Transcription
And without further ado, I'd like to present our speaker today. Our speaker today has a PhD in applied physiology from the University of Minnesota, as well as a degree and Doctor of Chiropractic from Northwestern Health Sciences University, and is also a diplomate of chiropractic philosophical standards. Without further ado, I'd like to introduce to the stage our very own Life University president, Dr. Rob Scott.
Thank you. Hey, it's nice to have the opportunity to come in and share some thoughts with you. I don't do this very often. I need to start doing it more. I know Dr. Rickman has pretty much had the stage every quarter, and as we transition Dr. Rickman to his Chancellor emeritus rule, I think I'll take advantage of coming in and sharing with our chiropractic students a little more frequently. I was, however, somewhat disappointed with the applause when they said this is the last assembly of the quarter. I would have thought it would just be a lot more enthusiastic than that. So you're just telling me that these are actually good events, and we should probably have more of them, wouldn't you agree? No. Okay. So here's what I'd like to do.
I'm always torn as a, you know, as the president, as speaker—you know, do you come in and students want to be inspired and motivated, and and you know, that's really not my gig. I'm not, as Jim Temple says, the jacuzzi experience that's gonna make you all warm and fuzzy and then kind of leave it when you walk out of the room. So I want to share with you, I want to motivate, inspire you, but I want to share with you some observations on the trends of the profession, Life University, and you as chiropractic students are so fundamentally important to the viability and success of caring, principled chiropractic to our communities in the future. I want to talk about the conversation that's happening around us now, globally, and and certainly starting to emerge here in the U.S. that plays into public health initiatives. Obviously, the coronavirus is taking up the news, and you know, universities like Life and vitalistic lenses have a different way of looking at these things, so I want to share with you some of that. And then what I really want to do at the end is allow some time to bring you up to speed on where we're at with the CCE, so that's kind of the 800-pound gorilla in the room. I tell you right now, it's all good; we're in good shape, but I want to tell you where we're at with new developments that happened in January with some of their policies. So that's my intention, is we have time, maybe a couple questions. So that's what I'm gonna do today.
So what I want to start with is this: I have a question for you, and it's not a rhetorical question; it's a really serious question: Why do you want to be a chiropractor? Why do you want to be a chiropractor? And I'm saying it's not a rhetorical question because if you have not taken the time to sit down and come up with the answer to that, I'm gonna really encourage you to do that soon. Does that make sense? Why do you want to be a chiropractor? And if you're coming up with answers like, well, I want to help people, or it's natural, or it's a hands-on approach to healthcare, I'm gonna say, well, that's all good; it's kind of warm and fuzzy, but I'm gonna ask you to drill down a little deeper. Why do you want to be a chiropractor? And I say that to you because if you do not have the answer to that question that you hold deep to your heart, that is the reason why you get out of bed every morning to come to Life University and go through this demanding curriculum and all the challenges and barriers that chiropractic and professional education put in front of people, if you don't have an answer to that, it's going to be a difficult road. If you don't have an answer to that question when you graduate from Life University, you're gonna get up every morning to go to the office, and you're gonna be missing something; that's gonna be the thing that keeps you going to practice when the shit hits the fan in practice. Because if you find what we're doing now challenging, I got some news for you: that when you get into practice, the challenge is just change. See what I'm saying? So why do you want to be a chiropractor? That's a really deeply personal question to me because I want you to avoid my experience, which was thinking I had an answer to that: it's natural, it's hands-on, it's drug-free. I got to tell you something, folks: syphilis is natural; it doesn't mean it's good for you. Just just telling you. You got to get a lot deeper into your questions on this. And I went to practice every day wanting to help people, wanting to be natural, wanting to be hands-on, and I literally almost left this profession after ten years of being in it because I did not have the answer to that fundamental question that keeps you going when people aren't coming into your practice, when payers aren't paying, when legislators aren't giving you the laws, when your regulatory buds or bodies are telling you you can't advertise that you help children with ear infections. It's the thing that keeps moving you past the pain to achieving a goal. See what I'm saying? So if you