North Shore Spinal & Sports Rehab – A Brief History

Posted On: October 5, 2011

Welcome to the new North Shore Spinal and Sports Rehabilitation blog.

This is both national physical therapy month and national chiropractic month. To celebrate these two great professions I would like to reminisce about my practice, which has successfully incorporated both professions to the benefit of the patients we serve.

I am Dr. David A. Johnson and I started the company back in 1988. Back then I was a newly licensed chiropractic physician and I had just started my new business venture, Chiropractic of Lake Forest.

I was very excited and proud to be the first chiropractor to practice in Lake Forest. Lake Forest had a lot of good medical doctors but they had no chiropractic physicians until I came along. I soon found my niche and it was rehabilitating athletes.

My practice grew and I added employees. One of my earliest employees was a trainer named Greg Neiderlander. He had some experience with rehabilitating athletes and he helped me develop some of my early protocols. Later I added a couple of more trainers, Mark Stone and Mark Cibrario. Both of these gentlemen added a dynamic new dimension to my growing practice.

My earliest associate was Dr. Mike Dydo, he was a young hungry chiropractic physician who really understood rehabilitation. Later I added Dr. Scott Clark who was an exercise physiologist. He helped me do sports physicals for the Barat college basketball team. He had worked as an exercise physiologist for the NBA and we modeled our physical after the work he had done for the NBA.

The first physical therapist I hired was Dr. Gary Mascilak who was licensed as both a physical therapist and as a chiropractic physician. When he joined our staff we found that combining the physical therapy with chiropractic care was a most effective approach in helping our patients with common musculoskeletal problems.

The first massage therapist I added to the clinic was Kim Hendersen who later went on to become a chiropractic physician by graduating from the Palmer College of Chiropractic.

As a result of our growth I started North Shore Spinal and Sports Rehabilitation, a multidisciplinary clinic focused on the care of orthopedic conditions. The clinic continued to expand and we outgrew our Lake Forest location, so I found a larger building in Lake Bluff. The 3000 square foot facility was a state of the art center with a full line of rehabilitation equipment, an x-ray machine, individual treatment rooms and shower. I am proud to say that over the years we have served the Lake Bluff community in helping them with their rehabilitation needs. The clinic has even been known to bring some of Chicago’s professional athletes into Lake Bluff.

We eventually got even bigger and as a result of the demand of my Highland Park patients and the persistence of my former office manager Eileen Rosenberg, we opened a second clinic in Highland Park on the corner of Green Bay Road and Central right above Anthropology. This clinic has been going strong for well over a decade serving the Highland Park community.

As the clinics expanded I continued my own personal pursuit of excellence by attending postgraduate seminars in orthopedics and sports medicine. I received my certification as a chiropractic sports physician, I became a diplomate in the American college of chiropractic orthopedists, was elected a fellow in the American college of chiropractic orthopedists and got a Doctorate of Physical Therapy degree to go with my Doctor of Chiropractic degree. I am now licensed as both a chiropractic physician and as a physical therapist in the state of Illinois.

As I look back over the years I have many a fond memory of the patients we have helped at North Shore Spinal and Sports Rehabilitation. The years have gone by so quickly and the joy of helping people achieve their goals has certainly deepened the practice experience. I would just like to say thanks to all of the patients and people who have made our clinic so special. Thank you.

To schedule an appointment, please call our Lake Forest, Lake Bluff office at 847.295.0920, or our Highland Park office at 847.432.4077. You may also use our online Request an Appointment form.

chiropractic, David A Johnson DC PT DPT, Dr Johnson, Highland Park, Lake Bluff, Lake Forest, physical therapy.