Today we’d like to introduce you to Adam Iannazzo.
Adam, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
1992: Training in Tae Kwon Do for an attempt to get to the Junior Olympics, I’m in advanced honor classes in high school and on my way to becoming an orthopedic Surgeon.
1994: High School Dropout, Depression, getting into trouble and Changing Tires for Sear in Salem NH. I live in an in-law apartment under two toddlers with moles running around the drop-down ceilings with my girlfriend that became my wife that turned into my wife, my ex-wife that then regressed back to my friend again that also lives in San Diego.
1996: Graduated from Night High School with a diploma. I was now working as a shipper and receiver for a company in Methuen Mass that made stainless steel gas systems to help grow semi-conductors. That year I decided to go to Physical Therapy school. How hard could it be to get in? Well, apparently very. I didn’t know, but it was a cut-throat time for PT school applicants and students were being driven towards therapy because of an unfilled need and promise of a better quality of life while helping injured and ill people. The Competition was fierce and you had to have an almost perfect past and bright future to get into “pre-physical therapy” school. I was a dropout, had a very colorful past and my grades were shit compared to the other applicants but you never know until you ask.
Notre Dame College, Manchester NH: A nun took pity on me, saw something in me or just wanted a project, not sure which, but now, it doesn’t really matter. What was important was that she helped me get into Pre-pre-physical therapy school starting in 1997, January.
January 1997: I somehow have a knack for knowledge. I can learn. I can pay attention when I couldn’t in High School after a long bout of depression and some ADD. I could apply myself and I excelled in college.
May of 2000: Quote from my grandmother: “Adam, I didn’t think you were this smart.” Graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in biology with a minor in Chem: cum laude. My last year of my bachelor’s degree was the first year of PT school. I somehow managed to get into the program. I got lucky really. Notre Dame College needed applicants. They were in their second year of their program, didn’t have accreditation yet and they accepted my application. Amazing. I’m working as a welder, electromechanical assembler and finisher of the gas systems by this point. I’m making 13 bucks an hour.
February of 2001: Get a job working for a cryogenic machine shop and help build testing equipment for the shuttle program to test superconductors near absolute zero while in PT school.
September 11, 2001: I’m in Washington DC at Howard University Hospital when the 9/11 attacks occur. I finish my day treating patients and don’t go home for the day early. Never have I seen the city so empty as that day. Fly home the Friday after with 4 other people on the airplane.
May of 2002: Graduation with a Master’s degree in PT!!! I tear my ACL practicing Tae Kwon Do. Nobody will hire me. I get a job installing high purity piping systems for a company because I know the owner. I rehab my knee.
August 2002: I get my first job as a PT. They ask me to start a “work hardening” program to help long-term injured workers get back to work. I accept. Little did I know that this would be the driving force for my career over the next 15 years.
August of 2003: I sell everything and move to San Diego with my Fiancee and two friends.
Over the next few years, I worked as a “floating” PT for various hospitals, a traveling PT company and for a company that mostly treated worker’s compensation patients. The owner and I started a separate business together where I did my specialty programs of work hardening and functional capacity evaluations. I begin to develop a reputation in the worker’s compensation industry as the PT that is honest, gets patient’s back to work when nobody else can while helping identify the occasional injured worker that was “less than honest” about their injury. I eventually become an expert in functional capacity testing for an employer in San Diego and have been in court proceedings many times over the past years.
January 2014: The business I currently own and run is going well. Business is good but a recent change in work comp law creates a situation where a company can start to defraud insurers and employers. I report it when I see it and I lose 90% of my business by June of that year and am forced to sell.
August of 2014: I decide to start a company on my own and only focus on specialty physical therapy, work hardening, Functional Capacity Evaluations and screening would be employees. I have learned to speak Spanish, educated myself on the interventions that are proven to help my patients and gotten rid of those things that are not scientifically proven to have a therapeutic effect.
August of 2013: I meet my current wife, love of my life and mother of my beautiful and amazing 4-month-old daughter (born 9/317): Abby Vernon and Grace Marie, respectively.
In March of 2017, I assist in filing a lawsuit against the fraudulent company and it quickly has the effect on the system I had hoped. Injured workers, employers, insurers and PT clinics will be protected from fraud and abuse by this company. The lawsuit (filed by the iPT) settles out of court in December of 2017, ending part of the fraud and getting justice for so many in the work comp system.
I continue to perform better than any other PT in San Diego. I get workers back to work that have been out of work for years. I help the city of San Diego indict two fraudulent injured workers with my objective eye from the reports I write. I learn to help all types of patients efficiently and with evidence-based interventions. I learn to help runners become more efficient and complete my first full marathon in Carlsbad in January of 2015. I finish in 3:40.
This year, I changed my name to Tried and True Physio. I no longer consider myself part of the physical therapy world even though I have a degree and license in PT. I am something different. I don’t subscribe to tradition, placebo, nocebo (words that hurt) and value my patient’s outcomes over my income. I provide the truth as the research shows it. I give back to the community as much as I can with as needed pro bono work for those that deserve it. I spend more time and bill for less.
I have just purchased my first commercial building another Physio clinic in El Cajon and I am improving upon the model of care in East County as well as Mission Valley.
Achievements outside of PT: hole in one, cave diving, full marathon, happily married, yoga practitioner (can do one-handed peacock and handstands because I love arm balances), devoted husband and father.
Has it been a smooth road?
Goodness no. Depression, ADD, moving across the country, lazy and greedy business partners, divorce, 2008 housing collapse, losing a company, starting a new one, buying a new one, competition, fraudulent companies and a frivolous lawsuit.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
I am a physiotherapist. I have a degree in physical therapy and a license but don’t provide the type of therapy most PT’s do. I provide the most evidence-based skilled interventions that I can find from those researchers much smarter than I. I don’t use the typical modalities like ice, heat, electrical stimulation, tapes and modality-based interventions that are not proven or even disproven in the literature.
I am most known in the athlete community for my “one and done” type therapy. I evaluate, give corrective exercises and provide detailed instruction and then release the athlete back to the plan. This is opposite of the type of plans in PT.
I get people better faster and keep them better longer with education and I understand chronic pain.
I provide physiotherapy, FCE, work hardening, nutrition consultation, running evaluations, golf evaluations and education on everything health from Vaccines to Organic vs conventional foods.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
San Diego is full of PT clinics and to start out new without a connection to a source of referrals or a name for yourself would be almost impossible. You have to have a Niche in SD.
We can demand better from our practitioners. If you are in a PT clinic and are doing exercise and the PT isn’t right there with you (not the aide) correcting, improving, promoting or inhibiting movement, then you aren’t getting skilled PT for your money.
Ice, heat, electrical stimulation and other passive treatments are not skilled, not proven and are often only placebo.
You should get your patients better in 3-6 visits and if not, change your plan.
Pricing:
- Cash pay therapy: $120 to $150 per visit for an hour or more. One on one care always with the therapist.
- Run evaluation: $299 for full evaluation and plan. Video evaluation of form.
- Golf evaluation: $299 for full evaluation and plan. Video evaluation of how the body moves in the swing.
Contact Info:
- Address: 1011 Camino del Rio South Ste 340
- Website: www.triedandtruephysio.com
- Phone: 6193632324
- Email: adam@triedandtruephysio.com
- Instagram: triedandtruephysio
- Facebook: facebook.com/triedandtruephysio/
- Twitter: @featsStrength
Getting in touch: SDVoyager is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