haven't had a conversation with yourself, please do, and spend some time on it and get to own it because it's going to be the compass and the barometer or the driving force that's going to allow you to be successful, not just here, but at anything you do. Does that make sense? Because you live by a set of values and principles that are yours that you use as a barometer for making decisions in your life, right? My mission in life is to provide love and support to my wife and family and to create opportunities that foster personal growth and development so we can live a happy, healthy, and prosperous life. Every time I am asked to do something, travel around the world, come speak to you guys, I always hold it up against that, and I make decisions based upon my time and my value proposition and all the things I have to balance as to whether the benefit and reward is there. Does that make sense to you? I love hockey. I love hockey. I got invited to go to the Predators game by a vendor, and I could have got down with the players on the sides and go to the glue where they have drinks after the game, man, but you know what? Couldn't do it because I have to be somewhere else for—but I said, you know what, I'm not too sure I'm going to be there for work because my son has something that's really important, and I miss a lot of really important family stuff, but I'm not missing this one. You with me? Those are the things you hold your values up to. I love this slide; this is my favorite piece of paper. I got this in June of 1991 when I graduated from Chiropractic College and went back to Canada and got licensed. I got this certification, and it says right on it, Drugless Practitioners Act. I love that because right in it it tells you something really important: that chiropractors in Canada, under this period of time, fell under something that was the Drugless Practitioners Act. You know, under this act, chiropractors weren't having a conversation about drugs and chiropractic because it says right there that that's what this is. Back in this time, chiropractors were called complementary and alternative providers. You've heard that term, complementary and alternative providers, and I always like that term because it was pretty clear as to what chiropractors were: we're complementary to healthcare, conventional healthcare delivery, and we're alternative to it. We're an alternative to it. Then it was clear, right? We're out there saying, yeah, you can be in traditional, conventional healthcare delivery, but me as a chiropractor, I'm a complementary and alternative to this system, a complimentary alternative to it because, you know what? I have something different to offer the consumer in their healthcare choices than that other system does. Did you see what's happened over the years is that this inferiority complex that chiropractors seem to have to be like medicine, you know, because medicine does this, medical school does this, and the training of medical doctors is this, and chiropractors don't—were somehow inferior to a medical doctor, so therefore we need to start taking on the behaviors and actions of something that people think has more legitimacy. You with me? So we went through this conversation away from complement, alternative into this world of integrative care, which we're in right now. So make sense to you? The integrative medicine, integrative care—how do you get people into a system for the patient's benefit that it provides them a wide range of ways of approaching their health? And in that conversation, we'd muddied the waters just a little bit, as we've talked about therapeutic scope and territory, roles and responsibilities of providers, and right now we're having a conversation in chiropractic, as you probably know, that is trying to pension, pigeonhole the chiropractor's into the marketplace of just musculoskeletal care. Following that conversation that says something like this: the evidence for chiropractic care is really strong for chiropractic intervention for acute low back pain and neck pain right now; therefore, chiropractors should only do acute neck care, back care, right? And that's literally the conversation that's over on the political landscape right now because we're cost-effective at it, and because we seem to appear to get better results or equally as good results as other providers in this space, we should hang our hat on that marketplace. Like the university disagrees with that for the simple reason that we kind of had this premise that chiropractic was an alternative and complementary to the conventional healthcare delivery system, but if we simply just emerge ourselves and assimilate into the conventional healthcare system, you now just become a therapeutic intervention for pain control within the conventional medical system. See what I'm saying? And if you simply become a therapeutic intervention for pain control within the conventional medical system, you are no longer complementary and alternative or have anything different to offer your consumer. Why is that important? It's getting back to my question of ask yourself why you want to be a chiropractor. Chiropractors are separate and distinct healing