Tue, 4/19 4:50PM • 1:42:39
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
patient, clearfield, practice, questions, judge, thyroid, nevada, standard, physician, years, lawsuit, care, jurisdiction, patel, alternative, good, burgess, share, point, case
SPEAKERS
Bill Clearfield
Bill Clearfield 01:45
Yes, yes yes he did. Thank God for Julie frost okay thank you oh, Judge doc, how are ya? Good. How are you?
03:21
Not bad for a Tuesday. Okay.
Bill Clearfield 03:24
Do you have slides at all you have a PowerPoint or No,
03:27
I don’t. Okay, that’s just got me.
Bill Clearfield 03:31
Okay, that’s great. So we know so we’re, it’s about a little bit before five of most of them show up right at five. And then there’s usually stragglers we usually end up with usually anywhere from 20 to 40. Is our is our usual crowd so they appreciate your taking the time and I think we’re going to have quite a quite a few questions. And if I got a couple of announcements, I make one right before we start and then then we’ll just you know, let you do your thing. So okay, so so your your trial is was postponed, was that it?
04:22
Yeah, the state had a necessary witness who’s avoiding service a process so I had to issue what’s called a material witness warrant. And are you allowed to do that is available? can’t really go forward?
Bill Clearfield 04:38
Are you allowed to do that? Yeah. No, I don’t meant that. I meant you meant to be allowed to avoid the surfaces.
04:45
Now you’re not supposed to do that it generally ends up with a one way ticket to jail.
Bill Clearfield 04:50
I was gonna say
04:52
I don’t recommend it. Yeah.
Bill Clearfield 04:55
So yeah, but that doesn’t sound it’s not something that’s been an ever been in my world, but
05:01
I recommend you keep it that way. Yeah,
Bill Clearfield 05:03
yeah. Well, I try to stay away from lawyers.
05:07
Lawyers aren’t all bad, but the criminal justice system.
Bill Clearfield 05:12
Yeah, we try to stay out of that. So. Yeah, so. So we have the only one one so far is Dr. Ortel. She’s one of our regulars. So and she’s, uh, she’s a good contributor. So. So just relax for a few minutes and we’ll start popping on Okay. Okay. And like I said, I have a couple of announcements to make and then we’ll, we’ll do our thing. Okay. All right.
05:41
That’s the interview.
05:43
Can. Only be
06:02
here. Big Bill. What’s happening?
06:04
Oh, you know what?
06:08
Let’s have a talk soon on Oh, man and what we can do in Boston. Okay. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Do you have friends there at Harvard? Do you have anybody at Harvard this stern anything fun special?
Bill Clearfield 06:25
I have some friends in Boston. I don’t not sure. No, we’re all moving on here. I don’t know if they’re still working or not. I’m out here in the middle. of nowhere.
06:33
I last go round. Okay. I’d like to take advantage of it. 1984 the year I graduated from medical school. That’s like 38 years ago. They had a Harvard research team said that osteopathic training was superior to Harvard training so they hired to osteopath and tried to upgrade, holistic broad spectrum integrative medicine, but I don’t know where they’ve gone with it. So I need to check that out. I just reviewed their main connections in integrative medicine and we seem to be lightyears ahead of them.
Bill Clearfield 07:14
I always I always quote Dr. Dr. T. Porton, who was our you know, our the head of our osteopathy department at our school 1978 1975 June July 1. He got up on the stage and said we’re not Harvard. We’re better.
07:34
That’s good. So in the next few weeks, I want to see if we can get some connections there.
Bill Clearfield 07:40
Okay. Hey guys, I can
07:44
Hey, I can’t. How are you doing? Everything’s good. Hello, Cheryl. Hello, Marie. that are happening. I’ll be one
Bill Clearfield 07:58
real good. Dr. Savannah, he is one of ours. connections from the country convention. And Judge Walker is on the line. He’s waiting for us to give him the okay here. So for that though, I do want to share with you this letter
08:24
I got from UCLA
Bill Clearfield 08:29
sent to me. So you know that it’s official. We scored 99.5 out of 100. And the point five was those of you that were with us in Reno two years ago. Dr. Manfred, Dhoni apparently didn’t sign the right form. He was our did that member we did the pain management class. They brought it to the AOA brought him in. They didn’t sign the right form for him. So we lost a half a point otherwise we had 100. So we are have been awarded a five year accreditation, which is as good as any other subspecialties. And that’s the top top accreditation. Congratulations. So so we’re in like Flynn. So So those of you that were at our conference, the DEOs you should already have your credits been credited. Those of you that are not I have a little bit of paperwork yet. I still haven’t gotten the final bill from the hotel. They you know, they were such a stellar folks. So I have to I suppose to come out the end of this week, so hopefully you’ll you’ll be getting your credits shortly. So, so that the DEOs or the MDS and anybody who gets the MD credits, the AMA credits so they’ll be coming shortly. Okay, so, Dr. Pitts. Dr. Nazarian will be on a little bit later. Also, we’re going to talk a little bit about we’re going to do something a little bit more formal, the last the last Tuesday of every month. I don’t know if we can get it together. For next week. But we’ll try and we’re looking to have have a little bit of a payment for that Super Bowl. So so I don’t know how much of an objection there’ll be to that but so showed me on a little while, but we’ll probably after the judge Walker’s finished to talk about that. So with that, let me stop this share. And
10:39
over here is Judge Egan, Walker. Over here now.
Bill Clearfield 10:47
You moved. And Judge Walker’s not to divulge too many secrets but he’s been my patient for quite a while. He’s quite prominent in in town. And I thought it might be you know, we’ve had some discussions over the last couple of weeks. And even Doctor philosophers group also about some legal issues. So I thought it might be good if we get this perspective, straight from somebody who actually knows what he’s talking about. You know, as doctors we talk about it all the time, but we really don’t except for except for Dr. Burgess is Sylvia here. So Dr. Burgess is is this Dr. Cruz here. She’s actually a lawyer also. So, so other than her the legal unit is sort of one of those murky areas that we try to stay away from. So I’m gonna let you introduce yourself, and I’ll let folks in as they go. Judge Walker doesn’t have any slides. So he’s going to do what he does. So this is Judge Egan, Walker. Thank you for being with us.
12:01
It’s a great pleasure. Thank you for the privilege of joining you all Dr. Clearfield, folks, my name is Egan Walker. I happen to be a district court judge in Reno Nevada. Reno is the city center, if you will of Washoe County. It’s a county of about 500,000 people. I’m one of 16 Trial Court judges in our county, and I happen to be a patient of Dr. Clare fields. And when most recently I saw him he mentioned your organization that you folks have sort of a weekly chat and thought I might have some useful information for all of you. I suppose we’ll see if that’s true at all. I welcome and suggest that your interruptions or questions to me
12:50
your questions to me will provide the best use to all of you. And so please interrupt at any time throw a hand up, let me know, Bill throw me a lifeline if you think I’m wandering far afield from anything that’ll be relevant to all of you. But let me tell you a little bit about me because it will inform kind of two broad areas. I wanted to share with you first, some insights as a patient to an integrative medicine practice through Dr. Clearfield and then some in insights as a judge and a lawyer to the medical profession in general, and sort of the world in which you all work. And we’ll see if that is at all relevant to all of you. So first, I’ll just share with you I happen to be 60 years of age, my undergraduate degrees in nursing. So I actually have a Bachelor of Science in Nursing and the way I put myself through law school was as an ICU CCU or nurse, and I’ve been a flight medic in the middle of military before that. So just so you all know, that just means I have enough knowledge to be dangerous, where medical terminology is concerned. And I’ll welcome you to keep me on track. If I go too far afield. I’m married. My wife and I are both patients of Dr. Claire fields. And really that’s where my story for all of you tonight begins. I’ll kind of share with you what I hope is a patient’s perspective. And a patient who comes kind of from the allopathic medical world, right my undergraduate degree being in nursing. I shared with you I worked as an ER nurse and an ICU nurse for years and years ago. That’s how I put myself through law school. And so coming into an integrative medicine practice was a bit of an eye opener to me. My wife and I will refer to Dr. Clearfield because we had been seeing a naturopathic doctor because my wife was struggling with some autoimmune issues and in particular, some thyroid issues happens. I also have some thyroid issues and that’s kind of how we came to Dr. Bill. So a story I’ll share with all of you that really sets the table for the conversation for me is this much to his chagrin, I suspect. Dr. Clearfield knows that I’ve had both of my knees replaced in the last 18 months. So I’ve been I’ve been a victim or a beneficiary as the case may be of sort of the allopathic medical world and the traditional treatment, if you will, for osteoarthritis in that vein, well, the story I wanted to share with you which is really my insight as a patient into your world is this. I was going to see Dr. Clearfield after I’d had my second knee replaced so I was about I don’t know, eight or 10 days out of surgery limping around hurting pretty bad. And one of my favorite stories about Dr. Clearfield was walking in and he said Boy, you look like you’re hurting. He did whatever he was going to do. I’ll share with you kind of his thyroid management hormone supplementation for me, but he did something very interesting to me. He said hey, would you like would you mind if I did something that might make you feel better? And then he started putting some acupuncture placements all around my ears and understand I’d never had acupuncture therapy as a patient in my life and heard about it, read about it, seen it, seen him do it to my wife but never had it. And he just kept chatting with me kept kept, you know, sort of distracting me and what do you know if almost instantaneously I had a significant increase in the range of motion of my knee, and significant relief from pain. And one of my favorite stories about Dr. Clearfield I’ll tell all of you is I asked him well, why does that work? How does it work? He says I don’t know. We don’t know. We just know that it works. And I hope you all agree with me it’s a it’s a relevant story. For the world in which you all work because you really see that world is designed toward patient care and patient comfort and quality of life issues. And, of course built in charge before it didn’t even I don’t I’m not sure even documented it in a formal chart. But it was a kind of a heartwarming contact for me as somebody who’s been around the medical profession been a healthcare provider, at least as a nurse myself, and then, you know, been exposed to broad ranges of medical treatment.
