Dr. Richard Tunkel

Dr. Tunkel practiced for several years as a chiropractor before going to medical school, which he completed in 1987. He completed his residency training in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in 1991 at The New York Hospital - Cornell Medical Center and became board-certified the following year. After that, he returned to New York and served as the director of Rehabilitation Services at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center for eight years. During that time, he became certified to practice medical acupuncture in the state of New York. He then served as the regional director of Rehabilitation Medicine in two New York City hospitals.

About five years ago, Dr. Tunkel moved to California, where he began seeing patients with subacute and chronic pain. In early June, he started seeing patients at Chiro-Medical Group where he has been using predominantly non-pharmacological methods, sometimes in conjunction with pain management specialists and general practitioners doing pharmacological interventions, with quite gratifying results. These methodologies include gentle manipulative medicine (especially osteopathic techniques), medical acupuncture, neuromuscular re-education, and instruction in therapeutic exercise.

In addition to focusing his efforts on the physical rehabilitation of those patients with the complaint of pain and other chronic symptoms, he will also be doing diagnostic studies including nerve conduction studies and electromyography. These can be of great help in diagnosing disorders of the peripheral nervous and muscular systems.

Dr. Tunkel is looking forward to working with the other health care providers at Chiro-Medical Group and helping to provide the optimal, multidisciplinary care to patients.