An Interview with Dr. Brandon Steele
When I was a chiropractic student, I interviewed one hundred chiropractors for the DC2Be Revolution YouTube channel and podcast. This article is about the insights I gained from Dr. Brandon Steele. He’s chiropractor at Premier Rehab and he’s co-founder of ChiroUp.
- Use experience combined with evidence.
Dr. Steele: When we talk about evidence we are mainly referring to the orthopedic tests you’re supposed to perform and the questions you’re supposed to ask. Unfortunately, you find that nobody falls in those buckets and there is always more than one thing going on. I’m still an evidence based provider, but I rely heavily on my experience combined with the evidence. The evidence has grown exponentially in the last ten years, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions. I have found a happy medium that I call an evidence informed practice. I spent a lot of time doing an exam to get the best information, but then I use my experience and intuition to get the right solution.
- Learn from the best.
Dr. Steele: Spend money on high quality seminars from people who have an interest in patient centered care. There are a lot of people out there who are very intelligent and have a product to sell. Be weary of those people. You need to find the people that are doing it right and learn from them. Every practice that you see is going to do things differently. Learn from those who have evidence based, patient centered care. Take their exam forms, take their rehab program, take their business policies, and then merge it all together. A lot of chiropractors are unsuccessful and I think the reason is they are trying to use a system their not comfortable with. When somebody comes in my office I know exactly what I’m going to do. I’m very comfortable with that because it’s my way of doing things. So making sure you know exactly what you’re doing comes from experience.
- Work with the medical community.
Dr. Steele: Our entire practice is based off medical referrals, my responsibility is to get somebody out of pain as fast as possible. Then, when they are out of pain I tell them “I like you and I never want to see you again, so take everything that we learned, take everything that we’ve done as far as rehab and the advice and the movement modifications and run with it.” We are moving in the direction of outcome based care. No matter what letters you have after your name you need to know that health care is going toward outcome based care. It doesn’t matter how many times you see them, or how much it costs to see you, and how fast you got them out of pain. The reason is because patients are now footing the bill for our services. In the previous decades when you submitted a bill you got paid. Now you submit a bill and there’s a third-party administrator who gives you less. It’s moving towards accountable care organizations and affiliate clinics with hospitals where you have to be seen as a valuable resource. That means you have to get outcomes. If you do that, it doesn’t matter if who’s paying, you’re a service that people want to buy. That’s the reason chiropractic has been around for so long. Manipulation is a very powerful tool. Especially when it comes to getting great outcomes.
- Use a knowledge bank.
Dr. Steele: ChiroUp is a virtual knowledge bank. The website can take clinical information and make it accessible so it is easier to diagnose. When this interview was done ChiroUp had 91 musculoskeletal conditions. It will show you how do you diagnose it, what are the most sensitive tests, how do you treat it, when should you refer, and what are the radiology considerations. Everything you’d ever want to know about these conditions, and it’s updated regularly. There is a foundation of content, but you can go in and customize it. This is what medical doctors want to see. We have gathered data on 500 doctors worldwide on what they do and their clinical results. We take that information and find the doctors who are doing the best work. We learn from the best and integrate it into ChiroUp. That knowledge bank keeps evolving and getting better, just like the doctors.
To watch the entire interview, you can go here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYBBLTj_mYQ
Noah Volz, DC is the author the The Master Student: Book 1: Mindset: The Ultimate Guide to Success, Enjoyment and Productivity as a Chiropractic College Student.