17:24
The other story I’ll share with you which is very relevant to the world in which we live right now is this. So in December of 2022 December’s ago, I contracted COVID here in our community and I being stubborn and being a nurse and not being the greatest of patients. I decided to delay intervention, which turned out to be a remarkable mistake. So much so that finally I started desaturating with oxygen and I became really quite lethargic. So I ended up going to the hospital is about a stone’s throw from my house and
18:10
was admitted with severe COVID. In fact, when I saw my chest X rays after I was discharged from the hospital, they were quite frankly a wideout, looking at my chest X rays. I’m surprised I didn’t end up intubated and ventilator dependent I didn’t. But one of the things I wanted to share with all of you one of the reasons I don’t think I ended up ventilator dependent is because I have started low dose naltrexone, with Dr. Clearfield about four to six months before I contracted COVID. And, you know, it’s a course of an off label use of naltrexone. It’s not a use of naltrexone as an anti inflammatory that I had been aware of at all as a medical professional and as a patient. But I actually had my wife bring the naltrexone to me in the hospital and took it while I was in the hospital. And it was discharged after five days didn’t have to be intubated never was over about four liters of nasal oxygen did get IV remdesivir in the in the hospital, but I to this day, it’s completely anecdotal. I really think the powerful anti inflammatory effect of the low dose Naltrexone was critical to getting out of the hospital. And so I come to you all kind of hopefully hopefully not boring you with my stories, but just sharing as a patient of integrative or so called Alternative Medicine, some pretty profound successes for me, as a patient as the husband of a patient. My wife gets hormonal replacement therapy gets testosterone supplementation through Dr. Clearfield and it really is, I must say in many ways life changing. And so at 60 You know, when I came to see Bill, I want to say three years ago, maybe as many as four years ago, I was you know borderline obese. I was closing in on metabolic syndrome, if not type two diabetes had hypothyroid symptoms, syndromes, symptoms, excuse me, and you know, was kind of living the middle American dream or nightmare as the case may be of being on the margin. And just two months ago, I had a full set of labs done again, and no longer bordering on type to kind of normalized my thyroid levels and really improved my overall health in ways that I would not have expected. And so, you know, not to overshare but to share some of the kind of on the edge are alternative treatments that I’ve been benefit to. You know, I was receiving thyroid replacement through an internal medicine doc here in town came to Dr. Clearfield and he pointed out that perhaps I needed both T three and T four turned out to be right, offered some hormone supplementation, specifically testosterone but also offered some health management insights. So you know, supplements that are that are short of medication interventions, Berberine, curcumin, ADK, glutamine, just a whole variety of things that really were supportive at a much more holistic way of my overall health. And then the low dose Naltrexone as well. And so when Bill asked me to talk he suggested that perhaps it would be useful to all of you to share my perspectives as a patient. And so there you have it. I really have come around to believe that a much more holistic view of my individual health but the health of cross section of the community is really much more what I’ve needed as a patient, as a professional in my community, etc. So Bill, I’m gonna pause there and ask if there any questions you have or anything you would suggest that you think your colleagues might need to know or any questions you all have for me as a patient.
Bill Clearfield 22:32
Well, so far, I’ve got I’ve got 10 bucks coming to you for that for all those attaboys there it’s about what it’s worth. So I’m gonna leave it open to the to the group to see if they have any questions i i You know, part of what we want to do is if you get, you know, share some of what, you know, what’s, what are some of the landmines that that that we we can avoid, you know, legally that’s, you know, part of part of, you know, why I’d like to have you here as far as you know, you know, if it’s okay to talk about you, that’s fine. You know, everything’s, you know, confidential, so I don’t say anything. The,
23:14
you are free to talk about my treatment. I will get to the legal landmines, I promise bill. Right, but I think you wanted you wanted me to share sort of a patient’s perspective as well.
Bill Clearfield 23:24
Yeah. So so we gets about four years ago. Yeah. So so so Judge Walker had hyaena pipes are no thyroid antibodies. His thyroid was not not really well controlled. Like he said he was borderline you know, obese, I think is BMI was around 27. And so we you know, we needed a an overall tune up. So so that’s kind of kind of what we did. And it didn’t take that long, right? I mean, maybe six months before we sort of turn the corner.
24:00
That was pretty was pretty remarkable after say, adding both T three and T four from a patient’s perspective. It’s all anecdotal, but I felt almost an immediate difference. And of course, the interesting thing to me about that Dr. Clearfield is the internal med guy was going to would say, Well, none of that is supported in the literature. Right? That’s that’s not it depends on
Bill Clearfield 24:21
what literature you it’s it depends on what literature you read. Right? So so for those of us out here, I don’t know if you can see this. I got this. I think it came yesterday, the Journal of family practice and the big lead article is on how to treat hypothyroidism. And the, the bottom line is, you don’t do anything unless the TSH is greater than 10. You only give Synthroid and you know make sure you have a healthy diet based basically that summarizes the you know the this and as we know, and you know, I can’t really speak for anybody else but there isn’t anything that I haven’t done for you, or you know anybody else that I don’t have literature for. We do have the literature for it. You know the, the powers that be might not like all of the literature, there’s always a problem with our literature at night, you know, as opposed to their literature. But, you know, the things that we do are not really out well out of that, you know, out of out of the realm of you know, hocus pocus and, you know, you know, you don’t make it I mean, at least I don’t I don’t make it up. I mean, I can I can, you know, show you chapter and verse with everything that we do, you know, and why we do it. You know, sometimes you have to look a little bit harder than, you know, that a textbook that was written in 1975 But you know, but you know, but there it is. So, I mean, Dr. Patel over here next to you in here is you know, has been doing integrating incredible integrative oncology work using all sorts of therapies, you know, light therapies and methylene blue and all sorts of the it’s not it’s not that there isn’t literature on it. It’s just that you know, you need to go go find it.
