Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
A podcast about practices to promote healthy lives featuring experts, businesses, and clients: we gather to share our stories about success, failure, exploration, and so much more. Our subscription episodes feature some personal and vulnerable, real-life stories that are sensitive to some of the general public.
Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
The Anchor Wellness Model: Revolutionizing Healthcare Access
What happens when healthcare providers decide they've had enough of a broken system? Dr. Sarah Crawford is pioneering a revolutionary approach with Anchor Wellness, a cooperative model that's changing how healthcare services are delivered and accessed.
The statistics are startling – a mere 18% of licensed physical therapists are currently practicing in clinical settings, hospitals are hemorrhaging money (with regional losses in the hundreds of millions), and doctors are fleeing traditional systems in record numbers. Meanwhile, insurance companies continue to thrive. This fundamental disconnect illuminates why our healthcare system so often fails both patients and providers.
As a doctor of physical therapy specializing in complex pain conditions, Crawford discovered early in her 14-year career that traditional healthcare models severely limited her ability to provide effective care. Her approach evolved to examine the whole person – their nutrition, sleep patterns, social connections, occupational stressors, and trauma history – recognizing that humans are complex, dynamic beings rather than straightforward machines in need of simple fixes. But implementing this comprehensive care model proved nearly impossible within conventional healthcare structures.
Anchor Wellness emerged from this challenge – a co-op where like-minded health and wellness entrepreneurs share physical space, administrative support, and business consulting. This innovative model liberates practitioners from bureaucratic constraints while fostering collaboration across disciplines including physical therapy, nutrition therapy, trauma therapy, massage, strength training, Pilates, and yoga. The result? Providers can focus on delivering exceptional care while building sustainable businesses, and patients receive the personalized, comprehensive treatment they deserve.
Ready to experience healthcare that puts humans first? Visit anchorscincy.com or find Anchor Wellness Cincy on social media platforms. For providers interested in joining this movement or bringing this model to new communities, contact Sarah directly at sarah@anchorcincy.com and become part of the solution transforming healthcare access nationwide.
Intro for podcast
Here is the link for Sunday's 4 pm Pacific time Zoom meeting
Well, hello and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, joe Grumbine, and today we have a very special guest and her name is Sarah. And Sarah Crawford is a doctor, the founder of Anchor Wellness, and she's got a lot of great information. You know, we talk a lot about products and services and practices and patients and doctors and practitioners of all kinds, but behind the scenes of all of these is an engine, a vehicle, a way to get a product or service from the person that's creating it to the person who needs it, product or service from the person that's creating it to the person who needs it. And many of us that are in the industry in any way are really good at creating things and building ideas, but terrible at executing and bringing them to the people that need it and maybe figuring out how to make enough money to sustain this, and Sarah's got some ideas about all that. Welcome to the show. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm doing really well. Reflecting on a rough day yesterday, spending the day at a funeral, and so I feel very fortunate and grateful to be here with you today.
Speaker 1:Nice, well, likewise, yeah, tell us a little bit about you. Know your business, maybe a little bit about yourself. How'd you come into this Anchor Wellness project?
Speaker 2:Sure. So I am a doctor of physical therapy. I've been practicing for 14 years and I have some specialty training that specifically works with people with more complex pain, and I found very quickly that the way that I was trained wasn't effective in the traditional model of physical therapy, and so most of my care looks more like talking to somebody about what's going on in their life, what their nutrition looks like, what their sleep habits look like, what their social interactions are occupationally, what they do, where their stress lies, what trauma they've potentially experienced. And all of that helps me formulate why are you experiencing this particular pain phenomenon? And most of those people need more than just me to get to wherever they want to be from a health standpoint right. Sometimes I can help somebody get pretty far along, but it usually takes a team because we're complex. Human beings are really complex. We're really dynamic. We aren't these just kind of straightforward machines like cars are.
