During recent meetings, the Chiropractic Examining Board has been evaluating more significant changes to the Administrative Law Code controlling chiropractic in this state. This is part of an ongoing effort by various regulatory boards to comply with the Governor’s request that existing administrative laws be reviewed and updated. The Board has already made relativity uncontroversial updates to Chapters 1, 3, and 11, but is beginning to evaluate more pronounced changes to chapters 4 (“Practice”), 10 (Delegation), and eventually 5 (Continuing Education) and 12 (Nutritional Counseling). The Board’s actions with these chapters of the Code will have a more significant impact upon the chiropractor’s standard of practice and should be carefully monitored by all interested doctors. With regard to Chapter 4, the Board considered changes which dramatically simplify the text, but leave open for future interpretation those techniques, procedures, and instruments which can be used in the course of a doctor’s practice. Initially, the Board approved a scope statement to insert into the code the definitions of “chiropractic science” and “practice of chiropractic” based upon existing language from the statutes (Chapter 446). Significantly, this statutory language replaces administrative code language from 1985 and excludes reference to “spinal subluxations”, “nerve energy expression”,
Read more →The Wisconsin Chiropractic Association’s (“WCA”) most recent legislative initiative has once again caused division within the profession and was initiated without accurate and open discussion of the issue. This time, the WCA sought to use the budget reconciliation process as a means of surreptitiously obtaining an amendment that would allow Wisconsin chiropractors to advise and counsel patients on the use of over the counter medication. (“OTC”) Although the initiative appears to be “dead” for now, this manner and method of introducing dramatic changes in the scope of chiropractic has to be done accurately and openly in the future in order to unite, rather than further divide, doctors within the state. First, the profession requires accuracy with important changes of this nature. In advancing the proposal, the WCA disseminated information that doctors cannot “advise and counsel” on OTC within this state’s current scope of practice. Depending upon the definition of these terms, this position can be disputed for several reasons, including: The statute broadly relied upon by the WCA for prohibiting treatment by drugs, more specifically references the definition for that word to only include those “drugs” listed in s. 450.01(10) of the statutes. Those “drugs” listed do not include many
Read more →In April, 2017, the Wisconsin Chiropractic Association (“WCA”) submitted proposed legislation which primarily addresses four matters. Before addressing an aspect of the Bill which is controversial, it should be noted that three of the matters are not widely disputed within the profession and; in fact, seek to legislatively confirm activities which are already practiced by state chiropractors. Those legislative matters involve: (1) the ability to perform physical examinations for athletes participating in school athletics, (2) ability to delegate patient services to other licensed health care providers and, (3) administrative code changes confirming the ability to perform DOT examinations and “invasive laser applications”.
Read more →Just days before the close of the legislative session, the State Senate’s Committee on Health and Human Services granted a public hearing on the controversial legislation introduced by the Wisconsin Chiropractic Association (“WCA”) to allow chiropractors to become “Primary Spine Care Physicians” (PSCP”). By the time their testimony was completed, it became readily apparent that each of these WCA presenters actually began to expose the fundamental problems or “challenges” which chiropractors face that have nothing to do with dramatically altering the scope of practice by creating the PSCP.
Read more →Chiropractors have voiced their concerns for changes
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