Research connects quality chiropractic care with higher satisfaction rates, better health outcomes and greater longevity. But how can a doctor of chiropractic know whether they’re providing this level of service to their patients?
According to newly published research, there are 70 quality chiropractic care indicators that, when present, suggest you are performing high-quality care.
Quality chiropractic care indicators
On January 12, 2024, BMC Health Services Research published the results of a review conducted by five researchers from Palmer College of Chiropractic’s Palmer Center for Chiropractic Research. The goal of this review was to identify a set of indicators that help determine the quality of chiropractic care.
For this review, researchers looked at 10 articles providing clinical guidelines, six offering best practice recommendations and two studies involving consensus and clinical standards development. Initially, this resulted in a list of 204 quality indicators. This list was culled down, ultimately providing 70 distinct and measurable indicators that can be categorized according to whether they relate to organizational structure, clinical processes or outcomes of care.
Organizational structure indicators
Several of the quality chiropractic care indicators in this category involved policies or procedures that could be put in place at an organization or practice-based level, including:
- An appointment wait time policy that supports or enables the provider to schedule patient appointments within three working days of their request.
- An examination policy that prioritizes the evaluation of affected body regions before providing care.
- Having infection control protocols in place, in addition to providing training for these protocols and procedures.
- Developing an interprofessional collaboration policy to coordinate work with other healthcare professionals on behalf of the patient, with their authorization.
Clinical process indicators
Other quality of chiropractic care indicators highlighted in this review were related to clinical or care-based processes. They included:
- Having screening processes in place to identify patients that need additional care, to determine their general health status, or, for older adults, to assess their cognitive and functional health.
- Creating processes to screen patients’ physical activity levels, tobacco use and usage of opioids.
- Regularly assessing and reassessing a patient’s response to care, recording their vital signs, and reviewing their systems outside the musculoskeletal system, such as their cardiovascular and integumentary systems.
Care outcome indicators
Four of the 70 quality of chiropractic care indicators involved outcomes of care, such as:
- Conducting outcome assessments or re-evaluations of patient symptoms and function.
- Whether patients can return to work, especially in a timely manner.
- Patients report being satisfied with their chiropractic care.
- Patients feel that they were involved in the planning of their care and that they took part in the decision-making process.
Assessing your practice’s quality of chiropractic care
Researchers stress the importance of considering these factors as a whole. There is no single indicator of quality chiropractic care. Instead, DCs benefit from looking at multiple indicators and assessing whether they are present within their practice.
This begins with assessing the policies, procedures and protocols you currently have in place. Consider those present through the entire patient lifecycle, from their initial appointment request to completion of a care plan.
Also, take note of your data collection processes. What information do you collect as baseline measures and how often do you update this information with or on behalf of patients? Do your assessments extend beyond musculoskeletal measures, such as asking patients whether they regularly exercise, if they smoke, or if they’re taking painkillers (prescription or otherwise) to deal with their discomfort?
Regularly assessing and reassessing patient data is critical to monitoring patient health outcomes, which is an important factor in quality of chiropractic care. Developing policies for these procedures helps ensure they are complete and consistent from one patient to the next.