professionals, licensed as a separate and distinct healing profession throughout this country, in Canada, and many countries around the world, and the reason we're a separate and distinct healing profession is not inconsequential. We're separate and distinct because we have a separate and distinct model of health on which disease is based. We have a separate and distinct model of health on which disease and illness is based. We have separate and distinct philosophical principles that underlie that model, and we have a separate and distinct way of intervening into somebody's life to improve their health. Have you heard that before? That's not in college. So what does that mean to us in this conversation? Does it mean we're separate and distinct from healthcare? Absolutely. It means we're separate and distinct, so that's why we're licensed that way. Does it mean we're isolated and alone? No. It means we can still be unique and distinct as an opportunity to provide consumers in your marketplace a different way of looking at the—and we can still work collaboratively with everybody else in the healthcare landscape, wouldn't you agree? But that doesn't mean you have to assimilate into the way the others think and believe. With me? That's the difference here. Now, Jamal, you heard him snapping, right? So I'm gonna say it because I—you guys do this all the time—now we're gonna meeting there, snapping dolls for our age. When you snap, it's like going back to a poetry slam in San Francisco. Yeah. So that's an important piece of this conversation for me right there is maintaining our position within the healthcare landscape. How do we do that? We have an idea in our conversations politically right now, nationally, even—I guess you can go there—that the way you create boundaries or draw more clear boundaries for healthcare professionals or any political conversation is to essentially build bigger walls around your therapeutic territory. Makes sense? And then we create these walls all over the place of exclusion within the healthcare conversation: musculoskeletal only; therefore, it excludes anybody who doesn't want—who wants to look at health from a different perspective; or subluxation only, and they excludes everybody else who doesn't embrace subluxation. You see what I'm saying? We build these walls, and I mentioned that to you because that seems to be our political strategy today in our profession. There's this guy by the name of Graham Berg, Ansed Center for Health Professions, University of California, who is working with a professional group having this conversation. He said, you know what, that's the wrong way to approach the conversation. How do you maintain professional identity as a profession, the things that are basic and unique and fundamental to your model of health, but how do you do it in a manner that's inclusive of other issues? And he uses the analogy of a flagpole, right? That's the best picture of a flagpole I have, looking down a flagpole, and the flagpole has to have some integrity to it in order to stay up, right? And the ground that the flagpole is in has to have some integrity to it, and as you expand out around that flagpole, it becomes more inclusive, but the integrity of that system is still there. So what are the core fundamental values of the profession on which it can be based so that people can collectively embrace it but allow latitude to this conversation? That's what I want to suggest to you that we approach this model, not an exclusive model, but a model that says, what are the things that are important to us? Who are we? What do we do? How do we do it? And what's the value we contribute to the healthcare conversation? And here's the important piece of this: you can read it for yourself, but unless we can produce in the marketplace dollar for dollar, we won't be around, and neither will spine surgeons because it's the same challenge for them. So I'm asking you for a chiropractor to go into a very competitive marketplace that is moving towards a retail-based concept away from third-party payers and affinity plans, but people are now reaching into their pockets to pay for care more. What is it that allows you to stand out from others to maintain the professional success because we don't work as a profession in a vacuum, do we? There are offices that work in vacuums, wouldn't you agree? There might be some schools that work in a vacuum who think that political, environmental, and cultural and economic pressures don't affect them, but the reality in our space is this: if we go into a healthcare marketplace where we're musculoskeletal, there are a lot of people in the musculoskeletal place, wouldn't you agree? Now you start listing them off, and there's threats to that industry: threats of entrance, bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of the buyers, and the threat of substitutes, and this is an economic paper written by Porter from Harvard; you can refer to it, but these are very real challenges to the profession that are putting pressure on a model of care that is saying, go out and do what everybody else can do because you're competing for how well I get you out of pain. That is not a very successful model.
