Dr. Ron Torrance

At Purpose Physical Therapy, Kenneth Clark sits down with Dr. Ron Torrance, DO, FAOASM of Regenexx, to uncover the truth about PRP, stem cells, and regenerative medicine. In this powerful conversation, Dr. Torrance shares what sets Regenexx apart from traditional orthopedic clinics, how he helps patients avoid surgery through innovative treatments, and why collaboration with physical therapists is key to long-term recovery. From spotting hidden movement dysfunctions that fuel chronic pain to exploring the latest non-surgical options for back and joint issues, this interview delivers expert insights, real success stories, and proven alternatives to going under the knife. Whether you’re searching for effective alternatives to orthopedic surgery, want to understand the power of regenerative medicine, or are simply looking for actionable strategies to overcome pain and recover stronger, this interview is a must‑watch.

Let’s talk about stem cells. Because I know a lot of patients, you know, we get the PRP questions and the gel they talk about, but they mention stem cells. If the inflammation was triggered by some sort of movement dysfunction, and if we don’t identify that movement dysfunction, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. I do what’s best for my patients at the end of the day, and that’s my obligation to my patients, and our mission is to get you back to doing what you love.

Hey guys, my name is Ken Clark, owner of Purpose Physical Therapy and host of the St. Pete Professional Spotlight Series. Today I’m excited to feature Dr. Ron Torrance. Dr. Torrance is a non-surgical orthopedic physician and a nationally recognized leader in interventional sports medicine. Based at Regenexx here in St. Pete, Dr. Torrance specializes in ortho biologic procedures using highly precise image-guided injections, helping active adults and athletes stay active without surgery. With board certifications in sports medicine and osteopathic treatment, Dr. Torrance blends advanced clinical skill with a whole-body movement-first philosophy and approach. He serves as president of the Hillsborough Osteopathic Medical Society, a board of trustee member for the Florida Osteopathic Medical Association, chair of the Health and Wellness Committee for the American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians. An author, speaker, and thought leader, Dr. Torrance has contributed to peer-reviewed research, co-authored Exercise 2.0 for Regenexx, and has presented at conferences across the country. In 2016, he was even invited to serve on the medical team for the CrossFit Regionals and Games. Outside of medicine, he lives what he teaches, staying active as a semi-professional beach volleyball player and a competitive CrossFit athlete. He’s also a devoted husband and a father of two.

So welcome, Dr. Torrance. Thank you so much for joining. I’m so glad to speak with you. Well, I’m grateful to be here, Ken, and I’m super grateful to work with and collaborate with patients with you and your team. And we were just talking about one here before we got started, and super grateful that she’s doing well. Happenstance is that she had a follow-up today, and she’s about 70% better, and her foot issue is getting a lot better. So thank you so much. Awesome. Absolutely.

Yeah. So like I said, I’m sure we’ll get more into that and kind of what you do and who you help. I would love to kind of start by just the listeners and myself kind of getting to know your story a little bit and your background. Obviously, you’re an athlete, and you’ve competed in CrossFit and beach volleyball. How has that shaped your approach into your patient care, and how has that impacted your journey on the way in your specialty?

So sports have been in my blood since I was as old as I can remember. And I went to college and played baseball, and after college, I was looking for an outlet. And that outlet became beach volleyball. I grew up in Sarasota, Florida, and came home from college and was trying to find my path and getting into med school. And I ran into a friend of mine from high school, and she was a professional beach volleyball player. And I was like, man, this is pretty cool. And she’s like, come out. You’re tall. You can be a blocker or something, right? So I got hooked and still play to this day at a pretty high level. And that’s where everything kind of came from. I mean, I also then started getting in CrossFit because I went up and did my internship and residency in the Philadelphia area. And in Philly, you can’t play beach volleyball year-round. So CrossFit was a really good outlet. Anytime I could go play, I’d play. But even in South Jersey, it was kind of fun. We’d go play at our friend’s house. But the CrossFit keeps you strong so that you can continue to play at a high level. And so that was really how CrossFit and beach volleyball kind of come together for me. CrossFit is definitely perfect for that, too.

