Chiropractic News Digest #06-01

February 15, 2005

Your Weekly Update of News and Reviews
February 15, 2006

Chiropractic News Digest, edited by Christopher J. Erickson, M.D. and cosponsored by NCAHF and Quackwatch, summarizes scientific and political developments; enforcement actions; and other news relevant to the chiropractic marketplace.

Major “Campaign for Chiropractic” backer charged in massive insurance scam. Mark Sanna, DC has been added as a defendant in a $234 million lawsuit against a number of plaintiffs in a complex allegedly “fraudulent scheme” to bilk insurers for unjustified electrodiagnostic testing. Sanna can be heard in an interview with Sigmund Miller, DC. Miller is a senior editor and advisor (along with Sanna) for ChiroView Presents (also a sponsor of the Campaign for Chiropractic) and of its parent company, Healthy Practices, Inc. Miller, also executive director of the Association of New Jersey Chiropractors (also a sponsor of the Campaign for Chiropractic), is actively involved in the activities of this campaign beyond financial sponsorship.

Sanna’s Breakthrough Coaching is a major backer of the Campaign for Chiropractic. Breakthrough Coaching was the third highest corporate contributor to the National Chiropractic Legal Action Fund, after the National Chiropractic Malpractice Insurance Company and Foot Levelers. In the interview with Miller, Sanna says that he “wrote a check for a half a million dollars to support” the Campaign for Chiropractic. (17:00). He also says his life time goal is “to help chiropractors run their practices 
 and be financially affluent in those practices.” (01:40). Sanna describes his typical clients “knows that science and science and technology behind objectively documenting functional improvements 
 is what drives chiropractic reimbursement.” (10:50). Ironically, Sanna wants to bring more students into the field by promoting “prosperity thinking.” “If you see the chiropractor driving down the block, and he’s driving a beaten down Buick versus a brand new BMW it gives you a different model to look to, to pattern your life after.” (21:27)

The Campaign for Chiropractic and Foundation for Chiropractic Progress have been initiated according to their presentation in part because of the public’s low public image of chiropractors, especially with regards to ethics. Ironically, the campaign itself has raised ethical questions by Joseph C. Keating. One of the current print ads on their web page tells parents they should “make certain their children have spinal check-ups on a periodic basis by a doctor of chiropractic.”

Palmer continues aggressive battle against alumni association. Palmer College of Chiropractic asked a judge to place further restrictions on a recently dissociated alumni association. The college calls for the association to drop “PCC” from its name, having already been forced to remove “Palmer” from its name. The college has formed its own alumni association, and continues to battle with the original alumni association over funds raised by the latter. Several alumni are angry with the school’s direction under Larry Patten, and the role played by the great-grandaughter of the founder of the eponymously-titled school, Vickie Palmer, who is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Palmer Chiropractic University System. In an era when the role of chiropractic in health care is being decided, sharp philosophical differences (which are a long-standing tradition in chiropractic) may increasingly involve schools, alumni, students, and courts.

Dean of University of Bridgeport elected to head college association. Frank Zolli, DC was named president of the Association of Chiropractic Colleges (ACC). Zolli steps in at a time when at a time when chiropractic schools with small endowments are trying to recover from a period of decreasing enrollment. With at least one projection showing continuing declines for several more years, students may wonder if educational spending will be significantly cut in the face of relatively fixed school operational expenses – or if more marginal students will be increasingly admitted. The elected vice president of the ACC Carl Cleveland III, DC has seen small graduating classes at his two schools recently, despite (or perhaps because of) his prominent role as the narrator in a recent fundraising film for the National Chiropractic Legal Action Fund.

The University of Brideport is also being sued by a gay man who claimed that the school forced him to have psychiatric treatment before he could finish his chiropractic training. Paul Lewis, 55, alleges that Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church still has considerable sway over the school, which has the only University-affiliated chiropractic school in the country. The controversial religious icon and church have been alleged to be discriminatory towards gays in the past. The University of Bridgeport, headed by president Neil Salonen (coincidentally former president of the Unification Church and of affiliated front groups) denies the allegations of discrimination. If initial commentary regarding the suit is any indication, the suit could explore the financial backing of the University by the Unification church.

Zolli is likely to focus initially on educational efforts related to documentation for medical necessity as a consequence of a damning report by Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General report, which among other findings found that “services provided among the first 12 in a course of treatment to a particular beneficiary by the same chiropractor were approximately 50 percent likely to be medically unnecessary” and that visits subsequent to the 12th visit were increasingly more likely to be medically unnecessary. (In a recent survey of chiropractors by Chiropractic Economics, the patient visit average (total annual regular visits divided by total annual new patients) was 31.) There are already private sector solutions, for example a program that “shows how to ‘Document The Medical Necessity of Care’ so there are NO limits in Medicare for the chiropractic adjustment.”

Zolli also takes over at a time when two prominent thought leaders in chiropractic, historian Joseph Keating and Northwestern University president James Winterstein, have recently coauthored a paper calling the ACC paradigm regarding subluxations “pseudoscience.” Although one of the coauthors of the paper is a faculty member at Bridgeport, Zolli himself was recently the director of a joint educational conference of the ACC and World Federation of Chiropractic which emphasized “respect for and use as appropriate of traditional chiropractic terms such as adjustment and subluxation.”

This page was posted on February 15, 2005