St. Tammany Health System’s nation-leading Musculoskeletal Ultrasound program (MSKUS), an offshoot of an award-winning 2016 initiative to explore non-pharmaceutical methods of treating pain, is a leading-edge modality leveraging the same painless, harmless technology used in pregnancy ultrasounds to quickly diagnose ailing joints and muscles.
In the hands of clinicians trained to interpret the resulting real-time images, it can often lead to an immediate diagnosis. That allows patients to avoid the 30-day waiting period most insurance companies require before approving advanced imaging – and thus to avoid 30 days of pain and 30 days of exposure to opioids and other powerful painkillers.
The upshot: quick, low-cost answers to help patients return to their normal routines with as little disruption to their lives as possible.
“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,” said Bert Lindsey, director of the health system’s Inpatient Physical Therapy Department and a champion of MSKUS as a diagnostic tool. “MSKUS changes all that.”
Already widely used in Europe and Asia, MSKUS has only just begun to catch on in the United States. With financial assistance from St. Tammany Hospital Foundation, the health system’s Physical Therapy team introduced it to St. Tammany in 2019, including at its Therapy and Wellness Clinic in Covington.
It is now in the process of having every full-time physical therapist on staff pass the rigorous national exam to become certified in the procedure.
The implications are huge, Lindsey said.
“We’re talking real-time imaging for school athletes, weekend warriors and patients experiencing joint pain that will reduce opioid exposure and give patients peace of mind,” he said. “Having so many clinicians able to perform this low-cost diagnostic within one community is a first in our nation, and St Tammany Health System is responsible for making it happen.”