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Did Physical Therapy or Chiropractic Care not work for you?

Writer's picture: Dr. Patrick Thompson, DPT, OCS, Dip. Osteopractic, FAAOMPTDr. Patrick Thompson, DPT, OCS, Dip. Osteopractic, FAAOMPT
Why didn't Physical Therapy or Chiropractic Care work for you?
Why didn't Physical Therapy or Chiropractic Care work for you?

I have had many conversations in my career with countless patients that share common themes or phrases such as:


  • “I’ve tried Physical Therapy before and it did not work for me…”


  • “My ___ pain started a few months ago, but I had to get X-rays and injections before I could start Physical Therapy…”


  • “I went to a Chiropractor for a few years to manage my symptoms, but it never fully went away…”


  • “I can just do those exercises at home…”


  • “I really didn’t like the PT clinic I went to because I felt like I was just shuffled around exercises by the tech with a bunch of other patients…”


And let me tell you, when I hear these types of stories - and I hear them all too often - a part of me gets upset because my patients obviously did not receive the highest quality of care. 


The Pitfalls of the Traditional, Insurance-driven Healthcare model


The traditional, insurance-driven healthcare model has many unnecessary hoops to jump through to receive treatment. And many times these hoops are not patient-centered and are likely not in the patient’s best interest - whether that be the patient's financial interest or treatment interest.


Using the example of lower back pain, which is currently an epidemic in the United States, the typical course of action looks very similar to the following scenario:


Initial injury/Pain begins → Make an appointment with your PCP, time passes due to appointment availability → At this visit, you receive Medication/X-Rays  → Orthopedic (or other specialist) MD Referral is initiated and scheduled a few weeks later while insurance approves → You receive an MRI/More Medication → Injection if the pain doesn’t resolve → Potential Physical Therapy Referral a few weeks later (by now the pain has become chronic and progressed).


To write this out as a story, the current healthcare model and insurance plans prolong common and very treatable orthopedic injuries/pain due to a standardized and inefficient protocol that is in place. This protocol has multiple unnecessary steps, which not only drive up your healthcare expenses, but delay actual treatment for your injury.


The Solution to Better and Quicker Care


One way to circumvent this obstacle is to utilize Direct Access Physical Therapy. This allows for you to be seen by the experts in navigating and rehabbing orthopedic injuries - a Physical Therapist - the same day without an MD referral. 


A Doctor of Physical Therapy has the ability to evaluate and assess your symptoms to begin with a personalized rehab program on day 0, leading to significantly faster symptom treatment and ultimately quick symptom relief. Additionally, a Doctor of Physical Therapy can rule in/rule out medical red and yellow flags and can make appropriate referrals for further MD evaluation if needed. 


How the Traditional, Insurance-driven Physical Therapy model Has Pitfalls


Now the confusing part - not all Physical Therapy is created equally. Many, many physical therapy clinics that are a part of the insurance network model are volume and session based, as opposed to being truly patient centered. And, as a practitioner who worked in insurance driven Physical Therapy clinics for over a decade, I know this from experience. 


This is most evident when your Physical Therapist is required to juggle 3 or 4 (or more!) patients at one time because employers often place quotas on staff PTs for increased patient volume. This is to drive overall clinic profits due to the ever declining insurance reimbursement rates for PT services. Additionally, insurance may require you to attend your Physical Therapy clinics 2 or 3 times per week, which leads to Physical Therapy treatment plans consisting of 12, 24, or even 36+ overall visits - with each visit potentially requiring high co-pays.


Unfortunately, this model just simply doesn’t allow your Physical Therapist to truly focus on your unique presentation and the sessions are filled with fluff and generalized treatments because the PT has many patients to manage simultaneously. This may be the reason that your Physical Therapy treatment, despite diligently attending your session 3x/week for 8 weeks, yielded suboptimal results. 


When insurance company profits are placed above the patient's needs, the patient will suffer, not the insurance company. Not to mention, by the time you add up all of those copays and the bills from all the medical referrals, you've paid more than an out-of-network clinic.


What makes Flow Physical Therapy’s model different?


To put it in one sentence:


Our model of Osteopractic Physical Therapy delivered by a Fellowship-trained Physical Therapist in 60 minute, uninterrupted, one-on-one sessions keeps the patient the focus of their personalized treatment. 


  1. First and foremost, Flow Physical Therapy is a part of the revolution across the country consisting of small PT clinics opting to be an Out of Network Physical Therapy Clinic to deliver a higher quality of care. 


By remaining outside of the insurance networks, our clinic is not restricted or confined by the unnecessary burdens of insurance. This means, when your “shoulder pain,” is really coming from your neck, then we can treat the neck without first asking for insurance coding/permission. We can treat the root cause immediately, yielding immediate results.


Remaining outside of the network also allows for every patient to receive the treatment they need for their diagnosis, not just what treatments your particular insurance covers (for example, some insurances don’t reimburse for Dry Needling treatments, and some PT clinics may only offer this treatment to the patient’s whose insurance covers the services).


Additionally, this model allows for our sessions to be 60+ minutes of uninterrupted time with the Doctor of Physical Therapy. When your Physical Therapist has 60 minutes to provide hands-on manual therapy, dry needling services, and personalized/diagnosis-specific exercises, then you see results immediately. This also means you may only need to attend your Physical Therapy sessions 1x/week and only need 3-6 overall treatments based on your needs. This sometimes cuts out 30+ unnecessary co-pays and insurance claims, and thus saves money due to treatment efficiency. 


  1. Flow Physical Therapy is considered an Osteopractic Physical Therapy clinic because our Physical Therapist was awarded his Diploma in Osteopractic Physical Therapy by the American Academy of Manipulative Therapy. 


Osteopractors are specialists and are considered leaders in our profession in evidence-based Dry Needling, Spinal Manipulation (Adjustments), and Differential Diagnosis


Simply put, if you have a problem/injury involving the Neuromusculoskeletal system, then it makes sense to find a specialist within the specialty of Orthopedics - and that is what Osteopractors are - Specialists within the PT profession. 


  1. Lastly, and potentially most importantly, if traditional, insurance-driven Physical Therapy has failed you in the past, then find a Fellow to get results. 


A Fellowship-trained Physical Therapist is a PT who has been officially recognized as a Fellow of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Manual Physical Therapists - placing them at the top 0.4% of Orthopedic Physical Therapists.


This level of expertise affords the PT to efficiently and accurately target the root cause of your symptoms using a systematic process of differential diagnosis and then apply expert techniques for the correct diagnosis. This leads to, not only quick results, but also results for stubborn diagnoses that didn’t respond in previous treatment plans. 


Ok, but where do you find a practitioner with all of these credentials?


Well if you live in the Acadiana region, including Lafayette, Youngsville, Broussard, Scott, and surrounding areas, then you have an Osteopractic Physical Therapy clinic right in your backyard. 


At Flow Physical Therapy and Wellness in Lafayette, Louisiana, we provide 60 minutes of our one-on-one, personalized Osteopractic treatments delivered with Fellowship standards. This model has yielded countless successful outcomes for chronic pain and chronic conditions that simply didn't respond to previous treatment plans consisting of Physical Therapy and/or Chiropractic Care.


So if you have previously been to traditional, in-network PT clinics, and you were unimpressed with the care you received or the outcomes of your therapy, then maybe you need a fine-tuned, specialized approach offered at Flow Physical Therapy and Wellness. 





Dr. Patrick Thompson, PT, DPT, OCS, Dip. Osteopractic, FAAOMPT

Owner of Flow Physical Therapy and Wellness

337-366-1703


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