Who writes this guide, and who pays for it.

What this desk is

The Metro East Chiro Guide is a small publication for the Illinois side of the river: Granite City, Collinsville, Edwardsville, Belleville, Fairview Heights, O'Fallon, Columbia, Waterloo, Alton, and the towns between them. It has one subject, which is what a car crash does to a body and how to get a documented exam this week, and one point of view, which is that the exam is worth a bridge crossing.

It is written by an editor, not generated by a template, and it is published for a clinic. That second fact is the most important thing on this page, so it gets its own section below.

What it covers

Madison, St. Clair, and Monroe counties, with the occasional nod up the river road toward Alton. The roads: 55/70 and the Tri-Level, I-64 from Scott to the river, I-255, Route 3 through the bottoms, Routes 159 and 157. The bridges: Clark, Chain of Rocks, McKinley, Stan Musial, MLK, Eads, Poplar Street, and Jefferson Barracks. The injuries: the delayed neck and back, the quiet concussion. The exam, the record, the three rooms.

It does not cover Missouri readers, who have other desks. It does not cover anything the clinic does not publish as a lane.

The advertising relationship, stated plainly

This page is advertising. This desk is compensated for featuring Missouri Injury Clinic, and it is not the clinic, not a law office, and not a party to anyone's insurance claim. We publish only the lanes, rooms, and hours the clinic publishes on moinjuryclinic.com. We do not write reviews, rank providers, or give medical or legal advice.

In plainer words: the clinic pays for this desk to exist, every page says so, and every call to action points at the clinic's own site or its phone numbers. There is no form here, no email capture, nothing to sign up for. The desk has no access to anyone's chart and never will. If you call a room, you are talking to the clinic, not to us.

How facts are sourced

Clinic facts come only from moinjuryclinic.com: the three lanes, the three rooms and their addresses, phones, and hours, the owner's name and credential, the named tools in the concussion lane, and the three reviews the clinic publishes on its own homepage. If it is not on the clinic's site, it is not on this one.

Medical background is kept general and true: what whiplash is, why soft-tissue pain is delayed, what a concussion looks like, when an emergency room is the right call. Where a reader might doubt a statement, the desk points at a public source with no advertising relationship to anyone, such as the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at ninds.nih.gov or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at cdc.gov.

Geography comes from the map. Which interstate crosses which bridge, which county a town is in, which side of the river a room is on. The desk does not publish drive times or mileage, because they change with the hour and we would rather be silent than wrong.

What we will not publish

• Prices, insurance arrangements, or any claim about what a visit costs.
• Staff, services, or hours beyond what the clinic lists itself.
• Reviews we collected, solicited, or wrote. Rankings of any kind.
• Anything about the value of a claim, the workings of an insurer, or what a lawyer will do. Joseph L. Hollingsworth, DC, is a chiropractor, and this desk is not a law office.
• Any suggestion that an exam is something other than medicine. The record is a care document first.
• Statistics we cannot trace to a public source. Drive times. Promises.

Corrections

If a phone number, an hour, an address, a bridge, or a county is wrong on this site, the desk wants to know. Write to the desk through the clinic's contact page on moinjuryclinic.com and say which page. We fix what is wrong and note the fix. Hours are the thing most likely to drift, and the thing most worth confirming on the phone before you cross.

The mark

The desk's mark is a truss span drawn in three strokes: a deck, the zigzag of the trusses above it, and a fainter line beneath for the water. The whole subject of this guide is getting across, so the mark is a bridge. The zigzag shows up again as the rule under the hero and above every page's key takeaways. The register labels at the top of each page are mile markers, numbered in reading order.

Chest pain, a sudden severe headache, weakness or numbness on one side, trouble speaking, a loss of bowel or bladder control, or a head injury with vomiting or worsening confusion is an emergency room trip right now, not a call to a clinic. Educational only. Nothing on this page is medical advice or a diagnosis; the person to ask is a licensed clinician who has examined you. Facts about the clinic come from moinjuryclinic.com. Emergency symptoms go to an emergency room, on whichever side of the river you are standing, not to a clinic or a website.