Privileging Chiropractors

[Lydia Kranz]

Do any of you privilege your local chiropractors? Our chiropractors don’t practice here. They all have their own practice in our community; however, sometimes, they’ll order an xray for a patient to be done here? Do they need to be privileged here to do so? I’m not understanding why they would need to be?

[Keri Pruette]

Hi Lydia,

We had been credentialing and privileging chiropractors who wanted to order outpatient x-rays here. They also had privileges to consult and provide inpatient services on request of the attending physician, however, these had not been utilized in several years. We found that our chiropractors really only wanted to be able to order x-rays.

Though chiropractors are licensed to order x-rays, Medicare won’t reimburse for x-rays they order without a physician co-signature. There, however, is a Medicare exception that allows a non-treating physician to order x-rays for the purpose of diagnosing subluxation of the spine as part of a chiropractic evaluation and treatment plan.

Therefore, we realized that credentialing chiropractors was not accomplishing anything and was unnecessary. We discussed this with our Medical Staff and the local chiropractors and made arrangements for them to refer patients for plain x-rays meeting above criteria. We have a medical officer who has agreed to write orders for these services, upon receipt of the referral form. Our Radiology Department then makes sure a copy of the x-ray report is sent to both the ordering physician and the referring chiropractor. The account is registered under the ordering physician.

We just made this change in August and no longer credential and privilege chiropractors.

[Stefanie Frank]

Hello – We do not credential chiropractors and actually don’t accept orders from them because they are not reimbursable by Medicare. If we get an xray order from a DC, we ask the patient to have their PCP co-sign it. We then put the order under the PCPs name and the results get sent to the PCP provider.

[Author]

Posts