Chiropractor hits at ‘crude attempts’

Press, 9 April 1987, Page 15

Chiropractor hits at ‘crude attempts’

PA Hamilton Crude attempts at spinal manual therapy are being performed by some health practitioners going outside their educational background, says an Auckland chiropractor. Dr Lionel Blackbourn, a past president of the New Zealand Chiropractors’ Association, was speaking at the recent opening of the Waikato chiropractic clinic in Cambridge. A Commission of Inquiry into chiropractic services in 1979 said that chiropractors should in the public interest be accepted as partners in the general health care system, Dr Blackbourn said. Since that report was published the Chiropractic Board functioned under the Health Department instead of the Justice Department and chiropractors’ certificates were increasingly being accepted by employers, schools and private medical insurers, he said. However, chiropractic patients were still unable to claim social security assistance and chiropractic care under Accident Compensation Corporation without medical referral, Dr Blackbourn said. “While sickness and accident costs continue to soar, Government social

security and accident compensation schemes continue to ignore chiropractic care, which has a proved record of being more effective and cheaper for conditions of spinal origin,” he said.

Other health care groups which the Commission of Inquiry found to have less training and to be less effective in treating mechanical problems of the spine were receiving Government subsidies while chiropractors’ skills were being ignored. “Some health practitioners are actually going outside the scope of their educational background and performing what in chiropractic terms can only be described as crude attempts at spinal manual therapy,” Dr Blackbourn said.

Those practitioners’ patients received Social Security or A.C.C. subsidy while chiropractic patients had to fund the full cost of treatment by a properly trained and registered chiropractor, he said.

In spite of the lack of financial assistance to patients seeking chiropractic care, there were more chiropractors in New Zealand than ever before and more people receiving chiropractic care.