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SpineNevada clinical outcome data |
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Clinical
outcome highlights at SpineNevada
51%
of patients had therapy as part of their care
35%
of patients had injections as part of their care
18%
of patients had surgery as part of their care
92%
of chronic patients returned to work
100%
of patients were satisfied with the time the doctor spent
with them
100%
of patients were satisfied with the doctor’s explanation
of medical problem
98%
of patients would be likely to recommend SpineNevada to
a friend
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Pain relief through function
The main reason people go to the doctor is for relief of pain. But if a spine clinic focuses exclusively on pain, it can miss the target of return to function. A spine specialized physical therapist provides pain relief and then moves the patient quickly into supervised exercise. This chart shows that SpineNevada has good success relieving pain, eliminating numbness and radiating pain in legs or arms, and ultimately returning the back pain sufferer to activity — after only 3 months of care. The gains in function did not come from pills either. For example, the percent of patients relying heavily on pills for pain control declined from 20% to 8% after 3 months. Self-reported pain levels decreased, as did patient-reported limitations related to carrying groceries, climbing stairs and standing for a half hour.
Return
to work & activity
Having a more complex patient mix makes return to work more difficult than an occupational medicine clinic, or primary care clinic that treats simple onsets of acute back pain that can go away on their own.
Of SpineNevada’s new patients, 96% had back or neck pain for more than 4 months, and 53% had radicular pain below a knee or elbow. Another 55% had numbness in a foot or arm. One in four new patients to SpineNevada had previous back or neck surgery, implying either failed back syndrome or degenerative disc disease — a highly complex patient base.
Encouraging patients to get moving and return to activity is key. For example, even with a complex patient mix, about 9 out of 10 patients were back to work within 3 months after visiting SpineNevada.
A nonsurgical approach
SpineNevada emphasizes nonsurgical treatment options like spine therapy, exercises and spinal injections that can relieve symptoms without the need for surgery. Consequently, even though 24% of new patients were “previous back surgeries” from other clinics, and 53% of new patients had pain radiating below a knee or elbow (implying a disc problem), only 18% of patients needed surgery — a much lower surgical rate than at other clinics with similar patient severity. A true spine center should see a “stairway to success” in this histogram, showing that the more nonsurgical options are tried first (PT, injections), the fewer patients need surgery.
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