I still believe in teams.
If you've been following ROOTS this past year(s), you've probably noticed we've had more staff turnover than expected. People came, people went, and somewhere between the third "this isn't quite the right fit" conversation, you might wonder if I've lost my conviction about building a team.
I haven’t.
Most healthcare teams aren't really teams at all. You've got practitioners working in isolation, occasionally crossing paths in the hallway, and calling that collaboration. It's more like parallel play than actual teamwork and I don’t want roommates.
What we're doing at ROOTS isn't just physical therapy with nicer equipment. We're practicing medicine the way it should work. We’re treating the human body as the interconnected movement system it actually is, rather than a collection of independent parts that sometimes break down.
This requires a specific kind of practitioner. Someone who gets genuinely excited about complex problems without obvious solutions. Someone who’s challenging their understanding of a problem with every assessment and intervention they perform. People who understand that "it's complicated" isn't a limitation but more often the most accurate assessment you can make.
Most healthcare providers are skilled within their specialty. They know their field deeply and practice it well, but the separations we’ve established in medicine aren’t paralleled in the organization of the human body. We need people who understand that the most important work happens where specialties overlap and standard categories don't quite fit. Practitioners who are comfortable with uncertainty, curious about complexity, and know that the best solutions often emerge from combining different approaches.
But you can't just put credentialed people in the same space and expect collaboration. The current system trains people to work within defined categories, focus on specific symptoms, and measure success in ways that don't always reflect whether patients truly improve. Real teamwork (and impactful patient improvement) requires practitioners who can challenge their own assumptions, learn from others, and admit when something falls outside their expertise.
I got into this line of work because I was like many of you - a frustrated patient that wondered if things could be better. I opened my own clinic because I was a frustrated practitioner refusing to conform myself to fit inside the box the US healthcare system traps us into. Building a team is much more than a utilitarian pursuit, it’s the satisfaction of my passion in this work.
I trust the vision of ROOTS I have, and am eager to see how it will continue to come together.
If you're a patient of ROOTS, stay tuned because we’re bringing you the best we can in some new and exciting ways.
If you’re a movement expert interested in treating ROOT causes instead of just symptoms, spending real time solving real problems with colleagues who challenge your thinking, we should talk.
Strong teams develop intentionally, one person at a time, with patience and the belief that what we're building is worth the effort.
