Tonya Lantto is a Physical Therapist at Mountain View Pain Center, seeing patients at Interquest in north Colorado Springs. She studied exercise science at Western Michigan University, completed her Doctor of Physical Therapy at Central Michigan University, and has worked in both outpatient and acute care settings. No referral is needed, and our goal is to get you in within the same week.
Dr. Tonya Lantto is a Michigan native who grew up in a small town where she participated in travel softball and varsity swimming. Being active growing up she decided to pursue an undergraduate degree in Exercise Science at Western Michigan University. She decided to become a PT while in undergraduate school after seeing her grandfather with Alzheimer’s Disease work with at home Physical Therapy after one of his hospital stays. She often enjoyed visiting her grandparents when she was on break from school and helping him go through his exercise program. Tonya completed her DPT at Central Michigan University and has worked in outpatient PT as well as the acute care setting in multiple hospitals. In her free time, Tonya enjoys spending time with her husband and two dogs as well as her family when they can visit. You can often find her outside on a mountain bike trail, hiking, reading, or playing card games in her spare time.
Tonya decided on this career watching a grandparent work through an exercise program at home, and it left her with a particular respect for the ordinary movements people stop mentioning once they get hard. Standing up from a low chair without using the arms. Getting down the front steps in winter without holding the rail. Carrying a bag of groceries in one hand. These rarely bring anyone to a clinic on their own, and they are the movements whose loss changes a life the most.
Her background spans outpatient rehabilitation and acute care, which is a useful combination, because the second one shows you how quickly function is lost when someone stops moving and how much work it takes to get it back. The practical result is a bias toward addressing a decline early, while it still looks like an inconvenience rather than an emergency.
The problems she sees most are lower back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, knee pain and sciatica.
The first appointment is an evaluation. Strength, range, control and the movements that reproduce your symptoms get measured rather than estimated, so there is a baseline to judge progress against later. You leave with an explanation of what was found and a small number of things to do between visits, which is the part that does most of the work.
Sessions combine hands-on treatment with loaded exercise, and the exercise progresses as the measurements do. Spinal decompression and dry needling are available where they fit the problem, and pelvic floor physical therapy is offered at selected clinics.
Where Physical Therapy is not the whole answer, Chiropractic, Acupuncture and Pain Management are in the same building and on the same chart, so a change of direction is a conversation rather than a new referral and another wait.
Tonya sees patients at Interquest in north Colorado Springs. That page lists the address, the hours and what a first visit involves.
For the rest of the team, see the Colorado Physical Therapy providers page, or physical therapy in your area.
Most plans cover Physical Therapy, and what varies is the visit limit, the copay and whether your plan wants a referral on file even where the state does not require one. Colorado and Arizona both allow patients to be seen without a physician referral, so the referral question here is a plan question rather than a legal one. Our team verifies your benefits before your first visit so the number is known in advance.
Availability changes from week to week, so the honest answer is to ask. Request an appointment online and say you would like to see Tonya, or call and our team will tell you what is open at Interquest. No referral is needed, and our goal is to get you in within the same week.
It is one of the things worth having assessed rather than adapted around. Balance depends on strength, joint range, vision and the vestibular system, and the contributions differ from person to person, which is why the evaluation measures rather than assumes.
Early is the point. A decline that still looks like an inconvenience responds faster and to less work than the same decline after a fall, and there is nothing to lose by having it measured now and finding out that the answer is reassuring.
Not to be seen here. Colorado allows patients to see a physical therapist without a physician referral. Some plans still want one on file, which our team checks when they verify your benefits.
At our Interquest clinic in north Colorado Springs. Physical Therapy, Chiropractic, Acupuncture and Pain Management are all Mountain View Pain Center service lines, so if your care needs to move between them it moves on one chart.
Day or night, seven days a week — and we’ll text you back to get you scheduled. No referral is needed, and our goal is to see you within the same week. Colorado scheduling runs through one number for every Colorado clinic: (720) 749-5599.
