After almost 20 years in the field of physical therapy I feel that I have a pretty good understanding of what works and what doesn’t.  I feel that I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly.  I’ve seen some really great, exciting stuff and some things that make me cringe.  And I have the experience to figure out what a patient needs very quickly and the skills to help them resolve their problems in a very efficient and timely manner.

I decided that I would set out on my own, into the world of fee-for-service physical therapy, free of the requirements and limitations inherent in insurance-driven practice.  The time that I can spend with my patients, free of the distractions of having to work with one or two or even three other patients at the same time, is invaluable.  The amount of time I have to get to the root cause and find the most effective method of fixing problems is such a relief, and I know that my patients will get better faster and have long-lasting success.

My practice is based on 20+ years of working with patients and athletes and accumulating knowledge of how the human body works and heals (athletic training and PT).  I’ve had some incredible training and some brilliant mentors.  I’ve learned some treatment techniques that really work well and I’ve seen some that don’t work very well and frankly don’t make sense.  But In the last five to six years I’ve found a methodology that really ties together some of the injury and postural patterns that I’ve been seeing all along.  I think a lot of us see the patterns, the injuries that seem to come up more than others.  We see that some injuries seem to occur more often on one side of the body and others on the other side.  And we see these things that we just can’t seem to help the patient resolve, some of these really difficult postural patterns that neither exercise or our hands can take care of.

My practice is centered around the principles of the Postural Restoration Institute (PRI) in Lincoln, NE.  I’ll discuss it more in my next blog entry, but this organization is the first to put together and make sense of these things that we see over and over.  It recognizes that there is a reason why we see them time and again, and it’s because the human body is slightly asymmetrical and driven towards some very specific postural patterns.  When we as therapist just keep this in mind we can figure out and treat much more effectively since we are working towards getting our patients away from these patterns.

This approach, together with my skills as a manual therapist (hands-on), makes what I do at Steve Cuddy Physical Therapy very effective.  It’s unique but it works.  And most importantly, I have the time to do these things because the insurance company isn’t telling me I have to do less, and I don’t have to spend time fighting for reimbursement, and I won’t have to work with other patients at the same time.