CLINIC FILES chiropractic-centred name, “we wouldn’t have been able to cross-link the physiotherapy as easily,” Wilson says. “We were one of very few clinics to incorporate chiropractic to physiother-apy,” he adds. For him this was a no-brainer. “If you look at the scope of practice, they’re almost identical. So instead of being contentious, we wanted to be complementary.” Although Physiomed was born in 2002, Wilson says the building blocks were already being laid out during his early years of private practice, which began in 1994, after he graduated from Canadian Memorial Chiropractic Col-lege (CMCC). “I was doing all types of therapies myself – physical therapy… everything from chiropractic to soft tissue to exer-cise, acupuncture.” Wilson observed early on that al-though medical clinics were trying to incorporate a multidisciplinary practice of physiotherapy, chiropractic and or-thotics, they were missing a point by failing to take their patients further to a path of “optimal wellness.” A majority of patients were coming for pain injury. “However, most of them have chronic conditions that go with it,” that needed to be addressed in tandem with their chief complaint, he says. He also believed that, “If people did what they wanted to do, other than what they needed to do, they’d be more success-ful” in achieving wellness. Physiomed clinic in downtown Toronto. PRACTICE DEVELOPMENT Connected caring W Business case for patient-centric franchise BY MARITES N. SISON therapy, compression therapy, diet and nutritional counselling and compres-sion therapy. Wilson says his first clinic at the “full-service” fitness club, where he learned from doctors, helped him to conceptualize Physiomed. “What I ended up doing was introducing phys-iotherapy to the traditional chiroprac-tic clinic.” Initially, Wilson’s and his partners’ chain of practice were called, Natural Health Chiropractic Clinics. As more physiotherapists were brought into the clinics, they decided to rebrand them as Physiomed. “We were looking to bring in the physiotherapy clients and cross them over to chiropractic care,” he explains. If they had stuck to the hen Dr. Scott Wilson opened his fir st chiro-practic clinic inside a fitness club in To-ronto in 2001, he latched on to the idea of a holistic approach to health and wellness that would evolve into a suc-cessful and pioneering enterprise. Fast forward to 2016 and Wilson is CEO of Physiomed, which describes itself as “one of Canada’s largest and fastest-growing chains of healthcare clinics.” Physiomed has about 30 clin-ics, which integrate a variety of health-care disciplines including chiropractic care, physiotherapy, naturopathy, kine-siology, orthotic therapy, massage GROWING PAINS MARITES N. SISON is a journalist based in Toronto. 34 Canadian Chiropractor May 2016 Physiomed’s growth came in stages. “The first was me understanding doc-tor-patient relationship by practicing intensely from 1994 to 2000,” he says. “Between 2000 and 2008, I really built up the rehab model.” Dr. William Salameh, who purchased a Physiomed practice in Hamilton, Ont., in 2005, and now operates a second clinic in Burlington, Ont., says he shares the company’s philosophy of being “a patient-centric, multidiscipli-nary facility with an emphasis on health, wellness and active living.” By 2008, Wilson had 12 clinics, which were run by partners who wanted to open their own clinics but carry the Physiomed brand, intellectual property and software. “I went down the road of having it as a franchise and www.canadianchiropractor.ca
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