This is where we're going as Life University. We talk about this model of health being separate and distinct. We have what constitutes health. Life University's vitalistic model, an outside-in model or an inside-out—low inside—a model. So we recognize that there are germs and parasites and bugs everywhere in the world, right? There's no excluding, getting away from them, but you know this doc by the name of Snow, James Snow, back in the Soho district of London in the 1800s, noticed that a whole bunch of people who are drinking water over the Broad Street well were getting sick, and they were getting diarrhea, and they were dying from dysentery, and it was this gentleman who identified that the water in the Broad Street well had this thing called cholera in it, right? And from that moment forward, we have created a medical industrial complex around identifying, eradicating parasites, insects, viruses from the outside world that can potentially be harmful to the human living species. Here with me? So I have a fundamental question to that view, and the question is, well, why did people who drank water from the Broad Street well not get sick? Because a lot of them didn't. But you know, the people in these several-block area of this particular area got very sick and died, but that wasn't the question that was asked. They didn't ask why. What is it about the constitution of people who actually drank the same water that, by the way, had cholera in it, but they didn't get dysentery and die? See, if they'd asked that question in the healthcare landscape, we'd have a very different medical industrial complex, wouldn't you agree? We'd have one based around how to support the internal viability and resistances of the human body to be able to express health to its fullest potential. We're having that conversation at Life University because that is the separate and distinct model on which health is built: this idea that the nervous system is the central processor and regulator to the body's ability to express health. And at the center of the model is optimizing nerve system function. Now, I'm not going to take a second to explain to you the science behind that premise because I'm asked this all the time, and I just—I have to roll my eyes that somebody who asks, somebody is there any science to support the premise that the nerve system is a major function we're in the body? I think that seriously right now. So if that's the—optimizing the nerve system is the basic central function of allowing the body to express health to its fullest potential, then what happens to the body's ability to express health when the system isn't working optimally? We know the answer to these things, and we built this model that says, well, when the odds—when the system is not working optimally, you're going to experience illness, injury, pathology, disease, acute suboptimal organic function. Some people might call this dis-ease, by the way, right? And I'm not standing in front of you guys intentionally when I say that, but it's disease because—how do people—as a physiologist, I always have to ask this question: what does dis-ease look like? It's a good question. What's it look like? I'm sitting here, lack of ease—what does the lack of ease—that's a very circular response, Jamal, but thank you. What's lack of ease or dis-ease look like? As a physiologist, I'm gonna suggest to you that physiology is the window to innate. The body's adaptive responses to external and internal stressors are measured, literally observed through your physiology. And I hate to tell you, but when there's a—when there's a subluxation, it results in malfunction; it results in incoordination, and it results in dis-ease. Let's go one step further: dis-ease; it looks like organ failure; it looks like eczema; it looks like—it looks like—it looks like—you see what I'm saying? We have a tendency to not want to call something what it is because that's medicine, but I'm suggesting to you that illness, injury, pathology, and acute suboptimal organic function—these are serious health issues that have been going on for a long time as a result in not optimizing nerve system function. Chronic states of illness, adaptation, injury, reduced function—those are things like rheumatic issues, arthritis, ease—all the stuff you're learning in your clinical science classes that results from suboptimal nerve function. And then, of course, the Holy Grail to this trilogy is the wellness paradigm. If I can get it—so there's a bubble down in that last corner—there it is: health maintenance and wellness. This isn't the conversation about how to get somebody who has pathology and suboptimal organic function better. This isn't a conversation about how do you get, you know, chronic states of illness better. This is a conversation about how do you get people to whole new levels of health that they've never experienced before. I think that's what we all strive for; it's what we want to talk about, but we have to talk about it in the same context that people are going to walk into your office in all these other states, and we cannot ignore it. I am really tired of having conversations with people in the height of