Frustration with insurance companies leads him to try new approach
By Anne Trautner
Assistant Editor
Chad Schleiger has been treating patients in his chiropractic office in Delafield since 2012, but has grown frustrated with insurance companies dictating each patient’s care.
So, in March, when he opened his new pediatric and wellness chiropractic office at 5 Ridgeway Court in Elkhorn, he decided to cut insurance companies out altogether. The new office, called the Wellness Pointe, does not accept any insurance.
“The challenging part is that most people, when they go see a doctor or a chiropractor, they ask if you accept their insurance. We don’t,” Schleiger said.
New patients are required to watch a video at a chiropractor orientation class, which is offered on Tuesdays at 7 p.m. and Saturdays at noon. After completing the class, prospective patients decide how much they can afford for chiropractic care and set an individualized fee schedule. While many people visit adelaide low back pain centers or something similar to get rid of their back pain, not many people would be aware that such affordable treatments exist.
Patients pay their fees by placing cash in a small, inconspicuous box that hangs on a wall in the office. No one else, not even Schleiger, sees how much each patient pays at each visit.
“It is completely confidential. It is between you, God and the box,” Schleiger said. “Everybody has got a set income, and everybody has got expenses. Most people have a little bit of disposable income. What of that amount can you and your family afford to get checked to make sure your nervous system is working properly?”
Schleiger does not know who has put money in the box or how much each individual has paid. If a patient needs to come for an extra session, it is up to that person to decide how much to pay.
“Let’s say you have an unrecurring expense, like something in your house breaks down, your car breaks down or you are just running low on cash that month or that week. Does that mean that you can’t get checked? That doesn’t make any sense. How do you stay well if that happens? Should there be emotional stress paying for your doctor’s bill? That’s not about wellness,” Schleiger said.
For those who are uncomfortable using the secret box paying method, there is a set fee schedule that people can pay with a credit card.
“There are some people that don’t like to use the box, and our fees for coming in every single week are pretty affordable as it is, so some people just pay with their credit card or they have an account. They just never use the box, they pay at the beginning of the month or week. So it’s an option,” Schleiger said.
Schleiger still accepts insurance in his Delafield office, but prefers the new, confidential fee method. He has not heard of any other Wisconsin chiropractors using that type of payment method.
So far, the honor fee system works, Schleiger said.
Wellness care
As a chiropractor, Schleiger’s main goal is to prevent illness and to promote wellness.
“We are set up as a wellness office, and we are trying to prevent things from happening. Even if things have happened, and we are trying to get the symptoms to go away, we can help that too, but we are more on the side of trying to prevent things from happening,” said Schleiger, who graduated from Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa.
As a chiropractor, Schleiger treats vertebral subluxation, a structural misalignment of the spine that affects the central nervous system. By focusing on subluxation, Schleiger helps people with neck pain, low back pain, and headaches.
When people undergo physical, chemical, or emotional stress, it affects the spine, Schleiger said. Physical stress creates lower back pain, emotional stress reveals itself in headaches or neck problems and chemical stress affects the nervous system, Schleiger said.
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“A lot of times we see chemical stress build up between our shoulder blades,” Schleiger said. “Our muscles get tight, they pull those bones out of alignment, they become stuck and fixated, and then they cause irritation on that nerve. That nerve goes somewhere, it doesn’t just float off into the universe and go nowhere. It goes to your heart, it goes to your liver, it supplies your immune system, everything in your body is controlled by your nervous system.”
Therefore, when the nervous system is stressed, it can cause an imbalanced immune system, which can create an inability to fight off illnesses, including things like cancer, Schleiger said.
Pediatric services
Schleiger also specializes in children with neurodevelopmental disorders, such as ADD, ADHD and autism, Schleiger said.
“Most people kind of overlook this thing called birth. A lot of kids have trauma, whether it is a C-section or vaginal delivery,” Schleiger said. “That causes a lot of strain on the upper neck. With that, it causes stress on the central nervous system being in a heightened state of stress, and a lot of times kids start out neurologically challenged and have digestive issues and problems with the immune system right off.”
A medical practitioner looks at the output effects of these issues, such as hyperactivity, behavior problems and learning disabilities. In contrast, a chiropractic pediatrician looks at the input to the system, Schleiger said.
“There has to be a reason they are having those challenges. The central nervous system is kind of like your flight system control coordinator of the body. We look at the input and try to get rid of the interference so the body can function the way that it should,” Schleiger said.
Schleiger said that he has witnessed an autistic 16-year-old who was nonverbal since age 2, start talking again after 10 chiropractic adjustments.
Likewise, one of Schleiger’s 8-year-old patients went from a score of 0 to level 6 on a reading test after one month of chiropractic care.
“The mom said they were not doing anything different except for this. So it could be a complete coincidence, or maybe the nervous system is an important thing when it comes to this,” Schleiger said.
To help pediatric patients with neurodevelopmental issues, Schleiger tries to remove interference from the nervous system.
“What we do with the adjustment is we try to slow them down and allow their nervous system to adapt and grow. With that, we improve communication, the digestive issues go away, their immune systems become valid, they don’t have chronic behavior problems, they start talking,” Schleiger said.
Of the youth that Schleiger sees in his office, 95 percent have spinal misalignment because of the stress of pregnancy or birth trauma, he said.
Schleiger shares his Elkhorn office space with Casey Bonyata, who provides massage and birth services.
