26, Ms. Haggerman wrote an article titled, "Chiropractic Care Reduces Workers' Compensation Cost."

The purpose of this letter is not to question Ms. Haggerman or the chiropractors mentioned in her article but to question the "research" on the article per se.

I felt very uncomfortable when I was reading the article because of the lack of information on the mentioned research. I felt more uncomfortable and frustrated after I called Ms. Haggerman on the phone.

I asked for a copy of the research article, but she was unable to provide me with one, and that was frustrating.

To me, this was very misleading! The author has a responsibility to the readers to provide the reference to their article when it is needed.

When a research study is discussed in an article, it is important to have a reference to it. The readers would need to know who did the research and why the research was done.

Was the research done to prove the efficacy of a certain therapeutic procedure? If a certain treatment can reduce cost, then was the research a comparative study? Compared to what? What were the parameters used in the study? Was there a reliability and validity study? If there was a reliability study, was it an inter-reliability study or an intra-reliability study?

This would make a lot of difference! To me as a reader, this information is important for me to know because research is supposed to be scientific knowledge with a scientific basis to it.

The way it appeared to me in her article, the research was done by the states of California, Florida, and Oregon, but who did it?

Was it an independent body that did the study or a group of chiropractors in those states? Who knows? This lack of information can be misleading and to a certain extent, deceiving. Was the purpose of her article to present a research or was it a marketing strategy?

Considering how complicated the worker's compensation arena is, I firmly believe that there is no single provider who can reduce the cost of work-injuries.

To achieve the best possible outcome, a team-approach (including physicians, physical therapists, case managers, company safety officers, the injured worker himself, and chiropractors, as well) has to be utilized.

It is also difficult to prove that a certain provider can reduce worker's compensation cost without considering other factors such as lost time at work, reduced productivity, cost of temporary placement, etc.

Also it has to be realized that true savings is not measured by cost per visit but the total cost spent to assist the injured worker in returning to work at full duty without any additional or continuous follow-ups.

Gerry Catapang, PT

Springfield