Meet James Justice of Wellness Reform School in Huntington Beach

Today we’d like to introduce you to James Justice.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Myself and co-founder (now wife!) Amy started out when we were both working for the same physical therapy clinic; I was working in the back office with patient care and she was in administration. We started to see a trend with insurance plans only covering a limited amount of physical, which was often not be enough to fully treat certain patients with more than one injury, or more complicated case and chronic cases. This problem would lead to patients running out of insurance benefits and being unable to continue their therapy until a new year and fresh benefits started up again. If you ran out of benefits in May, you were out of luck and had to pay out of pocket for the rest of the year, cash rates, which are prohibitive for most people. Because of this issue, we saw a lot of patients riding a roller coaster of getting better, then getting worse. We decided to approach the owner of our Physical Therapy clinic, now an officer in the Nonprofit, to see what could be done.

We wanted to fix this issue of lack of patient care due to cost prohibitive issues, and to find a way to keep patients on track with their recovery without putting a financial burden on them. We came up with WRS, which has blossomed to include community members who are can get wellness services while between jobs, or on fixed incomes, etc. We all agreed that wellness should be a right, not a privilege and we aim to provide that right regardless of resources people might or might not have.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
One of our biggest struggles in the beginning was staffing. We needed volunteers with a specific set of skills, knowledge about wellness, and the ability to teach exercises. One of our target populations has very specific needs as far as exercises go, so our potential pool of volunteers is relatively small. As of now, we have gotten a lot more help from the staff at the clinic we are partnered with, Orthopedic and Spine Care Physical Therapy, and we are steadily increasing the number of people enrolled in our program.

Another big obstacle for us was getting people interested in our program at the start. People have called our program “too good to be true,” which is both flattering but also hurt us as at first with many people hesitant to join in because they thought there was a hidden catch. It took us about a year before we had enough clients in our program to keep things flowing comfortably. Now, we get most of our enrollees through referrals and word of mouth, and we make sure everyone gets personalized programs and attention.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Wellness Reform School story. Tell us more about the business.
We have big dreams of what we want to provide in the future, but for right now, we focus on what our volunteers are good at: exercise. Our main focus is therapeutic exercise. All of our volunteers have multiple years experience teaching therapeutic exercises in a physical therapy setting. Typically, a new WRS client is referred to us from the clinic we are partnered with. The clients are usually done with physical therapy either because they have “graduated,” and are well enough to start doing things on their own, or they have run out, or are running out, of insurance benefits and are not at the place they need to be health-wise. Ideally, when a patient is done with physical therapy, they should continue their therapeutic exercise independently. However, as we all know, life happens and exercise is easily put off or ignored in lieu of other more pressing matters. For our clients, we work with their physical therapist and make a plan for them. The client then comes in to work with our volunteers and continue the therapeutic exercise that they were doing during their normal physical therapy sessions. Our goal is to continue the progress they were making during their treatment so that no injury relapse occurs.

Another part of what we offer is more traditional personal training. Many people find a gym setting intimidating, or they may not have a gym membership or other place to exercise. Because of our partnership with Orthopedic and Spine Care, we can use their facility and all of the equipment they have to offer training. Our approach to personal training is a more whole, therapeutic style of instruction, where we focus on longevity and overall health first, and other goals second. But whatever a client’s goals are, our team has someone who can help them reach it.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
One of the best things about being located in Huntington Beach is how generous and caring the local people are. We are a new, small non-profit and since we don’t have access to any grants yet, all of our budget and program funding comes directly from private donations. Our volunteers help us keep costs down, but we still have to pay for things like insurance and other supplies. We have been fortunate with our donors. They know that not everyone can afford to pay for wellness services, and understand that we can offer those services at no cost to those people. Huntington Beach is a beautiful active city, and we love that we can contribute to keeping people here healthy and happy.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.wellnessreformschool.com/
• Phone: (949) 342-6192
• Email: info@wellnessreformschool.com

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