The conversation of treatment cost begins with understanding band-aid care. Band-aid care includes things like adjustments, soft tissue work, dry needling—anything that changes muscle tone and makes you feel better but doesn’t actually fix...
The conversation of treatment cost begins with understanding band-aid care. Band-aid care includes things like adjustments, soft tissue work, dry needling—anything that changes muscle tone and makes you feel better but doesn’t actually fix the cause of the problem. You may save some cost with band-aid care in the short term because it’s covered by insurance, but because it’s band-aid care, you will be seeing your provider for years, and even small copays will add up over time.
We Go Beyond Band-Aid Care
At the Rehab Docs, on the other hand, we go beyond band-aid care by fixing the way you move. When we do this, we get rid of your compensational habits by teaching you how to use ideal biomechanics. This allows us to save your cost in the future. If you don’t fix what’s under the theoretical band-aid, and you continue to see your band-aid care provider for a long period of time, you’re continuing to misuse your muscles. By optimizing the way you move, we can help you avoid scary and costly surgeries like knee replacements, rotator cuff surgery, or repairing a torn meniscus.
Medical Treatments Don’t Fix the Root of the Problem
The reason medical treatments are so appealing to people is that they believe that they have a set outcome: take a medication, get better; get a cortisone shot, no more pain; get surgery, the problem is fixed. There are two main issues with this belief: one, these solutions are really just another kind of band-aid care, and two, sometimes the outcome is not as we expect. For example, we had a patient with lower back pain who decided before trying us to get epidural steroid injections to numb his pain.
Although he would no longer feel the pain, the steroid would simply mask the symptom, and would not actually prevent degeneration from occurring; his weak core compensation would still cause injury to his lower back even if he couldn’t feel it because of the injection. In the best-case scenario, without The Rehab Docs, this patient would have had to pay for a series of epidural injections (a standard series of three injections could cost $1800).
If the patient had decided to work with The Rehab Docs prior to this injection, we would have changed the way he moved. Not only would this have alleviated his pain, but also would have prevented it from returning because the degeneration would no longer be happening so quickly.
However, we did not see this patient until after he underwent the injection—during which the doctor severed his femoral nerve and he lost all motor control to his quadricep. He has now been dealing with this life-altering iatrogenic injury for the past fifteen years from a routine, “low-risk” procedure. This pain could have easily been avoided if he had learned to stabilize his core correctly. Continual rehab has cost him considerably, but this incident goes beyond the cost of treatment—it cost him his quad muscle.
In this article by Lifehack, they point out how when doctors provide medicine to patients they are removing the pain for a few days. The pain is going to come back after the medicine wears off because they didn’t look into what is causing the pain.
Our Plans are Likely Less than Surgery
So what can you expect with The Rehab Docs? Our average plan ranges from $1160-$1450, though the actual cost does vary depending on your individual assessment and goals. The average cost of a total knee replacement (with inpatient charges) is close to $57k; even a partial knee replacement averages about $47k. Additionally, post-surgery rehab is required which adds greater cost and recovery time.
What’s worse is a knee replacement only lasts on average about fifteen years—this means you’ll have to undergo another major surgery when you’re older and more susceptible to surgical complications. Though (hopefully) you wouldn’t pay the total cost of the surgery, it is likely that the cost of our care plans would cost less than your copay or deductible.
Contact Us
Contact us today for a consultation to fix the root of your problem. We want you to feel your best while also working on your problem areas. We will teach you how to move your body correctly and how to prevent injuries.