So what’s inspired you to pursue sports medicine or your specialty in general, which is more of that regenerative type of non-surgical approach?

So as most things in life, I was pursuing orthopedic surgery. That’s what I thought I wanted to do. And through adversity and overcoming not being one of the 30% picked forthe orthopedic surgery residencies, I found a niche field and really have dove into the field of interventional orthopedics, which is my analog to that is interventional cardiology, right? You used to have to open the chest to do a stint or to do any kind of thing for the heart. Now you can go in through the wrist even and put in a stint in the heart, right? That’s interventional cardiology.

And interventional orthopedics is catching up in that realm where we inject precisely with image guidance. And the precision is one of the biggest factors that makes us different than Joe Schmoe down the street who does what we do. We’re putting it right in the right place to institute change and create new inflammation to help the body heal itself. This is what we specialize in, non-surgical. And our mission is to get you back to doing what you love through non-surgical orthopedics. And so that’s really where I’ve focused and honed my practice for the last 10 years almost.

And really we track all of our outcomes, which makes me super, super excited because our patients are part of the largest registry in the world for non-surgical orthopedics. And we can say that based on our registry data, about 89 to 90% of our patients, if they’re a candidate, get better through our procedures. Now, 90% success rate, that’s pretty good.

Yeah, that’s amazing. Is there any particular story that comes to mind of a patient’s transformation that kind of really reminded you of why this work matters and why you do what you do? We’re about to put out a, essentially we like to do patient success stories and you can do case studies on these things too. One of the ones that comes to mind recently is he’s got a bad elbow, bad elbow arthritis. Replacing the elbow is a little difficult. You got a lot of ligaments, a lot of tendons. And so he’d be only able to golf. You know, he’s in his golden years as they call them, right? And he’s only able to golf like once every fourth day. And if he golfs the next day, his elbow is super sore, swollen, he can’t do anything.

And so we did bone marrow concentrate where your stem cells come from into his elbow. And he recently went to New Zealand and Australia. And I believe he golfed like 17 days straight with very little pain in his elbow.

Yeah, that’s amazing. It was his bucket list trip. And that’s somebody to me, it’s like fantastic. And he’s willing to sing praises to the rooftops for us because he knows that his elbow replacement didn’t have to happen to this point. And it made a big difference in his life and enjoying his life. So yeah, yeah, that’s awesome.

Yeah. And I’m always interested in this and I know a lot of probably the general public is too when they’re looking at a provider to somebody to help them. But it’s kind of just getting to know them as a person a little bit too. So my question is, is there any personal values that you’ve kind of carried with you growing up that you take along with you in your approach to helping patients?

And second question in addition to that is, what do you define as exceptional non-surgical care, especially working with active adults?

So attitude determines aptitude is something that I’ve always thought about in my life. And having a positive attitude and positive perspective, positive outlook can really, really help with anything in life, right? I told you about the adversity I already faced and how I pivoted and found something that, listen, isn’t necessarily exactly what I wanted, but it’s the niche that was right for me. And I saw that we needed to fill a need and fill a space. And so that positive attitude helped me find a place where I can help more patients and help them get better.

And with your follow-up question, then becoming what’s the difference? And what’s the difference between all floor orthopedics, floor orthopedic institute, Alexander orthopedics? That’s utilizing the ultrasound and or fluoroscopic guidance. And those are all in my office. We’re not sending you to a surgical center. We’re not sending you to some offsite clinic that they’re going to bill your insurance a million dollars and you’re going to see all these different bills flying around. It’s all in our office. It’s not where sick people live in the hospital or anything along those lines.

