From Vision to Practice: Dr. Jeff Shad’s Journey

In this episode, we interview Dr. Jeff Shad D.C,  about how he began his career as a chiropractor and how his practice has developed over the years. He shares his experiences, the progress he has seen in his field, and what continues to motivate him today. This conversation offers a look at both the professional journey and the passion behind his work.

Janice Wood
 Host and Producer of A Senior Citizens Forum &
Insights with Entrepreneurs
Owner of Benefits4U2 Insurance Services
Janice@benefits4u2.com
(310) 245-0332
License #0F35236

Dr Jeff Shad D.C
Jeff@misurgical.org
(949) 988-0445

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Have you ever wondered what integrative medicine is? Well, today on Insights with Entrepreneurs, we're going to meet with Dr. Jeff Shad of Minimal Invasive Medical Group, where he's going to talk about how chiropractic, physical therapy, orthopedies, neurology, and many other subjects work with the whole human body. So let's go in and meet with Dr. Shad. Hi, Dr. Shad. Welcome to Insights with Entrepreneurs.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Let's go back and talk about your minimally invasive medical group and what exciting things they're doing. Thank you. Come on. Okay. Well, Dr. Shad, welcome to Insights with Entrepreneurs. I'm excited to talk about your business that you have in Orange County at three different locations.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Yes, thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Yes, I know you're located right now. We're in Irvine. You have two other locations, one in Lake Forest and one in Mission Viejo.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

Okay. That's right. Well, let's first talk about how did you become a chiropractor? I know you went, started your education at Pierce College in Woodland Hills.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Yeah, so I migrated here when I was 14 years old from Germany. By the time I learned the language, it was my ninth grade, 10th grade. I was able to finish all my prerequisite in high school. Didn't have any more math or science or physics, anything left. 11th and 12th grade, I started college and high school. I ended up at Pierce College. I didn't know what I'm going to become at that moment. So I just started taking the general prerequisite. And that's how I ended up in Pierce. And then after I graduated from high school, I continued at Pierce for a few years. Then as I was going through what I want to do for as a profession, what I like to do, I wanted to become an orthopedic surgeon first. Then I had to take the MCAT. Friend of mine, he was like a mentor, he was older than me, bodybuilder, Persian gentleman, very nice guy. He's like, you know, I heard that you're very good with your hand. You're very handy. And you know, my cousin, his cousin at that time, is a chiropractor. And you should go check out his practice. It's in Santa Monica. Blah, blah, blah. Right after that, I got the person's information. I ended up at his chiropractor office. I saw, wow, what an elaborate setting. His patients were all happy. They they loved him, they hugged him. Like there were such an intimate relationship between him and his patient. That environment caught me. I'm like, wow. And all healing profession. It's all with hands. It's all with consultation about your nutrition, lifestyle, and so on and so forth. You're a doctor of chiropractic, so we really work on a holistic approach. You touch me versus doing surgery. And uh, although I had, you know, all the prerequisite requirements to do what I have to do as a surgeon if I wanted to become one, I chose to uh go seek um information about chiropractic at uh LACC, Los Angeles College of Chiropactic. And currently it's in Whittier. It's one of the best colleges for four-year graduate school. Checked out the prerequisite for chiropractic, went to Western University and finished the uh accelerated program to on science, biology, biochemistry, so on and so forth, physiology. I took a two-year crash course in six months period. So I was able to get into chiropractic school at the age of um 20, almost 21, barely almost 21. And I graduated right before I was 25. So I was one of the youngest ever graduated from chiropractic college in the United States of America.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

Oh my god, congratulations.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

I think I still told the record.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Because that's how I started chiropractic.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

So how did you go? You were out in the San Fernando Valley. Right. And then you you here in Orange County. So you and you started your first business, your first practice until around 1994. 94, okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Right after I graduated, almost right before I graduated from Carpathi College, I found a space in Garden Grove. Um, I speak German and Farsi and English. I understand a little bit of Turkish and a little bit of Arabic. So I'm I'm lit I'm fluent in three, understand five languages. The guy, the owner of the building was German, and uh we clicked. I spoke speaking German to him and he he fell in love with me, and I I made a deal with him, six months free rent, another six months for 500 bucks a month. Oh my goodness. So I and I got the place had it was a chiropractic office vacant. Actually had some equipment. The guy kind of left it, I don't know what happened to the previous chiropractor there, and he left the extra unit behind. So I kind of got it half furnished for for six thousand for the first year.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

So it was like steel. Very good. So you started your first practice in Garden Grove. And then found yourself in Irvine.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

