Credentialing

Knowledge is power. All of your education and your license may allow you to practice medicine or chiropractic and it also allows a broad spectrum of what you can treat, when it comes to personal injury there is clearly a need for additional education.

  1. Personal Injury is not healthcare. It is injury care.
    1. Most doctors have the skills to help most patients. Unfortunately with personal injury, the extent of injuries is usually not so obvious. The general healthcare that most doctors usually offer may not to be effective on the underlying injuries that usually go undetected in a personal injury case. Learning how to identify all of the injured structures is essential for any doctor who hopes to get paid after an attorney gets a settlement check. More importantly, it is imperative to any doctor who actually chooses to be concerned about  their patients first. Every injury that is not diagnosed runs a higher risk of being an injury that is not treated. It is these untreated and unresolved injuries that are the reason that so many studies have found that chronic cervical pain is likely the result of an old motor vehicle injury.
  2. Failure to diagnose is the leading cause of malpractice.
    1. Nelson Hendler, MD has done extensive research at Johns Hopkins where he found that up to 80% of patients involved in litigation were misdiagnosed. His studies went on to find that about half of these misdiagnosed patients required a surgical procedure. Granted, facet injections are a surgical procedure but if they help the patient that is a necessary surgical procedure.
    2. Medical doctors often go with the overly simplified diagnosis of cervical or lumbar strain. A stain is a muscle injury and instructions give to patients upon discharge from the emergency department explain that this injury should recover in 1 to 2 weeks and fully resolve in 4 to 6 weeks. Based on this assumption any care of this diagnosis beyond two months would have to be considered at the least over treatment and possibly malpractice or insurance fraud. If a patient continues to complain a year or two after the trauma then cleary a cervical or lumbar strain is not the correct diagnosis.
  3. Whiplash is not a diagnosis.
    1. There is no ICD-10 code for whiplash. The reason is that these ICD-10 codes are for diagnoses and whiplash is merely a mechanism of injury. Just like falling off a ladder can bring with it an expected set of bruises and fractures, the action of falling is not a diagnosis. In a motor vehicle collision it is important to understand the mechanism of injury in a whiplash type of trauma as that points the diagnostician towards the structures that our most likely to be injured.
    2. Understanding how the direction of impact alone can affect a body will provide better insight into what structures might be injured. Beyond the other variables that must be considered, it should be clear to any doctor, that being hit from the rear or being hit from the side will introduce a different set of forces affecting the body in different ways.
    3. Understanding these concepts alone puts the doctor in a better position to diagnose all of the injuries, validate their treatment, and support the attorney in building a stronger demand package. Each gap in the doctors knowledge may seem insignificant in and of itself but it also provides an opening that an insurance adjuster could drive a truck through.
    4. We teach you how to identify these gaps, fill them in with verifiable testing and research to prevent the insurance company from falling back on their tactics of deny, delay, and defend.

 

Our Certificate in Motor Vehicle Injuries was created to raise the bar on personal injury.

Right now medical doctors still carry more weight with the insurance industry. Their lack of understanding of all the intricacies of personal injury can eventually do more damage than good to a case. Sadly it can also affect the patient’s treatment and recovery.

85% of medical doctors are board certified in at least one specialty. Less than 15% of all chiropractors hold any type of advanced certification. On this basis alone, Chiropractors trail far behind on credibility. Our certificate helps to close that gap by providing chiropractors with the education needed to exceed what their medical colleagues have in terms of personal injury.

Graduates report that their personal injury practices have grown significantly because of what they have learned. They are doing a better job of diagnosing, testing, and treating their patients. Attorneys who have also represented these patients have noticed a higher quality of work from our graduates. Our graduates also report receiving more referrals from Attorneys.  

 

American Chiropractic Association Diploma

We are working with the American Chiropractic Association on a Diploma in Motor Vehicle Injuries. The diploma will raise the bar to a greater level of education. This level will be equivalent to that of board certified orthopedist or neurologist. In order to achieve this level you will be required to have 5 years in practice and 300 hours of coursework. The difference is that orthopedists may know arthritis, neurologists may know MS, but our doctors will have a diploma in Motor Vehicle Injuries and they will know that subject. The accreditation for this diploma will come from the American Chiropractic Association.

This advanced diploma and education will put the doctor in a position where they become the referral source of choice with attorneys and medical specialists.

Like other medical specialties, the Diploma in Motor Vehicle Injuries will require a total of 300 hours (this includes the 150 hours in the certificate program) and 5 years in practice. Of the additional 150 hours there will be required courses in research, radiology, and crash reconstruction / biomechanics. There will be several other programs whose hours can be applied to the additional 150 hours required for the diploma.

These programs include:

  • Dr. Arthur Croft’s Biomechanics and Traumatology
  • Dr. Dan Murphy’s Personal Injury Classes
  • Dr. Stephen Yoeman’s Classes on Impairment Rating and Outcomes Assessment Tools
  • Dr. Evan Katz’s Program on Injury Management
  • Dr Christopher Brigham’s program on Whole Person Permanent Impairment Rating
    • Procedures will be in place for candidates to challenge additional courses that they may have completed.  While our review board will consider any submissions greater weight will be granted to:
      • Courses taught at a college or university, this is not limited to chiropractic colleges
      • Courses approved for continuing education credits by a chiropractic college,
      • Courses approved by PACE, or
      • Courses approved by a state chiropractic board.