Speaker 1:I'd like to stop you there just for a second, because what you said is very impactful. As I'm working to cure my cancer, I've learned that having a team is not just important but critical, and building a community is really what this podcast is all about, and so the fact that you nailed that right on the head is important. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, so we are. We have needs that are really, like I said, dynamic, and so I found myself naturally gravitating to other providers who thought like me, right, who recognized the biopsychosocial model and its relevance in caring for human beings, and what I found is that we were all just really dispersed from one another. We were, you know, we were across town, we were in different systems, we are on different EMRs, we had different billing procedures, like it was just all so spread out, and so what I sought out was an opportunity to gather all the people who thought like me, that had similar values and missions, and let's get them all into the same space and let's get them out of this bureaucratic red tape that is traditional health care, where insurance is making decisions. And so I wrote this business plan for Anchor in 2013. I didn't execute on it until 2019 because I was in debt from student loans and young and dumb and didn't have any money, and so I sat on it for a while.
Speaker 2:But Anchor is essentially a co-op where we bring like-minded health and wellness entrepreneurs into the same physical space. We time, share out space, we share administrators and operations, and then we support them on the back end of their business, as well as business consulting and strategy to help them really execute running a business. As you mentioned, there are really great providers in this country, amazing providers. There are people in every discipline, from the highest end medical trained to the lowest end certification based whether that's like a reflexology or a healing touch provider, all the way up to your neurosurgeons. And what really often gets in the way of them providing care is the systems in which they're working.
Speaker 1:For sure.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, anchor was created to create systems that allow these really fantastic providers to operate and grow a business without worrying about the headache that is the back end, and be in community because you can be really good and go and have your own square box that you're in by yourself.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:But then when you get stunted with a client or you get to a place where you're like you know what this is. Just this is outside of my canoe.
Speaker 1:And you'll always find that probably quicker than you thought.
Speaker 2:Exactly, but then you have nowhere to send them right, you've got no other brains to bounce ideas off of or borrow, and so I wanted to create a place where people could be autonomous and independent in their own practices but still have the support that a system traditionally offers, and so that's what Anchor is. So at this point we have physical therapy, nutrition therapy, physical therapy, nutrition therapy, trauma therapy, massage therapy, strength training, pilates, yoga therapy, health coaching. Uh, if I had my way, by the end of the year we would have an internal medicine, functional medicine, orthopedics, mental health.
Speaker 1:So we still have a lot of disciplines or therapies that are emerging right now, like ozone therapy and different oxygen modalities that I'm working with a lot with. You know my cancer, and most of them, or many of them, are not covered by traditional insurance, or many of them are not covered by traditional insurance and they're expensive and people need to find a way to navigate that, and I think that there's a bridge that can be built. Sounds like what you're talking about is a perfect place for something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think, when you really think about it, who is winning when we look at traditional healthcare right now? It's not the consumer, certainly not us, it's not the consumer, it's not the providers.
Speaker 2:No, their burnout rates are exceptional. They're leaving. 18% of licensed physical therapists in this country are working in a clinic right now Right One-eighth. That's astonishing. Physicians are leaving. There's a mass exodus of primary care doctors leaving these giant organizations, so physicians aren't benefiting. The hospitals aren't winning. These hospitals regionally I'm here in Cincinnati regionally there's a half a billion dollars in lost revenue year to date, so far this year.
Speaker 1:Everybody's leaving, except for the insurance companies.
Speaker 2:Who's winning? The insurance companies, right, and so we won't get there until there are more providers like us who say we're not going to participate with you insurance because the longer we continue to participate, the more complicit we are in their systems. So you're going to see it, but now what you'll? What you have probably found is like in my physical therapy practice that I own, we bill at about one half to a third the amount that insurance-based practices bill. But when you go back to pre-1950s insurance, where all people paid for in their monthly premium was catastrophic care, right, hospitalizations, and you're now just paying that minimum premium, that's like, hey, when I'm really sick I need you, but when I'm kind of sick, I got it, I got myself. I think we're watching that happen, but it's only going to happen when more and more providers start to pull out of these.
