Solidarity HealthShare’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. John Oertle joins Bob Sansevere of The BS Show to discuss regenerative medicine and how it could provide patients with transforming medical care in an ethical and affordable way.
Bob Sansevere (00:00):
We are joined by Dr. John Oertle, the co-founder and chief medical officer for Solidarity HealthShare at solidarityhealthshare.org. Now, doctor, you do a lot of writing and the things you write go in journals, periodicals. You can find ’em online. And one of the things this really interests me, the headline would be ‘Revolutionizing Orthopedic care, Precision and Regenerative Medicine.’ Now, lemme give you some background. I had, well, a torn rotator cuff, went for surgery on the table. My wife knows the surgeon. She went to the cafeteria like five, 10 minutes in, she gets a phone call from the surgeon. She thought I died on the table. Fortunately not what he was calling to tell her was that my rotator what he was trying to fix an atrophied and he couldn’t do any repair on it. Now I’m wondering, can regenerative medicine help with this? So at least, and I have full range of motion, that’s the other thing. So whatever the tear is, it’s not like it’s destroyed my shoulder that I can’t put it above my head or put my arm behind my back. I can do all that. What I don’t have is the strength I feel I once had. Can regenerative medicine help with that?
Dr. John Oertle (01:16):
Yeah, Bob, great question. And what we’re seeing is that it can, and it should be evaluated because what regenerative medicine is a sense of is that it essentially utilizes therapies. A lot of them coming from your own body, like again, various stem cells that come from your own body, those are called adult stem cells or other types of natural things or even platelets coming, your own blood that you are utilizing to be able to help regrow and rejuvenate tissue within your own body. Oftentimes with joints and things like that, the body kind of gets into this broken record that it doesn’t actually repair and heal. And essentially what regenerative medicine is doing is it’s allowing the body to kind of wake up and allow it to be able to actually know that this is something that needs to be able to be repaired and healed. And a lot of those factors are within our own bodies ourselves.
(02:03):
And so it’s this ability to be able to actually target those areas with these actual, again, utilizing things coming from our own body and being able to actually regrow or regenerate some tissue. So in the event like an atrophied ligament or tendon, it would be something, if it’s too atrophied, then that’s a concern. But again, many times that atrophy is just basically that it’s a limiting of the actual tissue itself. So a shrinking of the tissue. So this is where you’re trying to be able to regrow tissue. It could be a great option to be able to seek the support of a regenerative medicine orthopedic specialist.
Bob Sansevere (02:38):
Well, and importantly, it’s worth looking into and you had checked before we started talking and there are several places in Minnesota, QC kinetics, maple Grove, Chanhassen, and other locations where it could be an option for people to look into. So it’s something that I absolutely want to look into and the whole idea about letting your body heal itself, and I don’t know the technical term, but basically one of the ways is to take your blood, spin your blood and reinject it into your body, right? What is that called?
Dr. John Oertle (03:08):
Yeah, I think you’re referring to PRP or platelet rich plasma
(03:13):
Where you basically take the blood out and you spin it down to be able to allow the gravitational G-Force to be able to push the red blood cells down and keep the platelets up at the top. And what you’re doing is you’re then taking, concentrating those platelets in the blood, which are already in the bloodstream. That’s what causes the ability to be able to clot and heal. And this is where you inject those directly into the actual tissue. And this is what starts to wake up the body to be able to say, this is where you need to be able to focus on right over here. And so what we see with this though, Bob, is that one of the things I’m excited about is seeing all the benefit that you’re seeing with the regenerative medicine practices, but what you’re also, and I’m really looking at as well is how well it is for the ability of a cheaper cost.
(03:56):
So it’s not just a better outcome with less days in the office that you need to be able to be multiple surgeries or more time spent in the office or going through repair and the difficulty of physical therapy after the actual surgery, but you’re seeing less time in the office. And then also you’re translating it to overall better cost savings. We’re seeing costs continue to escalate in the medical field. Absolutely. And so being able to have therapies that are better outcomes, cheaper cost really aligns with the Solidarity model. And so this is where we’re encouraging all our members to be able to get the latest in technology so that we can actually, one, have better outcomes, but at the same time drive down our costs as well for the whole entire community.
Bob Sansevere (04:40):
Well, I mean, I’ll give
Dr. John Oertle (04:41):
You an example. I’ll give you an example that you talked about. The rotator cuff, it’s a part of my actual, we did evaluation of this again, that labral tear or that rotator cuff repair would’ve been if you go a good price in the conventional setting for the actual surgery. So you probably paid over, but we always say a good price is $20,000 roughly around for that actual surgical price. The regenerative procedure cost is 4,600. So again, that’s at 77% savings in the actual, that ability of having that kind of a procedure that’s able to actually get better recovery, quicker times, better back to your normal lives. And again, so it just makes sense for us.
