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You can't look at this and say, okay, I'm going to do this little part or that little part, sequentially. We can't just do what we're doing here at Columbia and just keep it for ourselves. All these places are calling us and asking, "How do you do it?" We're having a symposium in the fall, in November. A two and a half day symposium: this is how you do it. This is the template. Now be careful. Don't go here, don't go there. This is only a template. I've stepped on every land mine you could possibly dream of. I'm lucky I even have any body parts left. Only use this as a template but make sure that the patient is in the center. That's the reason you're doing it, for true care. But at the end of the day, don't end up replicating exactly what we've done because what we're doing in the New York tri-state area might not work in Iowa. It may not work in California or New Orleans because of a different point of reference.LD: It's phenomenal what you're doing.
JW: If this was a job, I would have left a long time ago, because this is a daunting task...
LD: But it's a dream...
JW: Each and every patient and person I come in contact with is a tribute to my father. So there's number one motivation. Number two, I have another life that allows me the safety net to do this stuff. I put $100,000 of my own personal money, let alone my free time, in developing this from the beginning. But those are the people who are needed to make this happen.
LD: And it's happening.
JW: Yeah. We're driven. Because if you're only driven by money, forget it, it'll fizzle out. Or if you're saying, "We need relief here, we need help" -- it's not coming for a long time because we need to substantiate our existence. And that's okay. If we don't do this hard work, this movement's going to go the way of the '60s, again.
It's an appreciation of looking at just basic business. Observing where the barriers to entry are, listening to all the objections from different points of view. Isn't it true that everybody is right with the limited amount of knowledge that they have? All theories are correct until more information is given to them. They go, "Oh. I didn't know that." So to be very respectful of everybody's position or perspective and keep this movement as neutral as possible so it isn't a religious, theoretical or philosophical war. It isn't how many people died in the name of religion. And who substantiated there is a god, or who's a god and is it a man or is it a woman -- but how many people are still dying in the name of religion? Well, we have the same thing in health care. We have people dying in pain. We have dying patients. They're in crisis. Chronic illness. So let's leave the battle axes of, you know, the conventional side and the alternative side, and just say, hey, this is basic care. Here's a neutral sandbox. Let's create something different that's going to be here for humanity.
