Measurable Solutions Helps You Reach Your Goals

Since implementing The New Patient Course program I’ve become too busy! The Executive Training I did has given me control, though. I know that if my numbers do dip or my volume changes somewhat that I can correct it. That has happened and I have control of what volume we do have.

What made Measurable Solutions unique is they give you implementation steps for the technology that you learn. When you do the Executive Training a consultant follows your progress weekly on these implementations. I had looked at enough of the improving statistics of other practice owners who had attended Measurable Solutions’ training to make the decision to attend myself. I thought, “Look, everybody else has obviously been able to make this stuff work for them, so I can too. Let’s try it.”

The training that I’ve done has certainly taken some barriers off the vision I had for my goals. Obviously as a practice owner you have a dream that you want to achieve and sometimes you get caught up and it gets convoluted and it gets confusing. You’re not really sure in what direction to go after a while. A lot of what I’ve learned has cleared that up. I know that if I do these steps right here I can get to the next level. I can push the other stuff aside that blocks production. That has really cleared up a lot.


--S.L.

With Measurable Solutions, you are allowed to go much further than what you anticipated you can personally do

Todd Munson

David started the first practice 20 years ago in Kentucky, where I joined him 16 years ago as partner. Back then a 40-50 patient week was a busy week for us. We added clinics and satellite locations due to competition from the hospital, other private practice organizations and people starting private practices. We basically added a clinic on every couple of years, to the point now where we have seven offices and close to a hundred employees including about twenty therapists (PT, PTA and supporting staff).

The town where our biggest clinic is located has a population of around 25,000. I would estimate that the surrounding rural areas in which our other six clinics are located have around 80-100,000 people in total.

Being a strong entrepreneur looking for new ways to grow our business, David had attended several different practice-building type programs, of which a lot of times would emphasize brochures, the correct advertising, the correct business cards, etcetera, etcetera. To be honest with you, we never really saw much carry over in getting our practice to grow. The different programs cost several thousands of dollars but didn’t have a significant impact on our business.

My love in the aspect of Physical Therapy is being able to market to physicians and patients and having all staff take on a role in growing the practice as well. I had a successful marketing plan which I have used before which trained everyone on how to market from their posts within the organization. In other words, from the therapists’ standpoint: how they would market to the patients and to the doctors; how the front desk would do that too – all the way to the technicians. With this program, we increased our business by 30% that year after being stagnant for approximately four years.

David had seen the advertisements from Measurable Solutions as far as how to increase new patient referrals and to build your physical therapy practice and came down for The New Patient Course. At The New Patient Course we were able to evaluate our practice and set forth a plan of where we should be at with the number of employees; patient visits and percentage of arrivals as well as exactly how profitable our company should be where we were currently located. We saw that we could do significantly better with our current staff than what we were doing.

At first I was a bit hesitant because I had just instituted a program that was very successful with 30% growth and I thought that it might muddy the waters having something else added to that and make it not as pure. The neat thing was that we had a site visit from Measurable Solutions where they visited our practices, interviewed a lot of our employees and looked at the manual and program that we’d developed and to my surprise, actually complimented it and said that if anything works, don’t discount it -- Measurable Solutions only helps to accelerate successful actions. So that kind of opened my eyes that Measurable Solutions wasn’t there to knock down anything that already worked or that was effective – the technology would only enhance and increase the performance rate of our successful actions. Of course I was excited about this, so immediately after The New Patient Course we started the executive training at Measurable Solutions.
Prior to Measurable Solutions both my partner and I kind of prided ourselves in being the “best therapists possible.” In other words, orthopedic manual outpatient therapists where a lot of the manual skills were brought to us and we always treated patients. We felt that within our scope in the community, we were able to offer the best as far as Physical Therapy and in doing so we got most of our self-worth from actually being in the clinic and doing. We prided ourselves in “nobody is going to out-work us -- we are going to get there early and nobody is going to stay later” and we could out-hustle anybody.

Our decision to do further training at Measurable Solutions was based on two things: firstly, I was impressed that they didn’t discount what already had worked and secondly, one of the owners was actually a physical therapist in private practice who was successful and could speak our language and understand our nomenclature and what each one of us went through. I felt a special liking that there was somebody in this business that actually had performed the profession themselves. So that helped.