the biggest drug epidemic in the United States history that is a result of musculoskeletal people with chiropractors who say, well, I don't do low back pain; I just remove nerve interference. Your patient has come to your office for a reason. Now, don't get me wrong—with saying that I'm challenging your principles; I'm not challenging your principles; I'm challenging your messaging. You see what I'm saying? Take them from where they are and work with them to allow them to have their nerve system to express health to the fullest potential, and you know what? They may not be ready for it; they may not be aware or receptive to what you have to say, but if you're not willing to say it, then you need to look deep inside about why you get up every morning. Why are you a chiropractor? See what I'm saying? I want to point something out with this model, too. This is a nice model because you notice the word adjustment or technique is not there; it's intentional, and I'm not going to get—just assume that the word adjustment is there when we talk about how you influence the nerve system; it's through the adjustment, but it's not a conversation about which technique is better. I'm not going down that rabbit hole, folks, because when you want to start talking about it, there's very little good, solid justification for any technique being good. There are some that are great that are starting to do, produce that stuff, but let's not go down that rabbit hole. It also isn't here, by the way, folks, is the word subluxation. You know what's that? Now it's not there because this model allows you to have a conversation with a lot of people and not get hung up on terminology. I've sat in rooms with PhD in neuroscience researchers who have had this model put up on the wall, and they go, yeah, I'm with you. You mentioned the word subluxation. Guess what? Now here's what we're at at Life University: we are totally neurologically based, subluxation focused. That's the flagpole of the profession that we are having a neurological conversation about somebody's back; we're not having an orthopedic conversation about somebody's back; it's not about the bones; it's how we influence the nervous system, right? We're having a neurological, subluxation-based conversation. Here's what I want us to get in the habit of: I don't even want to do this. If I asked all of you what a subluxation is, I'll guarantee if there's—if there's a thousand people in this room, I'll get 900 different answers, would you agree? It's chiropractic. So what we're trying to do is move away from esoteric conversations about subluxation, conceptual conversations about subluxation, away from, you know, Stephenson's—the vertebrae above or below—a luxation that interferes—and if you know that one mental impulse—one—and we're starting to get into the world of having this conversation based upon optimizing nervous system function. There are two definitions I want to share with you. This one's the Rubicon. A collection of vitalistic institutions got together, resulting in ongoing maladaptive neuroplastic changes that interfere with the central nervous system's ability to self-regulate, self-organize, adapt, repair, and heal. This definition is put together for one purpose; it isn't an elevator definition, is it? It's not intended to be that ten-second definition of subluxation; it's intended for us to have conversations with professionals about what it is we're doing when we do this to somebody. You with me? We're affecting the nerve system, so it results in ongoing maladaptive plastic changes to the body that helps the body self-regulate, organize, heal. Make sense? 100%, totally researchable, and by the way, a lot of evidence supports that. With me? The other one, chiropractic guidelines—the group is working on a new one of these right now, but here's the one from 2013: it essentially says the same thing—you know, distortions in the body associated with adverse physiological responses, most frequent chiropractic correction of subluxation of our vertebral call. So if you're not using a definition of subluxation—again, not for talking with your folks about what these things are, but academically with your peers and others—please start to put these into your vocabulary. And by the way, I'm having the exact same conversation with our faculty to start bringing these into our classroom because I'm pretty sure they're not there. Yeah, that make sense to you? There is a tremendous amount of evidence to support the efficacy and benefits of chiropractic care on a lot of areas based on nerve system function, including this—this is the most exciting part about chiropractic. Do you know when I started Chiropractic College—so 30-plus years ago—we at Northwestern, where I went to school, that's the institution where Garrett Bradford and Ronnie Evans…
Worked. They're the ones who produced all the back pain clinical back pain studies. When I started as a chiropractor, there was no evidence, good evidence for chiropractic and back pain. It was all anecdotal; it was out of the clinics' office. None. Now, as dated David Eisenberg says from Harvard, there's boatloads of evidence. That was 25–30 years ago.
