Your Treatment Plan 
This clinic does clinical treatment and it also does regular massage and beauty appointments that people have simply because they like them. Both are legitimate. Confusing them is how people end up paying clinical prices for maintenance, so the plan separates them.
A treatment plan is for a specific problem. It has a measure — nights woken, range of movement, headaches a fortnight — a number of sessions before a decision, usually four, and a review at which we continue with a reason, change, or stop. It also has the part you do between appointments, which for most musculoskeletal problems is what makes the change last.
Maintenance is a monthly massage because you sleep better afterwards, or a regular facial because you like how your skin looks. It needs no clinical justification and we will not invent one. It also should not be sold to you as treatment.
Where a problem is not resolving, we say so and change the plan rather than converting it quietly into maintenance. And where something belongs elsewhere — a dermatologist for a skin condition, a GP for a new symptom, a physiotherapist for a specific rehabilitation programme — we refer.
One practical consequence: if you come in monthly for massage and then develop a specific problem — a shoulder that will not settle, headaches that have become regular — say so, because it changes the appointment. Working on a diagnosable problem inside a relaxation booking helps neither of us, and the assessment is what makes the treatment worth having.
Prices, including what a course adds up to, are given before anything starts. We are in Lane Cove, at 2 Austin Street opposite the library and metres from Longueville Road.
A treatment plan is a proposal with a review date attached. It says what is being done, how often, and when the two of you will stop and look at whether it is helping. Without that last part it is not a plan — it is an open-ended arrangement, and those tend to continue out of habit.
Most plans start closer together and spread out. Something recent and acute may need a short run of visits near the start; something that has been there for years usually moves more slowly, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
The spacing is part of the treatment, not a scheduling convenience. Coming too rarely at the start can mean nothing holds between visits; coming too often later can mean paying for sessions that are no longer doing much.
Usually something small — a movement, a change to how you sit or sleep, something to notice and report back. Not homework for its own sake. An hour a fortnight is not where change happens; it happens in the time in between, and the session is where you work out what to change.
Agree at the start what you are watching. Not "do I feel better", which is hard to judge week to week, but something specific: sleeping through more nights, getting through a working day, being able to do the one thing you stopped doing.
Progress is rarely a straight line. A bad week after three good ones is ordinary. What matters is the direction over a month or two.
You should be told the fee for a first appointment and for follow-ups before you book, and whether there is any difference for longer sessions. If a plan involves a set number of visits, you should be able to work out the total before you agree to it — not discover it along the way.
If something is not covered or not included, that is worth asking about directly.
If nothing has shifted by the review point, that is information, not failure. It means the plan needs changing or that this is not the right approach for what you have. Both of those are better found at session six than session twenty.
A practitioner who only ever proposes more of the same is not reviewing anything.
Nothing in a plan here is a reason to start, stop or change anything your doctor has prescribed. If you want to reduce a medication, that is a conversation with whoever prescribed it, and it can happen alongside this work rather than instead of it.
The point of the plan is to not need it. What that looks like is worth knowing before you get there.