The biggest thing with practitioners is there is a tendency for physical therapists to be hesitant. Many people are successful in their private practice, however most of their success is really based upon what they feel they personally can do, i.e. how many patients they can see. With Measurable Solutions, you are allowed to go much further than what you anticipated you can personally do, because you are the executive within your corporation and work on it versus being in the corporation. It allows you to excel much higher as far as seeing patients, profitability and growth of your organization that you typically wouldn’t be able to do in of yourself.

I’m appreciative that we do have the technology that’s allowed us to put this in place, that’s allowed us to train our staff so that they can perform their functions at their posts, and allow significant growth, all with less-in-the-trenches work, and I thank the Lord that he’s given me the energy and strength for this information to be able to implement it and the growth that we’ve had and looking forward for even greater growth.

How to Be in Control of Your Income

Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a simple yet powerful tool to combat the current state of the economy? A tool that would require no money, very little time and give you and your staff certainty that you can control the income and expansion of your practice? This tool exists!

To find out more go to www.measurable-solutions.com or call us at 1-800-491-2828.

As a physical therapist with lots of experience in running a practice, Kim Chastain decided to make a change and do it right in her own practice.

As a physical therapist with lots of experience in running a practice, Kim Chastain decided to make a change and do it right in her own practice.

For 6 years Kim was partners in a national rehab company, managing to grow her clinics to six with the help of another local partner. But she felt herself hindered by restrictions on her marketing budget and time that allowed her no ability to really manage her clinics properly.

“I put in long hours, which in the beginning was fine as we originally had some control over who we could hire and what needed to be done. That changed over the years and I found myself working more and more and having less and less control. The only way we were allowed to market was by going out in person to doctors which was never really productive and again took away from what little time I had to run the clinics.

I wanted to be able to expand but found that with our skeleton crew we were wearing all the hats and there was no real organization, no method to grow predictably. We were doing duplicate work and no one really knew how to measure how well each was doing individually. If we were successful it was the “partner” that did it. If we were not, it was the “partner” that did that. As an executive responsible for the operation this may be largely true but it is a team effort and each individual who works there contributes to the overall success of the practice. Those contributions can and should be measured. I knew that even if I left this partnership I would still need to solve this problem. I also needed to solve the problem of organization itself.”

Kim finally decided that she didn’t want to continue in her business partnership. She was working long hours, wasn’t having fun and wanted the freedom to be able to expand as she saw fit.

“I had Measurable Solutions’ newsletter for a few months, sitting in my briefcase – I would read it once a week at least. I realized that all that they are saying, all the myths that they had listed – that was exactly how I thought. I thought, this is too good to be true…this newsletter was almost too good to be true. Then I decided I am going out on my own. I needed to gather as much information as I could because I knew that everything that I had been taught by this national rehab company, if I kept doing that, I was going to be in the same boat. I would never get out of my practice. I would never be able to work part-time.

“Shortly after I made this decision, I took the New Patient Course, as I wanted more control over my expansion. I knew I would really need to get the word out as I was going to be building my own practice from the ground up. I also realized that despite a respectable degree of success I really didn’t have the knowledge it took to effectively manage a practice.

I opened my new practice with all the information from the New Patient Course in place and my office manager had been trained on it as well. We just went like gang-busters. We had patients calling before we had actually opened the doors.
I then rolled up my sleeves and became trained as an executive as well at Measurable Solutions. I can say that I now feel 100% certain of success. Before I felt that only my relationships with doctors would determine my growth. Now I know I can grow as fast as I want to grow and that I can create a diverse referral base through what I now know about public relations and marketing.

