Chiropractic & Patient Engagement: Spread Your Message

Introduction and Speaker Background 0:00

Welcome to the practice upgrade Summit. I'm doctor Dennis Perman, and I'll be your host for today. Our next speaker is a 1979 graduate of Life Chiropractic College. He's been practicing in Ann Arbor, Michigan since 1980. Our speaker has been on the Life University Board of Trustees since 2002, and is currently its longest serving member. He served eight years on the State of Michigan Board of Chiropractic, and has held numerous leadership positions in numerous chiropractic associations. Past president of the Congress of Chiropractic State Associations.

He was the first chairman of the board of the Michigan Association of Chiropractors, the Mac. He was the president of the Michigan Chiropractic Association, and he served on the board of directors of the ICR. He's authored two books and many articles, received numerous awards, honors, and accolades, including Michigan Chiropractor of the year in 1993, 2006, and 2007. More recently, he and nine other prominent chiropractors and chiropractic supported supporters founded One chiropractic.org aimed to aiming to advance the profession and raise public awareness of the benefits of chiropractic care.

Please help me welcome to the Practice Upgrade Summit. Doctor Tom Clapp. Tom, welcome aboard. Thanks, Dennis. Just like I wrote it. Yeah. And just like you wrote it. So, I can see that you have, the one chiropractic logo, over your shoulder. What on earth is one chiropractic? Well, that's, that's a great question. And, let me start by telling you what it's not. It's not a state or national organization. It's not a replacement for any other group or organization or institution. We don't have elections or politics or any of that kind of stuff, but what we are is a new or relatively new organization that kind of looks around the profession for things that need to get done

What One Chiropractic Is 1:57

that no one else seems to be doing. And then we do, we're a virtual organization. We have like very little. We have well, we have a little overhead, of course, but we don't have buildings, you know, brick and mortar. We don't have employees. So we are very lean and mean and, streamlined when it comes to our, you know, our operating structure. We are very we're a very diverse group of chiropractors. If you looked at our contributors, we have some very impressive, contributor contributors. You and Bob are among them.

Yes, we are, by the way, thank you very much. You're welcome. And of course, you make our list even that much more impressive. But we have a tremendously impressive and diverse group of supporters that have gotten behind us. And, they have a reputation for getting things done. So, and then one more I, I guess adjective I would use is, we are kind of single minded. We, we kind of pick up on these, projects that I'll talk about, and we go to work on them and we get them done. So, I think that's a good thumbnail about what we do.

Great. So how did it all get started? Yeah. Guy Brickman and myself were sitting around actually being on the board at life. I. I got to be very close with Guy, and we were sitting around several years ago talking about with all the dysfunction in our profession, how can we go and get things done without starting a new national chiropractic association? So, you know, we had very, I would say, informal conversations about that. But along about 2015, we invited, group of our friends and people that we knew again, got things done and we got in a room, we set ourselves down and we kind of hammered out a structure for this group.

One chiropractic. And the whole idea was, again, we wanted to be an association without being an association. We wanted to get things done without having to, you know, take a vote around a big table about what we're going to do. So in 2016, we actually, came up with and incorporated one chiropractic as a 501 C6 nonprofit organization. And we've been operating ever since. So what exactly is the focus of one chiropractic? What do you actually do?

Origins and Founding of One Chiropractic 4:42

That's a great question. I want to talk about three projects in particular that we have basically gotten done in our four years of existence. The first thing we did was, we took on a project we call one grateful patient for in our whole history, there's never been, at least to our knowledge, a place where chiropractic patients and frankly, chiropractors could go and tell the stories about the tremendous results that chiropractic gets. So what we did was we created a website and you can go see it now.

It's called one Grateful patient.org where our patients can go tell their stories, leave their testimonials, mention their doctors. And when you go to the site, you'll be impressed with all the many you know, diseases, ailments. Symptoms, problems that people have gotten, you know, miraculous results or seemingly miraculous results with through chiropractic care. In fact, to date, we have, attracted 4900 or so testimonials to that site. Wow. So the idea is, is that eventually we'd love to have tens of thousands of, testimonials on this site so that when people want to know the real world impact of chiropractic, we can take them or show them, one grateful patient.org

One Grateful Patient and Patient Testimonials 6:18

and they can see the power of what chiropractic can and does do. And furthermore, if you are a supporter of one chiropractic, we will give you your own personal, link to and from your website to one grateful patient. So you could literally make one grateful patient your testimonial page on your website. So that's kind of like a one of many benefits of, one chiropractic partnership. Really nice. And that also opens up the, doctor's patients to other stories about chiropractic and other success stories so that they can learn how other patients have responded to chiropractic care.