26:22
You know, what’s fascinating is a patient is when I came to see you, and when showing my wife came to see you, both of us had normal thyroid levels, right, or within a normal range. They weren’t optimal. However, they weren’t optimal for either one of us. And it wasn’t until there was kind of a more holistic look about well, okay, that’s great, but what will work for you Egan, that I really felt improvement,
Bill Clearfield 26:47
right. So, and again, and I don’t think anybody you know, that’s on here. You know, we disagree, you know, we have a couple of new folks names I see. I but I don’t think anybody has been doing this, this. This worked for a while we disagree that, you know, normal just isn’t good enough. Normal is. If you don’t know what it is, it’s two standard deviations of whatever you’re measuring which is 95.4%. of you know, whatever. Whatever the measurement is. So for example, if you take 25 Vitamin D, most of the labs will tell you 30 to 100 is normal. Well, 32 is normal and 98 is normal. Well, that’s ridiculous. Just ridiculous. Right? 29 is abnormal 31 is normal. I mean, that’s, you know, just that just doesn’t work. So, you know, we teach our students how to how to how to optimize that. And so our and I won’t go into the details, but you know, so our goal is usually about 50 to 80. But I there’s a formula and I tell every patient if they’re interested, I I work it out for them, you know, this is how we do it. And I tell them you know where I’m at I’m at fourth and McCarran I tell them we we stop 1000 cars on right on my street corner here and and we should get 950 for them should have a vitamin D between between 30 and 100. But you know, that’s that’s just not going to be good enough. So, you know, a TSH of greater than 10 and you don’t do anything, you know, less than that. That’s what it says in here. It’s just came out yesterday is ridiculous, you know, and you can go on them you know, nowadays you can go on to all sorts of forums. And so your doctor says that they’re not going to do anything unless there’s they’re only going to look at the TSH and if it’s greater than less than 10. They’re not going to do anything go find somebody else. So So and again, I again, I can’t speak for anybody else, but I know Dr. Kelly I seizoen. I know Dr. Kelly, you know has been doing this for a long time. And Dr. Burgess. So I know that, you know, they’ve been fairly certain that they’ll agree with me that, you know, you know, we try to find the, you know, scientific evidence to back up we you know what we do? Okay, so it’s not any, you know, it’s not anecdotal, and it’s not, it’s not, you know, it’s not, you know, sort of wishful thinking. Now, a couple of weeks ago, we had Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum, and I don’t know if you don’t know him. He’s actually very famous in the fibromyalgia. World. He wrote one of the original textbooks in 1975. And he threw out a statement about saying, well, the patients have some thyroid symptoms and but their lab numbers are normal or I can’t even get a lab normal. I’ll just give him thyroid medication anyway, and that caused a little bit of a kerfuffle and I don’t do that. But, you know, so. So some of our students were a little bit upset about that, you know, that he’s, you know, he’s one of the Guru’s or one of the masters. So I said, Well, you got to take what the master, you know, learn from the master and make it your own. So that’s, that’s, that’s kind of kind of what we do there. So. So there’s a lot of a lot of so So two weeks ago, I was at the age management Medical Group. And it was, it was part of part of the big issues with some of the big issues. Where the FDA is trying to shut down compounded bioidentical hormones, which I think would be a tragedy. And, you know, they’re all hell bent on it. And they, they get against some of the traditional medical groups to say, well, this stuff is no good and then they give it you know, they they’ll give you a 900 reasons why it what we do is no good, but the stuff that comes out of Pfizer or whatnot is goodness. You know, those guys are not, you know, no saints either. You know, we’ll you know, we’ll have something that doesn’t work. We’re going to, you know, we’re going to we’re going to you know, we’re going to adjust our methods but so I don’t know if you’ve come across any of this in your in your legal on your, on the legal side. If you have and so, you know, we’re all sort of swimming here you know, with with like without a paddle. So, I know Dr. Lawson’s group which is a group that we’re sort of affiliated with on Monday night. They’re looking to, I think Dr. Cruz was going to be involved. Have a Physician Advocacy Group for it with some legal, you know, at least advice
31:29
Well, yeah, diving into the legal issues, then. Let me begin in this way, Bill. First. I work as a state trial court judge so the jurisdiction that I am privileged to practice in is unlimited. What that means is if the matter in controversy exceeds $15,000 it comes to a trial court judge in Nevada, like me, and I’ve done about eight medical malpractice trials as a judge in the 12 odd years I’ve been state trial court judge was in the family division, and I’m now in the general jurisdiction. And I have some broad areas of commentary. For all of you. And then I’ll try to drive bill to your point about what I think is your point about how do you in this practice area, deal with other practice areas and the pressures you get financially, etc. I don’t see a lot of that but I’ll share some insights, for example, into some of the large physician group litigation, the hospital litigation against large physician groups that I see etc. But backing way up. Let’s talk about the framework of medical malpractice in Nevada. It’ll be different in every jurisdiction in the United States, but very similar from 100,000 feet. And so seen from 100,000 feet most jurisdictions in the United States have enacted so called tort reform legislation, or rules related to torts medical malpractice being a form of tort and more most jurisdictions that are very favorable to medical practitioners. So for example, in Nevada, the statute of limitations the period of time after something goes wrong, in which you can file a lawsuit is generally one year, which is a very short period of limitations. It’s very difficult for patients who if they have been wronged in some way to actually get together their medical records, find an attorney find an expert and file a lawsuit within a year’s period of time. And that shorten period of limitations exists in most jurisdictions in the United States, as I understand it, and I offer that as a reassurance to all of you that actually it’s, it’s intended in Nevada, it’s specifically intended as a protection to professionals, not just physicians, not just osteopathic doctors and others, but specifically to folks who work in the medical field. That shortened period of limitations is a protection because the window of time in which a lawsuit can be filed is fairly short. In Nevada, there are procedural protections. So in Nevada, if if a patient seeks to shoo a physician or a doctor, that the lawsuit has to be accompanied by an expert affidavit. So another physician in the same specialty area as the question physician has to opine that the question physician deviated from the standard of care and that deviation was the cause of injury to the patient. And that affidavit has to accompany the lawsuit. So unlike some other jurisdictions, where you can be sued for the simply the cost of a lawsuit, or the cost of the filing fee, as it were, in Nevada, you have to specifically have this expert affidavit and if you don’t have it, if it’s not filed at the outset of the lawsuit, the lawsuit is mandatorily dismissed, it must be dismissed. And so the procedural protections come at the very beginning of the case. additional protections in Nevada are that the damages that can be the damages that can be sought, meaning the money that can be sought from a professional are limited. So in Nevada, so called non economic damages for a medical malpractice cause of action are limited to $350,000. So that means damages for pain and suffering damages for loss of consortium damages for the loss of enjoyment. of life. The kind of nebulous damages that in decades past and years past had resulted in monstrous verdicts in medical malpractice cases have been limited in Nevada and are in most jurisdictions.
35:57
The number of attorneys in Nevada willing to take on claims against a medical professional are relatively small, because the costs of bringing a medical malpractice lawsuit are very high. The average cost to a plaintiff to bring a medical malpractice claim so for example, if the if using a terrible example, but if the wrong body part is operated on if a right knee was called on for intervention and a left knee was operated on, for example, which is in our jurisdiction malpractice per se. Even in that sort of a circumstance, the number of attorneys willing to take the case is relatively small because the costs to get that kind of a case trial ready are in the neighborhood of 250 to $500,000 between expert witnesses cost of preparation, etc. And so the the table I want to lay for all of you in my comments about the world of medical malpractice from a trial judges perspective, is that the world of medical malpractice is fairly hostile, at least in Nevada and California jurisdictions with which I’m relatively familiar. It’s fairly hostile to plaintiffs who want to bring claims. That’s intentional in Nevada and there was tort reform. Sorry. Was there a question? There was a court reform legislative crisis in Nevada in 2002. That legislative crisis led to a lot of the procedural protections that I just illustrated are outlined for all of you to include the economic damages or the non economic damages cap, excuse me, that I just described. An interesting kind of color item I’d I would share with all of you about malpractice claims, at least as I see them as a trial judge. In Nevada and to a lesser degree in California, is that patients that’s the world from which a juror would be chosen. Patients like all of you, patients, tend to identify with their treating providers patients tend to see the best in their treating providers. And so juries, interestingly enough, are very conservative in medical malpractice cases about when they identify that is fine as a matter of fact, that an act of malpractice has occurred, and they’re very conservative in terms of the dollar amounts they’re willing to put on awards. So as an example, a dental malpractice trial, a case that actually went to trial in my jurisdiction, resulted in a jury verdict of about $175,000. Now you might ask how, how was dental malpractice valued at that amount, but it was, in fact, a fairly egregious case of malpractice. That’ll they’ll use as an illustration or a story in terms of my advice for all of you to avoid a claim of malpractice. I’ve seen I’ve active right now, I can’t speak specifically about the facts, but I have two malpractice actions that both both involve catastrophic neurological injuries related to stroke, either stroke misdiagnosis or a failure to intervene with TPA in an acute care, acutely evolving stroke incident. Those cases will likely resolve before trial. And that’s sort of the final procedural observation I would offer to you that most medical malpractice claims don’t end up going to trial if in fact, there has been an error made if in fact, there is direct evidence of so called malpractice. For the most part those cases settle so I see very few cases actually go to trial as a percentage of the overall case is brought.
