Medical Practitioners
Online Referral Form
Thank you for your interest in referring your patients to Integrated Physiotherapy.
We consider it a great privilege, and a pleasure, to be a part of your patient management.
At Integrated Physiotherapy we offer an approach to physiotherapy that has many points of difference and is, in some respects, unconventional. When added to more conventional approaches where progress may be slow or appear to have stalled, positive change is often seen. This may be for many reasons and some of them are as simple as our appointment time structure but includes:
- Hour long consultations at Integrated Physiotherapy allow techniques to be applied to multiple, anatomically and neurologically related regions within one treatment session which allows a different level of neuro-integration following the treatment to what might occur after treating separate regions on different days
- Every session we go through specific integrated neuro-myofascial screening process which allow us to determine the presence of an accumulation of tissue irritation or restriction-anywhere in the musculoskeletal system. This is rarely if even that actual site of pain and these sites may produce abnormal impulses which load the neurological system and may contribute to “brain” sensitivity. eg. a shoulder restriction on the left may be what is causing the hip on the right side to exhibit excessive lateral movement or a lack of thoracic spine rotation to the left may be what is causing excessive and perhaps painful internal rotation of the right knee.
- We are able to spend considerable time teaching and retraining exercise, postures and work and sporting techniques using video feedback. In many cases people respond well to the longer teaching and feedback process than when these important aspects of treatment are, by necessity, squeezed into shorter consultations.
- The use of Integrated Dry needling as part of the manual therapy used at our clinic provides another point of difference as there are many ways in which this style of needle stimulation affects the systems tissues and neurology when compared to the trigger point dry needling techniques other practitioners commonly use.
- Over 25 years assessing and coaching many sporting techniques in conjunction with manual therapy directed by a head to toe, neuro-myofascial screening process
- The use of traditional acupuncture alongside dry needling, manual therapy and exercise prescription may provide important , breakthrough systemic support , for a patient who has suboptimal inflammatory and healing responses due to:
- immune system compromise
- autonomic nervous system imbalance
- altered body chemistry or hormonal imbalance
Integrated Physiotherapy is not for everyone
Our approach is best suited to someone who is actively engaged in their treatment process ,who is willing to make large scale changes in habits, the way they move and the way their body engages with their environment. That is not to say we are not hands on with our approach but that our manual therapy and dry needling stimulates adaptation in the system which must be progressed and sustained through movement and postural changes affecting the body. Suggestions may also be offered about sleep hygiene, eating habits and stress load management as these things can affect healing processes and response to treatment.
Physiotherapy is often be seen as involving some massage or machines of some sort , stretches and some strength and core exercises applied to the “sore spot”. There is often little understanding provided to the patient by the practitioner as to the underlying reason for a particular diagnosis occurring and how once pain has resolved, further progress is to be promoted, resilience gained and reoccurrence prevented .
For example:
Lumbar spine pain is often seen as being due to a disc bulge or other imaging defect rather than the disc bulge and subsequent sensitivity being due to adverse loading of the lumbar spine structures over many years through inefficient postural and movement technique. Integrated Physiotherapy aims to alter that perception by addressing the underlying tissue, systemic and environmental causes of your patients musculoskeletal pain. We work specific manual therapy and dry needling to quickly change range of motion And tissue irritation that has occurred over years of sub optimal loading and take the time to coach posture, work and sporting technique as well as any specific self treatment techniques and drills to maintain gains and promote further progress.
Integrated Physiotherapy is the right practice for :
✓Chronic, complex musculoskeletal pain
Chronic conditions that have not responded to conventional physiotherapy, chiropractic or osteopathy often present to practitioners that continue to offer more of what the patient has already received in the past with a similar outcome. We have many years experience with this particular patient grouping and confident that with the differences in our approach we are able to facilitate progress fro more often than not.