Speaker 1:Even with that I mean, that's the route I had to go, being self-employed and not having, you know, having to put all my energy into this you get this deductible that says, well, we're not going to give you much of anything until you pay that. And so, for even the little stuff on the way to a big thing, you'll have this overwhelming deductible to cover because your premiums were quote unquote low, and you put yourself either way into this unsolvable problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's the thing. People just don't understand how insurance works Exactly. Yeah, and that's the thing People just don't understand how insurance works. I think the more due diligence people do when they're choosing their insurances. You know you're starting to see a lot more of these like MedShare programs, pop up. A lot of them are sort of religious based, but that doesn't require you to be.
Speaker 1:Right yeah.
Speaker 2:That's what true insurance is. It's let's all put money into a pot right, pull from it when we need it, exactly. And large businesses do that. They self-insure. And you see, you know a lot of these hospital systems are self-insured right, they're not paying the insurance companies exactly um, but anyway you know.
Speaker 2:so I think it really my perspective is that every person has the ability to heal, right, and just like every individual who wants to be a business owner has the ability to succeed. But what is in your internal and external environment is what matters the most, and it's really quite basic for most of us, right? It's having the right people around you, having the right nutrition, having the right hydration, getting sleep and moving your body.
Speaker 1:And that is the same whether we're talking about a consumer of health care services or a provider of the show. I just really want to emphasize that that the community that you build is maybe one of the most important tools, because it's you're. No matter what you're doing, you can't do it all. And no matter what you're learning, you won't learn it all, and if you can surround yourself with people that have an expertise or additional experience in any one of the points, it can be so valuable or you don't have to start from scratch, especially if you're dealing with a serious illness or injury, you have to put so much energy at that alone that it takes away from your ability to go find and learn new things and to have a community that you can rely on. You know a vetted group of people that you can say well, I know, if I go here, I'm more likely not to be led down a wrong path and more likely to be led down a good path. I think that's some of what you're talking about here.
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure. So you know, for our business owners that we support that's exactly what we do, right? Instead of you, joe, going to start your business and you know some square box down the road and me, sarah, go in and you know I'm going to go try and find all my own services. Right, I got to decide who to get internet from, decide who to pay water to decide what system to use to keep track of my scheduling and appointments and medical records. You know we're collecting that.
Speaker 2:But also you get to this point where, like, okay, that's all like the foundation, the stuff you need to operate, but then it's like, but now how do I start to grow? And so you get to learn from other people's shared experiences, right, hey, I'm thinking about mentoring into this digital advertising. Has anybody had any experience with that? Who'd you try? What should I know? Going into these conversations with so-and-so? And it's the same thing we do as consumers, right? Hopefully, not everybody does, but hopefully you're pulling your friends to say, hey, has anybody been to this place or seen this doctor? Somebody just told me I needed surgery, but I'd like to get a second opinion. Anybody have somebody they recommend, and so, again, it's the same thing. That's what I said to you before the show. No matter what the audience is, we all have the same basic needs.
Speaker 2:Right needs and having people in your corner, people in your sphere of influence, that you can pop ideas off of and get feedback from right. That's the other important thing is being open to feedback. And you might say, hey, Sarah, I'm going to go see this particular provider and if you're not open to feedback, I'm going to say, okay. But if you're open to feedback and I've got some past experiences with them, I don't think that's the best place for you to go. But you have to be willing to be open for feedback and that is not always the case. I've seen that clinically as a practitioner for 14 years, where patients come in and they want to be better, but they don't want to do the work and they're not open to changing.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Right. They're not open to walking away from a really tumultuous marriage that they know has never worked, or a challenging job, or creating some sort of energetic barriers to you know a mother-in-law.
Speaker 1:Who knows. You know, there's a couple of questions that I generally look at as to determine if somebody is even willing to have a conversation, and I use that. As my energy is diminished, I need to be very careful where I put it, and so I'll ask somebody well, what's your goal, what are you trying to accomplish and what are you willing to do? And if you can answer both of those questions honestly, then it tells me if we're ready for a conversation or if I say well, thank you for your time and I wish you well, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's so true, and I think when you ask that more consistently, you probably realize how few people are really, you know, compatible.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly. And we waste so much time trying to convince people of things and you're never going to do that unless they're seeking those things you're trying to. You have to offer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the nice thing about Anchor because we are such a specialty collection, we generally get people here who do want to make change. Right, and I think that's the other piece about taking insurance out of it is you get to work with people who are choosing the services that they want. They're typically in the driver's seat themselves. Right, they're not being dictated to. Hey, I want you to go see this person and do this procedure and get this test done and try this supplement, and blah, blah, blah, blah. Right, they're in the driver's seat. They're coming to somebody in our organization for guidance, support, um, navigation potentially. But they also own the decision, right, they're not just like, well, whatever insurance pays for I'll take. Right, they're saying I have, uh, my own autonomy in this, in this situation and for this condition, and I have an outcome that I want to go after, and so the motivation's there. And when you have motivation, you can almost always get what you want.