40:16
And so what are my comments to all of you as practitioners? What’s the best advice I would give for all of you in terms of the cases I’ve seen? So in the Delta Dental malpractice case that was tried to verdict that I tried to verdict that I described to you I believe the chief reason that poor dentist ended up being sued is because she chose to be dishonest with her patient. What I mean by that is she had engaged in a tooth removal for lack of a better term of an impacted Moeller had inadvertently clipped the lingual nerve of the patient and had not been honest with the patient either about the signs and symptoms of the sequelae of impacting the lingual nerve, or in her charting about what had occurred or had not occurred either during the operative event, or in the follow up in the few days after the operative event. The patient had come in he was complaining of persistent numbness on one side of his mouth or persistent numbness on one side of his tongue. And the the practitioner had not accurately charted either an actual evaluation of the patient or any findings related to her evaluation of the patient. And so in the cold hard light of day, by the time it got to trial several years later, the poor practitioner on the stand was in a very difficult position to try to explain how her claims about carefully evaluating the patient carefully understanding the patient’s persistent neuropathy and numbness and the symptoms he had described, which clearly illustrated that his lingual nerve had in fact been severed. All of that came tumbling down on her late in the game and so quite honestly, my perspective as a lay witness, the judge in the case, again with enough met medical knowledge to be dangerous, was that had she simply been honest, at the time of the event, about what might have occurred what might be going on with him, and about, you know, taking that extra moment to actually document what she claimed she had done. The outcome I think would have been much, much, much different. And that message of documentation and just being direct with patients even when you make an error is perhaps the best message I can give. Now, let me hasten to add, I’m sure if you talk to your legal counsel, your legal counsel will tell you well the last thing you should do is admit making a mistake. And I’m not here to give legal advice to any of you I can only tell you as a former health care provider who made mistakes, fortunately, not often, but I did make mistakes as a nurse but who made mistakes and now as a judge witnessing the lawsuits that that result as a consequence. of mistakes. Overwhelmingly, unequivocally, the best practical advice I can give is be honest with your patients about what goes right and about what goes wrong. Because candidly, more often than not, the devil is in the lies told whether there lies by omission or lies by comission. The bad outcome comes because people get mad when they figure out after the fact that that they either have been lied to or that someone’s been dishonest, dishonest with them, or they think they’ve been lied to. And so to sum it up from a judge’s perspective, the overwhelmingly best advice I can give is just talk to your patients and be honest with them about the good, the bad and the ugly of what does and doesn’t happen, even if a mistake is made. Let me pause again and ask if there any questions that’s that’s really a multi day multi hour lecture distilled into just a few minutes. So I want to give as much option option as I can to all of you for questions or specific questions you may have
Bill Clearfield 44:34
anybody have any questions or put it in the chat otherwise?
44:42
I have a statement. Three words. Well, however many words it is standard of care. And I think that he and maybe some of you should elaborate on the problems that have come out of those words.
45:01
Standard of Care is a community specific term. And therein lies perhaps part of the challenge right. So the standard of care in Reno Nevada, may be different than the standard of care in Ypsilanti, Michigan, or then the standard of care of Orlando, Florida. The standard of care in a medical malpractice case is established by your peers. So whoever the leading expert of the person who claims to be a leading expert, for example, in orthopedic care, or in a hormone replacement therapy or in choose the specific specialty that you’re describing, it will be the leading proponent the person published in the literature, or the person willing to take a position who’s published in the literature, who describes what is the appropriate standard of care. So Bill, it would be very interesting to see for example, if you talk to the Internal Medicine Doc’s what they said the standard of care is for thyroid replacement, you know,
Bill Clearfield 46:12
we’re in your case, we’re way off the chart.
46:15
Right. Right. And you know, the internal medicine guys would say, it is outside the standard of care to be treating my thyroid levels and the way they’re being treated, even though that’s my specific request. So standard of care is a slippery concept, and it’s one that you need to be aware of as you engage in practice in your own practice. You need to know what the standard of care is, for example, in this organization, if it promulgates are discussing standards of care what the standard of care is in the allopathic medical world, and where the slings and arrows are gonna come from. I don’t know Dr. Fogarty, if that answers your question. Did you have other questions or would you like me to elaborate more?
Bill Clearfield 47:04
Well, actually, that was that was the same thing that I had written down here about standard of care. And then I thought, you know, you told us your story, right at the beginning, and you know, where you started and you know, how we, we sort of took took things from there and how much better you felt but again, and in one of one of my lectures that I have, I had one of my one of my nurses from a long time ago, and I got a I got a I got a letter from from her doctor from back home. This was back home in Pennsylvania, who called me a quote unquote shaman and a disgrace to my degree. And, you know, we’re supposed to say, I kind of took it as a badge of honor. But, you know, these are these are the these are again, these are the kinds of the pitfalls that we come up, you know, we come across,
48:02
Bill, if I may, the one thing that you do that I would suggest to your colleagues is a good idea is you and I have had frank discussions about Lookee. And if you go to the allopathic medical community, talking specifically about thyroid treatment, you should know that what I’m suggesting to you is not what they will suggest, because then right I make an informed decision about it, Bill, right. I decide is a patient Okay, I understand he’s, he’s described to me what the traditional standard of care is. I’m willing to accept something other than a traditional standard of care and it’s informed consent. Right. Right.
Bill Clearfield 48:43
Right, so and I know we’re all supposed to have everything you know, signed and sealed and delivered but don’t always do that. You know, you know, get busy kind of sometimes forget those kinds of things. And yeah,
48:56
of course, if it’s not charted, it’s not done. That’s the bane of our all of our existence.
Bill Clearfield 49:03
Right, so. So, we had a lady who we saw in March of 2021. And then she came in again in June. And I hadn’t signed the chart sometimes, you know, I hadn’t signed the chart and in March, like I noticed that you know, when she came back the second time, so I signed it again. So now all of a sudden that that was a fraud. Well, it was just an oversight. So I just signed it when I signed it, but you know, that now that that became a bone of contention, because she said she was never hearing March. Even though we had written her prescriptions and she was a new patient. It was, you know, I don’t get in the habit of writing prescriptions for someone, I don’t know just just you know, out of the blue, but you know, the chart was signed in June 2 Instead of March 25. So, you know, these things kind of happen from time from time to time, so, anybody else have any, you know, experiences any questions here? You know, this is kind of, you know, wide open forum. So,
50:05
I have a question I have a question just because we just mentioned that informed consent. And my understanding that informed consent only involves one aspect of the medical practice, and that is not for the patient to understand what is occurring physiologically. Or biochemically with them. The only required informed consent is for the patient to be clear on dose and see how much to take and how often the understanding is not even a requirement for informed consent.
50:40
You are correct about that. Dr. Burgess? When I was describing informed consent with Dr. Clearfield, I was using it as a term of description as much as a term of art. What I mean by that is as a practitioner, you can protect yourself. If for example, I was ever to say, well, Clearfield gave me you know, this armor thyroid. That’s that’s I don’t think that’s controversial, but just like, let’s say it was contract controversial. You know, Clearfield gave me this armor thyroid and I had some sequelae and I want to tell ya, I want to I want to now bring a claim against him. If he can illustrate that he spoke with me about part of the rationale whether I have a meaningful understanding or not at a about it or not, there is consent. Now Dr. Burgess, what you’re describing with informed consent is you have to confirm with me that it’s okay for for me to have you touch me. Right or to provide a medical intervention to me. That’s the narrowest sense of informed consent, but what I’m describing is having a meaningful conversation with your patients so that they can make a choice. And right you can you can later describe that they made a choice.
51:56
And that’s really my point is that we do not have meaningful conversations with our patients. And since those conversations are not required, I think it’s a big black hole in the middle of our system.
52:11
I couldn’t agree with you more, Doc. It’s so funny. You know, one of my kids had to have emergency surgery on on his hand because he cut an artery in one of his fingers and everything turned out fine. But when I read his chart after the fact, you know, the hand surgeon said oh, I clearly and in detail explained the risks, benefits and downsides of the procedure and got informed consent. And no one spoke to his mother and I literally no one spoke to us. It had not occurred.
52:45
So I guess a good question. As always to ask, are there any questions?
52:51
To the patient? Yeah. Thanks.