I can also say with total certainty that I understand what it takes to make a team and how important every staff member is to the expansion of the practice. Having the ability to manage each individual’s production with statistics allows everyone to be self-sufficient and to determine their own pay as well. We are also starting out with a way to communicate internally which will not waste each other’s time and will allow each individual to do their own job; something which we never had before. I feel that I really can have the dream that I wanted, I feel that I can opt, if I’d like, to not work the practice at all. I feel that I have all the training tools that I need to create another CEO (that is not even me) and I could leave. That blows my mind! That I could not be there, and it can be a lucrative business. With the training, it’s whatever your goals are. Depending on how much you choose to expand is how much you will expand. And I can step out or not. That’s definitely being able to do what I want to do with my own personal life!
I have seen what’s out there by the so-called experts. This is the only workable technology that I have seen. Just the New Patient Course alone, you go back to your practice and you know exactly what you need to do when you go back. No other course has given me that. Even those specific to physical therapists.

Prior to Measurable Solutions’ training what was drilled into me was to buckle down and shrink. For 6 years that was what the philosophy was. Measurable Solutions’ philosophy is the complete opposite, you know, you have to expand! I never thought that I would be seeing 200 patients a week! I never thought that would happen!

If your goals are to be a slave to your practice and to have it be totally dependent on whether you are there or not, then continue to do whatever you are doing. But if you want some freedom and you want to be able to work part-time or not work at all and still have an income, you need to have these tools or you are never going to get out.

I consider myself fortunate at this point that I had the experience of running a practice against considerable odds since it opened my eyes to the pitfalls that are there. I am glad I took the opportunity since then to really do things right the first time in my new practice and would encourage anyone in practice for a long time or just starting out to get trained as an executive.

After 14 Months Our New Practice Had Expanded From Zero to 150 Patients

After only 14 months, Rex and Jill Holden expanded their new practice from zero to over 150 new patients using proven physical therapy marketing solutions.

What did you do before starting your practice?

We worked for the local hospital and did physical therapy in patients' homes for eight to nine years. Our practice is in Traverse City (the largest city in NW Michigan) and its surrounding counties which make up a populations of about 85,000 people. There were twelve physical therapy clinics in our community when we decided to open our doors. Rex had the idea to go into private practice four or five years before we opened. We started actually looking into it about two years prior to doing it. At first our staff consisted of one receptionist, now we have nine full-time employees and two physical therapists. We both do administration and physical therapy, but are weaning ourselves from the physical therapy part.

What method of physical therapy marketing did you use before working with Measurable Solutions?

We didn't do any physical therapy marketing before Measurable Solutions. I had seen "Out the Wazoo!" and just laughed and thought that's really corny. But I kept seeing it over and over and then I called them. I asked for some references and they gave me a couple of people who had gone through their program. After talking to those people my wife and I looked at the New Patient Course and we decided to at least find out what it is all about. So I thought, "What the heck?" and signed up for the course.

After the first half day of the New Patient Course we realized that we were going to end up doing more with Measurable Solutions. All their other clients that had gone through their program had been successful. Measurable Solutions only works with private practice physical therapists -- that was key for me. I remember going to lunch with one of their clients, and along with everything else, the one thing that stood out for me was that he was just so enthusiastic about Measurable Solutions and what they had done for him. That helped us feel more confident as practice owners.

What were your immediate results after doing the New Patient Course and what are your patient visits now?

Once we implemented this method of physical therapy marketing, we started getting ourselves known. Measurable Solutions helped us with a tailor made New Patient Course for practices that haven't even opened their doors yet. We promoted our practice within the community -- just to let the community know we even existed.

If was kind of a whirlwind. We were totally a new business and hadn't seen any patients at all yet as practice owners. I did the New Patient Course, came home on Sunday and we opened our clinic on Monday. Our number of new patients has gradually risen ever since we have been doing this program. I think we felt a little bit of a delayed effect before we started seeing a rise in the numbers which wasn't terrible as it took a while to get ourselves known in the community. We started getting referrals and then it really started going up even more. There was a bit of a lag but it was all worth it. We had seven patients the first week. One month after we opened, we hit 30 patient visits a week and have been experiencing steady growth since we opened our doors. After 14 months we were hitting over 150 patient visits a week and haven't looked back since.

What could you tell other private practice physical therapists who are thinking about doing the New Patient Course?

I cannot imagine not having this information. It provides a framework to develop a whole organization, the whole clinic and then to grow. I just don't see how you cannot have all of this information in place and survive.