Speaker 1:Right, it's huge. I mean, you know you can tell the person that's driven. That's why you know I love doing this show, because generally the guests that I bring in have that motivation. They believe in what they're doing enough that they really are exuberant about sharing it and you can just tell. That's why I like to look you in the eye because I can tell you're not reading off a script and just saying the thing you've said a thousand times. You're sharing your experience and that's powerful. And when somebody is moved to do something and they have to go outside of the norm to get it, most people won't do that. Most people will just stay with their standard of care and do what the doctor says, or you do what the insurance says. They say they can't do it. I guess I can't do it. And yet there are some of us that say, well then, let me find another way. And I think those are the people finding you.
Speaker 2:Well then, let me find another way, and I think those are the people finding you. Yeah, yeah, and you know, I'm always, I'm always mindful to say that like I think this country has some of the smartest people.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Some of the smartest people.
Speaker 1:Some of the dumbest too.
Speaker 2:I didn't say that, joe, you did.
Speaker 1:I know, but that's OK, it's my show. I can say it if I want to.
Speaker 2:But no, we do. It's just that our systems don't allow it right. It is reactive and it is sick care, and we all know it. And as long as providers continue to be complicit in it, it is going to be that way.
Speaker 1:And so my goal.
Speaker 2:My why is I want to change how healthcare is accessed. That's all I care about. That is what I live for every single day. Because I see way too many people get to me and I'm just a measly little physical therapist, right, you know, bottom of the totem pole in the healthcare sphere. They get to me and they're really in bad shape and simple things make a world of difference, right? All of a sudden they're off statins. All of a sudden they're eating more vegetables. All of a sudden their cholesterols come down, they're sleeping better, they've lost a little weight. Because we talked about one thing, right, we've got the time to have those conversations. And when you work in an insurance based setting, you don't, because it is about volume, yes, volume over everything else. And and that's the job don't?
Speaker 1:care about you genuinely, genuinely. If you find a practitioner, a doctor who does, that's challenge, they don't care about you genuinely. If you find a practitioner or a doctor who does, that's wonderful. They don't always, but it's more likely. But to the insurance people, you're a number, yeah, and it's going to be more than that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the providers do they? Just their hands are tied.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Their hands are tied because they've got somebody booked 10 minutes later and they get bonus based off of customer satisfaction. And if you sit for an hour waiting for an appointment you're going to be pissed. So you know they're. They're in a damned if they do and damned if they don't situation. So I try not to fault the providers as much as possible. Some are to your point, yeah, just not good, just you know, basically cashing a check. But there are a lot of really passionate, intelligent people out there that just can't figure out a way. And health education in this country is exceptionally expensive.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:So you've got people who are coming into their positions in these really kind of quite powerful positions, who are upside down and wealth.
Speaker 1:Right Also just to spend their time thinking about that, and that's that takes away from you to execute the practice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I consistently tell people not to go into physical therapy today. You know, if I've got a high school student that will observe with me, I'm like, don't, don't like if you're lucky enough to practice in a setting like this, but it's hard. It's hard because I don't have insurance feeding me patients, right? So we have to go find our own clients and we have to keep them happy and we have to be really unique.
Speaker 2:And we spend a lot of time with people, so you're absorbing a lot of people's stuff. You've got to know how to manage that, so, um, and not everybody can, so yeah, so it's an interesting time and space, and I think what Anchor is hoping to solve for is is creating that place where people can still work in the way that they were trained and what they went to school for in the first place.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:And create some wealth for themselves, sure Without having to, you know, sell their soul to the devil.
