Our policy, that we adhere to strictly, is if you're wiling to stand in line, on a first-come, first-served basis, we don't care where you're from. We're not going to ask you who you are. We just ask, "Where does it hurt? " We just take basic information in the event that some follow-up is needed. And of course, we need to know if you're on medication X,Y, or Z so we don't do something that's counter-indicated. But we don't ask any questions.
And
when a family of five people come up to the registration who've waited all
night and they're obviously from somewhere south of the border, and perhaps
they have two or three little kids holding worn out hand me down teddy bears,
we're not about to say "We're not going to treat you because you're not
supposed to be here." So, we just treat everybody.
But when we're on a Native American reservation and working under the auspices of the Indian Health Service, we are only allowed to provide care to Native Americans. Because if we treat people who are not Native Americans, then you're in someone else's state and you better have people who are licensed in that state. Whereas when we go to the IHS we can get a waiver by filling out some forms to bring in practitioners from other parts of the country.
So you have more flexibility in
those situations. That's good.
Yes, to that extent. It used to be very onerous years ago with many, many
sheets of paper that had to be filled out in order to volunteer as a dentist or
a medical doctor at an Indian reservation in this country. To the extent that
it was very hard to get people to go through all that drama and then it took
about two-month to have a background check.
But now, I must say, the facility in Utah, thanks to very helpful people there, the Indian Health Service staff, Larry Zubel, who is the credentialing officer there, it was a minimum of paperwork there. They went to the national practitioner database on the internet, I'm sure, and within moments you could tell if you were getting someone with a little bit of problem in their medical history background. So, I'm hoping that now as we're starting to expand into other Native American reservations where we've had invitations, that the credentialing part will be as simple as it was in Fort Duchesne, Utah.
That's encouraging. Let's take a break, Stan. When we return, you can tell us about what preparation for a typical expedition looks like, how you support your project and why you haven't done an expedition in Washington, DC yet.
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