Photograph to shootThe treatment room from the doorway. Table made up with fresh paper, blinds half open, nobody in frame. Eye height, landscape, full bleed. This is the room a first-time patient is trying to picture.
Twenty-seven years of adjusting backs in a town of twenty-five hundred.
Most people who ring here have never been to a chiropractor and are not sure they want to be. So the page below is the first visit, minute by minute, and the prices, before you have to ask anyone for either.
Your first visit runs about forty minutes
Nothing is done to you in the first twenty-five of them. That is the part people do not expect.
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0 to 10 min
History
Sitting down, clothes on. What hurts, when it started, what makes it worse, what you have already tried, what else you are being treated for.
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10 to 25 min
Exam
Range of motion, orthopedic and neurological testing, posture. X-rays here on site only if the exam gives a reason for them, not as a matter of course.
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25 to 32 min
What was found
Read back to you in plain words, including the case for doing nothing and the case for sending you to somebody else. Roughly one visit in eight ends here.
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32 to 40 min
First adjustment
If it is warranted and you want it. Hands or an Activator instrument, your choice. Most people walk out and drive themselves home.
Bring a list of your medications and the name of your family doctor. If the pain came from a car accident or a work injury, bring the claim number, because that changes who is billed and it is easier to sort out on day one.
What people actually come in for
- Low back pain that has lasted more than a week
- Neck pain and stiffness after sleeping wrong
- Headaches that start at the base of the skull
- Sciatica, the leg pain more than the back pain
- Shoulder and rotator cuff complaints
- Rib pain after coughing or lifting
- Whiplash after a rear-end collision
- Hip and knee pain in people who farm
- Pregnancy-related pelvic and low back pain
- Plantar fasciitis and foot mechanics
Athletes, farmers and people who sit at a desk all day arrive with three different backs and three different jobs to get back to. The exam is the same; the plan is not.
Two lists, and the second one is the important one
What this office does
- Diversified manual adjusting, and Activator instrument adjusting for anyone who does not want to be twisted
- Acupuncture, needled or by pressure
- Soft tissue work on the muscle that is holding the joint where it is
- Files Medicare, Medicaid, most major plans, and personal injury and workers compensation claims
- Same-day appointments most mornings
- Refers out, in writing, when an image or a specialist is the right answer
What this office will not do
- Sell you a prepaid block of thirty visits before anybody has examined you
- Put you on a schedule with no end date on it
- X-ray everyone who walks in the door
- Treat a headache that has red flags on it instead of sending you for a scan
- Adjust a neck without telling you plainly what that involves first
- Charge for the visit where the answer turns out to be no
The acupuncture side
About a third of the people treated here get needles at some point, most often for headaches, shoulder and neck pain, or a low back that has stopped responding to adjusting alone.
The needles are single use, about the thickness of a human hair, and the usual report is that the insertion is not the part people remember. A session runs twenty to thirty minutes with the needles in place. If the idea is a hard no, acupressure covers a good share of the same ground and nothing goes through skin.
It is not a replacement for the adjustment and it is not sold as a package. It gets used where it works.
Photograph to shootThe tray, from directly above, in daylight. Sealed packets, swabs, clean cloth. No hands and no patient in frame.
What it costs
The first visit, meaning the history, the exam and the report of findings, is $85. A follow-up adjustment is $45. An acupuncture session is $55, or $30 when it is added to an adjustment on the same day. On-site X-rays, if the exam calls for them, are $70 for the series.
Those are the cash prices, and they are what you pay if you have no insurance or a deductible you have not met. With coverage, the office files it and you owe the copay, which for most plans in this county runs $20 to $40 a visit. Medicare covers the adjustment and does not cover the acupuncture, which is worth knowing before the bill rather than after.
There is no membership, no annual plan and no prepayment. You pay for the visit you had.