Speaker 1:I couldn't agree more. I'm curious we're getting a little low on time, but I'd like to hear about the genesis, the first. As you just begun this, you know you made the leap, you opened the doors. Tell me about the first few clients that came through and how that worked out.
Speaker 2:Well, I opened my doors six months before COVID, so Always a great time to start a business right. So there was that, so we opened in July of 19, and then obviously COVID started, and the blessing of COVID for this situation is real estate became widely available.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And so I took a leap of faith and expanded in August of 20, unsure of whether or not I'd be the only person in the fiscal space or not, and it took us about a year to really get another. The new will come right, yeah, yeah. And so you know that's been an interesting thing that I think has changed since COVID. There's a lot more access to telehealth. I personally and I'm an N of one in my opinion means nothing to most people, but I personally believe that we as healthcare providers have a responsibility to get people into physical space with one another.
Speaker 1:I agree there is some things with an initial consultation with telehealth, but beyond that that one-on-one time is is instrumental.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think if you are taking a biomedical approach, telehealth works just fine, right Cause I can look at labs, I can look at some images, you know.
Speaker 2:But when we are talking about biopsychosocial and I need to know, when I bring up like oh, how'd you get here today and you sit back in your chair a little weird, or you cross your arms or maybe you start to shake your foot, I need to be able to see that, right, or I need to know what happens.
Speaker 2:I need to feel what happens to you when I start to have a challenging conversation, and so I do think that there's a responsibility of healthcare providers to get people back. There's also still just a lot of fear about being out in community and amongst people post COVID. So so, yeah, it took us a little while and I think this model is very much based off of real estate. Right, it's a we share, we time, share out physical space, and so a lot of people have the ability now to flex virtual versus in person, and that was a surprise and a hiccup, but the nice thing is is like we can, we can adjust with it. I just try and seek providers to come into this network who, um, who believe the same thing as me, right, who believe that we do have a responsibility to being in physical space with somebody.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it.
Speaker 2:But so far, you know, we're growing. I think, uh, I think we are a little ahead of the game in terms of what is happening, um, nationally, from a healthcare perspective. With this, like I said, these hospital systems are losing primary care doctors hand over foot and I think these primary care docs are not making nearly the money that they used to. And so I'm saying, look, if I'm not going to make as much money, I'm just going to go out and open up a concierge or a direct primary care practice. See one-tenth of the patients and make money and provide better care.
Speaker 2:So I think we are well set up to be able to absorb some people who are currently in systems contemplating making a move. So I think we're hopefully pioneers in that regard. But yeah, it was a doozy getting through COVID.
Speaker 1:Well, why don't you tell us about the area that you serve and how people can get a hold of you? As this show is growing, we're getting a lot of new practitioners and physicians that are sharing their experiences, and I just know that this is a resource that I'd like to make available to them.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, so we are right now in them. Well, thank you, so we are right now in Cincinnati. We have two locations, and so to find us online is anchorsincycom A-N-C-H-O-R-C-I-N-C-Ycom, and you can find us on Instagram, facebook, linkedin, anchor Wellness Cincy on all three of those, and I'm always reachable by email, sarah with an H at anchorcincycom. But my goal has always been to really grow. Like I said, like I want to change how healthcare is accessed, I want to make it more efficient for consumers and I want to make sure that providers are thriving, not surviving, and so you know our goal is to be to have an anchor wellness center everywhere you look right Like I would love to have one regionally in Indianapolis and Columbus or down into Lexington. So you know those are what we're looking for for next moves, but you know we we would look for somebody like me who has a practice and really believes in trying to to raise the ceiling on what our potential is and wants and believes in multidisciplinary care.
Speaker 1:Well, sarah, I appreciate you joining us today and, as you're developing and growing, I'd love to have you back to continue the conversation. I want to thank all the listeners that have made this show increasingly more popular and effective. We're building a community for you and, sarah, you're now part of that community. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Ah, I feel so blessed. Thank you, thanks for having me Joe.
Speaker 1:Well, this has been another episode of the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and we will see you next time.