53:00
Hi, this is Dr. Cruz. I have an area where as an OBGYN, I’ve had two two lawsuits brought against me one was for an ectopic pregnancy and another was for bladder. fistula and with the first ectopic pregnancy we had gone over we had done i as the resident had done informed consent, and I went over infection leading injury to surrounding organs and then I also include death, because that basically covers it all. And the patient didn’t have a problem after the procedure, but the husband had a problem after it. And he came back like five years later and brought a suit alleging that we had we had decreased her fertility affecting his ability to you know, increase their family because she ended up losing her ovary and then she had endometriosis, just a whole bunch of stuff. But you know, the very fact that it even progressed to the point where we I because I was a resident at the time they and I was in Michigan. They had to come all the way to West Virginia give me a deposition and it went through the whole through the whole process, which was you know, just a stressful thing that it’s kind of, you know, you get tired that even if you get in for it, you give informed consent, you can still have the possibility of a suit brought against you. And then you know, just even trying to defend yourself and you know, having the deposition getting a lawyer to defend you. That’s That’s money that you’re just like, why am I doing this? This is a waste of time. So you just kind of get tired of, of doing stuff like that and you know, then you document as you know, OBGYN in Michigan you learn how to document everything to the tee because that was one of the biggest states that had high high malpractice suit suits and high high high rewards for patients who did mom prep who did win against physicians. So that was one thing. So even if you give informed consent, it’s not really protective against you. And Marie mentioned earlier about standard of care. And one of the things that we have been discussing is as alternative medicine medical therapy physician, you know, practitioners is, is to create a group where we create our standard of care because, as you mentioned, judging again that you know, you can speak to the patient that way, if you go to another endocrinologist and they’re not going to they won’t treat you for the labs that we’re looking at, but with our experiences, you know, as alternative medical practitioners, you will be benefiting from supplemental armor thyroid and whatnot. So, you know, that’s the big thing is you can talk to your patients, but then some, some patients will just get ahead of their butt and, and see what they can do to to punish you. I hate to say that but informed consent i It is important to get it but sometimes it’s not protective. You know, it’s always just dot your T’s and dot and cross your t’s and dot your i’s and, you know, I think creating a standard is where, where, you know, for alternative medical practitioners is where that protection is coming from. And then the other thing you had talked about with patients is, you know, you you do something wrong is acknowledge it and acknowledge it to the patient and saying, Sorry, is a big thing that I think that they have seen to actually decrease the amount of lawsuits or malpractice suits coming against physicians.
57:11
Yeah, Dr. Cruz thank you for stepping into the fray, especially as an OBGYN it is a high risk area, I’m sure and to your point, it is excoriating and painful to be sued I can only imagine, especially with claims of professional negligence and to be sure, no matter how careful you are, you know no good deed may go unpunished. But the one thing you said that I really want to emphasize, that I would emphasize to this group is you can help each other if for example, you had a core group of quote unquote expertise or experts within the field of called integrative medicine or alternative integrative medicine, who are available to one another. As pure experts, you could help in lawsuits. If that was your desire for purposes of establishing or supporting an appropriate standard of care. That’s unequivocally a good idea. So the American Medical Association has, you know, sub practice areas that do that in cardiology and neurosurgery. Probably an OB GYN as well.
Bill Clearfield 58:25
So yeah, I think Dr. Cruzi can elaborate more than I think since Dr. Hill losses group working on something like that.
58:36
Yeah, that’s that’s what we were talking about. Just because, I mean, you know, you get someone who practices conventional medicine, and they’re gonna say, you know, Dr. Clearfield, why are you giving this patient extra you know, thyroid medication when there is no indication and that’s not according to that family practice? Magazine that you just got, it’s not falling standard of care. So, you know, I this is where we were talking that if we form a group, that we we understand that there are going to be practitioners who do you know, like who used by identical hormones, use time, armour, thyroid, and all, all the all the practices that we as alternative medical therapy practitioners use, and then there’s always going to be the people who are we have that bell shaped curve of people who do regular alternative medical therapies. And then we have patient practitioners who do this stuff outside which is where, you know, we have like the light therapies methylene blue, I’m not I don’t think that’s like in the mainstream of alternative medical therapies at this point in time, or some of the oncology treatments, but, you know, it’s all those it’s on the edges. That that’s where we find, you know, new, innovative ways of treating our patients and having them you know, get some benefits from those alternative therapies. So, just creating some kind of group that we have created our standards so like what Judge Egan has said is, if we have those experts who are saying, who come in and say yes, he’s falling, he she is following what any alternative medical practitioner would who then someone outside the group, who is not versed in alternative therapies like the doctor who says that you are
Bill Clearfield 1:00:38
what? A shaman, a shaman, I thought that was a good thing. But if you look up in the dictionary somewhere about the eighth or ninth the definition, it says is a dweller of the dark arts, kind of like that actually.
1:00:55
So you know, if he as a uninformed, practitioner is not aware of the practices of, of the dwellers of the darker then he cannot judge you to be not following a standard of care because he’s just uneducated or uninformed regarding these therapies. You know, and I’m been using the example of a cardiologist coming to an orthopod and saying, you Dr. orthopod. Aren’t you are not following the standard of care and orthopod is gonna say you are a cardiologist who are you to judge me in my practice when you have no idea about my specialty? And so we can, you know, we can relate that to alternative medical practitioners and anyone else who you know, anyone who comes out from left field saying you guys you know, you shaman don’t know what you’re doing and you’re not following following standard of care, we can say, we are falling standard of care. You just don’t know our standard because you are uneducated, as far as you know, as far as our practices are concerned, and that’s where the protection was going to come from.
Bill Clearfield 1:02:03
I don’t know if that would would that fly judge our standard of care that that’s, you know,
1:02:09
well, why is it is it a difficult term to respond to Dr. Clearfield but what I would say is this, you can unequivocally help yourselves by having an evidence based you know, to overuse that overused term, but an evidence base College of opinion in alternative medicine, about standard of standards of care with different therapies, because then you have a rebuttal to the allopathic you know, the more mainstream version have to use the, you know, thyroid treatment example of internal med guys who say, Well, if your thyroid isn’t above your TAs, he isn’t above a certain level you shouldn’t be getting met. And, and you then have a rebuttal to it. Because in a medical malpractice trial, it becomes a battle of the experts, your expert versus their expert, and you want to have people with expert and expertise in the area of practice. Does that answer your question?
Bill Clearfield 1:03:15
So what I what I’ve been doing for a long time now because you know, we ran into this thing. I’ve been doing this for a long time is I kept keep what I call the reference point reference project. And so on my for example, did we give you we give you the the magic where the plant sterols sterile, yes, yeah. Okay. So for those of you don’t know, the plant sterile ins actually act almost like Pac Man and they will surround antibodies and actually, almost like the League of phagocytosis, you know, sort of sort of destroy them. They don’t work that quickly, but they do work. And they usually work we on average will do if you don’t know will decrease the thyroid peroxidase antibody by about 50% in a year. So if somebody comes in with a TPO of 800 it’s going to take a while to control it, but they do work. So I for that I have plant sterile ins I have I keep a register and I update it every once in a while. It gets to be kind of boring after a while but so if somebody comes in and says what do you give it what are we giving Judge Walker, you know, plant sterilants for I can hit a button and I have 51 References just on that. I said okay, here’s a 50 Here’s 51 references is that enough? You know, I ran into a little problem with testosterone for women. I know it was just the same. The same. endocrinology endocrinologist said there was quote, there was no no indication for androgens in in women for any reason. So I gave him a database. I sent him a database of 873 references and this was four years ago. So we’ve actually added to that. So I’ve been doing that on my own just just you know for because it kind of gets my blood boiling. You know, lately. I do have patients that you know, turn in their, some of their prescriptions to be to be processed. And, you know, the insurance companies will send incredibly insulting letters as you know, when they say we’re not paying for this and we don’t even know why anybody would prescribe this and we’re not even going to give you a reason why we’re not going to pay for this. And one of it one of them was was actually a 52 year old woman who’s you know, had all the symptoms of low testosterone or testosterone level was for your free testosterone was basically zero. I mean, you know, I was so so again, I have a database thing I sent them I have I have a letter already prepared and it’s got 37 different references and all I have to do is put her name on it and and whatever client numbered and off it goes and it’s I either don’t hear anything and it gets approved or I get to get a letter back that it’s approved. But so I’ve been doing that for a long time on my own just because you know, I I I have a thin skin I guess I don’t know.
