Touts Increased
Demand for Chiropractic and Alternative Services
In the July 14, 2002
issue of the Boston Globe appeared an article with the
headline, "Demand for Alternative Medicine Rises
- Acupuncturists and Chiropractors Increasingly Sought."
The article defines all forms of healthcare that are
not medical as "Alternative Medicine". Most
chiropractors object to the usage of this term since
chiropractic care is clearly not medicine. Chiropractic
stands as a separate and distinct form of health care.
Despite this terminology issue, the Globe article cited
numbers from the National Institutes of Health that
calculate that all of "alternative" health
care represents a $21 billion-a-year industry. This
number should be kept in context. According to figures
released in a report on February 7, 2001, the US Census
Bureau showed that US health care industry revenues
hit $1.01 trillion in 1999. The article also states
that surveys show about one-third of Americans visit
one of these "alternative" practitioners at
least once a year, and that this percentage will increase.
In an attempt to have the medical profession better
understand chiropractic and other forms of health care
classified as alternative, Tufts University received
a five-year, $1.5 million grant last August from the
National Institutes of Health (NIH) for finding ways
to include alternative medicine as part of the required
medical school curriculum. Dr. Mary Lee, dean of educational
affairs at Tufts' School of Medicine stated, "The
NIH is interested, and so are we, in training traditional
doctors to understand complementary medicine."
To meet the increased demand the article cited statistics
and projections that showed the current and future numbers
of doctors of chiropractic. According to the US Bureau
of Labor Statistics, (BLS) in the year 2000, there were
an estimated 49,949 chiropractors. The BLS projects
that by 2010 that number will grow to 61,654 chiropractors,
representing a 23 percent increase. "Since the
average growth rate for all occupations over a 10-year
period is 15 percent, those figures are significant,"
said BLS economist Alan Lacey. This projected growth
represents the ever-increasing desire on the part of
the public to continue to embrace chiropractic care.