Absolutely. It's it's just a really, tremendous resource. In the future, I think we could use this research resource for, attracting like business leaders, government leaders and decision makers to the website so they can take a look at all the benefits and all the, the power that chiropractic has. So eventually we want to affect public policy with this, with this website. The next project, I think, I would call it that we undertook and you're you and Bob are really into this. In fact, frankly, you and Bob are part of the reason that we got into this.

And that is neurologically based chiropractic. Yes. So you and Bob, I know, have been talking and preaching neurologically and brain based chiropractic for a long time, but I frankly was not that aware of it until a couple of years ago. Bob introduced me to Richard Burwell. Yes. And of course, you know, as as you all know, he's kind of like the godfather of this whole movement. I call him the, chiropractic Copernicus. He was great. You know, he I bet he loved that he took, the chiropractic from revolving around the subluxation to chiropractic revolving around the adjustment.

Which is a tremendous paradigm shift when you really start to look at the, importance of that concept. But anyway, I got involved with Doctor Barwell and I read his book and eventually I actually bought the neuro infinity and incorporate it into my practice on the book. I was talking to Baron one day. Baron, by the way, is our executive director of One Chiropractic, and I said, you know, Baron, we need to start promoting this to the profession because this is the future of chiropractic.

Neurologically Based Chiropractic and Video Training 9:00

This is what the chiropractic profession has been missing for 120 years or 125 years. And that is we've been missing the reason, the scientific validation of why chiropractic works. You know, we had our theories. We had, you know, innate intelligence. We had the subluxation theory. We had hard bone on soft nerve theory, but we never had science that could validate these concepts. And so what we found was, is that we were always, you know, kind of outside the mainstream. And the reason we were outside the mainstream was we could not scientifically validate what we thought were the reasons for our success.

And then, of course, Doctor Farwell with his, relationships with the, psychologist and the brain researchers and what have you, they finally figured out why chiropractic worked. And it worked because the adjustment changes the function of the brain. That's why chiropractic works. Yes, the subluxation has a role in this new paradigm, but the role is you have to adjust the subluxation to change the brain. Yes. And when you change the brain healing and all these miracles take place and we never could explain it properly, now we can explain it.

We have scientific validation of it. We have Heidi Havoc over in, New Zealand who's validating this on a frankly, almost a daily basis. Yeah. With her research, we have, we have, Doctor Stephanie Sullivan down at life who's researching very similar, taking very similar avenues of research to validate this brain body connect and, and its relationship with the spine, the nervous system and the subluxation. So here we have almost a brand new paradigm of, of subluxation and or subluxation of how chiropractic works.

I should say. Yes. But, you know, you and, Bob, we're kind of like, you know, in the wilderness kind of promoting it virtually by yourselves. Well, doctor, but, so we thought, how the heck can we get this message out? So what we did, basically Baron did it because Baron does most of the work. I just sit around and have the ideas and he goes out and does this stuff right. Works. We created two video series, one had 49 sessions. They're typically anywhere from 6 to 15 minutes each that you can go to.

And this is free of charge. You don't have to even be a supporter. We just want to get this message out. You can go to the one chiropractic.org website. Click on the neurologically based section and you'll see, links for two series of videos. The first series has 49 sessions. Now that sounds kind of overwhelming guess, but guess what? We have like a 60% completion rate on watching those videos, which is, you know, Dennis is unheard of. Yes. Yeah. Nobody watches 49 videos. But on our website, we've had hundreds of doctors go to this website and watch all 49, sessions of this, first series then is if you know, that wasn't good enough, we created a second series with 29 sessions, and we even had a higher completion rate on the second series.

Now, who do we have here? We have, people like doctor, Robert Melillo. We have Rob Scott from Life University. We have doctor Barwell. Of course we have Heidi Harvick. We've got, you know, all the people who have been probably at your seminars already, but we have them on video giving us the the absolute essence of how this neurologically brain based chiropractic idea, how it works, how it's going to change the profession, how it's the future of chiropractic. And, and I will send you the links so you can share those with, all of your of your viewers of this particular interview.