1:06:20
Well, and that’s that’s one of your goals at this organization. Isn’t it though? I mean, one of the goals in the end is to establish a database, a database, a library, a codex, a place
Bill Clearfield 1:06:32
Yeah, so so we you know, this, this group has actually been around. Doctor spirit can tell us better than me since 1972. I believe. It fell into some disuse a number of years ago, and we sort of been building it back. So and so we’re still kind of finding our way. I mean, we technically we’re supposed to be rheumatic diseases. But we’ve sort of taken in the integrative medicine group and, you know, half the folks that are that you’re seeing here are not DEOs um, you know, we’ve got Dr. Kelly’s a Chiropractor Dr. Zirin is homeopath and, you know, some of the other folks I’m not even sure I know Dr. Smith as MD and the two folks up in the upper left hand corner are my patients. They’re just just good, good old folks. So, so you know, we have quite a quite a quite a diverse doctor, Dr. Crowley’s pharmacist. So we have quite a quite a diverse group. And Anna Marie over here is our biggest cheerleader. She She even came all the way out from West Virginia to Las Vegas to our conference. She’s just a lay person and not Not that that’s there’s anything that came out wrong. But yeah. So if that would be that would be an ideal. But personally, I don’t have the time or the expertise to do that. If somebody there’s somebody here who, you know, would like to spearhead that, that would be great. And, you know, we can, you know, get the get some structure and some guidelines, you know, some guidelines and, and, you know, I’m not even sure exactly, you know what that what that would look like, you know, what makes it a standard of care, you know, I could write out you know, my protocol and say, Okay, here’s the standard of care from the American Osteopathic Society of rheumatic diseases for hypothyroidism. You know, just because I write it does it does that make it so
1:08:41
it does over time, and it does when it becomes more accepted as a practice standard meaning, by standard, I mean, more replicated, and especially as you publish about it in peer reviewed literature. There’s always going to be a fight. My favorite story about allopathic physicians happened last summer I had a terrible mesothelioma case where an electrician is dying of this terrible, terrible disease, and a very well credentialed very, quote unquote well respected cardiologist came into court and wanted to testify that he could opine as to the hour and date of this man’s death. And I threw him out of court. I said, there’s no science behind that Doc. Just because you say you’re a cardiologist doesn’t mean you can or anybody could opine as to the hour and date of any individual’s death. There’s no science behind that. So to answer your question, Dr. Clare Thiel is I love the idea that you’re building a library I call it a codex of the science which formulates the basis for your medical decision making with your patients. And that is over time, a standard of care, doesn’t mean everybody will agree with you about it, but at least it gives you something to point to.
Bill Clearfield 1:10:01
Right. Okay. So, yeah, so, so for instance, one of one of my favorite lectures that I give is testosterone and women. And at the end of the day, when I put it on that I actually photocopied it. It’s on, it’s on our slide. The right from the from the, you know, the doctors. I didn’t retype that. I said, you know, this was the real thing. And I say, Okay, here’s 105 Peer Reviewed references from such disreputable journals is the New England Journal of Medicine Journal, the American Medical Association, Journal of OBGYN kinda, you know, a lot, no one doubted online. And at the end of the lecture, I said, I don’t think 105 was enough. Here’s another 175 more so and it goes on for you. Know, 3020 30 slides and, you know, nobody ever looks at them, but that’s, you know, so that’s, that’s sort of something that I just kind of did as as a reflex. I don’t know if anybody else here you know, has sort of, you know, you know, put together or anything like that, but we can certainly start use that as as at least as a jumping off point. Because I mean, I do it for what I do, you know, I kind of keep my my focus, you know, fairly narrowed Dr. Spears a little bit more of a traditional road rheumatologist Dr. Richwine, does mostly osteopathic medicine. Dr. Patel, you have something want to add?
1:11:32
You’re muted.
Bill Clearfield 1:11:34
We can’t hear you.
1:11:37
Say that you have got an injury if you’re afraid so. You know, I wonder the word alternative medicine versus complementary medicine and because what we are really practicing is not alternative here just practicing better medicine. So we are complementing and so I we are not doing the traditional conventional medicine. I mean, you know, they prescribe thyroid we prescribe thyroid. So we are not doing anything alternative. We are just complementing what is not being done right. And we are just correcting it right. So, this is one of my opinion that when we say we are doing their alternative care practitioner, we are creating a problem for ourselves. But if you say we are integrative or we are environmental or we are functional in again we are restricting we are complemented where medicine physician we are practicing, our practice approach is is wider we look at the we look at the various other factors and so we are we are providing patient better care
1:13:01
an interesting question just popped up Dr. Clearfield Do
Bill Clearfield 1:13:08
you want me to do you want to I was gonna I was gonna read it to you but go ahead.
1:13:11
So the question is, is off label, prescription and medication safe use? And the short answer is yes. If you can show your homework, right to this point about standard of care. When you discussed with me using naltrexone, you pointed out it was an off label use. You pointed out which I believe to be true that there are several peer reviewed studies that you can point to that show. There’s a powerful anti inflammatory effect from that off label use. And so off label use in and of itself is not a deviation from the standard of care if there is a an evidence base kind of basis for the use that you can point to. It is unusual. I mean it does it does open you up to the question about it. And you know we haven’t even touched upon this is now a patient perspective. So much of what happens in medicine is driven by money and not by what is best for us as patients in my opinion. And so the whole off label use is as much about whether or not pharmaceutical companies getting their share as anything else. That’s just my opinion. Have I answered the question?
Bill Clearfield 1:14:30
Right, I think so. So, so let me let me let me bring this to you. So so let’s let’s talk about ivermectin for COVID. Okay, so we live I prescribed it, we’ve we’ve had very good success with it. You know, just this week, paper came out that it was ineffective for preventing hospitalizations or severe COVID infections. And it was it was it was in the New England Journal of Medicine and it was on a lot of the Bolton’s and I’m sure every lot of you folks might have seen it also. But if you look at the what they did, so our our protocol was five days at a specific dose per week, five days for for you know, with an acute COVID infection with several other several other entities. I mean, there’s a whole protocol in the paper that came out said that they used lower doses than that then we’ve used and I’m looking at the frontline doctors, you know, the ones that are sort of sort of at the forefront of this lower doses than then we’ve used and they use it for three days. But the headline was it didn’t work. So where do you go with that?
1:15:57
Well, the legal answer is this. If you can’t show a sort of show your work, show it show the homework or the basis for a treatment that you’re prescribing. You’re always going to be open to the possibility that somebody you know you you don’t speak much about it Dr. Clearfield but I suspect you take a lot of heat from your peers in the allopathic community here in Washoe County. This this medical community is very well compensated very powerful politically, and they don’t let outsiders in very easily. That’s just my opinion is a patient. And so if they found out you know, or somebody’s got a wild hair and said, Well Clearfield use an ivermectin let’s run him out of town on a rail and tried to cook up a lawsuit. I don’t know how they would do that, you know, patient would have to have a bad outcome. But nonetheless, try to cook up a lawsuit. Your defense is going to be pointing to the science. You know, here’s my homework. Here’s the why. I have prescribed it and here’s the scientific basis for it. If you can’t do that, I wouldn’t prescribe it.
Bill Clearfield 1:17:04
Well like you know, I I’m getting too old for that anyway, so if I can’t do that, then then I won’t. Yeah. But like I said, so. So we’re going to talk about plants sterile and you know, magic here is not the only one. There’s a few of them, but I’ve never heard anybody you know, outside of our group. You know, the people that we’ve studied with, you know, even even know what it is. And, you know, it’s the one thing that that that I found that you know, I’ve been doing complementary medicine for 2520 25 years now. It’s the one thing that I found that will consistently you know, control the thyroid antibodies, and if you don’t control the thyroid antibodies, you know, within five years of them you know, sort of sprouting up you’re gonna have a destroyed thyroid and you know, when they didn’t there’s there’s there’s point of no return at that. Point. So anyway, so another question is, can you use animal studies as evidence to support human treatment for humans? I think I think that’s done, isn’t it?
