Dr. Vince Leone describes his diagnostic workflow for spine patients: align the patient's complaints, physical exam findings, and imaging studies on day one. He completes the consult, exam, and imaging in a single visit, then immediately reviews results and determines if the patient is a candidate for care.
I always— we talk about need 3 things, right? You need subjective complaints that line up with the disc, you need objective testing that line up with the disc, you need imaging. So, uh, you're going to get that in the consult, the exam, and the imaging on day 1. Now, the caveat is if you want to do an all— what we call an all-in day 1, in other words, you get those 3 things and then you take time and say, hey, okay, Mrs. Jones, so, you know, do you have time? Do you want to go across the street, grab a coffee at Starbucks or whatever? I'll sit down and review this, and then we can go right into the report of findings and see if you're a candidate. Now, that's okay, right? Because you're taking the time to actually determine whether they're a good candidate for care. We had a lot of people that would travel an hour, 2 hours, etc., to see us. So they didn't want to, if they didn't have to, drive on back and then come on back the next day. And so they were more than happy to hang out for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, go get lunch, come, come back after lunch. It just depends on your schedule.