Bob Sansevere (05:28):
Well, mine better not have been 20 because nothing was done. He cleaned it up a little bit, but that’s not worth 20. Obviously I was disappointed, but all I said when he talked to me afterward is, as long as I had that full range of motion, I’m okay. And I do. So that’s a good thing. Now, I wanted to mention, you mentioned about is it the blood spinning? I’ll call it that.
Dr. John Oertle (05:50):
The blood spinning? Yeah. PRP or platelet rich plasma.
Bob Sansevere (05:52):
Well, we have a horse that suffered an eye injury and our vet thought the horse lose his eye. He started, he did that for the horse and was injecting the spun blood back into the horse’s eye and the horse is not going to lose its eye and it’s doing very well. It just needs to rest. And my wife is still giving drops, but that helped make a huge difference. So that’s a big deal.
Dr. John Oertle (06:16):
I’ve seen some remarkable things with what, again, talk about horses. I’ve seen some of these, I’m not a vet, but vets are definitely utilizing these therapies as well for their pets. And you are, you’re seeing remarkable turnarounds just like we see in the human population, we’re seeing in the actual animal population as well.
Bob Sansevere (06:35):
I’m not going to go off on tangent here, I want to get back to this, but where are you on red light therapy? Because my wife also used that, and she thinks that made a big difference for the horse too.
Dr. John Oertle (06:45):
Yeah, the research on red light is very good. It needs to be a certain type of red light at a certain frequency, a certain wavelengths. But again, when you utilize red light, it can really help to be able to speed healing times, and it really helps support mitochondria in the body. And mitochondria are your battery cells, the powerhouses of the cells. And so when you speed up that energy or you recharge the batteries, it’s amazing to see what the body can and will do. But again, I always like to say the data’s really there. It’s a very gentle therapy and you need a lot of it. So again, I don’t want to over promise that because again, I’ve seen, I feel like there’s a lot of people that do it. But again, it also, I feel like you also need to combine it with other things because just doing red light just doesn’t appear to be enough. The data’s really strong, at least in the science of it. But again, at the same time, clinically, I think there needs to be other things and not just relying upon red light to be able to solve all your problems.
Bob Sansevere (07:42):
Okay. Now getting back to the regenerative therapies that you’re talking about. Now, there are people certainly that have issues with stem cell therapies because I mean, it’s derived from embryonic sources that what you’re talking about being done does not in any way use embryonic type of therapy. And that’s a big deal too, certainly for Solidarity HealthShare, but also a lot of people that want to get some kind of relief from the issues they’re dealing with.
Dr. John Oertle (08:07):
That’s exactly right. So not all providers are actually doing it in an ethical way, like you’re saying, the embryonic stem cells and actually embryonic stem cells aren’t even approved here in the United States. But again, this is where you take the embryos from a aborted fetal cell lines and being able to actually inject those stem cells from those sources. What we’re talking about are utilizing your own body’s stem cells. So there’s no way, again, moral conflicts with using your own body’s stem cells to be able to actually reinject into the actual tissue. So it’s completely morally appropriate. And you can be confident that everything, every provider that we’re working with here at Solidarity or sharing into as far as those medical bills are completely ethical providers.
Bob Sansevere (08:51):
And also, as you said, you could look into this is regular traditional healthcare, do they cover this sort of thing? Solidarity does, which is important, but if someone had any other type of healthcare, is that something they could be confident it’ll be covered in?
Dr. John Oertle (09:06):
Unfortunately, no. So other traditional health insurance is not utilizing some of this latest technology, and so this is one of the areas where we really shine is that if it’s a cheaper cost and better outcomes for patients, again, it’s a common sense approach. Absolutely. Again, this is where it takes a long time for these companies to be able to adapt new technology into the healthcare field takes actually a very long time. But again, us at Solidarity, we be able have the ability to be more nimble and we see these opportunities to be able to serve our population and it just makes sense to be able to do these kinds of lifesaving or life altering or life improving treatments without that actual, the hurdles of all the medical complications.
Bob Sansevere (09:48):
Well, I’m definitely going to look into it and also look into Solidarity HealthShare. Solidarityhealthshare.org is the place to go. Dr. Oertle, thanks so much. Take a quick break. The BS show will be right back.
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