About Daniel
Daniel West has been a physical therapist for 30 years. Throughout his career he was always astounded and frustrated at how slow, timid, and passive modern rehab is, even with all the claimed technological advances. He always treated his patients far more aggressively than what everyone else did and logically had results that no one else had ever had with severely debilitated patients.
In 1997 Daniel had a devastating car accident that resulted in a TBI, broken bones, and ruptured bowel. His doctors told him it would take a long time to recover. Daniel worked to prove them wrong. And he did, getting himself back to work and playing rugby months before it was expected he could. When he was told to go slow, he questioned why? When he was told to play it safe, he questioned why? His own recovery confirmed to him that a lot of what is done during traditional rehab is a complete waste of time and designed more to entertain the patients than provide meaningful improvement.
His development of the YEATS SMD accelerated rehab protocol is designed to have progress in meaningful functional ability immediately and for this to continue throughout the entire program. Patients improve function literally from one set to the next. This program has allowed Daniel to advance patients in hours even when they have been disabled for years. (As a recent example a C3 quadriplegic was sent home after 6 months in the USA’s highest rated rehab hospital totally dependent and in an electric chair, Daniel had him walking in his house in a week)
Daniel’s experience in healthcare taught him quite clearly that rehab companies are primarily motivated with maximizing reimbursement and driving therapist productivity with no concern regarding having that translate into increased patient function. Patients regularly complain they do the same thing over and over in rehab with no results.
Instead, Daniel rehabs patients from spinal cord, TBI, and musculoskeletal injuries as fast as possible from his personal experience needing to force his body to recover from his own injuries. He never relied on assistance to recover, he never used any equipment or technology. These elements are used by the rehab industry more for convincing patients that their rehab is high-tech, even when it produces no meaningful results. (See examples in the patient story videos.)
There is an old saying that many in today’s world are oblivious to. A man falls off a wall and cannot get up. The gathering crowd cries, someone get him a doctor. The man on the ground screams, don’t get me a doctor… get me a man who has fallen off a wall and recovered.