THE ART OF MOVING FORWARD : DEFINING PREMIUM FOOT & ANKLE MEDICINE AND SURGERY

How do you give definition to innovative medicine and progressive, well-applied foot and ankle healthcare?  You have three guides: quality, design, and technology.  Good methods and processes never rest on their laurels nor look back, choosing instead a forward trajectory in the pursuit of excellence.  In aiming to forge a better future for all you encounter, you must have an appreciation for the power of progress that we have set out to create the Sports City USA Foot & Ankle Center and in the art of moving forward.

The notion of progress and how the future is can be more than a measurement of time: it is also an attitude.  We have set our sites on a future that puts progress first.  The brand you represent should reflect its core DNA – a fascination with advancing methods and quality, progressive design of care and an innovative mindset along with a dedication to precision and quality.  This can be interpreted twofold.  First, we have an advantage.  We have a multipoint view with exposure to many different care design methods.  Second, we translate moving forward into ‘progress’ – in the way you schedule, meet, care for and about those you are privileged to encounter.  Progress is more precise, it is not about sharp elbows; it is about helping hands – ‘we’ rather than ‘me.’  We want to be a driver of change, not to be driven by it.  We want to improve people’s lives with a focus on quality, harnessed technology, and healthcare pathways designed to enhance a patient’s pathway and future mobility.

William B Irvine published a stoic treatise entitled ‘A Guide to the Good Life.’  In these he defined progress in two different ways.  The one that most people think of is ‘material progress’: having more stuff, having better stuff.  If you talk to an economist or a consumer, that’s often the definition you’ll end up with.  If you measure that kind of progress, one will say we have made great strides in the past century and in the past decade.  If you went back to the world’s early and great thinkers, they would say that we should be aiming for ‘personal progress.’  This is in the form of transforming yourself into the best that you can be.  This transformation can be measured in several ways.  Are you more joy-filled?  Are you living a more fulfilling life?  We are all currently living in a renaissance with tension between this ‘material progress’ and ‘personal progress.’  How this tension is resolved and dealt with is our idea of progress in this focused healthcare field.

Someone might ask, “How do you know?”  The answer is, “I don’t really know; it’s an educated, calculated guess.”  People who look ahead and deal in progress are often optimists.  Are you one?  Despite all the problems we are all facing, they are nothing compared to those that people were facing a century ago.

We focus on the idea that human beings are made with intrinsic worth, and they are at liberty to live with freedom and in the balance of their own environment.  A foot or ankle problem can prohibit one from moving forward in many ways.  Our approach is to try and remove that problem as quickly and as effectively as possible, while being fully aware of the valuable human being that it is attached to. In our view, progress is anything that can support that.  It also must mean creation and invention.  That is why, within our core values, we have creativity and innovation.  We view innovation in two different ways.  One, it is an evolution or an advancement from the past – something created that can do it better.  Second, innovation is something you have never seen before, and you need to have it because it fully blows your mind. 

Our company sees the future of premium personal mobility – an ability to walk and run as needed and desired – across several key areas.  You must define the idea of first-class mobility – moving and functioning pain free with the activities of life (work, recreation, family, goals).  Connectivity, with the assistance of technology in healthcare, will continue to grow and ideally improve the overall care and patient experience.  Additionally, sustainability of care methods which must be built into everything you do in a premium way.

Progress must be incremental – resultant from small improvements to what already exists.  Something has never been created out of nothing.  We view our craft of Foot & Ankle Medicine and Surgery as something that exists and needs to be improved upon and refreshed.  The future must be an attitude embodied by all that are part of the company.  You must be continually acting for the benefit of the future: improved vision, advancing design and methods, future and forward function and mobility and tomorrow’s world (whatever that may look like).

Our work is all about people.  We are creating a road map towards a better way of living for patients and the communities we serve.  With the combination of quality methods, designed care models, care innovation and technology, we are developing a vision of mobility for people that contributes to the needs of our collective future.  After all, “the whole world is at your feet.”