We have seen success! That would be with more new patients, more patient visits, and improved teamwork in the clinic. Measurable Solutions helped is and really pushed up to the next level.

You think your whole being is being a therapist. Treating all these people and thinking "well, I'm doing that and people are coming in the door so I don't really need to do all that executive stuff and I don't have time to because I treat people." Well the truth is if you have the goal to expand, you've got to make some time to do that executive stuff, including marketing. You have to do it or you're not going to grow and do what you want to do. We found out by doing it! Our plans are to double the size of our patient volume right now, and have the clinic running totally independent without us. Then we'll see, expand further or take some vacations. We want to spend more time with our family. That is one of the main reasons we are doing all this.

If You Don't Make a Change Now, When Will it Be?

By Johnny Johnson, PT

When I went into PT school in 1993, I had a goal of opening two physical therapy clinics in the area where I was raised. My concept at the time was to provide physical therapy services to my rural community in either a home health or outpatient setting. I started by contracting myself to local agencies for home health physical therapy. After developing a consistent patient load, I opened my first clinic in a rural area with a population of 13,000 people. In 1999, I started Rehab Access Physical Therapy with me working 3 days per week in the clinic and doing 3 days per week of home health. I had one front office person with no other technical support. Since that time, we opened another clinic in 2001 and bought out a third clinic in 2004. The original clinic is 50 miles south of New Orleans and the other 2 are in the suburbs of New Orleans.

Prior to the Hurricane Katrina disaster, we had built a successful organization with 16 staff members. Then on August 19, 2005, our entire world was turned upside down. All three of our clinics were shut down for 5 weeks. We lost half of our staff as a result of their homes being destroyed. Our original clinic 50 miles south of New Orleans was totally destroyed as well as the entire community. Even 6 months after the hurricane, there was no one living in that community. My family and I were out of the area for over 3 weeks with the uncertainty of what was left. The reports that I was getting were that it wasn’t looking good. After going through the initial grief, my mindset turned to, I did it once. I can do it again.

When I returned to our area 3 weeks after the hurricane, I was relieved to find two of our clinics had survived. I checked the answering machine and there were even messages from patients asking when we would be reopening. We had past patients who had lost everything and been displaced calling to find out how we were doing. My staff was calling to say that they were ready to get going. We reopened 5 weeks after the storm and since that time, we have been able to climb right back to treating the same number of patients per week. However, things would not have worked out so well if it was not for a one-on-one meeting back in August of 2003.

When I was originally growing my business, I based my growth on giving excellent service to my patients, developing good relationships with members of the community and waiting for “word of mouth advertising” to kick in. That was the extent of my marketing. I was successful at doing that, to a certain extent. The problem is you can only see so many patients in a day. I had to drive one hour to work every day, see patients until 5:00 o’clock and then many times see one or two home health patients after work. I was seeing patients six days a week and marketing in my spare time. This is a very exhausting way of doing business. At that time I received some literature from Measurable Solutions on how to get new patients using a different means of marketing a PT practice. I was intrigued about their message and attended the New Patient Course in August 2003. While I was in Clearwater, Florida at their offices, I met with Shaun Kirk, who is the president of Measurable Solutions. Shaun and I sat down for a private meeting regarding the situation of my business. Shaun outlined two key points for me to expand my business. He told me that I needed executive training and that my business would flourish if I had a location closer to where the physicians practiced. I spent over an hour telling Shaun about all the barriers that I would have to deal with and the reasons they would make it hard to expand. Our area is extremely competitive with numerous physician-owned PT clinics, private practices and hospital based outpatient clinics. At that time, I had figured it to be almost impossible to expand into the area where the physicians practiced because of the fierce competition in outpatient physical therapy. However, my mindset changed when Shaun asked me one question, “If you don’t make a change now, when will it be? When will you not be working fifty hours per week with twelve hours of driving per week?” That question motivated me to make a change.

Since that time, I have done nine executive training courses. We more than doubled the patient volume of our second clinic and we acquired a third clinic in a suburb of New Orleans with a higher patient volume and many more referring physicians. I was also able to fully staff my original clinic in the rural location without me having to be there (though that clinic has now been lost to the hurricane).

