Issue 11 - September 2003

Radiologic technology sharpens more than diagnostic images
By Aadam Z. Quraishi, MD

One of the benefits of being a doctor is the opportunity to treat patients and see them improve. However, when it comes to getting paid for services rendered, it can be a different story. Insurance companies often deny claims.

The challenge: How can you simultaneously enjoy the rewards of treating patients, maintaining a reasonable steady increase in revenue and limiting practice liabilities?

The solution: Add a tool to your arsenal of diagnostics that already include x-rays, scans, MRIs and PETs. That tool is diagnostic radiology, accomplished through digital radiographic mensurations, also referred to as “computerized enhancement” of plain film radiographs.

Digitized x-rays, often provided in biomechanical, pathology and digitized analysis reports, allow you to produce an outcome-assessment, which helps establish:

• A chiropractic diagnosis for the correction of specific motion segments and functional units;

• A scale to assess the patient’s current conditions, compare serial studies, and determine maximum clinical improvement;

• A specific treatment plan with the clinical goal, to restoration of the functional biomechanics;

• A unique graphical information format of the patient’s biomechanical findings for reference during each treatment session.

Everyone benefits
A better diagnosis benefits you, your patients and even insurance companies, attorneys and other third-party payors.

• Patient benefits. Visuals help patients embrace complicated information. When a doctor prints x-rays onto photographic papers with mensuration lines and provides a statistical analysis showing differences and structural improprieties next to a standard spine, the patient has information that motivates him or her to comply with your treatment, which results in faster, more effective healing.

• Benefits to insurance carriers, attorneys and third-party payors. X-ray analysis is an objective tool that can be used to explain the problem of vertebral subluxation complex to medical doctors, insurance companies and third-party payors..

It establishes the factual basis of the presence or absence of spinal subluxation; measures the osseous component of the subluxation to either arrive at a clinical decision or assist in the prognosis of the patient; documents reliable pre- and post- changes in the vertebrae motor units stability ; and assists in determining the impairment rating.