GSM Team News

Granite Sports Medicine now has a Certified Pelvic Floor Physical Therapist on staff, Alison Shannon-Lier, who also holds a Doctorate in Physical Therapy. Learn more about how Dr. Shannon-Lier became interested in this field here.

• What’s a pelvic floor? It’s three layers of muscles at the base of our pelvis, directly related to bowel, bladder and sexual function.
• What does it do? A healthy pelvic floor prevents leakage of urine, feces or gas and supports satisfying sexual experiences as well as supporting our internal organs.
• What is pelvic floor dysfunction? These muscles, like any group of muscles, can be tight, weak, or dysfunctional, and cause pain.
• Is this rare? No, one in five Americans suffer from pelvic floor dysfunction that goes unidentified or undiagnosed.
• What does a Certified Pelvic Floor Physical Therapist (PFPT) do? They’ve had specialized internal pelvic floor training, in addition to their physical therapy education, and assess the body as a whole; looking at posture, core and leg strength, pelvic alignment, as well as the internal pelvic floor muscles and how they affect your daily life.
• Who benefits from Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy? Men, women and children who’ve been diagnosed with a pelvic floor dysfunction or suffer from chronic back or pelvic pain (see list below). This therapy is less invasive than other treatments, such as surgery or medication, and often addresses chronic conditions that haven’t responded to other treatment. The PFPT can also educate patients on other contributing factors, such as dietary choices and emotional stress.

What to expect on the first visit? A thorough, but discrete and completely private, history will be taken by the PFPT, who also has a doctorate in Physical Therapy. The PFPT is trained in gender-specific external and internal physical examination of muscle length, skin integrity, postural alignment, muscle strength and causes of pain.

What to expect on follow-up visits? Frequency of visits will depend on the patient’s presentation and diagnosis, but usually, it will be once or twice a week initially. During treatment, the therapist will do both internal and external manual work to improve pain, muscle length, relieve any trigger points, and begin an appropriate strengthening program.

Frequently treated diagnoses: 

• Pelvic pain
• Tailbone pain
• Sacral iliac (SI) joint pain
• Low back pain
• Leg or “sciatic like” pain
• Vulvodynia
• Interstitial Cystitis
• Irritable bowel syndrome
• Urinary incontinence (urgency, frequency, nocturia and stress)
• Chronic pelvic pain
• Endometriosis
• Sexual dysfunction
• Vaginismus

Contact us to make an appointment with Dr. AlisonShannon-Lier online here.

As you may have seen on the news, the AMA (American Medical Association) has made new recommendations that patients consider going to physical therapy first for back pain instead of costly Emergency Room and Medical Doctor (MD) visits. The evidence is clear that the sooner you see a physical therapist (PT) for low back pain, the faster you recover. Visiting a doctor first will be more costly, involving unnecessary imaging, injections or opoid prescriptions, and ultimately result in a referral to PT down the road.

“Direct Access” refers to the ability to come directly to a PT without seeing an MD first. All 50 states have some form of direct access and Montana has been a direct access state for approximately 25 years. Although there are a few insurance policies that still require a prescription for reimbursement, the trend is towards allowing more direct access. Click here to learn more about direct access and how to determine your insurance requirements and coverage.

The one concern some have expressed is that PTs might miss a major pathology and/or misdiagnosis the issue when seeing patients through direct access. However, there has been no data to support this claim. Physical therapy is a doctorate program and a large portion of the curriculum is geared towards differential diagnosis or determining the cause of your problem, while ruling out red flag concerns. And, when appropriate, we work with other health care providers to help determine the best path to your recovery.

The benefits of direct access are numerous. Not only does it decrease the overall cost to our health care system in fewer visits - plus reduced missed work time and eliminating unnecessary imaging and surgical costs - it is well established that the sooner people get into physical therapy the more rapid their recovery and the better their outcomes.

So give us a call at 406.222.4682 and get started! We pride ourselves in being an excellent first choice for your musculoskeletal needs. 

Granite Sports Medicine has won the 2016 Montana Women’s Business Center’s Start-Up of the Year at Prospera Business Network’s annual Business Excellence Awards. The Business Excellence Awards recognized businesses and individuals in five categories for their exceptional contributions to the region's business community. Granite Sports Medicine’s mission is to enhance health and wellness through innovative, evidence-based Physical Therapy interventions and their motto is: Physical Therapy for the active community.

Granite Sports Medicine (GSM) Founder Darcy Cook says, “Prospera’s support has been a huge part of our success since opening our doors in 2012. Six years ago, I went into the Prospera office thinking, ‘Maybe I should open a physical therapy clinic,’ and here we are now with a beautiful 4,500 square foot facility and 8 employees. It’s been an incredible growth process and Prospera held my hand throughout; from developing a business plan, to formulating financial projections, securing gap financing, to building Human Resource manuals, and how to use social media. Prospera has been integral to GSM's success and I am so honored by this recognition. I feel like I went in as a pupil and recently graduated from their fantastic ‘Business Start-up School’.”

In addition to a Master’s Degree in Physical Therapy, Cook is a Canine Rehabilitation Therapist and sees canine patients twice a week at her Black Dog Rehab clinic within Granite Sports Medicine. Learn more at http://www.granitesportsmedicine.com/livingston-physical-therapy-staff/16/Darcy-Cook-MSPT/ and www.406bdr.com

Thanks to everyone who attended our our open house and made it so much fun and a  big success.