Trouble Seeing? Call an eye doctor, not a chiropractor.
On January 13, 2023, the Division fined chiropractor Poorvi Sandesara, D.C. $8,000.00 for treating an injured employee’s compensable eye injury. For those that don’t know or aren’t frequent readers of our newsletter, chiropractors are not the same as medical doctors. The Texas legislature has limited chiropractors’ scope of practice to the evaluation and treatment of the “biomechanical condition of the spine and musculoskeletal system.” Chiropractors are prohibited by law from performing surgery, giving injections, and prescribing drugs, among other things. However, the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in chiropractors and sometimes they push their scope of practice boundaries, to the detriment of injured employees. According to the Division’s
consent order:
Failure to act within the scope of practice for a chiropractor is deceptive and harmful to injured employees, the public, and the Texas workers’ compensation system. This conduct directly interferes with the division’s goal of providing timely, appropriate, and high-quality medical care supporting restoration of the injured employee’s physical condition and earning capacity.
We couldn’t have put it better ourselves. This case also raises the obvious question of why someone would treat with a chiropractor for an eye injury. Did the injured employee not know better or did their attorney refer them to the chiropractor? It seems the goal in such cases is to stay off work longer rather than to get the best possible medical care. The Division’s actions in this case are in the best interests of injured employees and are to be commended. Next up on the Division’s agenda should be chiropractors treating injured employees with burn injuries which, believe it or not, we’ve also seen before.
