A health care system in transformation: making the case for chiropractic

This commentary explores the present day healthcare crisis and looks at the opportunities for chiropractors as pressure intensifies on politicians and leaders in healthcare to seek innovative solutions to a failing model. Amidst these opportunities, it questions whether the chiropractic profession is ready to accept the challenges that integration into mainstream healthcare will bring and identifies both pathways and potential obstacles to acceptance.A need for transformation in healthcare systems throughout the globe has long been recognised [1-3]. Social reform, improvements in living conditions and the positive impact of public health initiatives have all conspired to enhance quantity and quality of life [4]. As the baby boomers of the post World War Two era move into their twilight years enjoying a range of activities that would have left their ancestors aghast [5], western societies have experienced a steady increase in the size of the ageing population as communities dance, jog, cycle and gyrate their way into their eighties and nineties [6].But while we celebrate the achievements of medical science in prolonging and sustaining life, health care systems have been buckling under the pressure [7]. Advances in health technologies have brought about highly sophisticated systems of investigation, surgery and medical care [8,9]. In nations where health is delivered free at the point of service and where an informed public demands access to the most advanced available care, costs of health provision have rapidly escalated [10]. At the same time, fiscal deficits and global economic crises have resulted in budgets being dramatically reduced as governments struggle to balance the pressures on the public purse [11,12] whilst at the same time demanding added value. In nations which have seen the cost of healthcare as a proportion of the nation’s GDP rise steeply, in some cases by over seventy per cent [13], it is clear that within such an environment traditional models of