Chiropractic for Auto Accident and Work Injuries

Ask the Chiropractor- did you know you should see a chiropractor if you have had an auto accident?  Many people do not and discover later they should have.  Dr Hulsebus explains in this week's episode. #healthy815 #icachiropractor #palmerproud

www.rockforddc.com

Transcript

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- Hello, and welcome to another edition of Ask the Chiropractor. Ask the Chiropractor is my podcast that we do, talking about questions that people have about chiropractic or chiropractic care. I started this podcast because too many people will ask a primary healthcare physician before going to a chiropractor, and although primary healthcare physicians are usually great primary healthcare physicians, they're really bad chiropractors, and they really don't know what a chiropractor does. So I wanted to come on here and have people submit me questions so I could come online here and answer the questions for you, straight from a chiropractor, just like if you had a question about your teeth, you wouldn't ask your primary doctor about, you know,"This tooth hurts when I drink cold stuff."You think I should go to a dentist?" You would just go right to your dentist and ask your dentist dentist questions. So people come on, they ask me questions, and then I find the answers and I come on, try to answer them. And I try to do so with the most research and science I can back it up my answers. Myself, I'm a proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic. I am the team chiropractor for going on my 19th season with the Rockford IceHogs, the UHL, the AHL affiliate of the NHL Rockford IceHogs, the Chicago Blackhawks, excuse me, the AHL affiliate of the Chicago Blackhawks. It should be easy to say after all these years. So here we go. I got asked a couple questions recently about auto accidents and whether, how that works at the chiropractor clinic. Can I go see the chiropractor? I have been involved in an auto accident. Do I need to see somebody first? Do I need a note? Should I go see a chiropractor if I'm involved in an auto accident? And today I'm gonna talk about how the auto accidents work and whether or not you should see a chiropractor and the whole mechanics of the whole process. So yes, if you're involved in a auto accident, getting checked by a chiropractor is almost always a good idea. And what do I mean by that? Well, chiropractors will look at your spine and your neck and for whiplash things differently than other family physicians will. A main family physician usually just checks for inflammation, muscle tightness, and may or may not prescribe some physical therapy, and perhaps either a muscle relaxer or anti-inflammatory. So as chiropractors, we don't do those things. We don't prescribe, we don't recommend the drugs. We actually look at the biomechanics of the spine, how it's moving and how it's functioning after a motor vehicle accidents. During a motor vehicle accidents, the human being was never made to have that much force hit them and survive. Today's cars are definitely meant to absorb a lot of the blow and is much less violent than it used to be, but cars are also going faster than they used to, so the violence is still there, so a quick acceleration, deceleration injury can definitely cause some severe neck issues or whiplash. Even today, we're seeing things that are now, in the research it's calling it thoracic whiplash, where it's not even just your neck but it's between your shoulder blades too, gets jerked back and forth, and that quick forward and backwards causes the joints to open up and then slam shut real hard. When that opens and slams shut real hard, things get pinched, things get inflamed. Then when things get pinched and things get inflamed, your biomechanics will alter. What do I mean by that? Well, if the bottom left side of my neck is swollen and inflamed, I will lean away from that. That'll cause my spine to change and adapt to try to keep my eyes level, and now I've got a couple different spinal issues occurring because I'm trying to avoid putting weight on an inflamed joint. So as chiropractors, we're trained to analyze your spine, see how it moves, bends, and twists, do a couple orthopedic tests on you, push on your here, push on you there. More importantly though, we'll do a chiropractic exam. Maybe you'll lay face down, turn your head to the left, turn your head to the right, and we'll see how your spine moves when you do that. Another common thing for us to do is to take X-rays. A lot of times when I have a whiplash case, I'll do what they call a flexion extension neck X-ray. What we do there is we have you sit nice and straight, take a sideways X-ray of your neck, then we'll have you look down then look up. Then what we'll do is we'll take a clean piece of film and we'll draw all the vertebraes on the neutral position where you're nice and straight, and then when you look up and you look down, all the vertebrae, there's a couple action motion where they're supposed to be moving with you. But if you have an injury, those ones will stay fixated. They will not move. So we take this piece of film and we put it over the X-ray and we measure C7 to C6, six to five, five to four, four to three, three to two, two to one, and then we do it when you're looking up and down. A lot of times we'll find out that maybe two of the bones never move, whether you're looking up or looking down. So if that were to occur, then we know those bones, they're under stress, they've been injured and they're not moving, they're locked up and they're fixated. And only a chiropractor is trained to go in there and do the chiropractic adjustment to remove that fixation. So if you're involved in a