a community of practitioners

Working with the Chiro vs. renting a room from one

My chiropractor has 2 different kinds of massage therapist - some that work directly with him under his direction and 2 that give 60-90 minute massages, be it Swedish or Deep Tissue or Trigger Point. I've been seeing his normal massage therapist who are great and I believe they make a certain percentage or either just rent the rooms from the DC.

I'm curious if anybody works directly with the chiropractor and can tell me what that's like? I have never had a LMT work on me prior or after an adjustment but I have had his assistants place stim and heat packs on me. One of my fellow students interned with a chiro office and he had her working specific areas such as shoulder or neck for 15-20 minutes. I'm assuming this is an hourly-rate position?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jaci Yeager, LMT on June 21, 2012 at 8:34am

I've done both...I currently work for a DC for an hourly rate doing manual therapy before and/or after patient adjustments. Usually 8-15 minutes because that's how insurance bills. It's a lot of fun - I see about 3-4 people an hour. You have to think quickly and figure out what's going to help the patient the most in your allotted short time. You also get to see a ton of different pathologies which is cool. I'm pretty independent of the chiro as far as techniques performed and areas worked. I perform my own mini-intake, asking them about pain levels and where they hurt, and recent or past injuries. It requires a bit of coordination with the DC, especially for patients with serious problems. For example, sometimes we get people who have hip flexor problems. The chiro will work on the flexors and then I'll do MFR on the QL, or something like that.

It really helps the patients relax (which is big since they're in so much pain) and loosening their soft tissues helps the chiropractor perform a better adjustment. Sometimes it means the difference between the DC being able to "get" the adjustment or not.

My hours worked go toward my rent (I run my own massage biz on evenings/weekends), and we settle up every month. I also give a small discount to the patients they refer to me.