05/16/2016    Keith Gurnick, DPM

Running Shoe Stores and "In-Store Custom Orthotics"

Can't anything be done to stop the shoe fitters
and shoe sales personnel who work at running
shoe stores from selling "quasi-custom on-the-
spot milled orthotics" from being made and sold
to the public? Too often, I have athletes and
runners come in to my office, with foot, ankle,
knee, hip or other postural aches and pains who
have purchased, upon recommendation from a shoe
salesperson these inserts that they are told
are "custom foot orthotics." Unfortunately,
these orthotics do not fully address their
individual biomechanical deformities nor their
specific conditions.

Although what they get may appear to look like
custom prescription foot orthotics, they are
certainly not because they were not ordered
nor were they prescribed by any doctor for any
specific diagnoses, (P.S. many runners who go
to these shoe stores are told that they have
pronated feet and/ plantar fasciitis) no
prescription was ever written, and no
measurements were taken by anyone with any
credentials to evaluate the customer for
conditions such as forefoot varus or valgus,
limb-length discrepancy, rearfoot varus, RCSP,
NCSP, to list only a few things we look at when
we evaluate a patient.

When patients spend $250-$300 out of their own
pockets for these mostly inappropriate and
inferior products, it becomes difficult
financially for them to purchase a medically-
necessary and properly designed and fabricated
custom prescription foot orthotic. These
patients do not know the difference until they
see the benefits gained from the use of a
"real" foot orthotic.

How does our profession and our local, state
and national associations continue to close
their eyes and ears to this serious issue by
doing little or nothing (either in the media or
legislatively) to stop this problem which, by
their neglect, continues to let these shoe
stores and their employees get away with
deceiving and harming the public?

Keith Gurnick, DPM, Los Angeles, CA

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