whiplash accident, is it important to go see a chiropractor? Absolutely. Only a chiropractor can truly find out what's going on. And unfortunately, not everyone does this. Not everyone goes to visit a chiropractor after a motor vehicle accident. And how do I know this? Well, a lot of times somebody will come see me five, seven, 10 years after a motor vehicle accident and maybe their lower back hurts. And here, we look at the whole spine. So then we look at the neck and we see that the neck's got arthritis degeneration at the C5, C6. And I look at them and said, "You were involved"in a bad car accident a few years ago, weren't you?" They said, "Yes." And I said, "You got some permanent damage here."Did you not see anybody for this?" And a lot of times the answer is no, or unfortunately,"I went and saw my primary healthcare provider"and they never recommended chiropractic care." This is an all too common finding that we find here all the time. We get three or four a month that tell us this, so is it important that you go see the chiropractor after an auto accident to evaluate whether or not you had an injury? Well, you might not feel like it's important today, but 10 years from now when you have arthritis in your neck and your hands are going numb and your posture in your neck is bad and you've been leaning your head forward together for so many years, now your shoulders are starting to round and you're getting that hump in your back, boy, a couple adjustments, you know, when the accident first occurred could have prevented a lot of that. So yeah, it's really important to see a chiropractor when you get an injury and you can't rely on anybody else's recommendations if you see a chiropractor, other than seeing a chiropractor, just like no matter what my family doctor tells me about my teeth, I'm always gonna go with what the dentist says over what they say and if I have a question about a medicine or general health thing, if I go to my dentist, I'm gonna trust my family doctor over them. So it's really, really important you see a chiropractor. Now, can you go see a chiropractor without getting a doctor's referral or doctor's note? Well I'm in Illinois, so I'm gonna go by what Illinois does. That's the laws I know, those are the laws I'm responsible for knowing. But I'm 99% sure, in any state if you get involved in an auto accident, you can go see a chiropractor. You don't need permission. You have to let the chiropractor know you were involved in a motor vehicle accident so the chiropractor can do the motor vehicle documentation that's required in an auto list. It's a little different than a normal documentation because you see, when you're in a motor vehicle accidents, the insurance of the other driver only covers you for injury care. They wouldn't, like if you came in with a scoliosis and a whiplash, they're not gonna help you deal with the scoliosis. They're only gonna help you deal with the whiplash. So it's very important that we document the acute injury of the auto accident because you can't have the auto accident responsible for the fact you grew up with the scoliosis. That's not the person who hit you's fault. That's, but the whiplash is. So it's very, very important job of the chiropractor to do the proper documentation, and make sure the chiropractor knows that you're going to see them because of an auto accidents. And it's also important that you don't wait too long. Some people will say, "Well, you should probably wait two"or three months before you go to the chiropractor." No, the longer you wait, the longer it takes us to get rid of it and the more bad habits you occur. You can go, I've had people get rear-ended and then drive straight here. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. The more it's misaligned, the more problems you have, the longer it's there, the longer it takes to go away. Not only that, but again, like I say all the time, the chiropractor will know whether or not it's okay to take care of you today when you go see the chiropractor. We have that training. We go to school for many, many, many years to learn this kind of stuff. We don't need somebody to tell us. We know this stuff. We study this stuff. We understand these things. These are our specialty. That's what we do. So you can definitely let the chiropractor know if you get involved in an accident and you don't need to note from somebody else. You don't need permission from somebody else. And yes, auto accident insurance is working with chiropractors every day. Personal injuries attorneys work with chiropractors every day. As a matter of fact, your chiropractor probably knows different attorneys in town and can maybe, you know, help advise you in that area, is a good way of saying that. So yeah, chiropractors know what's going on. I even know a good place to get your car fixed because we see so many car accidents here from time to time. I can help guide you, help get your car fixed too. So go see your chiropractor right away. But we're on this topic, let's talk about a work comp injury. Let's say you hurt yourself at work or you injure yourself at work. Can you go see a chiropractor if you injure yourself at work? Well, I'm gonna talk about Illinois laws again because that's where I am and that's the laws I know. So in Illinois, if you're involved on a work comp incident, you're allowed to pick any one doctor of your choice to go see. So if I hurt myself at work and I wanna go see a chiropractor, I can go see that chiropractor without anyone's permission or anyone's referral, as long as that's the first doctor I see. Now that chiropractor can refer me to 40 different specialists after the fact. Or if I go see my family doctor first, then the family doctor has to refer you to the