And we’re doing this at the peak and we’re the tip of the spear in this circle because of the outcomes data and the tracking of the data that we have. And we have the world’s only corporate program. So we have self-funded insured groupsthat cover our procedures. There’s no other group in the world that has that. So 7-Eleven, the Diocese of St. Pete, Manatee County Schools, Morgan Auto. I believe Crown Auto is about to come on board. I think it’s July 1st. actually went and got my car serviced. Spoke with a woman there. She was fantastic. She’s such a great worker. She had these plaques saying she’d been there for 30, 35 years. I said, what happened to the CFO at Crown? She goes, yeah, I can get you his email. I was like, well, listen, we have this corporate program. And she introduced me to one of her associates who was like, I’ve got back issues. Can you see me? I go, let me see what I can do.

So we, and our corporate team is fantastic. We have 2,500 self-funded companies that cover our procedures. So yeah, we’re doing this at the pinnacle and the peak of what there is out there. And that’s really what I think makes this difference.

Yeah. So when you mentioned the 2,500 private corporations, how can somebody know that may watch this that’s kind of interested? It’s like, hey, how do I know if I work for somebody that would cover your services? What does that look like?

So typically they’ll get a mailer from their benefits provider saying that Regenexx is a covered benefit. Okay. That would come in a mail either on a card or something along those lines. Sometimes those self-funded groups won’t allow us to do that. We try to do that so that they know that we’re a benefit. And so understand that you’re self-funded. A lot of places are self-funded, and it’s a whole unique conversation that I don’t think we have time for today. But talk to your employer and see what their benefit options are. Do they have any additional kind of cool benefits that might be outside the box?

Cool. Yeah. And before even getting into all of that, I think it would be important to kind of dig a little bit more into kind of what you do specifically, if we can kind of maybe clear that up. Like what somebody’s listening and watching, what would make a good candidate for being a patient at Regenexx and receiving your treatment, your procedures?

So some of the most accepted procedures that we do, and TRICARE actually covers PRP, platelet-rich plasma, for knee arthritis. Okay. And so TRICARE is a large insurance group, mostly for veterans, and I appreciate our freedom. And so something for any veteran out there. And so they also cover for elbow, lateral kind of like tennis elbow. Yeah. And those are some of the most well-studied platelet-based procedures that we do. And we do that with ultrasound guidance, and we do that. Now, finding that, why am I saying about the TRICARE coverage? I know that it does cover it. I don’t think in the East it does, but in some locations in the country. But I just want to kind of bring that. So those are the most accepted ones.

Sure. Now, I’ll tell you that some of my favorite ones that work really well is looking at the lumbar spine, patients with disc issues, any kind of herniated discs, bulging discs, annular tears in their discs. A lot of times those lumbar lower back patients, they do fantastic. And we see a lot of those for not only lumbar, but cervical spine. And we do fluoroscopic or x-ray-guided injections. And typically they’re with platelets, to be honest with you, for the lumbar and cervical spine and thoracic spine. But those do fantastic. We’ve been able to see those discs actually shrink on follow-up imaging. And those are some of the most gratifying.

I have a Coast Guard CrossFit friend of mine. This is somebody I can talk to you about for lumbar spine. He came in, and I just got his follow-up MRI because he wanted to check it out. He’s like, I’m 90% better, Dr. Lawrence. That’s something that I think is great to show and see. And I think that it proves that what we’re doing isn’t just hocus-pocus. It’s science. And it’s based on literature that it actually works.

Yeah, absolutely. And is that something – so obviously back pain, sciatica-type stuff, disc injuries. I’m thinking of people that maybe have tried physical therapy or something like that in the past, and it’s kind of just been lingering. It comes and goes, and they don’t want surgery. That would be kind of a perfect sort of next option or even a first option if they don’t know about it. It totally makes sense.

So are you guys always kind of doing like a pre-test type of MRI, ultrasound,and then how are you frequently doing kind of a post-test like MRI just like you did, like you showed me to see, hey, how is this responding? And what does this look like? And what is the outcome with that? Is it to make significant changes on a radiograph? Or is it ultimately to get them to feel better? Obviously. But what is kind of your guys’ view on that when you’re working with somebody?

