In a cool and eclectic office that sits just off the 100 block of Colfax, Washington’s Main street, patients sit in a relaxed quiet, flipping through old issues of the local gazette as they wait for their appointment with the ‘scratch doctor.’
The doctor's Department of Health Chiropractor License sits askew on the nearby wall, partially obscured by one of the many wrought iron ornaments held up by nails. The license expired in July, 2009.
“People come from all over the world to see him you know,” retired nurse and Washtucna, Wash., resident Linda Hall said while waiting for her appointment. “In fact I’ve been seeing him for almost 25 years.”
Hall is one of many area residents who have either been seeing the scratch doctor for decades or have caught onto the trend more recently.
“I recommend him to lots of people,” she said. “Then they tell friends who tell friends, and pretty soon (the doctor) has got a queue going out into the street some mornings.”
Aside from reputation, other factors have lured patients away from traditional medicine to see alternative practitioners; namely price, convenience and perception of care.
The scratch doctor charges $30 for a visit that could last longer than 30 minutes, a far cry from what many hospitals or private offices will charge, and more time than many can allow.
Rising health insurance rates have raced ahead of inflation in the last decade, a USA Today article said, which is reason enough for some patients to seek alternative care, and what makes the scratch doctor's services such an enticing value.
"My insurance co-pay is $120, and they put me in a room for five minutes, and the doctor comes in and is in such a hurry," Hall said. "It's a lot easier to come here whenever I want."
According to a 2011 Consumer Reports article, more Americans like Hall are seeking out alternative medicine each year. 38 million will forgo traditional methods and try nontraditional medicine this year alone, the report said.
However, the scratch doctor has set himself even further apart from the norm. He practices a rather specific subset of chiropractic care - an unconventional approach to nontraditional medicine. He calls it low-impact therapy.
“His techniques here are a bit different, but I go here because they work,” Colfax resident Carol Sullivan said. “I had back pain before I came to see him but now it's gone, and my doctor couldn’t fix that before.”
Brandishing a device akin to a baby’s rattle made of a metal cylinder and two lenses, Dr. Dirck Dewitt D.C., performs a set of rituals that would seem bizarre in most doctor’s offices.
Dewitt rubs and scratches the device, which in turn reverberates a soft metallic chime. The rattle device detects spots of ‘hot tension’ in the body caused by frequencies emitted from distressed nerves, Dewitt said.
“My branch of healthcare is about two things - organization and balance,” he said. “I don’t deal with the balance part, but the organization, and fixing the unorganized in the body.”
However effective Dewitt's branch of care may be anecdotally, it has repeatedly failed to garner the respect of the American Medical Association or the medical community at large.
This month, the Council of Chiropractic Education may have distanced itself even further from mainstream medicine by pushing for chiropractors to have access to pharmaceuticals in their practices, a right mainly reserved for M.D.'s, a P.R. Web article said.
“Chiropractic has always been the redheaded step child of medicine and the CCE now wants to include pharmaceuticals in practice and give chiropractors the same rights, privileges, and status as medical doctors has currently," Chiropractor Phil Yamamoto said in the article. "This is a very dangerous recipe for disaster.”
Dewitt believes chiropractic care has been repressed by the AMA to stifle competition between the disciplines, and to keep M.D.'s on top.
Many M.D.'s view the situation differently, a BBC article said.
"Many doctors feel that patients seeking alternative medicine could be misled into believing they are being cured when little or no scientific evidence exists to support the effectiveness of the treatments on offer," the article said. "Others believe that alternative medicine is seeped in bad science and is practised by charlatans or the deluded."
Traditional medicine and chiropractic in particular have been at odds for a long time, Dewitt explained.
"Well if you look into the history of chiropractic, the AMA is always trying to make more money," he said. "They don't like us because we're different."
Despite Dewitt’s different approach, or perhaps because of it, his waiting room has remained full. Most of his patients are still returning after years of faithful patronage and his clientele has seen a steady growth.
Dewitt claimed he has healed almost 98 percent of the people who walk out of his office. A success rate that conventional western medicine can’t match.
“At a regular doctor’s office, if you have back pain, they give you two aspirin and an anti-inflammatory and then kick your ass out the door,” Dewitt said. “It’s the procedure they follow - it tells us that we’re all the same when we’re not.”
Despite his claim to a staggering success rate, Dewitt recognized limits to his treatment. Chiropractic therapy and traditional medicine should work together to form a more complete form of healthcare as neither offers a complete solution to health, he said.
“If I get in a car crash, I don’t want to go see a chiropractor,” he said. “I want to go to the hospital where they’re equipped to handle things like that.”
But Dewitt was quick to denounce modern medicine’s approach to healthcare one last time. Modern medicine is about following strict procedure rather than treating an individual, he reiterated.
“Despite what they offer, no M.D. can tell you what it’s like to touch someone and know what it’s like to watch them blossom under your hands,” he said. “They don’t think, they just follow procedure, and that’s why people come to me.”
No comments:
Post a Comment