Wonderful, wonderful. Another thing we've done along this same line is, this June. Well, actually last year we put together brainwave 2020. It was going to be a symposium of neurological brain based chiropractic. And again, we had we had, Doctor Barwell coming in, I forget all the speakers we had, but we had a, virtually who's who of this, style of thinking in the style of chiropractic that we're going to present here in Detroit. It was going to be a two day seminar. We had it all set up for, continuing education.

But of course, we we got knocked out by Covid, which is, of course, probably why we're having this particular conversation. It is indeed. Now, the good news is, is that we've rescheduled. We're going to do it all again, but we're going to do it in person in 2021. And I'm fairly confident by that time, we'll all be able to, you know, resume normal behavior. So, I think just in the short time we kind of devoted our energies to this, we've done a lot of work in the neurologically based chiropractic.

Now, if that wasn't good enough, we've just gotten some tremendous news from the Trump administration. Now, let me go back and give you the background on this story. 1992 Congress passed, and the president signed a law that essentially authorized the military to take chiropractors in as commissioned officers, just like they would a medical doctor, a dentist, a physical therapist. You know, all the health professions, all the health disciplines were able to serve in the military as a commissioned officer, except chiropractors.

But in 92, George H.W. Bush signed into law the first law that actually authorized it. However, the Department of Defense would never implement it. In other words, to this day, not a single doctor of chiropractic has been a commissioned officer in the military as a chiropractor. Now let's fast forward to this last, probably early spring, barren put together a coalition. He, put to put together a coalition of, let's see, the Michigan Association of Chiropractors, the Colorado Chiropractic Association, Raspy Chiropractic Association.

Also, there's one other one. I'm sure I'll come up with it. North Carolina Chiropractic Association also, Chiro Health USA doctor, Ray Foxworth Organization contributed to to this effort. And also the Patriot Project. So we had those four associations and, and, Doctor Foxworth and the Patriot Project, along with one chiropractic. And of course, Baron took the lead on this whole thing. They went out and hired a lobbyist on a short term, single issue basis. And the issue was get to President Trump and ask him to implement this 1992 law.

Well, as of yesterday, we got a call from Mark Meadows, President Trump's chief of staff, who told Baron, we actually told the lobbyist who then in turn told Baron that it's going to happen. He's going to sign the executive order. We even got a copy of the verbiage of it. And, The timing of it is there has not been determined yet, but, they look it looks like they've gotten they've actually got the D.O.D. on board.

Brainwave Summit and Military Chiropractic Advocacy 17:27

They've, the president is definitely on board with this, the word is President Trump is actually a, chiropractic supporter. And, you know, you being from New York, you might know more about that than I do, but in the past, he's he has said positive things about chiropractic. So here's the point. We got involved in this in this, military project. And it looks like that between now and the election or maybe a little after the election, we're finally going to get implementation of the 1992 law that allowed military chiropractors to serve in the military.

And it's a new career path for doctors of chiropractic that never existed before. It's a new way for our, graduates to get out of school and go serve. It's just, you know, it puts us, again, on equal footing with all of the other professions. So I personally am very proud of that accomplishment. I'm very proud of Baron because, you know, Baron is a guy who just goes out and he does it. He just gets things done. So those are the big three things that we've accomplished in the last four years. And I think you'll agree that, it's, pretty good for not being around that long.

Well, you had me and. Hello. So that's no big shot. So you kind of foreshadowed my next question. Why is it important for doctors to learn about one chiropractic and to support organizations like. I would, you know, that's I think it's pretty easy to answer that question. And the answer is, is because we know how to get things done and. You know, we do things pretty quietly. A lot of people haven't heard of us, but we have created a lot of really good relationships. We have relationships with people, as we've been talking about, who know how to get things done, who have big networks of people who have big followings.

And, what we'd like to do is kind of fill in the gaps where the national associations and sometimes even state associations are not able to get things done, maybe due to their, you know, their internal politics, their lack of resources. You know, frankly, the lack of, a single direction in our profession, our national associations are really not very functional. So in the face of that kind of dysfunction, one chiropractic, we've stepped in, we want to go out and get make things happen. So the only thing that we're limited by is quite frankly, financial resources with, you know, the old saying no bucks, no Buck Rogers.