So symptoms subjective are the number one thing we’re going to be looking at, right? So if somebody comes in, they’ve got a seven out of ten back pain with radicular symptoms down to the left leg, right? There’s a lot of things to digest there, right? You know, the radicular pain, do they have actually axial back pain as well? Do they have walking intolerance, right? So that’s sit down frequently. That’d be more usually with stenosis, central stenosis, right? So look at a lot of those things, right?

So I always try to ask a patient, if I get rid of one thing, right? What’s the one thing symptomatically that really is causing the most issues for you, right? And so usually that’s what I hope, you know, like I’m going to write down all these, it’s going to be an hour long eval, which I think is different than anything else. We do an hour long evaluation of our patients, which really is much different than the typical orthopedic model.

Yeah, that’s true. And so we spend time with our patients diving into that history and physical. And I think I’ve heard this in a lot of circles, a good history and physical, there’s no substitute, right? The patient will tell you what’s wrong with them. Exactly.

So diving into that, right? And so subjectively changing things is probably the number one thing that we’re shooting for, right? Making the person get better subjectively on a pain scale, the visual analog scale. And go, hey, listen, you’re from a seven to a two. Is that success, right? So I think a lot of times they go from a seven to a two, they’re happy with that, right? Especially if it’s a degenerative nature, right?

So if it’s a degenerative back versus more of just a herniated disc, those are kind of, those are different cases in my book, right? The herniated disc with radicular symptoms and the 30-year-old or the annular tear with the sitting intolerance is going to be a lot different. And I think they have a better long-term trajectory in the fact that we can actually get that to objectively heal, right? So I can see the annular tear get better. I can see the disc shrink.

Now, the degenerative spine, we might not be able to see that some of the things get better, the facet arthritis. We might not be able to get some of those other things that are going on in the back to objectively get better. But just like anything else, right? Degenerative spine issues are more of, I mean, we do steroid injections all the time for knees with degenerative changes. I’ll tell you that seeing us for platelet-rich plasma or bone marrow concentrate is going to be a longer, better course and going to protect your knees cartilage and protect the bone and make the bone stronger.

But the same thing here for back issues, we may not be able to objectively see it with some imaging, but subjectively, if the person’s 60, 70% better, we might not need to get them on a maintenance program where we do maybe a procedure once every two years or so just to make sure that we keep that inflammation as really the basis of pain in my opinion. And I think that it’s the opinion of most people.

But how do we get that inflammation out of the areas that are causing the pain? So I guess to answer your question, subjective and objective, I think subjective is the first thing, just kind of rounding this out. Subjectively, I want the patient to feel better. I’ll order additional imaging if somebody is like, hey, listen, I really want to see it. It’s going to mean a lot mentally to me if I can see that my objective findings have gotten better.

That was really one of the reasons why I got it for this gentleman. He’s like, hey, listen, I want to see that what’s happened. And fortunately enough, objectively it was getting better. And I told him, hey, listen, can we get it a little bit better? Is there room for improvement? Do you feel like you’re 100%? He’s like, no, I don’t feel like 100%. I’m like 90%. Listen, if we do this again, there’s a good chance that we can get that to shrink even more, right?

And so I had a positive response. It’s going to make your back more bulletproof, as I like to tell patients. And we can get those multifidi muscles stronger because when we inject the multifidi, if there’s any multifidi atrophy, we’re going to help with that. We’re going to help with the interspinous ligaments. We’re going to help with the capsules on the facets.

And so really it’s a – we call it a functional spinal unit approach to get them back. That’s cool. That’s awesome.

Yeah, same thing in physical therapy. Obviously, ultimately the end goal is you want to get the patient saying they feel much better. That’sthe most important, I think. And just like what you mentioned, the objective is sort of kind of filling in the gaps in between. We’ve got to measure to some degree. And filling in the gaps in between. So we got to measure to some degree like where we’re going. What are some things that we can actually measure or see that may or may not be contributing to how you’re feeling? Not necessarily like shooting in the dark or shooting in a barrel, but at the same time, we want to have those measurements to be able to see what we are improving on.

