How Do I Bring Medical Fitness Into My Medical Practice?

Mike Koenigs:

Now, if you’re a doctor, imagine what it  would be like to see half the patients, earn more, not deal with insurance bureaucracy, get paid faster and practice medicine that actually works. Sound too good to be true? Well, we are about to meet number one bestselling author JR Burgess, who is the former CEO and partner of Rejuv Medical and MedFit. He and his partner built a system that has served over 10,000 patients and has been profitably replicated in clinics worldwide.  He’s here to show you how you can do the same. JR is going to share a unique approach to completely change the face of healthcare. He and his partner created a cutting edge clinic that is restoring health in patients by using the body’s own ability to heal itself,  eliminate pain and reverse chronic disease (including diabetes, heart disease, arthritis and body degeneration) while optimizing patient health, resulting in more zest and vitality.

Thanks for being here JR. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about how you got into the business.

JR Burgess:

It’s my honor, Mike.  Thank you so much for allowing me to be on today.  I was a personal trainer going through grad school and I was also a college athlete and was suffering from chronic Achilles tendonitis and major knee pain.  At that stage in my life, sports (rugby and baseball), were my life, my outlet. So, I wasn’t quite ready to give them up. One of my clients that I was working with at the gym had a torn rotator cuff and he was diabetic and didn’t want to have surgery. So he said, “You should go see Dr. Baumgartner. He’s done prolotherapy and PRP on my shoulder and I avoided surgery.”

I had already tried cortisone and physical therapy and had already had 5 knee surgeries, so I was willing to do just about anything.  So I went and saw Dr. Baumgartner and he told me PRP would be a great option for me. He said it was because I exercised and ate well already, which made it more likely that I would have a good outcome. But he also wanted to draw my blood and run some labs because he thought that if my cell health was in perfect condition that I’d have a much better healing outcome. He was a double specialist, in family practice and sports medicine.  From the Family Practice perspective, if a patient had diabetes and he didn’t address the lifestyle and get them exercising and eating right, or if they had chronic degeneration in their back and he just gave an injection, he was just covering it up, and not getting them functional or moving the right way.

So he said, “Do you think you’d be willing and interested in joining me in practice?  I only get 20 to 45 minutes with my patients and I know you are results focused and really believe in exercise and eating the right way so you could spend the extra time with them to really get them the best results.  Ultimately that is what I want for my patients.” So, that’s where it all began. We started integrating the patients and getting amazing results. We’d integrate in the clinic, get those labs optimized. We were getting a lot of referrals, but our external marketing wasn’t working that great.

So, he sent me out to California to work with high level marketing and fitness professionals to truly learn how to attract patients. We grew from 1000 to 3000 to 6000 sq feet and we started designing a state of the art 28000 sq foot integrated center that would finally bring it all together, since we had been operating at different locations. We continued to grow and have great success.  It became very clear that there is a gap in healthcare and we thought, “If we can do this in our market and be successful, then we have to share this model with the world.” As a result, we created MedFit and have clinics worldwide implement this model with great success.

MK:

Wow.  I know one of the things that you’re doing is giving everyone who’s watching a copy of your book for free, and we’ll talk more about that.

JRB:

Absolutely.

MK:

But let’s talk a little bit about when you found and realized that you had something special going on here.

JRB:

I had a patient that had seen an ad in the newspaper, one of the few that were working in the newspaper, about medically supervised weight loss. So, she came into our practice and she was on 17 different medications, had over six joint replacements and I just didn’t feel equipped to handle her. I referred her over to Dr. Baumgartner right away and he started PRP on her, doing some nerve injections to eliminate her day to day pain, and then referred her to PT.  PT started working on some of her injuries and then gave me movement-based exercises to work with her. Then Christine, the other trainer that I had hired for our team, took over and focused on the nutrition and working on those movements. After about three months, she was down 50 pounds and instead of despair and not being able to do the things that she loved, she had found a new zest and excitement for life. Being a prominent member in the community, she referred over 50 patients to us over the years and became a raving fan and a walking billboard for us. That’s what we’re seeing in the other communities and practices that are doing this.   It is a referral based business because consumers aren’t accustomed to models that are results driven like this. So, it’s been pretty crazy.

MK:

That’s awesome. I know something that you have and talk about is medical integrated fitness.

JRB:

Absolutely.

MK:

What’s the bridge here? How does that work?