The training that I have received at Measurable Solutions has made a tremendous change in how we run our organization. I have been provided with tools that help grow our organization and I now know how to handle problems when they arise. I have been able to put together a great group of people who are dedicated to growing our organization.

The New Patient Course gave me practical marketing data on how to increase our patient volume ¬– and it really worked. The Executive Training gave me practical data on how to expand our organization. There is nothing more powerful for me than to know that I have the data to tackle any problem that may arise in our organization and handle it with the technology that was taught by Measurable Solutions.

Prior to training with Measurable Solutions, I had no one to ask regarding getting new patients, marketing a physical therapy practice, hiring staff, expansion, etc. Basically, I had no support group to ask what works and what doesn’t work in private practice physical therapy. It is hard to call and ask your competitors how to get new patients. It was even harder to call and ask them what I needed to expand.
I can honestly say my current situation would be totally different if I had not signed on with Measurable Solutions. It would be hard for me to be in a business at all after the hurricane if I had not done the New Patient Course and Executive Training. Fortunately for me, I was asked the key question, “If you don’t make a change now, when will it be?”

The New Patient Course Gave Me My Life Back

By Rob Jordan, PT

Fifteen years ago I started in private practice. I had hopes and dreams and personal goals I had set for myself. I had no particular desire to become wealthy or powerful. I just wanted to take care of my patients and make an honest living for myself and my family. It didn’t take long, however, for reality to set in. Over the next fourteen years I faced one challenge after another. It seemed I spent most of my time putting out fires. It is sad to say, but I had come to a point in my career where I honestly felt I could not win no matter what I did. I came to believe that the whole world was against me.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I had actually become reasonably successful to the outside world. I had managed to build my practice to three facilities and employed eleven people. Unfortunately, my family and I were paying a tremendous price for my “success.” Every two weeks I paid payroll and all of my bills and prayed that there would be something left over for me. I was working fifty to sixty hours per week and taking my work home with me. I had become so jaded and discouraged that I was probably not much fun to live with. Fortunately, my wife and my family believed in me and their support kept me going. But, by the early part of last year I had all but given up. I was preparing myself mentally for the day when I would be forced to abandon my dreams and give up. Two years ago I had hired a nationally known business consulting company to come into my office for a week. I spent $18,000 for them to tell me that I needed to close two of my clinics and fire 8 people. I also needed to cut my salary by 50% and start charging all of my patients $20 per visit as a service charge. Not only were these suggestions worthless, charging extra is illegal. I threw them out of my office and began considering closing my clinic. Perhaps, I thought, I should consider another occupation.

I had been receiving postcards and mailings from Measurable Solutions about their physical therapy marketing solutions for some time. I had even spoken with a representative about attending a seminar almost a year earlier. Unfortunately, I did not take any action until February of last year. I enrolled in the New Patient Course as a last ditch effort to save my practice. Worst case scenario was that I would pick up a few physical therapy marketing tips. I was intrigued by the notion that I could market my practice without feeding every doctor and nurse within 100 miles in an attempt to make them like me. I was skeptical to say the least, but figured I would “poke this thing with a stick” to see if it was real.

To my amazement, the ideas presented in the New Patient Course seemed to make a lot of sense to me. I began to see that I could gain control of my practice with the simple application of their physical therapy marketing technology. It was if a black veil had been lifted from my eyes. I had done a lot of things right over the years, but I could certainly do many things better. I came home from the New Patient Course with an energy I had not had in a very long time. We began seeing a change in our referral numbers about 6 weeks after starting the New Patient Course program.

Following the New Patient Course I was presented with an option of continuing my executive training or simply returning home with the information I had been given. I knew in my heart that my company had potential, but I could not figure out what needed to be done. I knew that marketing and promotion had worked in the past, but every time patient visits increased like I wanted, the bottom would fall out within a few weeks. What I came to realize was that my company simply did not have the organizational capacity to handle the increased load. I also came to realize, painfully, that I was probably the one holding us back. I had no real control of my company or the employees who worked for me. My idea of a financial plan was to pay all of the bills every month and pray that something would be left over. I was struggling to survive, but I was the one losing. I had spent thousands upon thousands of dollars over the years learning to be a good therapist, but I had spent virtually nothing on learning how to run a physical therapy business. My business was controlling me! Measurable Solutions gave me a glimpse of what potential my practice had. For the first time in many years I actually felt like someone was on my side.