But ultimately, like you said, the subjective is obviously we want people to walk out of there saying, I feel so much better, even if minimal changes happen. And that’s why I love the model of physical therapy that physical therapy brings is that it’s hands-on, one-on-one work where you’re working with a well-trained doctor of physical therapy who’s going to not only give you some exercises, corrective exercise for afterwards, but they’re going to do some hands-on work that’s going to actually change the tissue.

And in my perspective, the tissue usually is the issue. I like to use rhymes, don’t judge. But if somebody’s not touching your tissues or not putting their hands on you, there’s a lot of new age stuff where I’m not a super big subscriber to. It doesn’t say it doesn’t work. I mean, I think PRI is kind of out there. I think it can be helpful in conjunction with some tissue work. But I also think that there’s a lot of things that quality PTs like your team does do that.

That’s why I try to find one of the biggest things a sports medicine physician is that in a non-surgical one is that you need to find a good team. And going back to what I said originally, teamwork is where it’s at.

Yeah, that’s exactly what I was going to ask you about that. Obviously, right now we do share a patient between our clinic and yours who is doing absolutely awesome, by the way. So can you dive in a little bit more to anybody that might watch this and listen? How does something like your work with the regen medicine type stuff, the PRP, reducing inflammation symptoms, how does that collaborate or coincide or overlap with like a physical therapy clinic or physical therapist or an office?

Yeah, I mean, especially with like if we’re going to stay on the lower back pain, the lower back issues, whether it’s a disc issue, there’s definitely got to be some core work and some hands-on, hitting the hip flexors a lot of times are super, super on fleek. You can do some soft tissue there, release the hip flexors, make sure the person’s doing a proper, like everybody says they do a good plank. I look at like 90% of planks and I’m like that plank is garbage. You’re ragging your back out. You’re breaking that core.

So with the background that I have and I’m a level two CrossFit coach, I coach only myself and other people that I see around the gym. But I got that certification through CrossFit Health and it’s pretty cool to have that. It’s CrossFit Medical Society now. But so understanding the body better than 9.9% of people on earth helps really making sure that they’re getting in good positions. Sitting to the toilet is a squat, right? So at the end of the day, if you’re not hip hinging first, I think hip hinge first and core to extremity is how we should be working these things.

That’s how we do it, yep. So working with a quality group of physical therapists, it all works together, right? This happened, the inflammation was triggered by some sort of movement dysfunction. And if we don’t identify that movement dysfunction, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. Correct. You need to change that pattern that’s happened over years and it’s going to take time.

If we can be the impetus for change with the injections. Yes. Platelet-rich plasma, bone marrow concentrate, where your stem cells come from for your back, for your knees, for your shoulder. There’s a lot of stuff that can go on in shoulders and we can get into that another time. I think we probably have a whole other conversation.

Yeah, exactly. But if we’re not changing that movement pattern, it’s likely going to return. And that’s where it works in together as a team.

Yeah, awesome. Let’s talk about stem cells. Because I know a lot of patients, I’m sure you get this a lot, a lot of our patients, we get the PRP questions and the gel they talk about, but they mentioned stem cells. And tell everybody, is it legal here? Is it illegal in the States? Do you guys do something similar? What does that look like? And can you give us some insight onto that?

So my hard and fast onstem cells is if somebody’s telling you they do stem cells and they don’t call it bone marrow concentrate here in the United States, is they’re doing it wrong. There’s a lot of charlatans who are giving people stem cell procedures that only consist of growth factors and cytokines, period. There are zero stem cells in any of the frozen umbilical, placental, or amniotic tissue products.

There was a statement that I signed along with all my non-surgical and surgical orthopedic doctors. Don Buford’s a good friend and colleague of mine out of Dallas, I think it’s Texas Orthopedics, Orthobiologics, but he described the Buford complex in the shoulder. So Don Buford, he’s a shoulder and elbow surgeon, but he uses more bone marrow concentrate, which is where your stem cells come from, right? And it’s a portion of stem cells with growth factors plus cytokines.