Well, that really applies here. If we had more bucks, we've got a lot of projects on the docket that we could go out and and and attack. But we just need at this point, we just need more support. So go ahead with these 33, 33 bucks a month, by the way, is all we're asking. All right. Well, that seems like a reasonable amount a half an adjustment. You just use that, you just tease us, and I'm not gonna let you get away with it. What? What are some of the projected, expectations? What are some of the projects that you have in the hopper that you're looking forward to finding ways to be able to fund?

Well, again, one of the things that I see a need for being a practicing chiropractor, I have had associate doctors, working in my office for probably 30 or 35 years, at least. And it's always been a challenge to find doctors to work for me. And I have probably tried every method there is to locate and vet and attract and eventually hire the right person to work in my office. So one of the things that I see that this profession needs is a more efficient way to put people like myself and these new, newly minted, newly graduated chiropractors out of all these chiropractic colleges together.

And again, I don't know if you've tried to hire an associate lately. I doubt it since you do that in practice, but it's not easy to remember. I, I coached hundreds of backhoes on how to hire me. So so so you you probably do more than probably better than I do. So the point is it's a real need in the profession. So yeah, that's a project that we are kind of on the ground floor of right now. We're kind of, working out how that might look. It involves, engaging the colleges involves engaging state association, but we want to create a vehicle where a doctor can just go to a probably a website, of course. And put in some information and come back with some prospects of, you know, someone who might want to go to work for them.

So I think that's got to be an easier process than it is. So that's one one thing we're working at nice. Another thing that, we've talked about, and with this new success in the military project, we've talked about getting involved politically and again, politically, politically, that's kind of the realm of the national associations. And we never rule out working with anybody. We you know, as you've already seen, we work with, several state associations on the military project. So if we have to work with somebody to get something done, we are absolutely in favor of working somebody.

And we don't even have to get the credit. But all we want to do is we want to be able to bring resources both, you know, people, resources and financial resources and energy resources and, intellectual resources to solve these problems in our profession. And that might involve, like, getting involved more in the political realm in Washington. You know, you know, Washington is a hot mess these days.

Why Doctors Should Support One Chiropractic 23:57

But believe it or not, things are still getting done. You just hardly ever hear about it. So the problem is things aren't getting done for chiropractic. So I see that is something that needs to change in the future. So those are all things that you know, we like I said, we like to look for things that need to be done and then try to go do them. Well, that is a wonderful vision, Tom. And, I know you for long enough to realize that you don't, you don't make reference to stuff, haphazardly. Clearly, these are things that you're going to see through and make happen.

I want to shift gears a little bit, Tom, because you have the benefit of having been in active practice for the last, well, you know, 30 plus years. And, actually, it was 1980. It's now 40 years or two years year. Congratulations. Yes. Me too. So, so what I want to ask you is, how does what you learned and practiced and knew when you were first out in practice. How is it different now? How is practicing different now and what kind of recommendations? It's a practice upgrade seminar. It's a summit.

What recommendations can you make to the field practitioners right now to give them the benefit of your experiences? That is such a is such a big question. You know, it's interesting. I had my two associates, out to dinner last night, and, these are kids who were born, like, way after I graduated from chiropractic college. So it's, you know, they have such a different perspective. And they said, well, what was practice like in 1980? And I said, well, there was no documentation. There was hardly any examination.

We took X-rays, we did some cursory exam, and then we started adjusting.

Practice Growth, Hiring, and Future Projects 25:48

And there was no, you know, soap. No, no daily. No. You know, your patient intake form was half a page long. And obviously those days are long gone. But I can tell you this, it was a lot easier in those days to see a lot of patients. So fast forward to today. We have a bigger paper workload. We have a paper, a bigger documentation load. Our patients are far more sophisticated than they were 40 years ago. Yes. And they expect us to be more sophisticated than we were four years ago. And I think that goes back to this neurologically based chiropractic idea.

