WHAT TO EXPECT ON YOUR FIRST VISIT 1. Intake Paperwork The first thing that new patients handle is the paperwork. This is no different than in any other doctor’s office. With the intake paperwork, you describe the problems you’ve been having. Additionally, you review your past medical history (including any traumas, surgeries, infections and other medical problems).  The new patient forms can be filled out when you show up for your first visit. Or if you prefer, you can get the forms before you come in for your first visit via downloading them from this website. One of the benefits of getting the forms ahead of time is that it will reduce the time of your first visit. When you come in, we can go straight to the consultation (no waiting!). 2. Insurance Verification If you have health insurance, please bring your insurance card and a photo drivers license with you. We will make a photocopy of them, and then our billing department will be happy to verify benefits and eligibility. The reason why we photocopy your drivers license is to protect you against identity theft. 3. Consultation & Case History Once your intake paperwork has been completed, you will then have a five to twenty minute consultation with the Doctor. The consultation is where you get to tell the us what has been going on, where you’ve been hurting, how long you’ve had the problem, describe the severity and quality of the pain, what makes it better or worse, and other therapies that you’ve already tried. The Doctor will review your past medical history with you, and also review your work, social and family health history. We believe in doing a thorough case history because it can give us clues about the nature and cause of the problem. It is a very important component in forming an accurate diagnosis. 4. Examination Our primary goal is to objectively evaluate all the involved tissues (bones, muscles, joints, the neurology, etc...) in order to discover what exactly is wrong. This will then enable us to render the most accurate diagnosis possible. And from there, we can prescribe a treatment plan that is specific for your unique needs. The following is what you can expect from my examination: Vitals: (height, weight, blood pressure, respirations, pulseox, temperature) – to establish a medical baseline. Dual Scale Weight Measurement: We have the patient stand on two scales which are positioned next to each other. The purpose is to find out if you are carrying your weight equally from side to side. For example, a person who weighs 100 pounds should weigh 50 pounds on the left and 50 pounds on the right. If there was more weight on one side of the body than the other, this could indicate a misalignment of the spine and pelvis. Range of Motion: We check the range of motion and flexibility of your spine and neck in all planes. It gives valuable information about the health of your joints, and muscles. Leg Length Check: This test involves having the patient lay face down on the examination table. We check the bottom of the feet to see if they’re aligned. If one foot is shorter than the other, it may indicate a functional short leg (which could be due to lumbo-pelvic misalignment). Palpation: We palpate your muscles to check for spasms, trigger points and abnormal contractions. We also motion palpate each of the joints of your spine, in order to test the joint motion, feel for joint fixations and joints that are stuck out of place. Neurological and Orthopedic Evaluation: We do these tests to check to see if you have nerve damage, or damage to your skeletal system. Special orthopedic tests also help us to tell whether the problem is coming from the muscle, from the joints, or from a disc. Posture Analysis: There are over128,000,000 different combinations of abnormal posture. We use a very specific and advanced technique to check your posture, using sixteen reference points to check for abnormal rotations (twisting & tilting) and translations (shifting) of the skull, thorax and pelvis. Postural distortions can lead to many health problems. X-Ray: Our x-ray study checks for pathology, infections, degenerative changes, bone density, spinal misalignments, and postural distortions. Precise measurements are taken which show misalignments down to the millimeter and to a single degree of rotation. Based on what we see on the x-rays, we will then be able to determine how far out of alignment you are – and how many visits it will then take to get your spine corrected.            5. Discharge From First Day After you have completed your consultation, examination and x-ray study, you are discharged from the first day services. You then make an appointment for a follow up consultation called a “Report of Findings”. This special consultation is where the doctor and you will discuss what is going on, what we can do to help, how many visits it’s going to take and what it will cost. It is strongly recommended that you to bring your spouse or significant other to the report of findings. Additionally, we recommend that you schedule the report of findings the next day that the clinic is open. NO ADJUSTING ON FIRST VISIT? As a rule I do not adjust patients on the first visit, and for a very good reason. There is no way for me to know ahead of time what the problem is, or if there is some kind of underlying pathology. I don’t yet know the extent of the degeneration & damage to your joints, discs and other structures. I don’t know the severity of the misalignment. To protect you, I wait until I first have all of the information before I initiate treatment. You wouldn’t rush into surgery without your surgeon first having done full lab workups, having done x-rays and other imaging studies and having done a very thorough and comprehensive examination. Likewise, you don’t want to rush into a chiropractic care plan without your doctor first having all the information he needs to properly treat you. I need time to develop your x-rays, analyze them and take precise measurements. I also need time to review the information from your case history, consultation and examination. From there, I make a diagnosis of your problem and design an appropriate treatment plan.