A Descriptive Report of the Case-Mix Within Australian Chiropractic Practice

Ebrall PChiropractic Journal of Australia1993 Sep; 23(3) : 9 2-7

The objective of this study was to generate a description of the of chiropractic in Australia by using a prospective recording instrument provided to volunteer chiropractors. The 25 respondents were located in private practice throughout six of the eight jurisdictions in Australia. They were members of the Chiropractor’s Association of Australia and recorded details of 100 consecutive patient visits from Monday, 7 September 1992. A total of 2,500 patient visits were recorded. Of these, 1148 (46%) were made by males and 1352 (54%) by females. There were 246 (9.8%) new patient visits and 2254 (90.2%) return patient visits. The mean age of the patients was 39.45 years, and half of the patient visits were generated by patients in the age range of 30 to 50 years. The presenting complaint was back pain in 41% of patient visits, neck pain in 23%, and headache in 14%. There were 85 (3.4%) patient visits at which an apparently non-musculoskeletal presenting complaint was reported. Patients with workers’ compensation accounted for less than 10% of all visits. Slightly over half of all visits were funded by a private health fund, with the highest percentage being in South Australia (76.8%) and Western Australia (74.3%), falling to 25% in the ACT. This study is an early attempt to define the case-mix of Australian chiropractic practice, and concludes that chiropractors mostly treat musculoskeletal complaints where the patient is reimbursed for the cost of treatment by a third party. The proportion of non-musculoskeletal diagnoses, while very small, can be seen as demanding the retention of differential diagnostic skills by chiropractors, even though the number of patients with a primary presenting complaint of a visceral nature is extremely small.

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