MSA Offers New Approach to Pain Management
Tuesday, April 9th, 2013
Business is growing at Musculoskeletal Associates (MSA), a primary-care orthopedic practice with an emphasis on spine and interventional pain management procedures and diagnostics. It offers physical therapy, imaging services such as MRIs and CTs, neurodiagostics; and it has an ambulatory surgery center. With a full spectrum of services, MSA can in many cases enable patients to receive the treatment they need without going to a hospital.
“There’s a huge need for people with pain and we try to help as best we can,” said Phillip D. Hajek, D.O., founder of MSA. “ We’ve grown to about 3,000 patient encounters per month and now have 70 employees.”
Established in 2001, MSA moved into a larger facility in 2003 and since then, has expanded to include an ambulatory surgery center. In addition to Hajek, MSA has three orthopedists, including one focused on sports medicine, and a physical rehab physician.
Offering Aggressive Non-Operative Care
According to Hajek, MSA is taking a new approach to treating pain. It focuses on treating the patient holistically over time rather than focusing on surgery or narcotics.
“Orthopedists used to provide a screening for surgery and if you didn’t need surgery then that was it. Now more of the focus is on taking care of people,” Hajek said.
“We’re very involved with our patients. We spend time to figure out the source of a patient’s pain; looking at causes like osteoarthritis, muscular balance and obesity. And we look for the best long-term options for managing the pain.”
As people age, they tend to experience more pain. In many cases, treatments that reduce pain by half are attractive options to many patients. That may involve physical rehab for six months or more.
Providing More Outside of the Hospital
MSA has the capabilities to provide diagnostic services including scans, treatments and rehabilitation in their offices. The one-stop shop approach is appealing to patients and makes good business sense for MSA.
“Patients avoid the hassle and risk of going to a hospital for an MRI or a fusion,” Hajek said.
Payments for services under Medicare and Medicaid continue to trend down. Private payers are also putting pressure on payments to providers as part of their efforts to cut costs.
“With the payments going down, just providing office visits doesn’t cut it anymore for physicians. In order to stay in business, physicians have to provide as many services as they can.”
MSA patient testimonials are available on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxnbTLV7VBhJhFsvTRkhlEg. For more information, call MSA at (229) 435-0525.
