Spotlight Series

Guest Name: Dr. John Sanders

Credentials: DO

Hello! Dr. Xanders Thank you so much for being on our Spotlight Series for the Best in Utah, Pelvic Health Edition. Obviously we’re focused on public health, but you can speak to that within your own practice.

I’m gonna introduce you here and then we’ll get started in all of our questions. I’m happy to be here. You said pelvic health, I heard public health.

I’m a family doctor, so yeah. Yeah, okay. Dr. John is a board certified family physician with emphasis on family medicine, pediatrics, dermatology, sports medicine, osteopathic, musculoskeletal manipulations and holistic medicine.

He attended medical school at Nova Southeastern College of Osteopathic Medicine in Fort Lauderdale and residency at a dual accredited family medicine residency in Jacksonville. He has four children and his hobbies include woodworking, which I’ve had the experience of getting some woodworking, pickleball, soccer, volleyball, mountain biking and foraging for wild mushrooms. He is fluent in Mandarin, Chinese and knowledgeable in Spanish.

That’s it. You’re amazing. Okay, tell us how you got into the role that you’re doing and becoming a family medicine doctor in the holistic space.

Sure. So I grew up in a small town in rural Nevada, a little mining town and we didn’t really have any doctors or anything. We had like a nurse practitioner at the mine and there was a chiropractor who used to come out to my little town.

He was also a special forces medic and he was kind of a mentor of mine. And yeah, I just, you know, from a small town went to UNLV for undergrad and like sports medicine. I like sports and stuff.

And so working with all the teams and stuff and I was the University of Nevada School of Medicine kind of recruited me in high school. They just want rural kids in medicine a little bit. And so it just gave me exposure.

I didn’t, I wouldn’t have otherwise had any exposure to medicine at all. And I just really enjoyed sports and I really enjoyed, you know, caring for people and this mentor of mine, this chiropractor, special forces medic guy. I think all of those things kind of lined me up to take care of people.

And coming from a small town, like relationship is a big part of my healthcare kind of model and taking good care of people and really getting to know them kind of like an old school rural family Doc would, right? And so that’s kind of my jam. Out of residency in Florida, I went to Moab for six years and I was a country doc out there delivering babies and working in the hospital. And I did like four years as a hospice medical director as well.

So from life to death, I got to take care of all kinds of really cool people. And it was really satisfying, really rewarding work. Amazing, amazing.

Kay, what do you feel like makes you different in the space and the care that you’re delivering now? Yeah, so I started Voyage Clinics about seven years ago. We moved here to Utah County and I just noticed the healthcare system getting more and more broken and more and more sick care by people know that term now, like just people getting sicker. And I just really wanted to spend more time with my people and help them get better, like help them actually be well.

And so I just created like Voyage Clinics and it’s like an affordable membership for families and they can come in as much as they want, no co-pays or deductibles. They can text or call when they need. And so it’s just been really rewarding kind of back to my core values of really taking good care of people and just allowing me to just, I don’t know, get to know them better and take better care of them.

Most families have these big deductibles and these co-pays and insurance has been pushing them around the ringer, right? The healthcare system also is really broken in that it’s just more and more expensive. They just keep jacking up their prices. Insurance keeps covering less and less and less, pushing more of the cost down on people.

And so they’re kind of in a lurch, right? There’s nobody really advocating for the average American family or small business. And so what I’ve done is I just tried to create a system that does that. And so I advocate for them in a healthcare standpoint, but also financially.

So I’ve went out and found like affordable, transparent pricing on labs and imaging and pathology and even specialist care. And so that’s been really rewarding too, is like, oh, don’t worry. That’s only $25 for that full panel of blood work.

One of my patients actually this weekend, she said, yeah, I went to see this endocrinologist because we’re figuring her out. She’s got some really tricky things and he wanted me to order these four labs. And I went to the lab core and I tried to pay cash for it because she’s cash pay.

And it was gonna be like $490. And I said, well, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let me check this out.

Let me run it through my clinic. So I ran it through my clinic, same exact labs, and it was $45, like crazy, crazy. So it’s just interesting, the system, there’s nobody just in that position to advocate for her.

And it was neat that she could call me and say, doc, this is what I do. Yes, awesome. Okay, who would you say is an ideal fit to work with you? Like who’s your main patient that’s coming in the door? I love this question.