Well, no, and then I find myself, then I went to Costa Mesa. Oh, Costa Mesa. Opened a second office. Uh, I had a orthopedic surgeon who was coming to my office seeing some of our patients every other week, and then became every week, and then we became friends. And he wanted to open a surgery center. And I didn't know anything about surgery center. I'm two years into practice at that time. And um he found a place in Huntington Beach. So then he asked me if I want to help him, if I want to be his partner, and we became partners in Denver. I took over after uh being an administrator and a chief operating officer of that surgical center. At that time, the law didn't require to be accredited. Six months after we opened, the new law came, AB595, that required the surgery centers to be a freestanding, accreditated or licensed by the state of California, certified by Medicare or an accreditation agency. Okay. So I took that task on without knowing anything about it. And I did a pretty good job. I got it passed. Um, so that was our first surgery center with the orthopedic surgeon. I became his partner at two clinics at that time. Mind you, I'm only 27 at that time.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

Well, that's that's very good because you've you're doing something. You're you started out, you became a CEO of orthopedic business with your chiropractic. So that's like integrated type medicine.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

Exactly. It's integrated medicine, multi-specialty. That's all that got me excited because as remember, I said I wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

So I kind of found a passion. I'm like, oh great. So now I have orthopedic surgeon as a partner. I like orthopedic cases. I'm very good at spine, and I'm very good with my hand. So if I couldn't, I tried to treat my patient. Nine out of ten patients got better without surgery, without any medication. There's one always that needed some sort of intervention, surgical intervention. And I recommended my partner at that time, and then they got more doctors involved, so we became integrated, multi-specialty, doctors for spine, extremities, yada yada. It just kept expanding into pain management, neurosurgery, cosmetic surgery. It just evolved.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

I mean, it's evolved. I'm here in this room right now, which is actually a small gym for physical therapy.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

So only you're doing chiropractic, you're doing physical therapy.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Right. So that's another part of our integrated medicine that we are uh promoting. So minimally invasive medical group, I picked that name because it's minimum, whatever procedures they do surgically, it's minimal up minimally invasive. I could say almost non-invasive using small holes, cameras, microscopes, so on and so forth. Catheters, very, very small incisions, so less trauma to the patient. The other department we have is holistic chiropractic. And then next to it, we have to have rehabilitation and physical therapy, which we see here. So again, integrated type of medicine. We work together with physical therapists, doctor of physical therapy here at in this gym. They use the gym to rehabilitate the patients after the initial treatment with chiropractic, or they could come directly to PT. Depends what conditions they have. We customize the protocol to patients' need. It's not always chiropractic. So I don't force one line of uh treatment, whatever fits your situation is what I prescribe.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

I love what you just said. You customize. Yes. Because I look at each individual as being a unique exactly. A unique person. I want to say unit, but I don't think unit's a correct word. Each of us is different.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

Everyone has their own genetic. Everyone is uh formed, although we all human, we all have we all evolve, we all form the same way. All cells are pretty much replicating, dividing, and constantly renewing themselves. And um, but every individual could have a different perception for pain. Um some patients could have thyroid issues and they feel more pain. Some patients are deficient on vitamin D, vitamin B, they're they're nervous, they they they could have fibromyalgia. So if you look at the patient and you try to use one method for every individual, you might be too sensitive to acupressure. Like if I start doing a lot of acupressure on your shoulders, back, if you have fibromyalgia, you can't tolerate it. But then another therapist I have here does active release technique or does some mild exercises specifically for your condition. That individual, like you said, that specific um person.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

Yeah, because I find that I I talk to people, some people just they eat everything.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

And we're gonna talk on another show about eating, okay. And how you eat. Or maybe one person never gets up off the couch and somebody else may jog 10 miles a day. Right. So, I mean, and your work, what type of work you've done.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

You look at the individual um systems, right? So every individual comes in, you they come in with some kind of a symptom. Uh this is what you your what's your chief complaint when they come in? Like, what is bothering you? And they start by giving me, normally they give me 20 years of 20 years up to 30 years. When I was 18 years old, I fell off the horse. When I was 20, I got hit from you know really hard from behind. I don't know. They all have their stories. So something has initiated that injured body part, and in their mind, a lot of time they're stuck on that incident. To me, at that moment, I listen to it, but I then look at their body and I look at what would be ideal weight for them. That's the first thing I don't even tell them. Well, as soon as I look at you, and as a patient, I'm looking at you from head to toe. You're talking about your disc herniation in your low back, and I'm looking at your MRIs, and they're saying it's three millimeter, four millimeter, and I'm looking, saying that's not what's causing his pain. Because I see patients up to 12, 16 millimeters. I've seen the I know the characteristic of a discogenic pain, but that patient is stuck on that mode. So I have to work on their psyche, I have to work on their their nutrition, their overweight, I have to look up, work on what kind of work they do, how often do they sit, how long do they sit, do they get up and take a break? Do have are they ergonomically correct that work? We get into slowly, get into the entire body as a whole. That's why the multi-specialty clinic works great for my patients, because I'm become their gatekeeper.

