There was something wrong with her knee. Swelling within the joint was creating pain, and her daily activities were grinding to a halt.
But what was causing it? And would it require surgery to repair?
The problem, according to Bert Lindsey, director of inpatient physical therapy at St. Tammany Health System’s flagship St. Tammany Parish Hospital, was that most insurance plans won’t pay for testing such as an MRI or CT scan right away, opting for a wait-and-see approach, sometimes for as long as 30 days.
“Our concern as STHS clinicians was that delays in advanced imaging resulted in prolonged opioid exposure, increased expenses for conservative treatments, as well as quality-of-life disruptions due to the inability of the orthopedic surgeon having access to the imaging valuable to providing the proper diagnosis,” Lindsey said.
The downside of that approach is obvious and outsized. America’s opioid epidemic over the past decade-plus is proof.
There had to be a better way, Lindsey thought.
He was right. And he and his STHS colleague Jay Morange, now director of the health system’s outpatient operations, found it.
As part of an award-winning 2016 initiative at the hospital to explore non-pharmaceutical methods of treating pain, Lindsey and Morange learned about Musculoskeletal Ultrasound, or “MSKUS,” which – in the hands of a trained clinician – can help diagnose soft-tissue injuries quickly, inexpensively and noninvasively.
Although widely used in Europe and Asia, it has only just begun to catch on in the United States. With financial assistance from St. Tammany Hospital Foundation, Lindsey and Morange introduced MSKUS to St. Tammany, including at its Therapy and Wellness Clinic in Covington.