How to Become Every Patient's "GPS" -- An Intro to "Functional Radiology"

Source: Jeffrey A. Cronk, DC, CICE, National Injury Diagnostics, 715-833-8533
10:30 am ET, Friday, April 23, 2010

The following article was excerpted from a recent newsletter of National Injury Diagnostics. To learn more about "Functional Radiology," contact NID at the number above, or click here to sign up for the NID newsletter or to learn more about regularly scheduled webinars by Jeffrey Cronk, DC,CICE. 
 

“If you are treating the spine, your primary and most powerful objective diagnostic procedure can be ‘functional radiology.’  At its core, functional radiology is what helps you, the provider, accurately and thoroughly understand and diagnose your patients' conditions -- where they currently are -- so you can more effectively get them where they want to go.  Even a GPS needs to know exactly where a person is to get that person to the desired location.  Without a GPS, think of how much time we as travelers spend 'lost.'  Become every patient's GPS.  Accurately and thoroughly diagnosing your patient's condition is the foundation for your course of care.  More than that, it is the basis for your CONFIDENCE, which is one of the main things patients are looking for in the first place.  Patients deserve nothing less than clinical excellence when it comes to their diagnosis and care.  We intend to see that they receive this.”

~ Jeffrey A Cronk, DC, CICE

 
Clinics across the country are realizing just how huge the market is for spinal injury work, and just how few real experts there are in the field of spinal soft tissue injuries.

Now, many of you may be thinking that I am only talking about an active acute personal injury or worker’s compensation practice. I am not.
 
45 million Americans this year will suffer with chronic headaches. 34 million Americans will suffer this year from chronic low back pain. 19 million will suffer from chronic neck and low back pain. 9 million will suffer from just chronic neck pain.
 
Despite these numbers, 50+ million Americans (stats conservatively combined) may not have an accurate diagnosis for their condition (unless you think lumbalgia, or idiopathic lumbalgia or cephalgia is a diagnosis). These people are looking for someone, anyone, who can confidently, definitively, give them an answer to their question, which is “Why?” Why do I have this condition, what is the cause, and what can be done about it?
 
So, what IS the most likely physical cause which can be identified? It is commonly a trauma-induced spinal instability – a condition that is simple to identify provided that you understand all aspects of spinal soft tissue trauma. You need to understand with complete certainty what a spinal sprain is, and what it does to the spine. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO HAVE, OR EVEN DESIRE TO HAVE, AN ACTIVE PI OR WORKER’S COMP PRACTICE if that is not what you want! You do not have to be an expert in acute trauma care, if that is not what you want to treat in your clinic. You may desire a completely different spinal trauma practice. You may want to specialize in chronic pain patients, who, as a result of trauma, and probable lack of an accurate diagnoses, have been unable to understand, or minimize their chronic conditions!
 
In either an acute or chronic pain practice, accurate diagnosis is the key! Chronic pain patients are in a place of chronic pain (their current location), but they want to get to where, at a minimum, they are pain improved, or even better, entirely pain free (a new location). They want someone who can help to get them there! Before you can determine how to get them to where they want to go, YOU MUST accurately determine where they currently are. We call this diagnosis. A diagnosis is an accurate physical location of the cause of the problem.
 
Think of the Global Positioning System (GPS). A GPS allows road travelers, like me, to have a much better life, because I spend far less time being lost! The concept of GPS is easy. I know the exact location of where I want to go and dial it in. But in order to avoid the condition of being lost, I must also do something else. I must accurately enter into the GPS exactly where I am, my exact, accurate, current location. With both an accurate location of where I am, and an accurate location of where I want to go, the course is set, and I now can get to where I want to go with far less difficulty.
 
In many ways, doctor, YOU are your patients’ GPS! YOU are the one who MUST determine their exact locations (diagnosis) so that you can accurately dispense the directions (treatment) which guides the patients with far less difficulty to where they want to go.
 
Those that can do this better than most are wealthy with confidence, wealthy with security, wealthy with enjoyment, wealthy with satisfaction, wealthy with a sense of purpose, and, yes, wealthy with material means.
 
Those that truly understand what they are doing and WHY, begin to become immune to the professional internal discourses of those who do not, which by the way seems to be rampant in the body of chiropractic as a whole. As your individual certainty and professional success improves as a provider, it will allow you to spot with a high degree of accuracy the cause (diagnosis) of the internal condition of professional discordance, which is nothing more than professional uncertainty.
 
Why should those, who are certain, be plagued or slowed by those who are recognizably highly uncertain? As your certainty increases, you become almost immune to the uncertainty of others. The key is to improve your own certainty.
 
Certainty comes from ability to observe, for yourself, what is true. Then and only then can you own that truth with unshakable certainty. You have to be willing to look, and also understand what you are looking at. You have to have an explorer’s mentality or an explorer's make up. All explorers are confronting the unknown so as to make it known for all others. This, of course, means that they are willing to go into full UNcertainty in order to achieve certainty. Courage is a key ingredient in all forms of exploration…, including self-exploration.
 
In the area of chronic pain patients, if you understand that a spinal instability is nothing more than a trauma-induced spinal derangement (spinal misalignment) that has now gone into full-blown clinical expression (pain, chronic motor problem, chronic sensory problem or, yes, a potential visceral problem), then half of the battle is over. You can correctly diagnose where the patient is precisely located. Now you are set to potentially help upwards of 50+ million Americans who can’t get to where they want to go without a precise starting point. Ok, so maybe all 50+ million do not walk into your office right now, all at the same time. But recall – each patient you help get from one specific location to another is connected to 10-100 others who are looking for the same kind of assistance.
 
For any skeptics who may be reading this -- understand what a “spinal instability” is, and how it is diagnosed. Then look at any chronic spinal pain patient and you will see that a high majority of the time it is there! However, don’t take it from me – you don’t have to – rather, just look for yourself and you will see that it is there.
 
Knowledge is certainty and that is why my company, NID, does so many webinars! We want to freely share the knowledge that we have, so that you can begin to look for yourself…, so that you can improve your certainty as well!