✓Acute Back Pain and Acute Sporting Injuries
The Integrated Physiotherapy clinic diary is often booked ahead 3-4 weeks and because of this we are rarely able to field the calls for acute assistance that come in at the start of each week. We are committed to providing an acute service as this often leads to important preventative and bigger picture, sub acute, involvement with a patient and we offer 30 minute A30 appointments to those patients referred to us with acute presentations that satisfy our A30 checklist. We “create” these appointments at the start or end of each clinic day so flexibility is required on the part of both ours and the patients. We guarantee that these patients referred by you using our our online referral form will be contacted on the day of referral and treated within 24 hours with the exception of Fridays.
✓Overuse Sporting Injuries
We use a movement rather than a pain focus in our approach to these injuries, working to identify and restore efficient movement patterns that have led to injury and training awareness and assimilation of new or restored movement patterns in order to prevent reoccurrence. We use video analysis and have many years experience with bike setups and coaching techniques for:
- individual swimmers and swimming squads, and elite, age group tri-athletes. This has involved not only treating acute injuries but treatment and screening for injury prevention and performance enhancement
- middle and long distance runners
- road cyclists and mountain bikers
- surfers,surf ski paddlers, dragon boat and outrigger canoe paddlers
- golfers
✓Pre-pregnancy screening and back pain prevention
Lumbar spine and sacro-iliac joint pain are almost an accepted part of pregnancy and early childcare. Our experience has shown that the more optimised a woman’s biomechanics , symmetry and general range of motion prior to pregnancy, the less likely she is to succumb to these painful and debilitating problems. In addition to treating our musculoskeletal assessment findings ,we use video assisted feedback to coach technique and awareness in all aspects of early childcare including breastfeeding, changing, “child wearing” and vehicle transfers.
✓Medicare Enhanced Primary Care Plan/ Chronic Disease Management Plan
We welcome patients referred under this scheme and who seem otherwise appropriate for referral to Integrated Physiotherapy. We are familiar with the required Team Care Arrangement and can receive referrals via the online Medicare Portal. As these patients would not be expected to be acute and therefore not appropriate for our A30 (30 minute consultations) we usually see them for an hour with them claiming the Medicare rebate. If you have a patient who is absolutely not able to pay for the remainder of an A60(60 minute) consultation we are happy to provide whatever input we are able in 5×30 minute consultations. We do ask that because of the increased paperwork requirement for these referrals that patients with chronic conditions booking A30 appointments, prepay for their appointments with our online system and be prepared to completely outcome measures questionnaires online or via email outside appointment time.
✗Routine Post Surgical Management
We do not generally promote our involvement in routine post-op management unless we have been involved in the pre-operative treatment for the condition. There are many practices and practitioners who can We see our role as becoming involved if for any orthopaedic appears not to be progressing as would be expected. By addressing range and tissue restrictions and neurological interactions that may not have been previously considered , we can often be of assistance.
✗ DVA patients
The Department of Veterans Affairs provides a single long consultation for each referral, however the fee provided does not make providing service to these patients viable for us. We have worked with DVA patients from 1992 until recently but must now ask they be referred to a clinic with a more conventional appointment length and fee structure.
50% Workcover patients
We often see patients through Work Cover who have been referred to us by other physiotherapists who are interested in another point of view. We offer both single consultations to provide some breakthrough ideas or perhaps a short course of treatment before returning the patient to their primary physiotherapist for the remainder of their course of treatment. We enjoy the opportunity for this interaction .
The work cover system can, by its requirement for patient compliance, sometimes create a passive, disempowered attitude in patients. In order to help these patients engage and develop improved self efficacy we ask that they be prepared to pay for their consultation at the time of treatment and be involved in the reimbursement process through their employer at some level. We also ask as much as possible that they be prepared to attend appointments outside work hours, unless off work, or at the end of their normal working day.
We also ask that approval for our involvement has been given by the insurer and all other stakeholders informed before the first appointment.
We look forward to working with you
Online Referral Form