So the people who are telling you and putting stem cell out there, if they haven’t been around for five years, there’s a reason they haven’t been around five years. Because by the time five years comes, the FDA has gone to them and said, hey, listen, show me that these products, because the FDA, the Fed, I like to call it the Fed because nobody likes the FDA anymore. The federal government looks at anything that is being marketed in the FTC, right? So the Federal Trade Committee looks at it and goes, is this safe? Are these people doing things that are safe? Well, what ends up happening is these groups that are the charlatans, there’s been infections from these products that are not through three-phase clinical trials, and they’re not safe for patients.

Livion is a group that you can look up, L-I-V-E-Y-O-N. They had infections because they were injecting them to people’s eyes, and what ended up happening, people got eye infections and lost their sight from these stem cell injections.

And so in orthopedics, I utilize bone marrow concentrate from a patient in the same surgical procedure with minimal manipulation, and I use it for homologous use. So those are within the scope of practice of medicine, okay? And so those are legal along that pathway. And so how the Fed views stem cells is that nobody has been able to produce any umbilical, amniotic, or placental product that’s gone through three-phase clinical trials to make sure that they are, number one, producing live stem cells and have cellular studies that show that they can actually produce these stem cells, right?

So what pains me is that I have a patient of mine that she says she got a stem cell procedure, and then she came back and said, I paid $12,000 for this, and I’ve gotten no help whatsoever, and she put it on her care credit card, and she’s still paying it off because she thought this was going to be the end-all be-all for her. And I did PRP on her and got her better. And so that’s really the biggest issue I have with it.

Now, I’m going to say right now, the state of Florida is about to contradict the federal government, and as of July 1st, there was a bill that was pushed through Congress. And unfortunately, even with – I’m on the FOMA board. I was working with all the attorneys and trying to make sure that things were done appropriately because, again, we don’t recognize those products that are being created as stem cell products. Again, now, the guidelines that are being set forth are GMP, and this is getting super in the weeds of this, and the GMP standards are being instituted, and they’re supposed to be instituted for all these umbilical, placental, amniotic products.

I will tell you that the enforcement of those standards is almost nearly impossible for the state of Florida unless the Fed steps in and is going to supply these. And so my fear is that this bill is going to pass, and there’s going to be a lot of people in the state of Florida who are going to jump back on the ship of profiteering off of patients in pain, and that is hard and fast.

I’m going to probably release a blog either at the end of this week or beginning of next because it’s very timely. And to talk about the people who have experience in this field would tell you that everything that I said was factual and accurate. The people who want to profiteer off of patients’ pain would say, oh, Dr. Torrance doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I didn’t get on these boards, and I didn’t get on these things for any reason.I do things that help my patients, and I practice evidence-based medicine. And so that’s my fear. And I’m going to do everything I can to put out and have conversations like this with yourself to educate patients. Patients’ education is the biggest thing. I would say that there’s only about 10% of people that even know that orthobiologics exists. Right. Yeah. And there’s so many applications in orthopedics by itself that it’s too much to talk about. We could probably talk here for 24 hours and I could talk to you about each individual pathway and how we could help with each thing. Right. And so that’s the problem. And that’s why part of my hour-long eval, part of that is about 15 minutes of education and making sure that the patient is educated on exactly what’s going to help them the best.

A lot of people come in and they go, they want stem cell. And listen, I’m doing three bone marrow aspirations tomorrow. I do my fair share of stem cell procedures. However, if I don’t think you need it, I would recommend that we do play the rich plasma. I’m not sitting here. I’m doing what’s best for my patient. I’m not doing what’s best for Dr. Torrance and the practice pocketbook. I do what’s best for my patients at the end of the day. And that’s my obligation to my patients. And our mission is to get you back to doing what you love. So, yeah, love that. It’s awesome. That’s a lot of good information there for sure.

