Padda Institute’s Natural Bridge Road office is at 12174 Natural Bridge Rd, St. Louis, MO 63044. This is a physical location, not a service area — if you live in Bridgeton you are not being sent across the county for care.
Yes. The Bridgeton office on Natural Bridge Road accepts Missouri Medicaid (MO HealthNet). Book your first visit here with the Bridgeton calendar, or call (314) 481-5000.
The office sits on Natural Bridge Road, west of I-270 and a few minutes from the St. Charles Rock Road corridor. Parking is on site and at ground level, which matters more than it sounds when walking is the problem you are coming in about.
Hours: Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Phone: (314) 481-5000
Fax: (314) 481-3037
Both offices share one phone number and one set of records, so it does not matter which you call and you will not be asked to repeat your history because you were seen at the other one.
This is the practical question, so here is the honest answer.
At either office: your first consultation, physical examination, review of imaging you bring, follow-up visits, medication review, and treatment planning. Most of what you will do over the course of care happens at whichever office is closer to you.
At Woodson specifically: anything requiring the fluoroscopy suite. Fluoroscopy is live X-ray, and the C-arm, the radiation-shielded room and the procedure table are installed at Woodson. That covers epidural steroid injections, radiofrequency ablation, kyphoplasty, spinal cord stimulation trials and most spine work.
Woodson is about a fifteen-minute drive east along Natural Bridge Road — a straight run, no highway required. You will be told which office your appointment is at when it is booked, not when you arrive.
A nerve you are trying to reach is a few millimeters across and sits next to structures you must not hit. Injecting by surface landmarks alone means accepting that a meaningful proportion of injections do not reach the intended target — which is one of the most common reasons a patient tells us injections “did not work” for them.
Under fluoroscopy the needle position is confirmed before anything is injected, and contrast shows where the medication actually spreads. Under ultrasound a tendon, joint or nerve can be watched moving in real time, so a structure can be tested under load rather than assessed from a still image taken while you were lying flat.
The same range as our main office: sciatica and radiating leg pain, neck and low back pain from the facet joints or sacroiliac joint, diabetic neuropathy, knee and hip pain, migraine and cervicogenic headache, injuries after a motor vehicle accident, and pain that persisted after spine surgery. The full list is on our pain treatments page.
From I-270, exit at Natural Bridge Road and head west. From St. Charles Rock Road, turn south. From the Woodson and airport area, Natural Bridge Road runs directly west to the door. Maps for both offices are on the locations page.
Severe pain is not a reason to wait three weeks, and an emergency room is not built to work out why your back has hurt for eight months. We hold capacity for same-day and emergency appointments. Call and say how bad it is — that information changes how you are scheduled.
Consultations, examinations, follow-up and planning, yes. Procedures needing live X-ray are done at Woodson, fifteen minutes east, because that is where the equipment is installed. Most patients make that trip once or twice, not routinely.
Not from us. Some insurance plans require one for the visit to be covered, which is a different question — our staff will check your specific plan before you come in.
Which plans require one is set out in Do You Need a Referral for Pain Management?
On site, at ground level, no garage and no stairs from the lot.
The office, hours and directions are on our Locations page.
Plan on about an hour. It is a consultation and examination, and it should end with you understanding what we think is causing the pain and what would confirm it.
Only if it is clearly indicated, you want to proceed, and you are at the office where it can be performed. The first visit is primarily diagnostic.
Whether an injection happens at the first visit is covered in What Actually Happens at a First Interventional Pain Appointment.
Medication review is part of care at either office, but it is not the center of it. This is an interventional practice: the aim is to find what is generating the pain and treat it directly, with image-guided procedures such as epidural steroid injections and radiofrequency ablation at the Woodson office. Your current medications are reviewed at the first visit and built into the treatment plan.
Most major insurance is accepted, including Medicare. Plans differ on whether they need a referral before they will cover the visit, so our staff checks your specific plan before you come in rather than after. You do not need a referral from us to be seen. Call (314) 481-5000 to start.
Call us or request a time. Most major insurance, including Medicare, is accepted.
Prefer not to fill in a form?
Same-day and emergency appointments are available.