Back pain is common.
Long treatment is not inevitable.
If you’ve ever dealt with back or neck pain, you know the drill: schedule an appointment, show up for treatment, get told to come back next week. And the week after that. And the week after that. Before you know it, you’ve spent months shuttling to appointments, rearranging your schedule, and watching the bills pile up, all while wondering when you’ll actually feel better.
Here’s what most patients don’t realize:
More treatment doesn’t mean better treatment.
In fact, a groundbreaking new study from Baylor University reveals something surprising – and potentially frustrating if you’ve been stuck on the treatment treadmill. The research analyzed over 645,000 patient episodes and found that the most common approaches to treating musculoskeletal pain often keep patients in care far longer than necessary, at significantly higher costs, without delivering better outcomes.
The Treatment Treadmill: Why Conventional Care Takes So Long
The Baylor study compared five different types of providers treating back and neck pain: physical therapists, chiropractors, orthopedic surgeons, physiatrists, and Airrosti providers. The differences in treatment length and cost were stark.
Consider physical therapy, one of the most commonly recommended first-line treatments for back pain. According to the study, the average PT patient required 11.48 visits over 84.5 days – nearly three months of treatment.
Chiropractic care looked similar: 8.84 visits spanning 85.6 days.
That’s a lot of appointments. A lot of co-pays. A lot of time off work, away from family, or spent in waiting rooms when you’d rather be doing literally anything else.
Meanwhile, Airrosti patients averaged just 3.87 visits over 31.1 days – about one month, total.
That’s not a small difference. We’re talking about 50+ fewer days in treatment compared to PT or chiropractic care. Fewer appointments to schedule. Fewer disruptions to your daily life. Faster return to the activities that you love.
The difference isn’t patient severity. It’s the model of care.
The Cost Paradox: Paying More to Stay in Pain Longer
You might assume that more visits would at least translate to better outcomes or lower per-visit costs. But the Baylor study found the opposite.
The average episode cost for physical therapy patients was $4,324, or nearly three times what Airrosti patients paid for their entire episode of care ($1,471).
Even orthopedic specialists, who typically see patients for fewer visits, had average episode costs of $3,478 – more than double Airrosti’s.
This creates a frustrating paradox for patients:
You’re paying more to stay in treatment longer.
And while you’re stuck in that cycle, the hidden costs add up too: lost productivity at work, missed family events, the mental toll of chronic pain that just won’t resolve. The longer you’re in treatment, the more these indirect costs compound.
What Makes the Difference?
Traditional musculoskeletal care often follows a standardized protocol approach.
It’s volume-based, it assumes weeks of care, and it’s built for management, not resolution.
Airrosti takes a different approach: precision musculoskeletal care focused on rapid resolution.
Instead of scheduling you for an ongoing series of visits from day one, Airrosti providers spend longer one-on-one appointment times identifying the root cause of your pain and treating it aggressively with manual therapy and corrective exercises.
The goal isn’t to manage your pain indefinitely. It’s to resolve it quickly and get you back to your life.
You don’t have to accept months of treatment as inevitable. You don’t have to settle for marginal improvements stretched out over dozens of appointments. And you shouldn’t have to choose between managing your pain and managing your budget or schedule.
Precision musculoskeletal care offers a different path, and one that respects your time, your money, and your desire to get back to living without pain.
The Bottom Line: Time and Money You’ll Never Get Back
The Baylor study makes one thing abundantly clear: when it comes to treating back and neck pain, more is not better.
More visits don’t mean better outcomes. Longer treatment timelines don’t equal more thorough care. And higher costs certainly don’t guarantee faster recovery.
What matters is targeted, evidence-based treatment that addresses the root cause of your pain and gets you results quickly. Because every day you spend in pain (and every appointment you have to schedule) is time you’re not spending on the things that actually matter in your life.
Pain should not circulate through weeks of appointments.
It should resolve.
If you’re tired of the treatment treadmill, it may be time to choose a model built for resolution, not repetition.
About the Research: This article is based on a retrospective claims-based study conducted by Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business Forest S. Kim et al. The research analyzed 645,799 episodes of care over a 51-month period, comparing cost and utilization across multiple provider types for back and neck pain treatment.