Yeah. So that being said, in certain indications, bone marrow concentrate and stem cells are the right way to go. I mean, I would tell you that based on one of the studies that just came back from Dr. Centeno et al. Dr. Centeno founded Regenexx. It shows that partial thickness and full thickness tears that are non-retracted do fantastic. 73% of the MRIs on two-year follow-up show that the MRI had signs of healing in the rotator cuff. And subjectively, the person was better, right? So that’s a really good study that we can have to stand on for bone marrow concentrate and stem cells for a rotator cuff. Knee arthritis is another big one if it’s severe knee arthritis. And if somebody’s got some bone marrow lesions, what we look for.

There’s a study by Dr. Felipe Hernigau out of Paris. And what we do that’s a little bit different than other people is that we’ll not only inject the joint, but we also inject the bone itself, which is a painful procedure. But at the end of the day, what we’re doing is we’re injecting into the bone to help the bone kind of reset its healing processes. His study showed that 80% of patients avoided a knee replacement 15 years later. So knee arthritis, backs, and shoulders, I think some of my favorite procedures to do, and they do really, really well.

Awesome. Perfect. Because I was going to ask those questions about types of patients. Well, that’s awesome. I don’t want to take too much more of your time. So Dr. Torrance, I’d love to ask whoever is watching, got into this point, how can they find you? What’s the best way for them to contact you to make an appointment to schedule with you?

Yeah. So if you go to newregenortho.com, regen, R-E-G-E-N, ortho.com, that’s the easiest way to find our website. And fill out a candidate form and our team will reach out to you to get you in for an evaluation. We’re not a group that’s, we’re going to do a, again, hour-long evaluation and make a recommendation. Don’t expect to come in, some patients come in and like, hey, we want to do that procedure the day of. That’s not how we work. We want to make sure that you understand and are educated appropriately on what we’re doing before we do it. So that’s one of the best ways to find us.

941-357-1773 is just our phone call, if you want to give us a phone call. And click, I think, press one, it’s a new patient prompt, and you’ll talk to somebody. We have an education center that we’ll get on the horn with you and talk to you about what your condition is, what you can expect. We take most insurances for evals, whether it’s Medicare, Blue Cross, Cigna, Aetna, and I think that we take TRICARE for evaluations. And if not, we have a very good self-pay rate if we don’t. And then our team will talk to you about, after the evaluation, we’ll talk to you about a recommendation based on your condition and move from there.

Dr. Torrance, lastly, any final encouragement for someone who’s trying to avoid surgery but doesn’t know what their options are?

Yeah, so obviously find a good physical therapist if you’re watching this. Obviously you know Dr. Clark and his team, and you’re working with a great group of physical therapists who are going to help you avoid it if you can. If that’s not moving the needle, as I like to say, and you want to avoid surgery, we’re a great option. Come see us, and we’regoing to tell you whether you’re a candidate or not. If you’re not a candidate, we’ll let you know and we can hopefully help steer you in the right direction. you in the right direction. So good, honest, trusting your clinician is the biggest thing here and I appreciate the trust from Dr. Clark to get on here today and look forward to continuing working with you in the future. Likewise.

And yeah, so Dr. Clark, tell me what your favorite patient is before we get off. My favorite patient? What’s the favorite patient? What’s the home run? What comes in and nine times out of 10, Dr. Clark, you’re sending them home singing your praises. I mean, 90% success rate is pretty good. Yeah, that is.

Well, I think it comes with the diagnosis and the type of patient too. For me, first and foremost, I love post-op. I’ve always loved post-op. I don’t know. I love ACL repair and even total knee replacements. I just enjoy the process and just kind of guiding the person along natural history and the course and helping them return to sport or whatever it is and beyond where they were even before.

But if it’s not post-op, anything that’s lower extremity related is probably my favorite. So I would probably say somebody that is an active adult, somebody that wants to be there in the clinic. You get people that sometimes they’re not sure. They don’t want to be there. They’re there for different reasons. But the person that is dedicated to taking ownership of their body and their health is first and foremost. It makes obviously things a little bit easier if, like I said, the active adult, athlete, runners, gym goers, things of that sort are kind of my bread and butter, I would say. Thank you.