Born and raised in New York, Dr. Michelle Rose attended the University of Pittsburgh and graduated from Palmer College of Chiropractic. Since April 1998, she has run her practice, Green Run Chiropractic. She was recognized as one of the Most Influential Chiropractors age 40 and under, by Today's Chiropractic Lifestyle magazine. Dr. Rose is licensed by the Virginia Board of Medicine and is very active in the chiropractic community. She is the current President of the Unified Virginia Chiropractic Association and is a member of the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association.
In this episode of TechTalk Podcast, Brad Cost, Dr. Jay Greenstein, DC, and Dr. Michelle Rose sit down to discuss:
The whirlwind of working under a crack addict to becoming a business-owner in 2 days
Dr. Rose's experience with the principal of the chiropractic community: pay it forward!
The fight for her veterans to give them the one thing they want: chiropractic care.
SHOW NOTES:
5:13 – New York to Pittsburgh to Iowa. “I'm originally from New York and I wanted to become the team doctor for the New York Giants. Way back in the day, they weren't allowing women in the locker room, so my dream got shot to hell and I had to find a backup plan. I used to waitress in college, trying to figure out what I was going to do for the rest of my life, and hurt my back one day on the job. One of the chefs took me to his chiropractor during lunch and I instantaneously fell in love with it. I decided that's what I was going to do, and, within three weeks, I had applied to school at Palmer, got in and went. I went to college at Pitt, so I went from New York to Pittsburgh to Iowa and it was pretty miserable going from bigger cities to kind of nowhere land. But here I am now in Virginia, 27 years later.
8:26 – Crack addict for a boss? “I was just looking at the East Coast for an associateship when I graduated. I wanted to work for somebody for about a year and, at the time, there was a job listing in Virginia Beach. I figured I can work somewhere for a year, so I moved there three weeks after graduation. The second day on the job, the guy that I was working for told me I could have the office, so I bought him out and stayed. The fun background on that – when I took the job, I had no idea he was a crack addict that just wanted money and wanted out. I got the business for very cheap. It was one of those shocking moments where you don’t have time to think and you might as well just jump in and do it, so I did!”
10:42 - Percentage of vets or military people in military practice. “50% are actually military or veterans, but 100% are related to military or veterans. Either somebody's married to or is a kid/parent to a military person or veteran.”
14:41 – Paying it forward. “With my history of buying that practice, I knew absolutely nothing about business. It was my second day on the job! I reached out to all the local chiropractors in the area and every single person here opened their doors to me and allowed me to learn anything and everything about running a practice and being a chiropractor. The only thing they wanted in return was for me to pay it forward. At the time, we had two little district associations. The Hampton Roads Chiropractic Association and the Northern Virginia Association. I was talked into going to those and then worked my way up to the board. When the two state associations unified, I was talked into being secretary on the board of the Unified Virginia Chiropractic Association. I loved it. I loved knowing what was going on and helping run things, but I really liked being behind the scenes and able to do whatever I wanted. Eventually, it became a personal challenge to be the president and here I am almost four years later as the first female president in the Virginia Chiropractic Association.”
17:59 - Most rewarding and most challenging parts of being president. “The most rewarding is accomplishing so many different things for the state and for chiropractic as a whole. That's been pretty cool. Legislation we can pass. Access we can bring to patients across the state. Public knowledge we can share about chiropractors. The biggest challenge is probably just trying to make everybody happy. We have a lot of members to satisfy, and they don't necessarily like everything you do. There's just a lot of challenges that are behind the scenes.”
18:54 - Join your state association. “You have to support your profession. It's your profession who fights for you every single day. They're the ones who have your back more than anybody else - no pun intended. They're the ones who are going to fight for you in the trenches when something goes wrong. Talking about my veteran practice, I've had great chiropractors help me out in that. You have to fight for and support each other because that's the only way you make your profession grow. That's where the money and power come from. You get more public relations that way.”
19:58 – Be a part of the tribe! “I don’t think they've ever stepped foot into the tribe to find out what the tribe is like. You can open the door, but a lot of people don't want to walk through it and feel like they can do it all on their own. They really don't have a clue that they're not doing as well as they could be doing. When we get together at our conventions, the camaraderie is huge. You get to hang out with each other, find motivation from others, and go back to your office on a Monday morning flying high every time.”
22:08 - Chiropractic services in the VA hospital. “The Foundation for Chiropractic Progress brought Becky Halstead to one of our conventions. She was high up in the military and she talked about how great chiropractic was for the troops in the military and veterans. They were talking about this Community Care program, so I got involved in it years ago. For years, it was working fabulously until about October 2023. It stopped working well because our local VA hospital decided to cut off chiropractic referrals completely. It hit personally because I had a ton of vets that I was treating, and they were calling to cry because it was the only thing that worked for them. I actually got to see the results on a daily basis of what chiropractic care can do for a veteran. It became a challenge to try to fix it in this area. It really wasn't a problem at the time anywhere else in the country, so I felt the drive to try to make changes on it.”
27:12 – The one thing veterans truly want is being denied. “Chiropractic care got cut off by our local veteran hospital in the Hampton Roads area and I had a lot of veterans calling me to find out how to fix the issue. We went through their proper channels through the veteran hospital and didn't get anywhere. We then started reaching out to different politicians and still didn't get anywhere. I actually reached out to my lobbyist, and he helped link me up with Jen Kiggans, our local congresswoman, and she happened to be the chair of the Veterans Affairs Committee. I set up a meeting with her to speak to her and her team about what was going on with the veteran hospital. We realized this was just a local issue and that there were no other hospitals having this problem at the time, but we knew that if we let it go, it would spread across the country. It became an even bigger project of just trying to fix it as much as possible because I didn't want veterans around the whole country being denied care. We have not been able to fully reinstate Community Care for the veterans for chiropractic. They're given things like massages, yoga, Tai Chi, music therapy and physical therapy, but are refused chiropractic care even though it's cheaper. We all know that they don't have to take the drugs or opioids. They don't have to get injections. They don't have to get surgery. It's the one thing that they really truly want but it's the one thing that they still can't get here locally. We're still fighting it.”
30:54 – Making a difference through politicians. “I don't like politics any more than anybody else. It's not really my favorite thing in the world, but I was just pissed off enough that I didn't really care. By the time I got to her, I had gone through many different people that kept blowing me off. I kept getting madder about the subject that by the time I got to her, I didn't care who she was. I was just going to have a sit-down conversation and get my point across. Once my foot was in the door, they wanted to hear everything. They were very open, provided me whatever access, and still check in on me all the time. It's been actually very good. She has been in front of Congress. She brings it up constantly in meetings about chiropractic. We've made a real difference.”
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