Graduate of Palmer Chiropractic College, Dr. James Raker is a private practice chiropractic physician and CEO of Ark-La-Tex Health Center, in Texarkana, Arkansas with 30 years of private practice experience including 18+ years in Occupational Medicine and Health Evaluation Services. Dr. Raker has provided occupational health services for local Municipalities, such as State, County, and City governments, and for over 50 national companies, including Pepsi, Coke and FedEx.
In this episode of TechTalk Podcast, Brad Cost, Dr. Jay Greenstein, and Dr. James Raker discuss:
Dr. Raker's journey into serving the D.O.T. community through chiropractic.
How you can get involved in helping the D.O.T. community today.
Dr. Raker's website, occmedfordcs.com.
SHOW NOTES:
3:20 – Third-generation chiropractor. “I'm a third-generation chiropractor. My mother's uncle was a chiropractor. She went to Palmer to visit him in the summer when she was 16 and decided to stay, so she went to Palmer College, where she met my father. They got married and had three kids, but I was the first one to go back to Palmer. I've also got four or five cousins that have now went to Palmer. We've got quite the chiropractic family.”
3:56 – Illinois to Texas. “I'm from central Illinois, so I was only a couple hours away from home at Palmer. I went back home, worked for about a year and decided that central Illinois was 20 below zero in the wintertime and that was too cold. I moved to Texas to get to the warmth, and I've been down here for 32 years. I love it down here.”
5:18 – Helping others, right on the D.O.T. “Early on in my practice, I had a couple of patients that were truck drivers bring this little piece of paper in and say, can you fill out this form? I looked down at the bottom of it and it had chiropractors listed, so I could. It was a simple physical and I did it. After I did a few of those, I kind of scratched my head and thought this might be a little niche market. I started actively trying to do more of the truck drivers’ physicals. The next thing was drug testing. After I looked at the rules, and it was really simple to do, I started doing that too. Then they started talking about this new alcohol testing. Again, I went to the rule book, and it said chiropractors could do it, so I added that into my portfolio. From there, it blossomed. I had companies outside of trucking calling me about doing drug tests and more. Hearing testing. Pulmonary function testing. Respirator mask fit testing. We can do all of that. In fact, there's now roughly 25 things we know about that I teach and half of those are mandated by the government, meaning certain industries and workers have to have certain things done.”
9:00 – All in one place. “It's real interesting on how this is developed and rolled out. This is mandated. It needs to get this done. The problem is it's a very fragmented society that does this. In fact, most pieces of the medical pie are controlled by the medics. It's always us trying to get patients from them. They own healthcare. In occupational medicine, the medics really don't like it. The physicals are all they have to really participate in. There are literally lay people that get certified to do hearing testing, the PFTs, drug testing or alcohol testing. When I walk into a company and offer all this stuff under my doctor supervision, the companies realize they don’t have to farm it out or order and deal with four different companies. It's all in one place. It's really given a leg up. In fact, I have multiple big, large companies that I'm the company doctor for. Every single work comp injury comes through me unless it's going to the ER. When there are 100 employees that need to get a physical, it’s me doing that! Occupational medicine is a really good way to get new patients, make a lot of income and be more involved with the community.”
14:43 – D.O.T. exams across the United States. “That's exactly it. The truck drivers sit all day long, have all those problems and need our help really badly. Remember, this whole thing about occupational medicine is not just truck drivers. There's around 12 million people that work under DOT, but it's truck, train, plane, bus, subway and pipe handlers. It's really a variable of different people, but all of them need our help and can become patients. In the non-DOT side with companies, it's assembly line workers, desk workers, everybody else. I actually do drug screens for my bank and grocery store. It's darn near every company across the whole city. A lot of doctors always ask me how they would know if there's some of this work in their town – if there's anything that has to do with driving vehicles that are large, like gravel trucks, logging trucks, cement trucks, big semis, your city has work that has to be done by mandate. There are only three states that you can't do DOT exams and that's Washington, Michigan, and New York. In the other 47 states, we can do DOT and in all 50 states we can do all the other 22 tests that I talk about and teach.”
17:42 – Requirements to be under D.O.T. “Uber is a private driver in a small vehicle, it does not have to come under DOT. Now, limousine drivers do. Anybody that takes people for pay except for Uber, like limousines, school bus drivers, and big city buses, come under this. The pipe layers or pipe handlers work on gas and oil pipelines that run from state-to-state interstate and anything that goes federally interstate comes under federal rules, so pipeline guys come into the whole thing.”
18:40 – Process of getting involved in OCC Med. “Because there's 25 things, it's a long answer, but I'll boil some of it down pretty short. Number one, there are now seven- to eight-hour webinar courses to prepare you for the DOT exam. It's a computerized, federal exam and once you pass, you're good to do DOT exams. The drug testing certification is an hour video and has mock exams where you can show that you know how to do those. Same thing with breathalyzers for alcohol testing. It's a two-hour video and has some mock exams. There's a certification to do hearing, which is 20 hours. It's a federal certification. You go to a class for two and a half days. It's really a lay person class, but I tell my doctors do it because it gives you the lingo and background to talk to company people. Same with doing PFTs. Once they have those certifications, they could go anywhere in the United States and do any of those four tests. Now, your DOT is determined by your state licensure, so you can only do DOT exams in the state that you're licensed. The other 20 or so things that I teach need no certification. It's just a training process to know how to do it. It’s pretty simple.”
20:54 – Dr. Raker’s membership program! “I have a membership program, and these 25 things are very modular. You can do one or all 25. I used to do a weekend seminar that was 12 hours long that explained everything from A to Z so someone could do that or pick and choose what they want. I've now got that recorded as a web-based video that you can listen to at your own leisure. Once you know what you want to do, I have a Google file with all the material you’ll need that I’ve gathered up over my 30 years. It tells you how to get certified, what the forms and rules are, where to go, and what to do. It has everything in there. I also have some marketing tidbits on how to market this to get the business.”
24:18 – Contracting for OCC Med. “We're working on is getting national contracts. When we get enough doctors all over the country, there are contracts that you can get from the state and federal government to farm this out. There are contracts that you can bid on. One of my doctors in Dallas got the Dallas School District, which is one of the biggest school districts in the country and he now has to farm out work to 10 other doctors to get it done because there's so much. I do a lot of small companies that may only have 10 people and need just a few things done. Every company has a little bit of this, so when look out across your town, almost every company that you're looking at needs something done.”
39:34 – Chiropractic wellness. “I have been so excited about this for years and years and years, and it's so funny that I have a hard time convincing the chiropractic profession to look at this really hard. I've literally had chiropractors tell me that this doesn't have anything to do with chiropractic and ask why I’m even doing this. Here's my turnaround: I'm doing the mandated safety and wellness of the employees of America. If chiropractic isn't about safety and wellness, what do we do? What are we doing? Corporate America is finally coming around to the point where they have to spend money on the front end to save money on the back end and we can walk in to be a corporate wellness expert that the MDs have no clue. Corporate wellness on a medical side right now is getting your sugar checked to see if you've got diabetes, getting your blood checked to see if you got cholesterol problems, or seeing if you're overweight. All they do is put you on medicine. That's not wellness. Our wellness is stopping smoking, losing weight, exercising, doing all the right things to be healthy. I'm 62 years old and I don't take any medicine, but I do physicals every day on people that are 30 and 40 and they're already on medications. We need some wellness in this world and occupational healthcare is the way that chiropractors can get in the front door.”
CONTACT JAMES
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