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STORTFORD GRANGE
Physiotherapy Centre
Jenkins Lane Hallingbury Road
Bishops Stortford Herts CM22 7QL
01279 654020
We are pleased to be able to report that Bupa contacted us to see if we would be happy to continue to treat their members as they needed another practice in the area to provide patient choice.
Whilst they are not able to accommodate our new pricing structure ie cost per condition
and not cost per session at the moment (no one else in the UK is offering this!)
we agreed that we would continue with the existing contract until April 2010. This
would then mean that Stortford Grange would have the new system up and running for
8 months and we could then discuss changing the patients onto the new fee structure
which would then provide Bupa with fixed cost physiotherapy services for their members
and our patients -
BUPA PATIENTS
Introducing
the STORTFORD GRANGE GREEN ROOM
We now have an extension to the Physiotherapy Centre area offering a quiet room for massage, beauty therapy and traditional Chinese Medicine Acupuncture.
Pam Cox continues to provide therapeutic massage.
Sian Page will be providing Beauty Therapy including manicures and pedicures etc.
Vindy Bains will be providing the traditional Chinese Medicine Acupuncture on Tuesdays. Please visit her website for more information concerning acupuncture
The new NICE guidelines were published today on the advised protocols for the treatment of low back pain.
27th May 2009
These guidelines are essentially a further development of the CSAG Report produced
in 1998. They re-
“The key focus is helping people with persistent non-
The guideline has been designed to try and stop a simple low back problem from becoming a chronic pain issue with all the attendant cost to the patients, the workplace and the NHS.
The guidelines also recommend that courses of treatment or exercise should be limited to a maximum of 9 sessions of manual therapy; 10 sessions of acupuncture or 8 sessions of exercise. Non of these should continue for more than 12 weeks. If no satisfactory outcome is achieved in this time, then the treatment needs to be changed and a different approach is required involving other disciplines including a psychological programme.
The media have latched onto the fact that these NICE guidelines are recommending chiropratic, osteopathy and acupuncture on the NHS. They made no mention of physiotherapy and the services that are already on offer.
Equally, the guidelines appear not to have considered that in the light of today’s economic environment, there is the very real possibility of losing your job if you cannot work in the first 6 weeks of the “simple low back pain” episode. They are absolutely correct in trying to prevent simple low back pain from becoming a chronic condition, but they have also failed to realise that the best treatment for low back pain is early and accurate diagnosis followed by a combination of treatments that has been put together for the individual patient and their condition.
The guidelines specifically do not recommend electrotherapies such as Interferential therapy, ultrasound, TNS or laser. To provide these treatments in isolation would indeed be misguided and ineffective. But to rule them out entirely is equally misguided.
NICE have produced these guidelines based on the current available research. What they, and many other researchers before have failed to realise is that every person is different. This applies to their individual condition, their individual reaction to the pain based on past experience, the social implications of the condition and their lifestyle.
The Stortford Grange way of working means that we provide an accurate diagnosis and a treatment plan that is tailored to the individual patient. We can provide specialist skills in manipulation, manual therapy, electrotherapy, acupuncture and rehabilitation programmes.
We also provide extensive education and advice on self management and detailed information about the specific conditions. We can also bring in a range of other specialities including pain management and counselling for those patients who have been everywhere else and developed chronic pain condition.
Our outcome measures prove our effectiveness.
The average number of treatment sessions is only two -
We are currently looking into the recurrence rate for low back pain patients who attend this Centre. We feel that this is vitally important for our patients.
Our aim is to diagnose the condition correctly, provide the right treatment for that condition and then show our patients how to avoid the problem in the future.
Long term treatment is not the aim of our game. We want to get patients better in the fastest possible time, and then move on to the next one! This has to be the best outcome for our patients and for us.
There are more physiotherapists with post graduate qualifications in manipulation and manual therapy than osteopaths and chiropractors combined. There are more physiotherapists practising acupuncture than any other health profession in the UK.
We now charge a fixed price for the condition instead of a charge for each session/treatment.
See the Fees page for more information