Network Care for Workers’ Comp Woes

Texas/South Central • May 7, 2004

“Florida took chiropractors out of the system some time back and saw that there was no true effect on the problem. The costs of care were not lowered as anticipated. It is not appropriate for the injured workers to be limited in their choices of treatment algorithms.

“The subject that just gets glazed over is the failure of this state to implement appropriate guidelines of care that are evidence based. Texas has been without clinical guidelines of practice for a number of years. Further the guidelines that we had were not updated as often as appropriate based on advances in the medical community.

“Washington put together a program, developed their own guidelines and seemed to plug their gushing wound called workers’ compensation. It is time for Texas to make appropriate decisions that will secure injured workers options and not waste time with band-aid fixes that have no evidence of effectiveness.”

— Frank Schneider, Grapevine, Texas.