So really anybody who’s kind of burnt out of the current system, if they’re getting treated like a number in their doctor’s office and they’re just kind of pushing them through, come to me, it’s a total different experience. Also, I think, I mean, most of my clients actually have insurance and they still find value, both financial value, but also from a care standpoint also. So even though our membership, we don’t engage with their insurance, right? We can order an MRI with their insurance if they would like, but often it’s cheaper to run it through my channels because I’ve got really affordable, transparent pricing on everything.

And so I think really anybody would work. People with health shares, I think I’m really well positioned to help those folks. I have, again, just the affordable transparent pricing piece is really nice.

Small business owners, small to medium sized businesses are great fits for me. They wanna offer like a perk or a benefit to their employees but they can’t afford a mortgage for every employee. It’s expensive.

Insurance is, it’s really expensive. And so I come in at a 10th of the cost of insurance. And I cover probably 85, 95% of their employees’ healthcare equation.

And so that’s another good fit for folks. Amazing, super cool. Okay, what does the process look like to work with you? Like how does someone become a patient? Yeah, voyageclinics.com. Everything’s very transparent.

I’m not hiding anything. There’s no hidden fees or agendas here. So just go there.

There’s a sign up button, super easy. If it’s a business owner and you wanna just talk to me, then just call the office and we can kind of talk it through what that might look like for your employees. But yeah, individuals and families, we have people sign up really consistently on our website, really easy.

Amazing, great, simple and easy. Really like that, right? Okay, let’s talk about what is something that most people don’t know that you think that they should know about your services? Oh man, I would say everything is really on voyageclinics.com slash services. And there’s a lot.

And even my current clients have been clients for a minute. Like they’re like, I didn’t know you did that. So a good family doc, a good country doc like me can do a whole lot for people.

And so it’s easier just to go to that website. Yeah, read all the things. As part of our membership, we just keep trying to bring value to our clients, right? And so more and more value means better, better care for them.

And so we do like a sleep coach program. We have a health coach program that’s free till the end of January, but it’s $50 a month after that. We just dialed in mental health.

So we do some short-term therapy for our clients for free. We also do chiropractic care. So I’m an osteopath, I do adjustments, but I have a friend who’s a chiropractor, Dr. Matt Finlinson, who comes in once a week as well here.

So yeah, it’s neat. We just keep expanding services. We’ve got Dr. Clark is with us.

He’s a family doc. And then Marilyn Sorensen is a nurse practitioner friend of mine. So we’ve got a nice team to take good care of people.

Yes, awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that. Kate, is there any special thing you’d like to promote to the audience listening here? You know, it’s New Year’s and I think the average New Year’s resolution fails in three days.

So we’re just past that. So if we’ve already failed the New Year’s resolution, that’s totally fine. Be kind to yourself and let’s just move more.

I would say movement is the key to brain neuroplasticity. Just exercise alone is really, really helpful. And so honestly, like if you move more, I’ll be out of a job.

That would be sweet. But from like a muscle skeletal standpoint, I’m like 46 now and, you know, back pain, neck pain, very, very common. And so movement and stretching and mobility, like I’m preaching to the choir here as a physical therapist, but those things are really clutch for us.

And don’t get down on yourself for failing at a New Year’s resolution. Just pick it up and move forward a little bit with whatever you can for that day. Love it, love it.

Okay, my favorite question to ask everyone, what do you want to be known for? I don’t know. You know, I think when people come in and they just know that you care as a healthcare provider, as a doctor, that matters to me. Like I had a patient tell me like, Dr. John, like I just know that you care about me.

And I don’t always feel that from every doctor that I go to. And to me, that was the best compliment you could have given me. Just that’s my why, right? My why is really good care and taking really good care of people.

And if, I don’t know, that resonated with me really well. Absolutely, absolutely. I agree with all that too.

Okay, and then where can we find you? I know you dropped your website already, but Instagram, anything else social media wise you want us to follow you on? Yeah, we have a Instagram account, voyage underscore clinics, and then Facebook as well. And we have a podcast that we launched last year, really cool, right? Just get with multiple healthcare providers and people in the community and talk about various healthcare topics. It’s really fun.

So that’s on YouTube. And then all the podcasts, it’s just under voyage clinics, the name of my clinic. And so, yeah, and we have offices in Orem and in Mapleton, kind of the Spanish Fork area.

So Central and South County, and then we have clients as far out as like St. George and Moab and Salt Lake County. And so, yeah, we do a fair amount of video chat and telehealth as well as in-person visits and stuff. And so, yeah, those are the places how to find me.
And those are kind of my throw area for clients. Awesome, well, thank you so much, Dr. John for being on our spotlight series. Thank you for all that you’re doing in our community.

And as always, it’s always a pleasure chatting with you. Thank you, you too.