“Unfortunately, health and wellness appears to be taking a back seat to fear of job loss in this tight economy,” said Tabatha Erck, CEO of Shoreview, MN-based ChiroCare.
Shoreview, MN (PRWEB) March 05, 2013
Six in 10 (61.4%) of higher-income Minnesotans (with incomes above $100,000) say they have gone to work while enduring severe back or neck pain out of fear they might lose their job if they took time off for treatment, according to a new survey commissioned by ChiroCare, a network of 1,600 chiropractor providers.
“Unfortunately, health and wellness appears to be taking a back seat to fear of job loss in this tight economy,” said Tabatha Erck, CEO of Shoreview, MN-based ChiroCare, whose providers make services available to 1.1 million eligible members of ChiroCare’s contracted health insurance customers. A bright spot: Erck says the survey of 400 Minnesotans who sought chiropractic care found that those who were treated for back and neck pain by chiropractors report missing an average of less than 2 hours of work a year (1.6 hours).
Among lower income workers (earning under $50,000 a year), just 10.3 percent report refusing to miss work due to severe back or neck pain. ChiroCare believes this data suggests that lower income workers in physical pain are either more willing to miss work or must stay home because their work involves physical labor that would be difficult when injured.
Other findings of the 2013 ChiroCare Survey:
- Chiropractic care has become mainstream in Minnesota. One in five (20.3%) adults surveyed have seen a chiropractor in the past year.
- Life with children is more physically stressful on parents’ health than life without. Adults surveyed with children report 39% more visits to a chiropractor than those without children.
- Women report 33% more visits to a chiropractor than men in Minnesota.
- Chiropractors are collaborative within the healthcare system: more than 40% of patients say their chiropractor referred them to a physician for additional care.
- Perhaps most strikingly, eight out of 10 Minnesotans with back or neck pain concluded that it’s more effective to begin their treatment with a chiropractor than starting with a medical doctor or specialist.
Chiropractors enjoy extremely high patient satisfaction rates. 97% of Minnesotans interviewed say chiropractic care helped them return to work sooner. “This preference for chiropractors may be tied to their reasonable costs, compared to the otherwise high cost of health care,” Erck said. “Minnesotans surveyed by ChiroCare thought the average cost per visit to a chiropractor was $66, which is indeed correct. In contrast, Consumer Reports said last year that the average cost of spine surgery ranged from $8,150 to $25,760.”
For more information about ChiroCare, visit http://www.chirocare.com.
The “ChiroCare Consumer Survey” was conducted in February 2013, by Q Market Research, Eagan, Minnesota. The survey company reached 2,328 people with back and neck pain, and surveyed the 472 who had seen a chiropractor in the past year. The results are statistically valid at a 95% confidence level within +/- 4.9%.
Consumer Reports source: July 2012, “That CT scan costs how much? Health-care prices are all over the map, even with your plan’s network.”