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Founder's Story
What Happens When a Surgeon Starts Thinking Like a CEO | Ep 237 with Dr. Charles Ruotolo Founder of Total Orthopedics & Sports Medicine
00:15:51
Dr. Charles Ruotolo, founder of Total Orthopedics & Sports Medicine, shares how he’s transforming patient care through innovation, accessibility, and a five-star service mindset—blending surgical mastery with a visionary approach to modern healthcare. His journey reveals what it takes to build a thriving medical practice that puts both doctors and patients first.
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- [00:01]
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- [00:28]
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- [00:41]
Daniel
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- [00:45]
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- [01:08]
Daniel
So Dr. Charles Rutolo of Total Orthopedics and Sports Medicine, something that I've been noticing as I've gotten older, now in my 40s, it's like every, every time I do something different, I lift something, I'm getting injured left and right. I don't know what is going on, but I feel that since I've hit over 40, it's like everything is changing. But Dr. Charles, what do you tell either patients or people? What do you recommend as we are starting to hit over 40s? Plus, is there something we should be doing differently or something we should not be doing at all?
- [01:46]
Dr. Charles Rutolo
Well, I think if you're having pain when you're exercising or pain in general, you should be consulting with your orthopedic doctor for, you know, for muscle skeletal pain. Because sometimes there's just one exercise that makes all exercises hurt. So whether it's doing military presses for your shoulder or doing, you know, deadlifts with your back, you know, sometimes there's one exercise that makes everything else miserable. And I think going over your exercise program with your orthopedic surgeon could help you kind of figure out what might be the thing that's causing the pain and what you could do to, to, to make everything else not hurt again. And the goal for all this is to continue to be exercising.
- [02:23]
Daniel
So when you, when you look at, for your lifestyle or something that you feel is a, a healthy form of exercise or an amount of exercise, what do you normally do on a daily basis?
- [02:34]
Dr. Charles Rutolo
I think you should Be exercising at least four to five times a week. Certainly you want to be doing some aerobic exercise. I also, muscle mass is an important thing, especially as you get older. As you get older, you lose muscle mass. So, so doing some type of weightlifting also is, Is good for your. It's good for your muscles. It's also good for your bones. You know, it helps prevent osteoporosis. So. So you should be doing a combination of weightlifting as well as aerobic.
- [03:00]
Daniel
Amazing. So when you, when you looked at why you even got into this industry, looking back, you know, going back a few years ago when you first started, what was that spark?
- [03:11]
Dr. Charles Rutolo
First time I saw orthopedic surgery, it excited me. You know, you're restoring function. A lot of it was hands on, which is. Which was very interesting to myself. And the other thing is, it's, you know, it's a specific problem. People come in with, like, I have this pain, I had this injury. And you work to fix that. Which is much different than the medical patient comes in and says, I feel old, I feel tired, and they're on 30 meds. And my, my, you know, on that, it was hard for me to focus. You know, my head would start spinning when someone says, I'm £300 and I'm tired. You know, like, what do you do differently? So, but, but in orthopedic surgery, I, I think the other interesting thing is these are problems that everyone's having, you know, and, and even when I was in medical school, you know, and you're studying about the heart, you're studying about the lungs and the kidneys. All my friends, whenever they had a question, it was always about orthopedic surgery. You know, it was all. It was like, I hurt my knee, I hurt my elbow. Why. Why does my wrist hurt? And it was funny. In medical school, you really don't learn too much about that. You really learn it in your training. And, and I'd always say, well, gee, we don't really, really don't learn that yet. So. So that's what sparked my interest is, is just how common it is, how it affects everyone through all, all age ranges.
- [04:21]
Daniel
When you look at the success of your practice, I know you do a multitude of things. You have different doctors that specialize in different things. What helped build the success of your practice. And I think this is great for other people that are aspiring doctors or maybe they already have a practice and they want to grow and build it.
- [04:39]
Dr. Charles Rutolo
So I think as the president of Total Orthopedics, I think the most Important thing is I'm on the front line. I'm, I'm, I'm a very busy doctor in the practice and I try and make my practice physician friendly. You know, and physicians, there's a myriad of reasons why physicians get frustrated, whether it's about, you know, the way the EMR works or about the insurance companies or how they have to get pre approvals for all this stuff. So anything you can do to make the physician happier on that end helps. And then my other philosophy is when you hire physicians, if a physician loves his job 90% of the time, but 10% of the time, you make them go do something that they hate doing, they'll hate their job 100 of the time. So, so, you know, I always explain that to people is like, like the only thing I care about is that they're, they're successful, you know, on the business end of it, you know, it's a business, so they have to make money and that, and that they do a good job with patients. Outside of that, if, you know, someone doesn't like getting sent to this, you know, far out clinic because that, like, it drives them crazy, you know, I don't make them do it, you know. You know, you find what they, what they want to do, make sure that they excel at what they're doing and go with that. You know, don't try and fit every, you know, square into a round hole. Just doesn't work.
