Hello everybody. My name is Eric Hoffman, I am the Executive Director here at Chiro Secure, and I am back with your five-minute crisis response for chiropractors. Today, we want to touch on a topic that we’ve been getting a lot of inquiries about. It is the topic of, are you or are you not an essential healthcare provider? To start, I want to touch on the fact that we believe that you absolutely are essential healthcare providers, and here’s why. We believe that chiropractors serve an incredibly important social and public utility, that right now in this crisis and this pandemic, chiropractors are keeping patients away from the emergency room and away from urgent care centers. When a patient has an acute or emergency issue, if they’re in pain, they’re going to go to one of two places, either your office as a chiropractor or one of those emergency care facilities.
So to keep those on the lighter end and reserve those resources for the people that actually need them, we believe that chiropractors are essential in doing so. So that being said, even though we believe that you all are essential healthcare providers, that doesn’t necessarily mean every city, every state or the country as a whole believes the same thing. So one of the things that I recommend to all of you is you need to make sure you’re following your city or your state’s guidelines and ordinances that come out, and they come out every day it seems like. This is a fluid situation, so things continue to change, and if you’re not sure about what you’re reading or how to decipher it, you should also contact either your state board or state association.
One of the champions in this has been the Michigan Association of Chiropractors, the MAC, which we have a close relationship with. In Michigan in particular, the governor put out an ordinance that was unclear and it seemed as if chiropractors should shut their doors. But then they created a caveat and they interpreted it a little bit differently, and the Michigan Association of Chiropractors clarified and got a new ordinance put in place with some assistance with different governmental agencies. So that being said, I know that there is a lot of different things out there right now. One of the sentences that I’ve seen in a lot of these, which to me is very important, is a lot of these ordinances are saying something to the effect of these terms should be broadly interpreted.
And what that means is there’s gray areas in all of these things. They cannot and will not address every minute situation, every single type of business that’s out there. They can’t. And so what they do in general terms is they say healthcare operations should continue, physicians should remain open, things like that that’s more broad scope that chiropractors tend to fit into, because you are healthcare providers. So in most cases, you can stay open. But in certain states, in certain cities, Michigan included, there are ordinances that say you should remain open, but only for acute cases and only for emergency situations. You shouldn’t continue to see your wellness patients. You shouldn’t continue to see those types of people because that adds an additional risk to exposing them when they don’t need to be. So at the end of the day, you again need to follow those rules, those regulations. You need to keep up with what your state and city are doing.
Even if there’s confusion, call your state association, call your state board, have them clarify it for you because they are on the front lines just like you are. And they are the bodies that need to interpret this so that everyone, all of their membership and all of their licensees can be aware of what they need to do in this type of crisis.
So that is really the best way I can recommend to move forward in this type of situation. Again, we’re here to help. So please continue to ask questions in the comments. Please continue to reach out to us over the phone or via email here at Chiro Secure. We’re getting a high volume of calls all day long and we’re happy to take them. So keep in mind if we don’t get back to you right away, we will get back to you as soon as humanly possible. And remember, we’re doing these every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. So we will be back Monday at the same time, 9:00 AM Pacific, 12:00 PM Eastern. So make sure you tune in. We are here for you. We hope you stay healthy and stay safe. Thank you.
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