The trick in this model is you cannot have a system that people just follow blindly. You must have systems where people can think and create because every patient is different. Every patient has a different presentation, and that is what our systems allow us to address. The clinician can look at the patient, utilizing our methods, and figure out which is the best way to go with this patient. What are the best things for me to work on? What are the things that are functionally limiting this patient, that is affecting their activities of daily living, so we can restore them and get that person back to enjoying and living life instead of suffering through life?
Integrating multiple disciplines and practices and personalities under one roof sounds like it can be kind of complicated and challenging. What are some of the most significant challenges that your clinics face, and how do you help them overcome it?
Dr. Mike Carberry: That is a great question. We find that chiropractors, and medical doctors, and nurse practitioners, and physical therapists, don’t all think the same. One person from one profession could say something very logical that would be misinterpreted by the other professions. This communication barrier, I would say, is the most significant barrier. The way we overcome that is we do training. When somebody hires us, we have training all around the country. I just flew back from Clearwater, Florida late Saturday night into Sunday morning. I live in Oregon, and we were in Clearwater at the Hyatt on the beach there, a beautiful facility, and we were teaching medical people to work alongside chiropractors and physical therapists. We had a room with physical therapists, nurse practitioners, medical doctors, and chiropractors, all training side by side, learning how to work in this model, and how we look at the model.
What’s really cool about that is you see these different professions working together during the two-day training, and they have these epiphanies along the way. “This is really good, I realize I can help people, and I do not have to give them an opioid or put them on a prescription to numb their pain. I can now figure out what is wrong with that person.”
We like doing those trainings. We do them all over the country, and that is how we help. We also do one-day trainings on how to logistically process a patient through the practice, and we only do that training at our clinic in Chattanooga, which is our training center. Doctors from all over the country fly in about three or four times a year. They get trained on that. We have other trainings as well. That one-day training is done 12 times a year in that clinic, and our two-day trainings are done four times a year in Chattanooga.
It is the training that bridges the gap. It is the hands-on and the communication and getting each other to realize we are all in the business. I will tell you this, Phil. After doing this for twenty years, not all doctors, medical, chiropractic, physical therapy, are interested in helping patients, but the vast majority are. I would say over 80% of all those professions got into healthcare for the primary purpose of wanting to help their fellow man. That is whom we look for to work with. This model is designed to get patients well, and we look to work with people that are genuinely interested in doing that. That is whom we work with.
When you get that, and you tell everybody, “Look, I know we have different ideas based on our training. Let’s put them aside and let’s look at the logistics.” Most of the research we use to teach our medical people come from medical doctors. There’s much research out there by people like Dr. Rene Calle, Dr. Vladimir Janda, and Dr. Janet Travell, where they acknowledged that we did not have the best healthcare system, that we need to be more function based and less symptom-based to get patients well. That is the idea that we train from, and it is inspiring to see people have the epiphanies when we teach that. I hear medical people and chiropractors, saying, “This is the reason I got into healthcare. Thank you so much for helping me do that.”
That is great. I was wondering, could you share an epiphany that may embody how people make this transition from what I call the silo system, where they cannot see anything but their discipline until they get that epiphany. What would be an example of one that they had experienced during the training?
Dr. Mike Carberry: I could give you a couple. One of the epiphanies would be from the viewpoint of the chiropractor. I have had some of them come up to me and tell me, “You know, I realize that I have always functioned like a lone wolf. I had to be the guy to fix everything, and I had to be the person who treated everybody. In this model, I realize that I can be more of an executive and help other people using their expertise and their knowledge, which is different from the chiropractors, to help people.” It is the chiropractor giving up some control to expand this facility to give patients more options and more ability to get well. That is from the viewpoint of the chiropractor.
