At its House of Delegates meeting in September, the American Chiropractic Association (ACA) Board of Governors elected new leadership to direct the organization in 2008.
Q: In your opinion, what are the most important challenges facing the chiropractic profession nationally?
Our profession is facing several unique challenges. Managed care organizations are interfering with doctors' treatment plans, denying legitimate reimbursement claims and disrupting the doctor-patient relationship. We know this [places] a professional and financial burden on our doctors. We must help them achieve more satisfaction and economic viability within their practices. Our doctors are having difficult times with increased demands of paperwork and regulations, plus the grossly reduced levels of compensation for their professional services. This is why ACA is fully engaged in the battle against managed care abuse. It is not fair to our patients or to our chiropractic providers.
Additionally, as a profession, we have not truly established cultural authority as it relates to all of our available services. Our market share has not increased in the past several years. We have to do a better job of educating consumers about chiropractic treatment and services for many different health care issues. We cannot continue to be relegated to a "one condition, one treatment" profession. Our academic and clinical education prepares us to deliver much more service, and most of the scopes of practice in our states also allow for this.
As a profession, we need to work together with a "single mind, single voice" philosophy. This is how our counterparts in other health care disciplines operate and achieve results. ACA recognizes the challenge to work for increased expansion of scope of services for Medicare recipients and to ensure inclusion within any national health care policy. First and foremost, our current and future patients deserve to have access to a true alternative to medicine and surgery. Increasing utilization of chiropractic services will benefit the overall health of Americans and achieve cost savings for our citizens. Previous demonstration projects have confirmed this and we believe the completion of the recent Medicare demo will also assist in this regard. Communicating chiropractic's effectiveness and lobbying for inclusion in all health care legislation are our most important challenges!
Q: How do you see the ACA answering these challenges?
ACA has already begun the process by working to unify our profession. We recently held a multi-stakeholder Chiropractic Summit at our House of Delegates meeting to discuss and identify the primary issues affecting our patients and doctors. This was a tremendous achievement for our profession. As a result, when UnitedHealthcare recently disclosed a policy which would have terminated reimbursement for chiropractic services for treatment of children, adolescents, and headache conditions, ACA was poised to work quickly and collaboratively with several organizations. CCGPP provided a scientific challenge to this ridiculous policy and we were successful in getting FCER, ACC, COCSA and ICA to sign on in support of the CCGPP response to UHC's decision. Shortly thereafter, UHC issued a "stay" on their policy for a minimum of three months, allowing for more discussion, primarily because of justifiable objection by our profession. This was an unprecedented victory for our patients and our profession.
With national health care reform on the horizon, ACA is preparing to meet the challenge by mobilizing millions of our best advocates - our patients - to lobby on the profession's behalf. To undertake a project of this magnitude, we must be able to collect an unprecedented amount of data - consumer names and e-mail addresses - for lobbying our efforts. ACA has committed to using all necessary resources to purchase an Association Management System which will enable our profession to input the millions of patient/consumer names necessary to create a grassroots campaign as never seen before in our profession. Our ACA leadership team is fully committed to these goals with our staff, our volunteer time and other ACA resources. We are hosting a second Chiropractic Summit of our profession's leaders at our National Chiropractic Legislative Conference in February 2008, where we will discuss the development and implementation of the patient database and a profession-wide approach to launching this unprecedented grassroots initiative.
We are fully committed to unifying the profession around these two central issues!
Q: What other goals are on the top of your agenda for 2008?
As mentioned before, ACA will continue to confront those managed care practices which unfairly discriminate against our patients. We will be front and center in the battle to challenge those organizations which provide illusory benefits and unfairly burden the doctor with treatment obstacles and administrative hurdles. As an association, we are working to build a closer relationship with our members and stronger working relationships with our state associations. Another priority goal of ACA is to partner with all chiropractic organizations genuinely interested in achieving progress for our profession. A recent survey funded by ACA and conducted by FCER has demonstrated that our doctors need help in practice and we have heard them. We are implementing programs which will help them become more efficient and service-oriented. Talking about these issues is not enough. We intend to be action-oriented and have already begun the process. Our website and news publications will keep the profession alerted to these ACA services. The "Action Train" is leaving the station and we are sounding an "all-aboard" call now, loud and clear for all to hear.
Q: How will the focus of the ACA change or grow under your leadership?
I fully intend to be a "hands-on" president. I am still actively engaged in practice, as are the other members of our ACA Executive Committee, so we know full well the frustrations that our DCs face, members and non-members. We have dedicated these next two years to ACA and this great profession. I routinely respond to 150-plus e-mails and dozens of phone calls daily. I arrive early each day and leave late. So does each member of our leadership team, especially my cohorts, Dr. John Gentile, chairman of the board, and Dr. Rick McMichael, vice president. They inspire me to shoot for the stars each and every day. I have already recorded a video for our state delegates to use at various state/district chiropractic meetings, for those occasions when an ACA national leader cannot be present. This message tells my personal story of how I became a chiropractic patient and then a doctor of chiropractic. The video shares ACA's recognition of the importance of service to the American consumer and the profession and why America needs this chiropractic message.
We believe that as non-members see ACA working harder than ever to achieve parity for our patients and profession, there will be a growth in ACA membership. Leadership is not about titles; it is about responsibility and service. Our profession must have a viable and resourceful national association. ACA has achieved some remarkable accomplishments with our current membership and resources, but imagine what we could do with double or triple those numbers. Our focus is to earn that loyalty from doctors of chiropractic. Our leadership team will travel, phone conference, e-mail and speak on behalf of chiropractic causes whenever and wherever. There is much work to be done and we believe ACA will grow because of a demonstrated commitment to service for our patients and profession. We think non-members will see a vision and will see action associated with that vision. This will be the focus of our leadership at ACA.
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