1:18:08
It is, you know, the way the science of medicine plays out in the courtroom, you have to understand is this a jury strangely, is the one deciding whether or not you have deviated from the standard of care? And the way the jury does? It is by listening to experts, competing experts, so the plaintiff’s expert or the defense expert, and all of those experts are going to rely on whatever studies they think support their position, right? And of course, animal studies are a part of the basic science behind many medical interventions that happen to humans. So in the shortest sense, yes, you can use you can draw analogy to animal studies, but it really comes down to how persuasive the science is that you’re relying upon and how persuasive the expert is, who’s going to support your position about that use. Because you’re, in the end lay people the jurors are deciding if a mistake was made as strange as that sounds, and so a part of the challenge of medical malpractice litigation is simplifying it condensing very complex biochemical issues, physiological issues into an understandable form and that’s a that’s as much about the expert involved as it is about the science, you know, the persuasiveness of the expert. Okay,
Bill Clearfield 1:19:36
the only thing I just put on there, this is where all of our transcripts and our videos go as od aos or d.org/webinars. If you’re, you know, you miss part of this or any of our other you know, lectures from we’ve been doing this for more than a year and a half now. So we have quite a body of literature here, you know, stored up on there. Yeah, with that. So, one of my favorite stories, maybe you can comment on this so that everybody here at least all the doctors know when you were a nurse, so you probably know, h pylori is a cause of peptic ulcers, right. Right, though no, no argument about it. No question about well in 1983 was Dr. Marshall he was an Australian gastroenterologist first presented H. Pylori as a bacterial infection as a cause for chronic gastritis and peptic ulcers. He was laughed out of the out of the arena. He was he had his medical license taken away. He went so far as to make a slurry of H. Pylori and drink it himself and then have himself endoscope to have to prove that you know that the H Pylori you know, cause the you know, the peptic ulceration and ultimately 25 years later, he was actually awarded a Nobel Prize. So, you know, so those those kinds of stories are kind of heartwarming, but when you’re in the middle of it, it’s you know, it’s not a whole lot of fun. Any suggestions for me, you find yourself in those kinds of process
1:21:17
well, the only thing I would share with you is this. And I sort of wanted to open this up when Dr. Patel was talking. It’s remarkable to me as a patient, how narrow minded we are in the United States about medical treatment. I mean, there are ancient cultural treatments I mentioned. You know, a treatment you offered to me when my knee was hurting. That is ancient in derivation and ancient in use, and there are all sorts of complementary to use Dr. Patel’s word, medical procedures and interventions from different cultures across the world that are just discarded outright by traditional medicine in the United States for reasons I can’t really explain. And I guess the best reflection I would have for you is this stick kind of put a nice bow on things. So I’ve had the privilege of going to an alternative and integrative medicine, doc or whoever else who really genuinely seems to care about his patients in the sense of their outcome. And last week, you don’t even know this doc last week. 18 months after I’ve had two total knee replacements, and when I came to you four years ago, you know, almost diabetic. Last or two weeks ago, I pulled five pounds 500 Or five pounds over the national record and deadlift. And so that what I’m trying to dive dive to is just do what works for your patients as well. And you’ve got to have some homework behind it some basis for it, but you also do treat, right the human being and what works for them. Right.
Bill Clearfield 1:23:00
Right. So the other thing is I like to think that after all this time, like my mother used to say I should know what I’m doing by now. So you know, it’s not sometimes experience you know, you know, is a great teacher also.
1:23:14
And you have to have some bravery about it. I’m sure I can’t you know, I don’t I don’t know I don’t know what you all I don’t know the risks you all take I can’t know them because I don’t have the expertise you have. But you have to have some bravery about it to be sure.
1:23:27
Can I Can I ask something. So I’m very new to all this. But one of the things that kind of scratched the surface. A long time ago, maybe five or six years ago, I had a family that was telling me about Dr. Bradstreet and apparently he was treating autistic patients and doing some alternative one complementary treatments. And and then he was found dead. They said it you know, it was self inflicted, but it wasn’t and then, you know, I think I’m more concerned about those kinds of consequences. I mean, I guess, right, right before that he had had his I guess his practice rated after a judge had signed a warrant for some stuff to be pulled there. Do you know anything about I just don’t, I guess people are asking me now that I’m kind of delving into craziness is what I would call I’m just I’m feel like I’m pulling back the sheet on the matrix. Maybe? Like that’s what I feel like every day now. But I don’t tell people that I’m doing that like people when they come in. I say, you know, if I see something that I’ve learned that might help them, I want to offer it to them, but I’m very under the radar. I don’t want to end up like that. Um, I guess do you know anything about what had happened with that person or?
Bill Clearfield 1:25:05
Not, not anything I’m familiar with but judge you can. You mentioned about the Euro the year that I moved here, the urologist got shot or something?
1:25:15
Well, so I don’t know if that is connected to the issue that Ms. Kylie’s talking about or not, but I will tell you as a judge, I’ve practiced law I was a prosecutor. I was in private practice, and I’ve now been a judge for 14 years. And so 32 years of experience in Northern Nevada. I don’t know that a doctor’s office has ever been searched on a search warrant by a judge. That doesn’t mean that it couldn’t happen. I’m just saying that’s a very rare occurrence is the first reassurance I would give you. The second is you know, physician heal thyself. You have to know what your risk tolerance is and what you’re willing to write in terms of heat. However edgy your practice may be. But to your point, Dr. Clearfield, the year you moved here, there was a terrible case where a gentleman had had, I believe he had a prostatectomy a fairly standard procedure with fairly well known consequences. And because he was unhappy with the results, came in and killed one of the physicians in the practice and mortally wounded. Another the poor, the poor lady surgeon, you know, was a surgeon and right handed and he blew her right arm off with a shotgun. So it was a terrible, terrible, awful case. Related to you know, a patient’s subjective perspective about a bad outcome and and it’s it, you know, it’s just flat wrong for a patient to project their bad outcome onto a physician, which is I think what the OBGYN was talking about before, I mean, one of the risky things you all do is projection is a natural human tendency anytime something goes wrong in somebody’s life. It’s inevitably got to be someone else’s fault, right? The same is true in my business.
Bill Clearfield 1:27:07
We have Yes, go ahead.
1:27:10
Yeah, I’m not an REO. I have so we’re alternative practitioners. So let’s say FDA, or anybody who’s going to come into our clinic would try to inspect what we do. Who should we recognize authorities and watch us practicing? What should we do for this? Like, should we look for a warrant first before they go in? Or should we call our lawyer first before they get into our clinics? What are your suggestions for these situations?
1:27:40
So I have to be careful not to give you legal advice, but I’ll give you practical advice. Yes, you should call your lawyer. You should recognize the licensure of anyone so you you know you have a business license, right. So if this the city pursued to the business license wants to come in, you have to make your business available to them. If you have a medical or a professional license, somebody associated with the licensing agency, you have to be responsive to but yeah, I would, I would unequivocally if somebody’s coming in to inspect your practice, to kind of go over things with a fine tooth comb and you’re concerned about it. I would unequivocally get a hold of my lawyer.
1:28:23
Meaning you didn’t come in and ask for documents first or Hold on. I’ll call my lawyer before you get into the facility.
1:28:32
Yeah, I would. I would try to message to anybody. Look, I’m going to be cooperative. But I’m sure you can understand I need to refer to legal counsel before I actually respond to any of your requests.
1:28:45
So definitely not let them in and spec until you call your your town
1:28:50
doctor. I you know, the the question implicates such a broad range, so the cops could show up at your facility, right say I have a search warrant. And if you tell them you’re not coming in, they’re gonna break down the door. I’m not sure I would stand in their way under that circumstance. But if somebody whose legitimacy you question, or whose authentication you question, you know, they show you a badge, or they don’t show you a badge they they claim to be I’m so and so and sector from so and so. Organization. I would probably tell them look, I want to be cooperative and I want to be transparent, but I hope you can appreciate I need to talk to my lawyer before actually reveal anything to you. Thank you.
Bill Clearfield 1:29:41
Okay, anybody else? Questions? So it was a little bit before my time, but Dr. Forsyte is one of our colleagues here in our group and He speaks to us quite often and I don’t think if you’re around when he had his trouble with a growth hormone in the and the feds. You remember any of that anything about that at all?
1:30:03
None of it. None of it rings
Bill Clearfield 1:30:04
a bell with me now it was around 2005 I guess he was getting it from Israel and they came at six o’clock in the morning. I mean, he’s 82 now so it was about 15 years ago. So he was in his 60s then and you know, guns drawn into his house at 6am. Gracious. So, I mean, anybody else want want to hear from town? This was before my time here. So they remembers any of the I mean, if you typed in HGH and legal, you know, and the law in Reno immunity comes right up in a newspaper article anyway. So
1:30:40
I work with Dr. For science, so he does tell me these stories. He talks about
Bill Clearfield 1:30:44
it all the time. So it is real. No, no, I know he talks about it all the time. So but it even
1:30:50
that I think they went to his house to to investigate something. But I guess the star of that show really is the clinic that he was working in.