chiropractor, because you're only allowed to pick one doctor of your choice, but that one doctor can then send you out wherever you need to go. This is really important to remember, because if you're hurt really bad and they send you to the emergency room, you have to make sure you document that that was the doctor the work sent me to, not the doctor I picked for myself, because work has the ability to send you to a doctor also. And you have to do both, because your employer can send you to a physician to make sure that this is an actual real injury. Now, at the employer's physician says you need to do A, B and C, you don't have to do anything the employer's physician tells you you have to do. You're still allowed to go with your own doctor and your own doctor recommendations. The main reason you're seeing the employer's doctor is just basically to make sure that this is a real injury and you're not trying to cheat or steal or you know, be dishonest. That's the main reason you have to see the company's doctor, the employer's physician of recommendation. But no, in a work comp claim, it's just like an auto accident. You can go in, you know, you don't need a note or referral. But in Illinois, check your own state, the best way to see what the laws are in your state is every state has a chiropractic association, a state association. Call that state association, you can get your answers. If you don't know how to find them, go to chiropractic.org C-H-I-R-O-P-R-A-C-T-I-C.org, and there you'll find the International Chiropractic Association and they can help find your local laws and the state rep in each state to kinda tell you how it works. If you call them or go to their website at Illinois, you would find me, and that's why I know these answers. So there you have it. So if you're in an auto accident, should you see a chiropractor? Absolutely. Do you need permission to see the chiropractor? No. You'll only be able to see one doctor and not pick another doctor or you have to say, go through the referrals, like you do a work comp claim, that does not apply, does not apply in Illinois for an auto accident. You can go see multiple doctors to get all the care you need. However, the more you see, let's say you see 12 different physicians different types of doctors, you're gonna have a really hard time winning that argument in court why you need 12 different doctors without referrals. But that's on you. That's a choice you made. But go see a doctor, a chiropractor, and you have to understand, as chiropractors, we can refer you to specialists too. Like if you came to saw me and I think you have an ENT, an ear, nose, throat issue, I can refer you to an ear, nose, throat doctor just as easy as your family doctor can. If you came and saw me in an auto accident and we think maybe you tore your rotator cuff from the seatbelt pulling on your arm, I can send you to the orthopedic surgeon and have him evaluate your shoulder. You don't have to go through your primary doctor, especially in an auto accident or work comp case. You can go directly, everything right through your chiropractor. And lastly, like I said, if you hurt yourself at work, you're gonna file a work comp claim and submit it to the HR department of work saying you got injured at work, in Illinois, you have to see their doctor, but you're also able to pick one doctor of your choice, different than an auto accident, only one doctor of your choice, but that one doctor, be it the chiropractor, family doctor, whoever you see, they can refer you to as many as you need to go to. And if, let's say you go to a family doctor first, they refer you to the chiropractor for your work comp claim, I see you and I think maybe you should go see an orthopedic doctor, then I can refer you to the orthopedic doctor, the orthopedic doctor then thinks maybe you need to go see a podiatrist, I don't know, then you go to the podiatrist. It's not that you have to go to a doctor and only one doctor can refer you, but you have to go to one start to chain of referrals, and then the one doctor can refer you to all those doctors if they want to too. But you have to only pick one of your own. You can't go to see a medical doctor and get one opinion, then go to a chiropractor, get a different opinion. Now you've gone to two different doctors without a referral and they're not gonna cover you as well as they should 'cause you picked more than one. So there you have it, auto accident care, chiropractic care. By the way, when you're under care for us in these situations, you would come in, like I said before, we would probably do an X-ray, probably do an X-ray, we would do a full examination of you, both chiropractic and orthopedic. Then, we would see you anywhere between four and six times. Then we would reevaluate you, go back to the positive findings you had before, see if those are cleared out, once they're cleared out, then you're dismissed. Like I said, they don't cover up all that lifetime care when you're in these accidents. So once we've seen that we've taken care of you, your symptoms, your complaints are cleared up, then you're no longer a patient here and then you move on. That's basically how it works. So you talk to your chiropractor, ask 'em what their care plan is or recommendations, and if you have any other questions, go ahead and look me up. You can find me RockfordDC.com, R-O-C-K-F-O-R-D-D-C.com. And if you have a question for Ask the Chiropractor, you can submit it there too. If you wanna see some of my, some of our previous episodes, we've been doing this for over a year now, every week, there's a whole bunch of them out there, go to the website, looking at the blogs, you'll find us. All right everybody, thank you and stay safe and we'll talk to you next week.