A new independent national survey in the US has firmed once more the high patient satisfaction rate associeted with chiropractic care (83%), and concludes that “this is remarkable, given the fact that much of the financial burden of the care is borne by patients, and the preponderance of care is the difficult chronic problems of the back and the neck”.

The study is by Gary Gaumer, PhD from the school of Health Studies, Department of Health Care Administration,Simmons College, Boston, Massachusetts and combined a literature review of the past patient satisfaction studies with a new study based upon a national US telephone survey. From a large group of respondents there was random selection of 400 who had had chiropractic treatment last year, 400 who had not.

83% were either very satisfied (53,5% – over half of all patients) or satisfied (29,5%) with their chiropractic care. This was amongst past chiropractic patients, including those who hadn’t sought care in the last year – who represented 49,2% of the patients surveyed. Fewer than 10% were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied.

Summary points are:  96,1 % of those in the chiropractic patient group had sought care for back pain (68,2%) and/or neck pain (22,6%) end/or headaches (5,3%).

* Gaumer G (2006) Factors Associated with Patient Satisfaction with Chiropractic Care: Survey and Review of the Litereture, Journal of Manipulative Physiol Ther 29:455-462.