Predictors of visit frequency for patients using ongoing chiropractic care for chronic low back and chronic neck pain; analysis of observational data

Table 1 Alternate versions of enabling factors (coverage for chiropractic and costs per visit) to be tested

	Chronic Low Back Pain¹		Chronic Neck Pain¹
	No coverage (n = 218)	Some coverage (n = 590)	No coverage (n = 202)	Some coverage (n = 475)
Mean (SD) # chiropractic visits/month	2.0 (1.6)	2.4 (2.4)	2.3 (2.1)	2.2 (2.0)
Enabling factors
Insurance with caps on visits or costs	–	291 (49.3%)	–	244 (51.4%)
Insurance with no caps	–	85 (14.4%)	–	68 (14.3%)
Insurance with unknown caps	–	214 (36.3%)	–	163 (34.3%)
Out-of-pocket costs per visit*
Unknown / $0	0 (0.0%)	67 (11.4%)	0 (0.0%)	69 (14.5%)
$1 to $20	0 (0.0%)	227 (38.5%)	0 (0.0%)	148 (31.2%)
$21 to $40	14 (6.4%)	195 (33.1%)	19 (9.4%)	175 (36.8%)
$41 to $60	101 (46.3%)	65 (11.0%)	89 (44.1%)	51 (10.7%)
$61 to $80	71 (32.6%)	18 (3.1%)	72 (35.6%)	18 (3.8%)
$81+	32 (14.7%)	18 (3.1%)	22 (10.9%)	14 (2.9%)

¹Data on insurance status were not available for a small percentage of patients in each sample: 44 (5.2%) for chronic low back pain and 28 (4.0%) for chronic neck pain
^*Out-of-pocket costs differ significantly between those with and without some chiropractic coverage for both those with chronic low back pain and chronic neck pain, p < .001