So my question to you is this: If we're neurologically centered and subluxation focused, and that we want to move forward with optimizing nervous system function—the new frontier right now, folks, is this stuff—prefrontal cortex and the effects of the chiropractic adjustment and all the things that are near and dear to our heart, and they're listed up there: processing, control movements, spatial awareness, decision-making, memory, autonomic function—or any of these things—areas that we're seeing increased incidents of maladaptation in our society these days. Do we have issues with autoimmune disease in our society these days? Yeah. One out of every 35 kids in this country right now is diagnosed somewhere on the autistic spectrum disorder. What are the thirty-five folks? 20/50. If it keeps going up, it's going to be one out of every two children is going to have a severe neurocognitive deficit. Chiropractic has a potential answer for that. Notice I said potential because we haven't done the research.
How about dyslexia and cognition and the ability of children to process information? Just the stuff we're down at newer neural life with eye tracking and the basic stuff is suggesting we're gonna have immense impact on learning disabilities for kids in schools. I don't know about you, but, God, that is the frontier of where we're going in health care. It's not about low back pain and neck pain; it's so much bigger than that, isn't it?
So our challenge at life is to build this model, to build this conversation that allows us to say, you know, there's something unique and different, separate and distinct about chiropractic that's based upon a neurological basis of health, not a germ theory disease thing that I have to take all this stuff to fight things from the outside. How do I reinforce my body's internal ability to adapt and resist these things? That's what the conversation is about, and you're part of that conversation. It's why I ask you: Why do you want to be a chiropractor? Why do you want to be a chiropractor? Because I hope that's part of your answer. See what I mean? Yeah. It's natural, it's hands-on, it's drug-free, but it's so much more than that. Own it. Own it.
Why is that important for you in the marketplace? Basic principles of marketing: The success of your product or professional will be directly related to the magnitude of your meaningful difference you provide. Well, I'm going to be a musculoskeletal low back guy, and I'm going to go into the marketplace that's jammed full of everybody chasing a little back pain, and that's where I'm gonna provide my distinctiveness. Okay, you could be successful; it could be a lot more than that. The most powerful marketing advantage is owning a word in the prospective customer's mind. Think about it right: Coke, Nike—I mean, they become synonymous with their industries, right? So what is that distinctiveness about chiropractic? The model itself is the distinctiveness. Words like subluxation and adjustment are just part of that. Two products can own the same word in the consumers' mind. Two products can't own the same word in a consumer's mind. So I'm just telling you, if you're going in saying, "Come to me for your low back pain because I'm the guy," and they've got everybody else to go to—if you're going to me saying, "Let's have a different conversation about health. I'm gonna deal with your back pain, but we're talking about how to express health to your fullest ability by clarifying your nervous system"—you're having a totally different conversation with your consumer; you're not even in the same ballpark. And by the way, those aren't my words; those came from *Meaningful Marketing*, a book that I think you should all read.
How to create your value: Three ways you create value through your services; you create value through cost of care; you create value through the distinctiveness of your care and message. Think about that for a second: Through your service—the office experience, the front desk—right now people go to places simply for the service that they get, despite the price point, all over the place. You can see it; some people go to places because of the service because they simply know what they're gonna get. Wouldn't you agree? So why fast-food restaurants are doing so well: Because the expectation and what they're gonna get is going to be the same here as in China or everywhere, right? You walk into McDonald's; it's the same burger, doesn't matter where it is. That's the point. You create value through cost of care—your price point. This is where we get trapped because there's this concept that if you decrease your price point, you discount your price point, somehow people are gonna see that as valuable. They don't. Okay, they don't. And the minute you start to decrease your price points, you are stuck there forever. So maybe, but be really cautious about it. You create value through the distinctiveness of your care and your message. Simple. So think about those as you go into it.
