What is Custom Physical Therapy?

Dr. Tom created Custom Physical Therapy to give clients like you total freedom and choice to recover your body to your lifestyle standard and demands. It becomes custom for several reasons. First and foremost, you are different from everyone else even though other people can experience the same physical problems as you. You can’t choose your injury, but you can choose how you heal. Some people may respond better to one treatment better or worse to another. Timing your care is important, too. There will be treatment options that would serve you better early on versus a chronic condition or one that was building up overtime.

Custom Physical Therapy begins with an initial evaluation by Dr. Tom. He can learn your goals and identify underlying problem areas affecting your body’s movement, comfort, and function. His recommendations are based on your body’s need, what you can do for yourself, and what Dr. Tom can do for you. After your initial evaluation, personalized recommendations and treatment can begin. If follow up sessions make sense, you will be given either a number of sessions to consider or an estimated session frequency and duration (ex. 5 sessions or 1x per week for 6-8 weeks).

In many cases, clients have more than one area they would like to address. Dr Tom will work on the top priority problems, any body part, at any course in our sessions, without having to make a separate appointment and still no referral required. If you do have orders from another healthcare provider, diagnostic imaging results or other pertinent information, please provide at your initial evaluation. The main goal for your first visits is to have you walking out of the clinic feeling better than you did coming in for each session (results vary)for each session (results vary).

What to expect with the Initial Evaluation?

You may arrive at your appointment time, no need to come in early. The paperwork before your visit can be completed online through My PT-JaneApp portal. When you arrive, Dr. Tom will greet you and invite you to have a seat. Make yourself comfortable, some people like to kick off their shoes, but this is not necessary. You will start with a 10 minute conversation about the reason for your visit. Dr. Tom will ask a bunch of questions while taking notes into your electronic chart. Next, he will assess your posture, movement, strength, and special tests to understand the clinic relevance of all the results. The final part of the evaluation is explaining the findings and your personalized recommendations. You are encouraged to ask questions at any time about anything you think is relevant to your body. Please speak up about what hurts or feels good, chit-chat, it’s ok, we will stay on task.

What is the treatment like?

Again, the treatment options are catered to your body’s needs. Treatment options range from posture correction and training, re-learning how to walk, building strength, flexibility, or balance all the way to pain relieving techniques, manual therapy, customized foot orthotics, and the use of therapeutic tools. It all depends on your problem and state of healing. Lots of people go to physical therapy after an orthopedic surgery. You can come here for rehabilitation following the protocol for healing. Other clients come in for specific treatments like the Epley Maneuver for vertigo (BPPV), dry needling (trigger points), or myofascial release for pain relief. Dr. Tom likes to instruct clients on the use of first aid and day-to-day recovery tools for home like hot and cold packs, red light therapy, percussion massage gun, massage sticks/balls, soft tissue and joint mobility devices, and electrical stimulation. That way we can focus on the treatments you can’t perform on your own and making best use of your time. For more information on treatment options: Therapeutic Exercise, Manual Therapy, and Therapeutic Modalities.

What are the general benefits of physical therapy treatment?

What makes My PT different from other Physical Therapy clinics?

My PT is an independent-private company that chooses to deliver healing services to our clients at the time they need care. Dr. Tom focuses evaluation and treatment on posture imbalances, myofascial pain, joint and spine pain, headaches, TMD (temporomandibular joint disorders), special populations like EDS (Ehler-Danlos Syndrome), orthopedic conditions, pre/post orthopedic surgery, worker’s compensation injuries, automobile injuries, and the most challenging patients that don’t respond to “in-network physical therapists”. Dr. Tom gives 100% of his time to listen to what is really going on and make you feel heard.

Most health insurance companies create so many rules, Physical Therapists have be told what and how to do their job. Therefore many Physical Therapy clinics today operate under a system to treat the masses by putting everyone into the same program or system. You start with the PT for an evaluation, then by the time your discharged you worked with 7 different therapists, having to retell their story over and over again. My PT solves the continuity of care conundrum by dedicating one therapist (Dr. Tom) to you for every entire treatment. We don’t let insurance companies tell us how to get people better, that’s our job. There’s no delay to make an appointment because we don’t have to ask for permission to begin care.