A metro desk, paid for by one clinic, and honest about it.

Most local health websites are vague about who pays for them. This one is not. Gateway Spine Health exists to send injured readers across the St. Louis metro to one clinic, Missouri Injury Clinic, for an exam this week. The clinic pays for that. Everything else on this page follows from saying so plainly.

Who this desk is

Gateway Spine Health is a metro-wide editorial desk about spines, crashes, and concussions. Its concept is in the masthead: for the whole metro, both sides of every highway. Where other local desks cover one county or one condition, this one covers the region as a single driving map: north county, south county, the city, West County, St. Charles County, Jefferson County, and the Illinois side of the river. The writing is done by an editor, not a template, and the point of view is consistent from page to page: time to exam is the variable you control, and the record is a care document first.

The advertising relationship, stated plainly

This desk is compensated for featuring Missouri Injury Clinic, a chiropractic injury clinic run by Joseph L. Hollingsworth, DC, with offices in Hazelwood, on Tesson Ferry, and in O'Fallon. Every link on this desk that asks you to get seen goes to that clinic. The desk is not the clinic, not a law office, and not a party to anyone's insurance claim. It does not hold anyone's chart, schedule anyone's visit, or speak to anyone's insurer. The disclosure appears in the footer of every page, and we have restyled it to fit the desk without weakening a word of it.

What it covers, and what it refuses to

The desk covers the three lanes the clinic publishes on its own site: auto injuries, meaning diagnosis and a treatment plan after a crash; TBI and concussion rehab; and sports injuries. It covers the three offices, their published hours and phones, and the midday closure. It covers the metro's roads as they relate to getting hurt and getting seen.

It refuses to invent. No reviews beyond the three the clinic publishes. No rankings, no superlatives about the clinic, no wait times, no prices, no insurance claims, no statistics about the clinic's outcomes. No staff names beyond the doctor the clinic publishes. No description of billing arrangements we cannot verify. No legal advice of any kind, no estimate of what an injury is worth, and no instruction about what to say to an insurer. If you find any of those on this desk, it is an error and we want to hear about it.

How facts are sourced

Clinic facts, meaning lanes, offices, addresses, hours, phones, the doctor's name, the motto, the named concussion tools, and the three reviews, come only from moinjuryclinic.com and are checked against it. Medical background is kept general and true: what whiplash is, why soft-tissue pain is delayed, what a concussion can feel like, when the emergency room is the right call. Where a reader might doubt a medical statement, we cite a federal source such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, or the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. We do not cite ourselves.

Geography comes from driving it. Corridor names, interchange names, and bridge names are the ones people in this metro actually use.

The two lines on every page

Two things appear on every page of this desk without exception. The first is the emergency bright line: the short list of symptoms that mean an emergency room right now, not a call to a clinic. The second is the educational line: nothing here is medical advice, a diagnosis, or a substitute for an exam by a licensed clinician. The desk is a reading desk. It cannot examine anyone.

Photographs

Some photographs on this desk are real and credited in the caption, including the Wikimedia Commons landmarks, where the photographer and license are printed under the image. Others are editorial scenes made for the desk and are labeled as such in the caption. No photograph on this desk shows a patient, an injury, or a real person's face, and none should be read as documentation of any actual visit.

Corrections

If an address, an hour, a phone number, or a medical statement on this desk is wrong, we want it fixed. Write to the desk through the clinic's contact page and say which page and which line. Corrections are made on the page itself; we do not keep a separate errata log, and the year in the footer is updated when the desk is revised.

Why it is built this way

Because the lawful version of this idea is also the useful one. An injured person in this metro needs an exam this week, findings written down, and a plan. A desk that says that plainly, says who pays for it, and refuses to say anything it cannot verify is more useful to that person than a glossy page that promises everything. That is the whole editorial policy.