Why is that important today with the conversation that's going on? I just wanted to share with you—our—I'm continually asked, "Well, like university is anti-vaccination," and we're gonna be hearing a lot about this as we move into the coronavirus heirs era here in North America. So I wanted to share with you: Life University is not anti-vaccination. Now, as a vitalist, as somebody who believes the vitalistic lifestyle, and I believe that my body has with an inherent ability to heal and express health and to flourish without interference, then that's going to inform how I view questions of vaccination, but it is not saying that you're anti-vaccination. Life University is what's called an informed consent institution—an informed consent institution. And it says right there that we're conformed is an ethical principle in all healthcare practices. By definition, it implies choice. Okay, it implies choice. All medical procedures, including vaccinations, have the potential to cause injury. Informed consent is an ethical imperative, and we will oppose any and all efforts, legislation that take away parental choice or personal choice in someone's health, period. Now you may have a different opinion on that, but as it relates to the conversation that's going on in vaccination, what it is saying—because in New Jersey, in California, if you're following this conversation around—people are going, "Well, why are chiropractors the ones out there?" Because this isn't a chiropractic issue, and it's not, but it's a health care issue that is viewed through the vitalistic lens. So right now in New Jersey, they've had mandatory vaccinations. Here in this state, by the way, House Bill—force 15, I think it is—is reducing the age of consent from 18 down to 14, so that kids don't have to get parental consent to get vaccination. It's the first step to going mandatory. And here's my position on this: Mine. Before you inject a biologically active agent in me or my child, you will have my consent to do so, period. Anything. It doesn't matter what it is; it's an ethical issue in health care.
Why is it important? So right now I'm not gonna go too deep into this, but as—how many people are familiar with the National Childhood Vaccine Act of 1986? Three hands. One, three over here. This is a law that was passed by Congress in 1986 that took away liability from the major vaccine manufacturers for vaccinations. Took away their liability as a manufacturer. So every other drug has a process to go through except for vaccinations, which means that the vaccine companies cannot be sued for harm and damages ever, right? Take this one step further: All four major vaccine manufacturers—there used to be five; there's four now—are convicted felons, straight up. Their serial criminal convictions for corruption and fraud. You can read about it; just read about Vioxx with Merck, right? They literally withheld information that showed that people were dying from heart attacks on the asses in order to market their product, but they had some accountability there, and that's why they were sued and lost billions of dollars in that lawsuit. The National Vaccine Act excludes that and puts the onus on the FDA and the Health and Human Services Department to periodically check safety. And I'm saying that to you because they say, "Well, the safety is—it's—the science is settled." Here's a lawsuit from New York. How many people have seen this? This is a case decision, by the way; this is a ruling of the courts. It came out just a couple summers ago, where is it? 20th of June of 18, and they were sued because every two years they're supposed to do a safety study on this stuff, and this particular lawsuit came—was settled, by the way, in court—but it came to the conclusion that the FAA, the HHS, and the feds had not done what they were supposed to do: That after conducting a reasonable search of the files most likely to contain responsive records, neither the NIH or hersa were able to identify any records reflecting recommendations by the task force on safety childhood vaccines to the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services at any time between January 2009 and 2018. So their responsibilities of oversight were lacking. So I haven't even got to the worth and merit of whether these things work; the safety issues are seriously flawed, and that's why we think it's important that there's informed consent. Whole other conversation on that.
How we doing for time? Okay. I like that. See, when you have a Purpose-Driven Life, this is what it should feel like at the end of your day. Do you ever wonder like guys like Dr. Reek, when he's 70, he doesn't have to be here, right? And you think of these docs who are still in practice on their 80th, 90th birthday? Man, they're Purpose-Driven lives; they're not doing it for the money. I can guarantee you that. They're doing it because they have a bigger cause, and that should be what the ride is like.
So let's talk about this in the last minutes we have. Please stay with me if you have to run because I want to have this—I want to have this conversation with everybody so that we're all hearing the same message. Okay, and I'm open to questions afterwards if you don't have time. Come to my office or drop me an email.