I could not envision myself leaving Clearwater after the New Patient Course without signing up for additional training. I was hungry for every course I could get and I decided then and there that I was going to go for it. I had spent 10 years paying off student loans and another 14 years paying off bank loans after purchasing my practice. In the past 10 months I have paid for all of the training at Measurable Solutions and have money in the bank to spare. I, now, see a light at the end of the tunnel. I now see how I can run my business without even being there. My employees are happier and more productive and I am working fewer hours per week than I have in 14 years. How much is that worth?

Implementation of what I learned at Measurable Solutions has given me the ability to maintain control of my practice without constantly needing to produce to keep us afloat. I have learned how to give my employees responsibility and I have learned how to confront them when they fail to get the job done. As a result, they know that I trust them and that I expect only the best from them. Now, I have lots of free time to think about expansion and the future of this practice.

The New Patient Course and the Executive Training program at Measurable Solutions has given me more than just lots of new patients; it has given me my life back. To any therapist who believes that the courses are too expensive or the commitment too great, consider the costs associated with continuing what you are doing now. How’s that working for you? Do you see a day when you can walk away from your practice and retire? Do you foresee a time when you can run your practice for extended periods of time without being there? Until you learn how to control your practice, your practice will control you. Remember, you have spent many years and tens of thousands of dollars learning to become a PT. Doesn’t it make sense that you would want to spend a little extra to make sure you are successful in business as well?

During This Difficult Economy I Am Still Hiring And Growing

By Dr. Lisa J. Allen, BioMechanic Physical Therapy

Let me tell you a story.

I wanted to open my own practice, but while running a small practice for a large corporation and seeing how hard it is to make ends meet, I was afraid. I met Measurable Solutions in the exhibition hall of an APTA meeting. I wasn’t ready, but they called and mailed and called until I finally decided to have a look. I have never looked back. After seeing other PT’s skyrocketing graphs on the wall at Measurable Solutions I decided that that was what I wanted. With them by my side I knew I could not fail. Not only did I not fail, my practice took off like a rocket!

I had successfully opened two start-up clinics for two different corporations. Let’s compare my growth using the New Patient course versus my growth marketing “some other way.” In the first case we hired a second PT after 2 years, in the second case we hired a second PT after 1 year. In both cases the CEO’s were happy with the rate of growth. The corporation in the latter example should know what is good since they have experience with over 300 small clinics nationwide, right? Well they ain’t seen nothing. Had they known what Measurable Solutions knows and had implemented their physical therapy marketing program or at least had known what type of results were possible, the corporate heads would never have been pleased with my results!!

Flash forward to opening my own clinic using the New Patient course. I hired my second PT in 3 months! My third PT after 7 months! Now during “this difficult economy” I am still hiring and growing. I love how my own personal economy is indifferent to the nation!

It is great how Measurable Solutions is always there when I have a question or problem. They have the experience to know what is happening, the tools to handle it, and the guts to speak up and give strong advice.

If you mean what you say, and you want to open a clinic for yourself or just get your current clinic rocking, then look no further, you have found the solution.

My best wishes to you and yours for a prosperous PT practice and lots of happy patients.

To find out more about physical therapy marketing please
Click Here!

What Physical Therapists Are Saying About The New Patient Course

Prior to NPC, I did the typical marketing with dropping info and cards to MDs; light snacks. We got a high percentage of patients by word of mouth. The concept of accurately marketing the docs was very foreign. I now feel that I can market to the doctors effectively without losing time in the clinic to meet the anticipated demand. – D.L.

I was first introduced to MS by a colleague who previously had a private practice. He ran a few numbers on average amount of collection per patient visit. I saw the potential for myself to improve my income, my stability, and my future. I had been floundering around as a travel therapist, running after dollars, was working in an environment I would rather not. Completing the New Patient Course has opened my eyes as to what I can accomplish: opening my own successful PT business. I have been so impressed with MS that I have already signed up for more of their classes. To me it is like getting a business degree from PT clinics at only a fraction of the cost of an MBA.