SPEAKER_01 12:57

So do you see each patient and do an intake and then refer them to the other as much as I can actions?

SPEAKER_00 13:04

As much as I can. But of course, um every doctor is an independent contractor here, and they have their own patient flow. But once they get stuck or they need my opinion, I do get involved. Majority of time, yeah, the answer is yes. I do see most of the patients that enter the chiropractic and physicotherapy clinic. I'm the clinical director, so I do see them, almost every one of them, and kind of assess their case, review their records, and shed some light on uh their condition and give them advice.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

Because I noticed on the when I was reading about the other staff people that you had, especially the professional staff that are doing the medical part of it, okay? They all have some really interesting, unique backgrounds. Right. So you're being able to put this unique clinic together.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

Exactly. Yeah, what I do is um I interview every pretty much every one of these doctors that join the practice. Um, of course, I do have a medical director uh who oversees all the medical services because this is a medical corporation, it's a medical group. It has to be um medically directed by a group of physicians. Uh, and being a chiropractic physician, uh a non-medical physician, uh, I stick to advic to the patient, and I'll see what background these doctors are coming from, and I share my philosophy with them. And often they blend and they match my philosophy. But if they don't match my philosophy, kindly I'll find a way to go to the next physician that I think is best fit in this environment. So yeah, so I do, in a way, um interview the doctors to certain degrees.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

Because of the type of practice you have and medical group it has, you want to be working with people who are like-minded. Like-minded, exactly. Like-minded. And I know interviewing people is not easy.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

No. And then a lot of them come in, um, a lot of them come in with their own ego under shoulder. And um, but I find a eventually I find a pacifier to pacify the physician in the right way, in a good way. So give him a good environment. Physicians are busy, they're they're treating, you know, some complicated cases, especially surgeons. They they're surgeons. They are, they just need to, you know, you come in, you have a blown disc, all he's thinking about is this is what I could do surgically. He doesn't have the time like me to talk to you about other non-surgical remedies, what you could do as far as nutrition, what kind of a lifestyle change you have to do to address it if you don't want surgery or even if you have surgery. So, yeah, so so it's it's a very uh challenging job that I have, but I love it.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

This this I can tell you love it. I can hear it, I can see it in your eyes, and I can see it in your smile.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

Thank you. That that you love what you're doing, and you're out to make sure that your patients' lives are better when they walk out your door than they were when they walked in.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

Exactly. And I use my my own lifestyle, my own life as an example often for them. I show them my uh, I show them an MRI, I have it all, I have the MRI um blocked, whatever the name is, and sometimes they come in with small discarniation or something that is insignificant in my eye. And um I say, hold on for a second, let me show you something. And I show them the MRI, and I said, Who do you think this who do you think this MRI belongs to? And they're like, oh my god, that looks bad. Like, this person is working out every day an hour, goes four-wheel driving, plays with his kids often. Yeah, maybe he doesn't run 10 miles a day, but he's very active and he's in shape. And they go, Oh, there's no way. What did you do for him? I said, Well, that person is me. You're looking at me. And I try to keep fit all the time. I try to keep my ideal weight. So I walked to talk, and they see they see an example in front of them, they go, Wow. And uh, you know, although my hair, my hair is turning gray, but often they can't guess my age. But um, now that my I'm getting all kinds of gray hair, it's easy to guess, but but when I was like 45, they thought I was 35 or 32, so that's what I do. I I inspire them, I I excite them. Sometimes they forget about their pain. It's very interesting how psychologically I could make them turn around. And they're like, wait, we didn't even do treatment yet. I'm like, yeah, how you feel? They're like, oh, I feel better.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

I like that you're looking at treatments that are not so aggressive, like going in and doing a surgery with. So I'll I'll use knee surgery, which is not one of the easier things to recuperate from. But you're gonna try to.

