V.I.P. FAQ

We take each application to heart, and encourage every Veteran to reach out to our team at any time during their experience with our program, and beyond. 

Please know every step to processing your entry to our program is essential to ensuring we offer only the most personalized care and attention.

Our facilitations are a responsibility we approach with the thoughtfulness and personal attention every Veteran deserves, and look forward to offering each Veteran In Pain applicant, the same.

STEP 1: V.I.P. Veteran Application/Entry Form Includes:

📍Submission of DD214

📍Submission of Drivers Lisence

Discharge

📍Access to MRI’s of areas of concern conducted within the previous 12 months

📍Presence of soft tissue within affected area(s)

📍The degree to which their condition(s) has affected their quality of life and that of their family, friendships and ability to engage with the outside world. 

📍Agreement  to participate actively in his/her healing process and commitment to V.I.P.’s post-procedure directives, and acceptance / understanding as to the uncertainty of results and patience necessary in enduring a traditional OrthoBiologic recovery of 9-12 months. 

📍Veteran is Officially Cancer Free for at least one year. 

📍Veteran is devoid of Heart Disease

STEP 2: Submission of our V.I.P. Liability Waiver. Transparency is key to our success as well as our Veterans'. We encourage applicants to read through this carefully and understand V.I.P. is a facilitator. Only upon an official diagnosis through consultation with a valued V.I.P. Specialist will the Veteran be approved or denied treatment based on this professional assessment. 

V.I.P. prepares the Veteran for this moment in the most thorough manner possible through their Zoom Intake, so he/she will have an optimal foundation laid for any potential procedure to commence in the most efficient and fluid manner possible with all pretreatment requirements, imagery, and technique overviews satisfied prior to meeting with our physician. 

STEP 3:  Our V.I.P. Veteran Zoom/Facetime Introductory Meetings 

This step is crucial to our ability to properly assess each Veteran to familiarize each Veteran with the field of Interventional Medicine, and for the proper and responsible assignment of each VIP Physician match.

This very personal conversation with our Founder is 45-60 minutes and essential to understanding the wants and needs of each and every Veteran applicant, as a supplement to the electronic application.

Topics will include:

📍Education in the role of Interventional protocols, what they are, and what they are NOT, their place in the field of chronic pain management and their limitations for use.  We also explain the various modalities existing in this field which may incorporate various components outside of which their physician may or may not discuss.  

📍A personal overview of their history, nature of onset, and story of degeneration and how it has impacted their life and that of their family. 

📍Previous efforts and any surgeries conducted on their journey toward healing. 

📍That V.I.P. is solely a facilitator, and does not guarantee treatment, but the opportunity to be scheduled for a physician consult who will then approve or deny procedure(s) uniquely based on their expertise and findings.

📍To reinforce each the unpredictability and length of an Interventional procedure recovery.

📍Discussing the essentials of engaging in our multidisciplinary post procedural support system available to each Veteran through our extensive network of options generously provided and available through our program. 

STEP 4: VIP Quality of Life Survey

This may be the most important Step for each VIP Veteran to take as information gathered due to these submissions with provide the hard numerical data necessary for us to implement our long term initiatives to implement long term ACCESSIBLE Interventional and Alternative Solutions for Veterans suffering from chronic pain.

We are currently conducting our VIP IRB-Certified Study through the invaluable information provided by our VIP Veterans in Step 4, on the effects of Interventional solutions on the quality of life of Veterans suffering from joint-specific and spine related chronic pain conditions. This is STEP 4 of our Veteran facilitation process, and is the most important step to our long-term mission in establishing accessible solutions for Veterans suffering from chronic pain.

This numerical hard-data collective will be published without any Veteran's identifying factors, and is essential to commencing our VIP Legislative Initiative, The Interventional Therapies for Veterans Act - Government funding of Interventional and Alternative solutions for Veterans suffering from chronic pain. 

A Veterans In Pain V.I.P. Physician may accept as few or as many V.I.P. Veterans as you feel comfortable, and are never under any obligation to accept a Veteran submission. 