I think if you want to upgrade your practice and you want to bring it into the 21st century, the best place you can start is get involved with the Master's Circle, get involved with one Chiropractic. Go watch our videos. These things are, an unbelievable resource for this new paradigm of practice. And see, once you get involved in this kind of thinking, you start to realize. And then here's the key. You start to realize that what chiropractic does is not make back pain and neck pain go away. What chiropractic does is it improves the brain, the neurological, the physiological, the musculoskeletal, neuromuscular, skeletal function of the human body.

Chiropractic is the number one way method to improve human function. There is nothing better. There is not a modality. There is not a surgery. There is not a drug. There is not a nutritional supplement. There is not a treatment. There's not a lotion, potion or pill that can do for the patient what a chiropractic adjustment can do. So if you want to upgrade your practice, get a vision of what's happening when you deliver that chiropractic adjustment. And it's not what we were told. It's not correcting a subluxation.

Although the subluxation will get corrected. What you are doing when you deliver that adjustment is you are changing the neurology and the brain function of that patient. This is why this answers the question why do these people keep coming back? And I even I didn't even educate them properly. I had. So I always wondered why these people keep coming back. They're not even in pain. I mean, yeah, I teach them. I've taught them that you maintain your health, but

How Chiropractic Practice Has Changed 28:30

it really, I realized after learning about this whole neurologically based chiropractic, they come back because they become more parasympathetic. They're more relaxed. They're more calm. They digest better, they sleep better. They are more emotionally, grounded. When you get an adjustment, it literally changes everything. It takes you from being sympathetic to being parasympathetic. And there is not much else out there that's positive that will do that. You know, I guess I guess you could take, you know, drink enough liquor and get a little more parasympathetic or, cigarets or something, but and we.

Could you write me a prescription for that, please? They do have prescription. I want to show it to my wife. Exactly. Well, but the adjustment is the thing that does that better than anything. So there it is. That's the difference. Well, that's quite a statement, doctor Tom. And, nobody can deliver that, perspective more conveniently than you. Our time is growing short for today, and I want to get from you a vision for the future of chiropractic and the future of one chiropractic. So what do you foresee coming down the pike for our profession, and how does one chiropractic fit into that?

I refer you to our name one chiropractic. You know, our history is littered with adjectives for chiropractic, pediatric chiropractic, strake chiropractic, mixer, chiropractic, conservative chiropractic, liberal chiropractic, medical, pharmaceutical, chiropractic, where that would come from. But I've even heard that kind of there's only one chiropractic. There's only one thing that we do that makes us different than everybody else. What is that? We give the adjustment. That's the one thing that separates us from the medical doc doctor, the PT, the PR, the, doctor, the surgeons, the faith healers, you name it.

We are separate. We are different. We are distinct. We are one chiropractic and we are one chiropractic because we give the adjustment. Now, what are the implications of that for the future of chiropractic? If this profession

The Future Vision for Chiropractic 31:00

can. Gain the vision of what? That how powerful that truly is. Our future is unlimited. There's no limit to what we can do. In fact, you know, I'd like to read you one chiropractic vision statement because I think it kind of says what? I'm kind of dancing all around here. And it is empowered chiropractors realizing their brightest future by ensuring that chiropractic is the consumer's primary health care choice. How powerful is that? That's one chiropractic vision statement. And believe me, if we could realize that vision, there'd be no such thing as an unemployed chiropractor.

I can tell you that no such thing as, empty seats at the chiropractic colleges. There'd be no such thing as, empty appointment slots in the chiropractic, practicing offices around the country. Around the world, for that matter. There is no limit to our future, as long as we understand the power that we hold in our hands. Well, I don't think I can follow that. So, doctor Tom, clap, on behalf of the practice upgrade, someone, I want to thank you for sharing not only your distinguished career with us, but also, giving us a vision for the future that inspires, that excites, and that is clearly feasible.

So, I really appreciate you sharing your perspectives with us. Do you have anything else you want to mention? Go to the website one chiropractic.org. There's a spot where you can contribute. We're asking you to contribute $33 a month. I think that's a great investment. It's you know, that's beer money for a lot for a lot of people. And, believe me, we'll get a lot more done. And your beer will. So check us out, go to the website. Definitely watch our videos. The 49 and the 29 session series. Incredible, incredible information.

And, it'll it'll change your it'll change your vision of what chiropractic is. Doctor Tom Clapp, thank you so much for your incredibly distinguished service and for being on the practice upgrade. It was my pleasure, Dennis. Thanks for having me.