SPEAKER_00 18:11

Depends on what type of knee surgery you're talking about. But yeah. If you're doing a knee replacement, it takes anywhere between two to six months to recover, sometimes more. Uh, I could tell you personally that it takes more. Okay. Depends what age you do it, too. Uh so we could get there whenever on the next show or this show, whatever show you want to.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

Well, on another show, we'll definitely talk about that more. But um, for this show, it's like, so you have an actual surgical center and right.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Yeah. So um, me and my wife, um, I have to give the credit to my other half because she um it's not easy to be my partner because I'm very busy, active mind, active life. She keeps me on my toes. Uh, and she keeps me in the right direction. And she's I actually she is our CEO of the surgery center. So I made her the CEO, meaning I can't do everything by myself. So she helps me run the surgery center with the help of our uh director of nursing and our administrator, they're both very close to me and my wife. So yeah, it's uh it's a team effort. Yes, we run that center. Uh it's a multi-specialty surgery center in Lake Forest attached to our clinic. And um, yeah, we do all kinds of minimally invasive procedures.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

So, do your doctors have any uh practicing rights at any of the local hospitals that they have to do something more than your center?

SPEAKER_00 19:40

Right. So we are uh we are an outpatient surgery center, meaning it's that's what they call it ambulatory surgical center. So you could ambulate on your own into the center and walk out. So uh more complicated cases, the ones that might require overnight stay. Actually, we do have 23-hour stay. By law, we could keep them up to 23 hours, and we've done so on some of the bigger cases that we do. Um, like let's say lumbar disc replacement, like you replace your disc in your lower back. Those, because they have they go from the front, we've done, we do about a couple of those a year on a younger patient. It's a better environment for them to do the surgery than a hospital. But uh yeah, these doctors have privileges. Most of our doctors are either chief of staff or medical staff or mission, saddleback, hope.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

Yeah, so we work with pretty much the three major hospitals.

SPEAKER_01 20:35

So do you have do you see any more growth going on in your in your practice?

SPEAKER_00 20:40

Yeah, I mean, uh we just uh we just opened the first uh outpatient interventional radiology center, which in my opinion is going to be the next urgent care center. Probably in three to five years, you're gonna see them pop up everywhere. It's called the IR Center, interventional radiology. And people don't understand, they're like, wait, radiology? I thought it was x-rays, right? So, what these guys do, they're trained physicians using imaging guidance procedures. So they use a CT scan, they use a C arm with the 3D images, they use MRIs, ultrasonic imaging to enter through your blood vessels, enter your body, and do direct treatment. For example, one of the treatments they do is Y90. They go through blood vessel to the cancerous tissue in your liver, and they inject radiation material around the uh cancer cell and they melt the cell through your through your own pathway to the cell. So they find the cell with CT scan, and while they're in the operating room, they're using live images, guiding their catheter, the little wire, get us, get it close to the cancer cell. The cancer, I would say, cyst in a way I want the audience to understand. I'm trying to use a layman's term. So that way, and then they radiate it. And sometimes they find the hemorrhoid that way, and they embolize the hemorrhoid. They kill the blood flow to the hemorrhoid internally through your blood vessel. No cut, no incisions, and the hemorrhoid would shrink. And they also starting doing that for knee arthritis, they do that for frozen shoulders. There's so many different procedures these IR doctors do. Currently, they do mainly in the hospital.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

Is that like using more uh robotic type surgery?

SPEAKER_00 22:46

It's not robotic, it's a catheter. Just a catheter. Consider it like a wire. Okay. You put the wire through your blood vessel and they're watching which direction is going. Okay. They find the pathway, the way to that um uh illness, or that cyst, or the hemorrhoid. They find the pathway there and they stop the blood flow, or they slow down the blood flow so it stops growing, or stops the inflammation, or it stops the adhesion in the frozen shoulder. So that's the next step. That's what we've done. We're probably one of the first IR centers in Orange County.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

Very good. This has been very interesting. Entrepreneur is my name for sure. You are definitely an entrepreneur, okay. I know we're gonna we have some other shows scheduled for for the future. I'm looking forward to them where we're gonna be talking about more of the type of procedures that your minimally invasive medical group does. Dr. Shad, thank you for coming on with all your energy and your uh your love of what you're doing and how you're bringing different things to the Orange County area. One of the things I like to always say, and anybody who watches our show is if you have any questions that you want to bring to Dr. Shad, or especially to myself, medically, I cannot answer any of these questions. Please, we love comments. You can find us on many different outlets, YouTube, Facebook, anything where we can take the comments from you. We love to have them, and I know Dr. Shad would love to answer any comments about his medical group. But please come back and join us again. We love having you on Insights with Entrepreneurs and finding out what a great entrepreneur you are and uh how you enjoy watching your business grow and helping people at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 24:49

Yes, that's the goal. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

And we will see you very soon on Insights with Entrepreneurs. Thank you.