One of the most valuable concepts in Judaism is that of tikkun olam – a responsibility to heal, repair and transform the world.
For several Jewish physicians who specialize in orthopedic care at Phoenix-based The CORE Institute, tikkun olam comes into play at many levels – from healing patients’ broken bones and aching joints, to raising awareness of musculoskeletal health, to transforming physicians’ business model within the American healthcare industry.
“We’re currently in a time of transformation in healthcare, and I think as it relates to musculoskeletal care, we’re proving that we are leading that transformation from a cultural and quality perspective,” says orthopedic surgeon Dr. David Jacofsky, chairman and CEO of The CORE Institute.
Nearly 10 years ago Dr. Jacofsky saw healthcare changing. “We decided to come up with a creative model that allows physicians to get better control over healthcare, to really allow them to take better care of patients and at the same time create a business structure that allowed them to better monetize their efforts,” Dr. Jacofsky says.
The CORE Institute stands for Center for Orthopedic Research and Education, emphasizing that the organization Dr. Jacofsky and fellow physicians started in 2005 does more than specialize in orthopedic care. The CORE Institute’s 100+ providers work on patients’ shoulders, spines, hips, knees and ankles, from surgery and rehabilitation to musculoskeletal oncology. But The CORE Institute also is built on solid tracking of patient outcomes, where physicians get monthly scorecards and patient treatment is based on medical evidence. Their Excellence through Evidence platform has led to The CORE Institute’s rapid growth and to industry-altering partnerships with hospitals including the Cleveland Clinic and Banner Health.
The CORE Institute includes a management company that manages practices and the orthopedic service lines at hospitals including five Banner Health hospitals. It also owns and manages a malpractice-insurance plan, an international orthopedics consulting business, a real estate company, and intellectual property and patents on its practitioners’ innovations.
The combination of healing and transforming has interested Dr. Jacofsky since he was a child on Long Island, NY, where his mother taught school and his father ran electronics-related business. The family celebrated Jewish holidays and special occasions, giving Dr. Jacofsky a sense of tradition, ritual and discipline that he still values today.
By the time he was 8 years old, he was studying martial arts, with its physical and mental discipline, and was interested in the human body’s musculoskeletal system. Dr. Jacofsky says he always wanted to be a surgeon. By the time he was 11, he was working with his father on weekends and vacations, seeing how to manage people and how to grow a business. With that background, Dr. Jacofsky started his first business, a product marketing company, while an undergraduate at Lehigh University. At the Medical School of Pennsylvania, he and a friend partnered on a title and mortgage company. During his residency at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, he started a real estate development company that built 100 condominiums around the city.
Dr. Jacofsky left his position as a division director at Mayo Clinic to found The CORE Institute, moving to Arizona with two other doctors and two employees. He maintains his longtime interest in martial arts but now spends more of his free time lifting weights, running or hiking with his two sons. How does he do it all?
“You’ve got to have the right people. The job of a CEO is to surround themselves with people much smarter than they are,” the 41-year-old Dr. Jacofsky says. “And I don’t sleep much.”
His staff includes former hospital executives, consultants to Fortune 500 companies and software entrepreneurs. Dr. Rene Lucas was director of inpatient rehabilitation at Banner Del E. Webb Medical Center before joining The CORE Institute in 2006 for a fellowship on interventional spine techniques.
The importance of healing, repairing and transforming the world resonates with Dr. Lucas, too.
“I saw that The CORE Institute was going to raise the standard of care for orthopedics in Phoenix, and I wanted to be part of that,” Dr. Lucas says. A specialist in diagnosing and managing painful conditions of the spine, Dr. Lucas aims to help The CORE Institute develop comprehensive spine centers, treating patients with exercise, some medications and, if needed, surgery.
Dr. Lucas also works to raise awareness of musculoskeletal conditions, which he says are a leading cause of disability and chronic pain among U.S. adults but which receive just 2% of federal research dollars.
An avid cyclist since his medical school days at the University of California-San Francisco and a two-time gold medalist at the Grand Canyon State Games, the 54-year-old Dr. Lucas started a cycling team at The CORE Institute last year. They race every weekend from January through April. This summer they plan to race in California and at a national event to raise funds for the team’s new nonprofit official sponsor, the MORE (Musculoskeletal Orthopedic Research and Education) Foundation. An observant Jew who does not ride on Shabbat, Dr. Lucas admits the out-of-town races create challenges from a kosher food perspective. Still, he’s thrilled to see the team he started thrive. Dr. Lucas has participated for six years in Wheels of Love, a five-day bicycle ride in Israel that attracts 350 Jews from around the world to raise $2 million annually for the ALYN pediatric hospital. He is active participant in Phoenix Community Kollel and member of Ohr HaTorah Congregation. He and his wife have three children, who attend Jewish high schools in Los Angeles. Next year, his daughter will go to seminary in Israel.
Both Dr. Jacofksy and Dr. Lucas tap their Jewish backgrounds in their work. Dr. Jacofsky’s leadership includes an emphasis on traditions. “I think the fostering of traditions is a very good way to bring people together and have them focus on a common goal, share common vision and a common belief, whether it’s religious or otherwise,” he says. Traditions have been especially important as the company grows rapidly. The CORE Institute regularly presents awards at staff meetings, hosts holiday parties that include staffers’ families and communicates with its workforce through quarterly video newsletters. “In the world of healthcare especially, but really in the world of any business, there’s a significant amount of perceived chaos,” Dr. Jacofsky says. “Everything changes extremely rapidly, and I think being able to have traditions that are shared among the group helps to ground and root people and brings some calm to the chaos.”
Dr. Lucas sees his work with spine patients and with a cycling team that raises awareness and funds for musculoskeletal health as part of tikkun olam. He says The CORE Institute’s culture of innovation and learning is strongly based on ethics.
“Because of our emphasis on doing things that are ethically correct, I think it raises the level of our performance, and everybody believes in everybody else here at The CORE Institute,” he says. “We definitely feel like we’re doing something that’s beneficial, not only for the patients but for us also.”
The CORE Institute’s focus on culture and quality is paying off. Last year, The CORE Institute logged more than 250,000 appointments with patients from all 50 states and six countries. Revenue grew 45% from 2012 to 2013, Dr. Jacofsky says, enabling the company to self-fund significant investments in growth and infrastructure. It also opened a 69,251-square-foot national headquarters and north Phoenix clinic near Interstate 17 and Union Hills Drive in Phoenix. Besides its 14 locations in Arizona, it recently added four locations in Michigan, and locations in two more states are planned.
