Chiropractic Care in Portland OR Offering Movement-Based Medicine to Help You Live Better

Yes—chiropractors are licensed doctors who complete thousands of hours of specialized education and hands-on clinical training. While our training differs from that of medical doctors, it's equally rigorous, just with a focus on anatomy, movement, and spinal function rather than pharmacology or surgery. Many of the doctors at Move Better have done a full body cadaver dissection as part of their doctorate. This is an amazing and unique experience among any doctorate currently available.

Chiropractic care is one of the lowest-risk healthcare professions. At our practice, most patient time—about 90%—is focused on improving how a person's body moves through soft tissue work and nervous system retraining. In fact, many of our patients don't receive traditional chiropractic adjustments at all because, for their specific needs, they simply aren't necessary.

One of the best ways we can answer the question of safety is by talking about malpractice insurance. Malpractice insurance rates reflect how often a patient is seeking legal action against a doctor. The more often this happens and the more often the doctor is found liable, the higher the costs. • High-risk specialties: Surgeons, obstetricians/gynecologists (OB/GYNs), and emergency room physicians generally pay the highest premiums due to the increased likelihood of malpractice claims. For example, OB/GYNs in Miami-Dade County, Florida, can pay as high as $226,224 annually. • Lower-risk specialties: Primary care physicians, such as family practitioners and internists (without surgery), typically pay lower premiums, often ranging from $5,000 to $12,000 per year. • Specialty-specific examples: • General surgeons in Michigan might pay around $67,000 per year. • Internists in New York City can pay between $25,497 and $35,836 annually. The national average is generally cited around $7500, which is a huge range.

The average cost for a chiropractor's insurance is $750 - $3000. The cost for the chiropractors at Move Better is below $1500 per clinician. These extremely low costs reflect how rare any incident is in the chiropractic profession as a whole.

We can't prescribe drugs, but that's rarely why patients come to us. Most people who visit us are looking for ways off the meds, not onto them. We focus on improving how your body functions so you don't have to rely on pills to get through the day.

Absolutely, chiropractic care can be appropriate for kids when it's done thoughtfully. We always match the intensity of care to the child's needs, often using gentle adjustments and simple movement cues. Sometimes, just a small shift can make a big difference in how their body functions and feels.

At Move Better we are always striving for the least amount of effort for the highest positive change. This is why we have our system of Breath, Brace, and Hinge. They are low effort movements that have huge positive changes to most conditions. Under that guideline, we can treat anyone at any phase of life, from newborn to elderly. We can treat frail to robust and we can be strong or we can be very gentle. There are many times when a small amount of intervention for a child can have profound positive impacts on their health.

Insurance companies are increasingly covering chiropractic treatments. This is a reflection of acceptance of the positive results of chiropractic care, the effectiveness of this kind of care, the savings of this kind of care versus other interventions, and the safety of this kind of care. On average, we see that most insurance companies cover 12 manipulations a year, which is a fairly good amount.

Most insurance plans do not require a referral from a primary care physician for chiropractic care. We do, however, encourage all of our patients to open a line of communication between Move Better and their primary care physicians. Many physicians are thrilled to work with us because we provide results, keep them informed of care, and have the skills to treat what their patients need. Primary care physicians know that medications are not a solution to your pain, but that is the tool they have to use. They are happy to work with us to use movement as a tool to fix your pain just as we are happy to work with them for the patients that do need medications.

If you're using insurance, it's typically just a $25 copay. But again, most of what we do is billed under physical therapy benefits—so your coverage might be broader than you think.

Move Better excels at care with motor vehicle collisions. Care for these cases involves many moving parts. There is often legal action needed, rental cars to be managed, pain to be controlled, and very commonly some level of concussion. There can be multiple appointments to meet all of these needs. Our clinicians excel at taking charge of this scenario and help organize all aspects of care and find a balance for our patients to get the care they need and not be overwhelmed with all of the other demands on their life. This is also where we shift our care to meet the needs better. Most of our patients have persistent pain without an injury being involved. Movement is a great tool with this kind of pain. A motor vehicle collision is very different. It is actual trauma to tissues and, as such, we shift our care. We need to optimize the body's ability to repair itself and allow time for healing. We have significantly more soft tissue care for these scenarios and often use movement as a way to protect an injured part of the body. Breathing and bracing are remarkably effective for whiplash as both allow the injured neck to have much less stress throughout the day. We also provide clear changes to diet and many more home care protocols to accelerate the healing process.

Work related injuries are very similar to motor vehicle collisions. There is significant crossover between all aspects. A chiropractor can be seen right away for work related injuries without any sort of referral. In some states, however, there is a limit as to how many initial visits are approved until a person would need a referral for continued care, usually from their primary care physician. Work related injuries almost always require some sort of guidelines as to what a person can do at work. We excel at this because we have the facilities to actually test and perform work movements. We know our patients can pick up 35 lbs at work because they can easily do it in real time in our clinic. We do not need to make any assumptions about capacity. We can establish real guidelines that the clinicians and patients can agree are safe and achievable.

Having a conversation about what conditions all chiropractors treat would be a long paragraph and, ultimately, not answer the real question. The question really is what do we treat well? There are many chiropractors that have many specialties. Some are amazing with concussions, or treatment of babies, or specialize in treating disc herniations. While we can treat all of those conditions, you would be much better served by connecting with people that are amazing in their own categories versus someone who is just ok at everything. What Move Better can treat are body pains. If the formula is "I do ______ and this hurts or feels unsafe" we can treat that, and we really specialize in that. The benefit of having our Movement Paradigm system is that it lets us know very quickly if this is the right place for you to be. It allows us to know right away if you have a movement based problem and need movement based medicine. If that is not apparent we will refer you out to great people that we personally know that will get you the medicine you need.

First visits at Move Better are very different than any other medical visit. First they are long, usually 2 hours. During this time you will be one on one with our doctors. It first starts with a long conversation so we can fully understand your side and your experience. If we do not understand your story, we will not know how to help you. The second half of the visit is education and movement. We want you to know why you have the pain you have and to understand the steps to change that pain. It almost always includes laughter, which is very endearing considering most people come here because they are in a lot of pain. It almost always has some version of "Wow" or "Whoa" or "I wish I knew this earlier" coming from our patients. When you can see and feel the differences of movement or control, it is very eye opening. It becomes obvious that there is a new way to do things and that new way can really change your life experience.

It is also worth noting that movement in the first visit usually involves lying on your back or sitting on a chair. It is really more about education than exercise. The goal is to leave that first visit with 2 or 3 concepts that can immediately improve your life, reduce your pain, and are easily done at home with no equipment.

Our initial care plan is almost always once a week for 6 weeks. Care is then usually reduced after that to every other week. We are very consistent in our care plans because we use a system that creates predictable results. Almost every patient will have clinically significant improvement upon their re-examination at their sixth visit. An exception to this would care for an acute injury, like a motor vehicle collision. Care is then usually 2 - 3 times per week for an initial treatment plan of 4 - 5 weeks. This change in care reflects the increase of soft tissue care provided when there is tissue trauma.