Bill Clearfield 1:31:01
So yeah, so he turned it around on them and he ended up writing the guidelines for you know, for HGH, HGH, you know, to the legitimate uses of HGH that I think that that’s what came out of that. You know, I’m at the point in my life where I don’t really want to deal with anything like that, you know? Understandable do my thing and go home at the end of the day. I don’t really want to deal with any of this other nonsense.
1:31:26
Yeah, understandably.
Bill Clearfield 1:31:28
So. Okay. Anybody else have any questions or comments or so, So believe it or not, you know, Ahmed, which is the AOA scientific conventions come coming up at the end of October and Dr. Burgess and I are going to have to start getting that together. Even though we just finished with our Las Vegas deals a couple of weeks ago. I still don’t have the videos if you’re looking for them. So pressing them, and we will put them up on the website with password protected so you can you’ll have them when when they’re available. I think doctors Aaron wants to speak a little bit about, you know, what we’re going to be doing in the next next week. Judge Walker, I can’t thank you enough. It’s been very interesting. And we had a we had a lot of good information. I’m getting a lot of attaboys in the in the in the chat here. We really appreciate you taking your time and and you know explaining things from you know, from your perspective, you know, from your legal perspective, and I’m sorry, I didn’t have the video the video one when you were patting me on the back but it was getting to be kind of embarrassing, and I may have trouble getting my head out out the door anyways, so we’ll leave that alone. So
1:32:49
it’s been a great privilege. Thank you all for having me so much. And
Bill Clearfield 1:32:53
we’ll see you soon. Okay, take good care, everybody. Okay, so before you go, go those doctors Aaron. You want to just say a couple words.
1:33:02
i Hello, everyone, so that you didn’t talk about it in the beginning.
Bill Clearfield 1:33:06
I didn’t. I didn’t. I was waiting for you.
1:33:10
Yes, I just want to thank Sarah Walker. That was the most useful, useful meeting. I’ve ever ever attended. So that’s even though I’m in Canada, but they have so many questions that I got answers. So it’s very, it’s similar, but I hope that it could be a little bit longer than I could have some of my questions. So in regards to the next week, so I think some of you guys have already know. Dr. Clifford already announced it that we created a course for the aftermath of hysterectomy so this course, actually is by Dr. Clifford and by myself, even though it’s coming from two different perspective and views, but it’s very compatible and complementing each other modalities. For example and homeopathy. In homeopathy domain. For example, we do not give a hormone replacement therapy after such as hysterectomy. So personally, I work on different pathways in order to stimulate the endocrine system, the organs in order to make enough female hormones progesterone or estrogen for the state of that particular person after the surgery. So it will be interesting if you listen to our talk and see how compatible The talk will be. So by by doing this way, I know that Dr. Clifford has different domain but as I heard his talk through our conferences, you’re very compatible. And by doing this, it’s helping the person after hysterectomy to heal much faster and actually healthier. So, I hope that all of you can attend next week to listen to us and see how it goes. Okay.
Bill Clearfield 1:35:17
Any anybody else? Questions, comments? complaints? Dr. Smith, yo, okay, over there.
1:35:27
Dr. Patel, so I want to I want to know your overview on what I said about Complementary Medicine
1:35:42
Dr. Patel, talking to me
1:35:45
separately, Dr. Bell Are you can answer that.
Bill Clearfield 1:35:49
Oh, well, you know, I I’ve always I’ve always been of the mind that I’m not doing alternative or integrative or complementary medicine. I’m doing medicine. This is medicine. I’m not, you know, I don’t I you know, I mean, I read the, you know, the books I read are available to anybody. I mean, I’m not hoarding anything. You know, just because, you know, Dr. So and so in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania has an open textbook since 1970. That was written in 1978. You know, and that’s the standard of care. I mean, that’s, you know, that’s, that’s their their issue. I just think of it as medicine. I don’t think of it as a complementary or alternative. And that’s kind of kind of the, the that’s kind of my starting point. Like I said, though, I have been keeping this reference project and I, I get to it every when I get a spur so in the last two weeks, I’ve gotten to insulting letters from insurance companies about you know, they don’t even need to, you know, respond to gave the two women with you know, you know, menopausal women with low testosterone levels and, you know, low you know, and what symptomatic low testosterone levels and they there’s no need for that and you know, and so, just as our expert says that there’s no need for that as long as I your expert is wrong, your experts no expert. I tell them right out they don’t like it. They don’t like it, but I always get it overturned, you know, small victory I mean, so, but that’s my perspective, is that this what we’re doing? We’re doing is medicine. It’s not alternative medicine. You know, you know, we’re osteopaths, they try to make it a distinction. It’s osteopathic medicine which is, you know, and then the kind of, you know, unless you’re doing manipulation like Becker or wine and whatnot, it kind of loses something in the translation, I think. So, you’ll find more, I think, more of are those of us that have the sort of the same philosophy and in the deal world in the MDS, but, you know, like Dr. Smith over here, we’re breaking them we’re breaking them down slowly. So don’t be scared we we got your back. Don’t worry about it. Okay, we have your back. I’m gonna do it for you when we run into a problem you know where to find this. Okay. You know where to find me and Dr. Burgess down in the left down here. He’s, he’s a font of information also. Okay. I’m also
1:38:27
I’m also a font of website names. So, as far as Dr. Patel’s concerned about what this is called, and I like Bill and 1000 others have gone through holistic complementary, alternative, and integrative all that stuff. But I did get a web name in case we ever need it because it’s also definitive of what we do. Now. It’s good dot healthcare, www dot healthcare, because that’s all we’re talking about. There are ways I think we can prove it’s good DoD health care, and I didn’t bring it up here because I didn’t want to get into a debate about it. But if you’re going to establish protocols, you also have to establish principles. I think we have those principles, but we haven’t spoken about it. And when doc or Judge Walker said we can’t make them agree upon it, I think we can make them agree upon it. And once we get them to agree to agree to our game, we will set the rules we will set the standards, but all these you know things like this are important. What is it we’re not stuck on the side? We’re just practicing good health care. Another alternative would be ethical health care, but we own good dot health care should we need and we also have osteopathic dot inst osteopath against the dude.com. If we want to establish other protocols and osteopathy and document it and research it. We can do that.
Bill Clearfield 1:39:57
And a little bit on the later side, I also have one called hoochie mama.org
1:40:07
Yeah, that’s a good one.
Bill Clearfield 1:40:08
Yeah. Well, yeah, I think I saw it on a Seinfeld episode. I think Kramer was yelling with some sort of code word, hoochie mama. And I remember saying that would be a great web domain name and I looked it up and.com was taken, but that org was not so. So I’ve never used it but
1:40:24
but we haven’t at the risk of offending everyone. I will say I also have massage balls.com It depends upon how you take it, right? Yes, there are some things you can say and some things you can’t but good healthcare is something we can do.
Bill Clearfield 1:40:41
Okay, so next week, doctors Aaron and I will be presenting progesterone after hysterectomy from my perspective and from hers. Okay. And any questions, comments? So, you had pause out there you got anything to say?
1:41:05
Thank you, ma’am.
Bill Clearfield 1:41:06
Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Patel. And Dr. Ortel. Dr. Kelly, thank you for being with us. And Dr. Cruz. Thanks for thank you for participating. Dr. sabini. Thank you for being with us. Thank you Ching as always, Dwight. And then our usual doctor, Dr. Renza. Murray. Thank you all. I’m going to sign off. We’ll have this up as soon as we we, you know as soon as I can get it get it up usually within 24 to 48 hours. Next week we’ll be doing like Dr. Patel, Dr. Oz Aaron, and I let you know and if you’re interested in presenting at omega, please get in touch with either Dr. Burgess or myself. And that’s what does that October 27 to 29th in Boston.
1:41:57
I think that’s around there in the 20s Yeah,
Bill Clearfield 1:42:01
I think that’s when it is it’s in Boston. I’m sure it’ll be virtual also. And hopefully they don’t. They don’t, you know, chicken out like they did last year at the West and then so so anyway, good night, everybody. Thank you so much. And we’ll be in touch. David, thank you so much for being here again. And it was every phone number is at the bottom right there. I don’t know who it is. I don’t have as a phone number. So thank you all so much. And we’ll see you again next week. Same time, same station.