- [05:55]
Daniel
So as, as most businesses we go along, we always want to add in some sort of service, maybe a new product. How do you look at it when you're like, okay, we've mastered this service, then I want to add a new service because you have a multitude of services. And I think a lot of businesses, they maybe do it too soon or they're not effective with adding in the service because it might take away from, you know, a service that they were offering previously.
- [06:20]
Dr. Charles Rutolo
Yeah. So I think trying to be ahead of the curve is very important with any business. Right. You know, you, you, you don't want to be late to the party. So, so, you know, we, we added an orthopedic urgent care years ago, before most people had an orthopedic urgent care. Because you want, you want easy access when, when you, when you tear your ACL on a soccer game on Saturday, you don't want to make a phone call on Monday. And here the doc can see you a week later. You're like, you're not, nobody's waiting that long. If you're limping around, you want to make sure you didn't break something, you know, make sure you don't have a fracture, make sure you didn't need surgery right away. So the orthopedic urgent kind of help with that model. And, and again, it's 20, 25. Nobody wants to wait more than nobody wants to wait an hour. Right. Like you want to be able to log on to something and get an appointment and be seen that day. Right. So. So I think trying to stay ahead of what's going on is important, but when you set up any of these things, you know, you got to go through your business model, you got to kind of work out how you're going to do it, who's going to do it. It's not easy setting up a new business, and you got to devote time and resources to that. Our current big project is Total Wellness. We're setting up a wellness center for our patients. And I think that's excellent because most patients coming into orthopedics just want to feel better, they want to feel younger. They're concerned about longevity and aging. And, and so I think, like, that's a great complement to what we're doing. But we've spent, spent almost a year setting this all up. Our opening date is on July 7th. You know, a lot of time and energy, a lot of conferences I went to researching, like, what we can offer. So I think if you're going to, if you're going to do something new, don't go in half, half in. Like you got to go in 100%. You got to put the people around you to help you to be successful. You know, I think that's, that's the goal with anything that you're going to start any type of project.
- [08:17]
Daniel
We've talked to some other doctors and practice owners around this whole new thing with this concierge type medicine where I think a lot of people now are looking for something, you know, they don't want to go. And, and you mentioned it before, you don't want to go and wait 15 hours at the emergency room or you can't get a doctor for a week, two, three weeks later. How are you seeing health transform with this new, more concierge, more custom type to the person health care that people are willing to pay more for.
- [08:48]
Dr. Charles Rutolo
Yeah. So, I mean, everyone's time is important. And I explain this to my staff all the time. If, if you're booking patients three weeks out, right. If you just worked a lot harder for the first three weeks, then you could book because you're going to see the same amount of patients. If you just catch up on those three weeks, then you could see everyone the day of. Right. It's, it's, it's just catching up on that lag. I think you have to think about what you would want as a patient. As a patient, nobody wants to wait three weeks to hear why I can't walk or why I can't sleep because my shoulder's killing me. So I think as long as you kind of look at it that way, it kind of fixes all the problems. But certainly concierge medicine is the way to be successful. It's like a hotel. Like if you, if you run it like a five star hotel, you will be filled. You'll have happy people. And if you run it like a two star motel, you might get some business here and there, people coming, but it's only because they couldn't find somewhere else to go.
- [09:46]
Daniel
So I like that. Run it like a five star hotel. I think a lot, a lot of practices, they need to hear that. When you look at the advancements in technology now you and I were talking earlier about AI and I'm sure you know robotics, like my dad just had robot surgery and the doctor was in a total different country, which blows my mind. But how do you see the advancements of technology transforming maybe not just the industry that you're in, but maybe even surgeries Overall, There's a lot of great.
