games, on TV and print media. Wait a second. The doctors pay the team? According to Dr. David Geier, a medical doctor, this is actually true. “Often there is a separate contract that allows the physi-cians to advertise that they are the official team physicians. Those contracts involve huge amounts of money. Whether paying a lot of money to advertise serving as a physician for a pro team generates enough patients to make it worthwhile is debatable,” Geier says. In an article by Darren Rovell, NFL Raiders’ team med-ical doctor for eight years, Dr. Robert Huizenga, said: “In this arrangement, a medical organization provides the team doctors often for free and also pays for a marketing arrange-ment which advertises the deal to fans. Does the Hospital For Special Surgery in New York really have the best doctors for the Mets, Giants, Knicks, Nets and Red Bulls or is it because they pay for the right to say they treat the teams?” Huizenga then said something I have been saying for years: “The players have to know that if they want the best care, they can’t see the doctor for free, the players have to step up and pay for the work themselves.” These words echo my previous article, “What Athletes Want,” from 2012. In that piece, I ask several professional athletes, which they value more: a doctor who charges a fair price for treatment or a doctor who treats them for free? NHL’s Vancouver Canucks defenseman Even McEneny said: “Generally, my opinion is that if the treatment is free then the therapist won’t care as much. It’s important that the therapist is motivated, and wants to do a good job to make sure I return for another treatment.” CFL’s Montreal Alouettes lineman Brian Simmons stated, “Usually you get what you pay for in life. With that said, I want someone that charges me the fair price because it will make me feel as if he is serious about his practice.” It is clear that DCs in professional sports are not com-pensated well. Our professional associations must rethink their vision instead of indirectly promoting the undervaluing of our services. Ask yourself: Do the NFL team lawyers work for free? How about the accountants of CFL teams? Anonymously, an accounting firm employed by a CFL team told me they, in fact, get paid by the pro teams. Ac-cording to NFL sports lawyer Darren Heitner, lawyers in the NFL make between $100,000 to $1 million a year. Other professionals get paid respectable wages as well: executive accountants, payroll analysts, even accounting interns. If our associations and our profession want to be taken seriously as a mainstream athletic health-care option, then we should start acting like it. Otherwise the mantra, “you get what you pay for,” will remain associated with our ser-vices. www.canadianchiropractor.ca CC Survey Half Page MAY17 JLR.indd 1 June 2017 Canadian Chiropractor 11 2017-05-26 4:24 PM
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