World Chiropractic Alliance
Responding to
Eight Chiropractic Issues
ISSUE 6: Council on Chiropractic Practice
The need and value of chiropractic guidelines is universally accepted, and the most widely accepted and endorsed guidelines is the one developed by the Council on Chiropractic Practice Guidelines
The only other set of guidelines to achieve widespread distribution is the so-called "Mercy Guideline," which failed to gain acceptance or endorsement even by the organizations that launched and sponsored it (The Congress of Chiropractic State Association).
The most obviously flaw in the Mercy guidelines was that they were not evidence based. They were a consensus document and they were not developed by "academic" chiropractic. They were developed by those in the profession who had an interest in marketing chiropractic to insurance plans and for those within chiropractic who worked within the insurance industry scrutinizing chiropractic insurance claims. The Mercy document was wholly rejected by the profession and was even removed from the National Guideline Clearinghouse because it did not meet the guidelines set down by the Federal Government as a legitimate guidelines document.1-2
References:
1. Haldeman S, Chapman-Smith D, Petersen DM. Guidelines for chiropractic quality assurance and practice parameters: Proceedings of the Mercy Center Consensus Conference. Gaithersburg (MD): Aspen Publishers; 1993.
- Mercy pulled from government site: JMPT prints letter outlining Mercy flaws. The Chiropractic Journal. February 2002. http://www.worldchiropracticalliance.org/tcj/2002/feb/feb2002b.htm