What is most important, is for each  experience to bring meaning to the lives of both our Veterans and well as Physicians participating in our program.

1. Once we declare the candidacy of a V.I.P. Veteran Applicant, we will submit their patient-summary to an appropriate VIP Physician match who then informs us as to whether they would like to accept  our VIP Veteran for care.
2. Our VIP physician reaches out personally to their VIP Veteran  to introduce themselves and personalize the Veteran's experience.
3. Physician requests their front office to then contact the Veteran to schedule the Veteran for their consultation.
4. At Consult provide the Veterans with a physical therapy prescription for Chord Health, so he/she may access their pro bono Virtual online Physical Therapy sessions.
5. Once a procedure has been completed, the Physician's office sends VIP the overall value of donated services, and VIP will remit an official Letter of Acknowledgment for your records. Please defer to state laws via your Secretary of State Registry of Charitable Trusts for the parameters within which each state allows  potential benefits.
6. Post-Treatment is when VIP steps back in and coordinates postoperative multidisciplinary solutions available at no cost to our V.I.P. Veterans through our partnerships through Chord Health and Amp Recover, virtual online physical therapy platforms, Naturopathic Guidance through certified & dedicated practitioners, psychological and emotional support through our “V.I.P. Cell Mate” program - uniting our program’s post-operative Veterans with our V.I.P. ‘Sponsors’ for the first 12 months of recovery who have undergone a prior yet similar procedure and recovery, and facilitation of Neurostimulation device- support.

Like most Nonprofits, Covid-era funding efforts have been our largest hurdle to- date. We understand how difficult it is for families to share even the smallest amounts, which is why no matter what the situation, we exercise monumental efforts to continue to provide the often life-saving facilitations our VIP Physicians are able to provide. 

However, without financial support, many costs we normally cover, are now placed as burdens on the very Veterans we are trying to help. 

As a non-salaried administrative team, every penny of your donations go directly toward our programs, and to coverage of the hard costs required for every procedure, OrthoBiologic or otherwise. 

• OR and anesthesia
• V.I.P. Research Division
• Travel
• Accommodations
• Cryogenic/Hyper-Wellness & Ozone Therapies
• Bio-Product
• Procedures used to perform procedures
• Operating room fees 
• Nursing assistants
• Kits for tissue/fluid collection 
• Physician Outreach
• Conference symposium outreach
• Awareness Building
• Veteran outreach
• Development of the V.I.P. National Symposium for Veterans In Pain - an invitational to Veterans in search of chronic pain solutions

Although we have secured a network of participating physicians around the country, we are actively accepting qualified physicians to ensure treatment-accessibility for Veterans in all 50 states. 

Accessible care is mandatory due to the difficulties travel can entail for Veteran patients in chronic pain. 

For a number of our applicants, we are the last-ditch effort for a solution; A burden we carry with reverence for those placing their trust in us, as well as the impetus for ensuring we are providing the highest quality of care needed in as many locations as possible. Our current waitlist is demanding the continued expansion of treatment location options, causing many to wait for care, sometimes meaning a situation of life or death. 

Donations help make this possible. Our efforts in procuring physician participation are accomplished through various efforts such as presence at national Pain symposiums, conducting speaker panels at Pain-related healthcare conferences, personal and content-related outreach to qualified physicians in areas of need, content procurement for submission to medical publications, press releases to local and national news outlets on issues facing our nation's Veterans in pain, and social media marketing, just to name a few. 

Additionally, the majority of Veterans In Pain’s funding is provided solely by individuals, and grassroots fundraising. 

Our Founder and Team V.I.P. have engineered our steady growth, as of December 2020 having facilitated the treatments of approximately $1,000,000,000.00 in pro bono care without any salary expenses. 

However, with our extensive waitlist and exhausting product distribution options from the generous companies who have supported us thus far, we are expecting vastly increased costs for 2020. This mandates the financially ability to acquire a core team to execute the administrative roles necessary in guiding our initiatives as a growing entity in the nonprofit sector due to the number of applicants and limit to manpowered facilitations our current smaller volunteer team allows.