Course founder Rashid A. Buttar, DO, bases his practice on the premise that "Knowledge is Power", encouraging patients to take a proactive stance in decisions regarding their health and treatment. As a part of this philosophy, Dr. Buttar would present his "9 Steps to Optimum Health" to all patients during the initial office visit, regardless of the patient's chief presenting complaint. This same information would also be presented at seminars to educate the public and became very popular, eventually being scheduled for presentation on every continent. Although these lectures proved very successful, they still left the prospective patients wanting more information.
Dr. Buttar found that having to repeat himself over and over again while explaining the "9 Steps" to new patients was increasingly consuming his time during initial office visits. Furthermore, the redundancy of repeating the same information was extremely taxing on the intellect. Dr. Buttar also noted that when giving public seminars educating patients on the "9 Steps to Optimum Health", the most common complaint he heard was although people immensely valued the information provided; they wished the information had been recorded at the seminar so that they could refer back to some of the content due to the volume of information presented. In addition, due to travel constraints, the appeal of the video far superseded that of the scheduled seminars.
"Know Your Options, The Medical Series" Videos:
In 2000, in order to optimize efficiency and to preserve his sanity, Dr. Buttar made a decision to put his popular "9 Steps to Optimum Health" lecture normally presented during the initial office visit and during the seminars, on a professionally filmed video tape that he entitled, "The 9 Steps to Optimum Health". He also created a second video entitled "Heavy Metal Toxicity, the Hidden Killer" which detailed the association between chronic, sub clinical, insidious metal toxicity with various chronic disease processes. Both these videos became part of the "Know Your Options, The Medical Series" video library. It took over 2 years to complete the first phase of this expensive project, but the end result was far more than anticipated. Four additional tapes are now being produced.
Each tape is 90 minutes or longer, consisting of about 50 minutes of a lecture and/or pertinent interviews regarding a specific topic, followed by other supporting and relevant information and concluding with a number of first hand "patient self assessments" composed of real patients telling their own personal story. The so called "marketing experts" felt the tapes were far too long and should be kept to less than 15 minutes or the potential audience would be lost. However, Dr. Buttar disagreed. At the lectures he used to present to patient groups, he had often witnessed individuals who would stay well beyond the end of the seminar to ask questions. Many of these potential patients would stay as late as midnight and on a few occasions, up until 1:00 am in the morning, finally stopping only due to presenter's exhaustion despite some of the attendees wishing to continue.
When a person is sick and faces a serious illness, Dr. Buttar believes that there is no such thing as "too much information." People that are sick are desperately seeking to become empowered with knowledge that may help them get better." These "potential patients" develop an insatiable need for additional information, which when provided, results in a more informed patient with a greater desire to seek the best possible care. They will have a substantially higher compliance rate, will travel as far as necessary, and will actively seek a physician able to provide them with treatment and care they seek and need.
The Plan:
In November 2002, Dr. Buttar implemented the first two tapes into his practice. The plan initially was to sell the information packed video tapes but Dr. Buttar decided to give each existing patient a set of the videos. He also implemented a new policy where all new patients were required to watch at least one of the videos prior to the initial office visit. Depending on the applicability of the video content to the patient's chief concern, they would watch at least one video in the waiting room or both videos prior to coming to the office. All new patients receive a set of both videos regardless, the cost of which is reflected in the new patient appointment. It is important to remember that the goal of these tapes was only to save Dr. Buttar time and preserve his sanity by not repeating information. However, in addition to accomplishing these goals, the tapes resulted in rapidly expanding his medical practice.
The Results:
Dr. Buttar found that the new patients viewing the tapes formed an important relationship with him based simply on watching the videos. This crucial relationship between doctor and patient, which is essential to the healing process, was established effortlessly without any time invested by the doctor. Dr. Buttar realized that besides saving himself time (which was the only desired goal), he had accidentally stumbled on a far more important feature achieved by the tapes. Confidence instilled within the patient of the doctor's ability to treat the patient effectively without the doctor spending any time with the patient is virtually impossible. Yet, this had been accomplished without ever having met the patient previously or having invested one single minute of precious time to establish this crucial relationship. But that was only the beginning.
Dr. Buttar observed the patients would watch the tapes and then pass them on to their friends, family, relatives, neighbors, and coworkers. This phenomenon resulted in one of the most unprecedented rates of growth ever documented by a third party for an established medical practice in existence for almost 8 years. The growth exceeded the normal 10% rate of growth for an established company by over 50 fold. Details will be explained at the banquet at the end of the first day of the lectures. Dr. Buttar's clinic grew so unbelievably fast that the clinic could not keep up with the patient load and almost risked the reputation of the practice due to not being able to accommodate the multitudes of patients that sought their care.
Testing the Results:
As a result of this unprecedented growth, Dr. Buttar decided to test this phenomenon with a few other doctors to see if the results could be duplicated using the same videos. And the same thing happened. Two of these doctors, one from New York and one from Tennessee have actually shown these tapes in the local hospitals and have had patients come to their office on the date of discharge from the hospital. The results of the tapes have been nothing short of phenomenal. The success has been so great that the net income of at least one practice implementing the tapes had increased by over 400% from 1stquarter of 2003 to the 1st quarter of 2004. The increase in net income by the 2nd quarter 2003 to 2nd quarter of 2004 exceeded 510%. By the 3rdquarter 2003 compared to 3rdquarter 2004, net income had increased over 640% over the last 9 months. It appears this practice will exceed the 700% mark by year end.
The only reason the increase in level of income is discussed is simply because it is the most objective method to qualitatively and quantitatively measure the success of the videos and the over all success of the individual practices implementing the video series. Obviously, this is only one example of the success of implementing the "Know Your Options, The Medical Series" education tapes. The result of other practices will obviously vary, depending on each individual physician's own initiative, tenacity, desire and hard work. The doctors in this test had also been trained by Dr. Buttar and his staff for a day or more on how to perform certain procedures, the use of certain protocols and how to administer certain treatments. As a result of these events and increasing requests by physicians to spend time with Dr. Buttar to learn at his clinic, he began thinking about initiating a formal training program for physicians.
Within 18 months of implementing the tapes into his clinic, Dr. Buttar was experiencing a wait for new patients that exceeded 6 months. At the time of printing of this brochure, Dr. Buttar's earliest new patient appointment was more than 10 months into the future. These incredibly long periods of time new patients have to wait to be seen by a physician, who they felt could help them, convinced Dr. Buttar that he had to start training other doctors. The natural next step was to provide these doctors, once trained, with the tools such as the video tapes, to empower their patients. The results speak for themselves. All these things, and more, are now accomplished through the AMESPA sponsored, "Centers for Advanced Medicine Physician Training Program". If your application to attend this course is accepted and you successfully complete this 5 day intensive, "how to" course, and you meet all the required criteria, you are automatically eligible to become a "Center for Advanced Medicine Physician Associate" (CAMPA) physician. |