- [10:17]
Dr. Charles Rutolo
Things that are happening under AI and robotics. There's these virtual surgeries, there's surgeries where you'll be doing a shoulder replacement and you're wearing a headset and you kind of see your pre op templated plan like overlapping what you're doing and so you can match up what you're doing with what you preop templated. You know, you're not like, I kind of remember how I planned it, it should be this or that. So that right there is amazing. On top of that, there are some things that they're doing now with, with virtual where, where you're wearing a headset and an expert in the field that might be, you know, that might be doing this the last 40 years. You'll be talking to them and the two of you are conversing over and seeing the same thing that you're operating on in front of you, right? So you're talking to like the great expert in the field on whatever it is in the shoulder or knee that you're doing. And they might be interacting with you as you're doing it live, which is amazing. And Then on the business end, just AI in general is just going to drive business to be more efficient. So we're putting in place now an AI system that'll answer the phone 24 hours a day, seven days a week and make appointments. That's an unheard of thing. If you thought just two years ago that would be something you couldn't do. But imagine being able to call your orthopedic surgeon at midnight on a Sunday night and get an appointment for Monday, right? As compared to, you know, and as a business, Monday morning is always like the busiest time. Like, how do you staff for Monday morning? You know, phone calls. You know, in medicine, you know, between 8 and 10 on Monday, we get like 10 times as many phone calls as you get the rest of the week. But imagine if you could field all those phone calls on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and make all those appointments so the patients don't have to wait till Monday.
- [12:10]
Daniel
This excites me. It's like I remember Google had the Google Assistant many years ago. They said, we're going to come out with this. And I thought to myself, like, I don't, I don't know, how's that going to work? Are we, are we as humans going to be accustomed to talking to this AI agent over the phone? But now that we've been, you know, chat, GBT obviously got us all into like, you know, talking to AI. I was just watching a video about a man, it was a CBS New York actually interviewed this guy. He asked chatgpt to marry him and it said yes. And now his wife is really upset because he's really in love with ChatGPT. So I think we as humans now are already open to the idea of talking to AI. But that's really great when you look at what makes a successful surgeon, because I imagine that has to be one of the most complex jobs anyone can have. I mean, I could. I don't think I would ever qualify to be a surgeon. But when you look at what makes a successful surgeon, what are a few of those traits that you've seen?
- [13:15]
Dr. Charles Rutolo
One is dedication and repetition, right? Like, you get better and better the more you do something and the more you dedicate yourself to perfecting what you're doing. So. So, you know, constantly watching videos, listening to what other people are doing, you know, it's like being the coach of a football team. Like the idea and plays, other people come up with great plays to counter what you're doing. The. And so you have to be constantly kind of looking at what everyone's doing because someone might have a great idea that you didn't think of yourself. So, so there's constantly changing in orthopedic surgery of how we do things. And so to stay up with that, that's important. Two is just dedicating yourself to, to repetition, doing things over and over again. You get better and better. Like a musician gets better and better the more they, they play an instrument. And then the last thing is paying attention to your outcomes. And I think this is where some people fail. Like if you don't examine your patients, if you don't communicate well with your patients, if you don't track your outcomes, you may not realize that something that you're doing really doesn't work that great. You know, just because you read a paper that says everyone comes out, you know, 90 success rate doesn't mean that that's true for your patient population. And so you want to be tracking your patients, really taking a close look at your patients, doing a full exam every time they come in to see where they're at and how they're doing.
- [14:41]
Daniel
That's amazing. I mean, you know, hats off to you and anyone else who does surgery because, you know, we, I can, I would think when we look back, you know, pre surgery and how things are post, you know, the ability for us to, as a species, human race to do surgery, you know, how much better are we today? How much better do we feel? Like you said, there's so many reasons why I'm grateful and I can't wait one day if I need to go somewhere, I want to go to your practice. And really it's very interesting. I've never heard a doctor talk about the five star experience. Being there 24, 7, I can tell that you're really at the forefront of medicine and having the patient, everything is really around the patient. So if people want to get in touch with you, they want to find out more information, how can they do so.
- [15:33]
Dr. Charles Rutolo
So you can go to totalorthosportsmed.com that's our website. You could certainly Google us, you know, Total Orthopedics and sports medicine if you're. And if you're injured and you're on Long island, just come to Total Ortho Express. You know, we have four locations. You know, you can walk right in. Our mass Pico locations open up seven days a week. So, you know, we're willing to see you at pretty much at any time.
- [16:00]
Daniel
Well, Dr. Charles Rutolo, thank you for joining us and thank you for all you do to help. I'm sure thousands of people every year get better, stay better, be healthy. I would look back like in our life and say, you know, the doctors that made a difference, I would remember them more than like teachers. I don't even remember any teacher. But I can tell you like the doctor that I had, you know, when I injured my knee or the doctor that helped me in these certain situations. So you know, shout out to all.
- [16:28]
Dr. Charles Rutolo
The doctors and a good doctor is like a teacher because he should teach you about what your problem is and what you can do to make it better. If you're not teaching, you know, you're not helping.
- [16:37]
Daniel
The best teacher is now the doctor. No, I and I thank you for that and I hope a lot of other doctors also, you know, take on that same mindset. But thank you for joining us today on Founders story.
- [16:48]
Dr. Charles Rutolo
Thank you. Thank you. Daniel.