JRB:

For example, we had a patient that was a diabetic patient that came to us and had tried numerous weight loss attempts in the past.  We got him exercising and eating the right way, but he was stressed from his executive position and was not sleeping well. So, we integrated him into the clinic side, and took a look at his bloodwork.  As I said, he had failed numerous diets before because every time he tried a diet, he was starving. So we did meta metabolic testing. Instead of putting him on starvation calories, we got him in the right exercise prescription, with the right amount of food so he didn’t feel like he was starving and exercises that he actually enjoyed. After three months he was completely off all of his medications with supervision, he was feeling satisfied and not hungry and doing workouts that he loves. Seven years later, he’s still working out in the same location.

Another example is Jen, one of our most recent clients.  She is such an exciting story. Jen came in on the fast track to heart disease. On high blood pressure medications, with high cholesterol and was 100 pounds overweight.  She was also a smoker. So, she joined our program and we did heart rate variability testing with her to make sure we could progress her at the right heart rate. We got her moving, got her doing exercises, found a community and a support group because she had a low self image at the time. Was down 75 pounds and then got pregnant during the process, which was a huge goal of hers.   She still had a 100 pound weight loss goal, but she had her baby and then she came back around December this year. About three weeks ago we heard a big scream in the clinic and we were like “what’s going on?”. So I walked in and she was so fired up because she had finally hit her 100 pound weight loss goal! But it wasn’t just about the 100 pound weight loss goal, it was so much more than that.

So we do what are called Bio-scores. So, we look at people’s external and internal factors. Externally, she smoked, she had a waist to hip ratio that wasn’t right. Internally, we look at blood pressure, cholesterol, HDLs, LDLs, insulin. So, she had an internal score of 55. After losing the 100 pounds, she went to a 95. We aren’t just worried about scale weight. We’re worried about reducing the risk of stroke, heart attack, and disease. And we pretty much eliminated all that for her through this process. Those are the life changing results that are truly what we’re seeking in this model for restoring health worldwide.

MK:

Right. And that by itself is basic but it’s also a super novel concept at the same time. The fact that you are integrating these approaches so successfully.

JRB:

Yes, it’s a novel concept.  Medicine and fitness remain segregated. So, you’ll see hospital wellness centers, they just don’t operate or communicate together. Physicians don’t know how to engage it or attract patients or integrate cash based medicine. They go, “I just can’t afford it” or “that’s not my population” or “they won’t work out” or “they’re not motivated”. First, it is about attracting the right members. We see a lot of physicians that are truly frustrated. They see hundreds of patients a week and they don’t have the time they need with them. They spend more time in their EHR than with the patient counseling and providing the guidance and advice they need, only to see their reimbursements continue to decline and be cut. But there are solutions and we are living proof of it. 

MK:

Dealing with the business side. It’s one of the reasons I’m so excited about the fact that you can actually replicate and bring this to other doctors who are frustrated with the circumstances they’re in. So, let’s talk a little bit about your book that you’re giving away and what that’s going to help doctors do, who want to participate, maybe learn more about how you are changing the way healthcare is done today.

JRB:

The goal is to restore health worldwide and we know exercise and nutrition is medicine. It’s the only way we’re going to get to the root cause of chronic diseases. 90% of chronic disease is preventable. The book describes how to reverse chronic disease and body degeneration while building the bottom line without just being in the patient room. Just like Dr. Baumgartner. He didn’t have time.  There are all these integrated professionals that can help and support getting people the best outcomes. It doesn’t have to be done alone. If we’re truly going to fix healthcare, this is the only solution. It’s not going to be the government. It’s not going to be the pharmaceutical industry. It’s not going to be the insurance payers. It will be visionary physicians that are going to take this opportunity, that see that medicine can be done better, in a more cost effective manner, and we’re just so excited and passionate about making this model really successful.

MK:

Well, you’re doing it, that’s the best thing. You’re already in the weeds. You’re doing it with real people. Well, let’s talk briefly. You can head on over right now to jrburgessconsulting.com. You can grab a copy of JR’s bestselling book for free. You can learn more about what he is doing and how you can introduce this into your practice as well. So, I want to thank you. This has been absolutely fantastic, JR. Thanks for being here.

JRB:

Thank you so much, Mike.

MK:

All right. Go ahead and grab that book right now. Again, head on over jrburgessconsulting.com.

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