So here's where we're at: We're in good shape. In October—last September, in October—we told you that we had a site team on campus from the CCE that came to review our report and look at our numbers. They came to campus—into September 1st of October—they wrote the report back to us. We showed them the completion data that we said at the time was above the 70% threshold. They looked at us and they said, "But the data you've presented have exclusions in them," and it did because we—we have IPEDS reporting. If you're familiar with IPEDS, it's the stuff on the site, and it allows things like: If you die, you're not included in the numbers; you could be pulled out of that; if you are part-time, you can be pulled out of it. There's five—there's five exclusions in IPEDS. CCE said to us—because we provided our list of exclusions—and they said, "Well, CCE doesn't allow exclusions," and we said to the CCE, "Well, where does it say you don't allow exclusions?" Because all institutions report their IPEDS data and this stuff, and IPEDS has five exclusions. So then we invited the CCE to the Association of Chiropractic College presidents meeting in November, and they came in front of all the college presidents, and we had this conversation, and it became really clear to the CCE at that particular meeting that all the schools are calculating this 150% thing differently, which isn't a really good barometer for a federally mandated Public Disclosure calculation if everybody can pick and choose how they want to calculate it. So they came away from that meeting realizing that every school was at least thinking it was IPEDS data that was reported, and some had other exclusions that obviously weren't permitted. So our hearing for the CCE on that site visit report was on January 10th. Myself, Dr. Gross, Dr. Phil Green—the chairman of the board, John Magee—our IT person, and Dr. King—the Dean of the college—went to that hearing. The day before our hearing, the Executive Committee of the Council on Chiropractic Education passed a new policy—56 rule—that now allowed exclusions for the different ones and IPEDS allowed. So they've created now a level playing field, so all institutions have to come back and calculate these things, but they're not retroactive. So everything we've been calculating up till this point is not retroactive under these new rules, despite the fact that three of the last five quarters under these new rules we would have been compliant. So what we've done is—they said to us—in Ghent in January, "You're doing fine; your numbers are going the right direction," as we knew they were. "We're gonna give you another six months, and in June come back, and this should be gone because your numbers are good." We said, "Okay, well, that's fine, but what about the fact that you change the rules, and you know our calculations weren't done?" So we've appealed to the CCE that they have a special hearing—which they're allowed to do by policy—on April 3rd because our March graduation rates will have been done on March 27th. We know they're going to be above the threshold, so we can send those in to them, and you can have your hearing based upon that; it's all calculated; it's good to go. So we're waiting to hear whether the CCE is going to allow us to have a special hearing to review material—our most current material—under the new calculation standard.
So I got to tell you, folks, this is really frustrating for me, just so you know. But the worst-case scenario—I first of all, I can't imagine them not allowing that because there won't be any new information between March graduation and June because we don't have a graduation till July. So there's no new information to present to them. So we're hoping that they're going to allow that. If not, we're waiting till June. So I—the only people—and hear me when I say that's the only people who can determine whether Life University is compliant is the CCE. I'm just here to tell you that our numbers are looking really good under these new calculations, or even better; we just have to live through this process. So I'm being as transparent as I possibly can. This is still confidential information because CCE has parameters on what we're allowed to talk about, not talk about while we're in deliberations as a member institution. But I cannot go any further without sharing with you, folks, where we're at with the CCE because I get worried about all the stuff I read on the internet that is just categorically wrong because we're not in a position to post something to the Internet. Does that make sense to you? So I'm saying we're in pretty good shape; we got to wait till either April or June. And if you want, there are the numbers that were submitted. See, there's our winter one right there; there's our fall one; there's this coming winter graduation; there's the spring graduation—71.4, 72.4—and then we go on and on and on with that. Okay, so we're in good shape. I just wanted to share that with you. I appreciate your time, everybody. I know I might have kind of got on my soapbox a little bit. Think about why you want to be in this profession. I appreciate all you're doing for Life. Thanks. Thank you so much.