I had some restless nights trying to make the decision to go into practice for myself. I realized that the only thing stopping me was knowledge. Once I obtain that knowledge their won’t be anything holding me back. If anyone reads this that is a PT and thinks that it can’t happen, talk to MS and see what their services can do. I hope that when you see MS promotional material you see my clinic’s statistics to show what hard work and the proper knowledge can do. The best investment is the investment in your self. I feel like courses from MS may be the best investment in my self besides my PT. – A.W.

The NPC is going to be valuable to our practice by giving us control of the inflow of new patients. The information was presented in an effective way. The presenter knows his stuff and was enjoyable to work with in the classroom. We will be implementing the program as soon as we get back. I know it will work and our office will be more effective and have happier patients. – J.R.

We took the New Patient Course in January. Since then, our numbers have doubled. We also found out that our collections per patient were approximately half of what we “assumed” they were. We have now brought our collections up, also! Since our success with the New Patient Course, we are excited to start our Executive Training and bring our numbers up even higher! – M.S.

When we first came to the New Patient Course we were averaging 40 patients a week, we were very happy with this. Come to find out we were actually losing money with the way we were running our clinic. After the New Patient Course our numbers went up into the nineties in just 2 months and we are actually making money. We would recommend this course to anyone. – T.S.

The course solidified and consolidated our current promotion and marketing strategies. We had tried a number of the suggested techniques but not in a systematic approach with an ability to analyze the results of our attempt. I think if I can implement this program I will be able to finally get a vacation. – R.M.

To find out more about physical therapy marketing please
Click Here!

Best PT Practice Of The Year Award

Measurable Solutions' Executive client, JOHN WOODARD, PT and Co-Owner of Premier Physical Therapy, Kyle Johnson VP Public Relations and Teressa Rutherford, VP Administration were presented with ADVANCE magazine's BEST PT PRACTICE 2008 Award at the APTA Private Practice Section Annual Conference & Exhibition held November 5-8, 2008 in Orlando Florida. ADVANCE Editor, Scott Huelscamp, also presented John with a large check for $1,000 made out to Premier Physical Therapy recognizing their excellence in service and dedication to physical therapy.

To find out more about physical therapy marketing please
Click Here!

We Can Go On Vacation And Not Worry About The Practice

By John Woodard, PT

My business partner, Tony Rubba, and I started out in private practice in September of 1997. We currently have two physical therapy clinics and 21 staff. Our competitors are two major hospitals and five other private practices nearby.

Prior to doing The New Patient Course, our method of getting new patients was basically word of mouth. We went out and met some doctors, sent some lunches over and things like that which got a few referrals. After that, we would be too busy treating to market anymore, resulting in a fall off of new patients again. That was our entire physical therapy marketing plan.

Because of this, we never really grew, we just kind of went up, then went back down, and then went up, went back down. Also, we had a situation where 70% of our patients came from an orthopedic group. And one of the doctors that referred the other 30% of our business was leaving town. We had to do something fast! Lo and behold here came the postcard, ‘Have New Patients Out the WAZOO!!’ Needless to say, this sparked our interest.

We made a couple of phone calls to Measurable Solutions but, being the skeptic that I am, I asked for some references which they gladly gave. Their clients were more than pleased to talk with me and spoke so highly of The New Patient Course that we decided to do it.

After doing The New Patient Course we went from 25 referring doctors to 115! We were doing somewhere around 20 new patients a week prior to The New Patient Course and we now have about 40 new patients a week. We have gone from 180 to 400 total patient visits a week! Now we had a real physical therapy marketing plan!

Once we started to expand, the biggest problem we had was hiring new staff quick enough to handle all the business coming in, but there Measurable Solutions was able to help us as well.

My partner and I were each putting in about 60 hours a week. After Measurable Solutions’ training, Tony doesn’t even come into the office much and I get home every night around 4 or 5 o'clock. I now have time to go to my kids’ ball games and take them to school in the morning. We can go on vacation and not worry about the practice. This is a big change from a few years ago.

After working with Measurable Solutions I am in tune with areas I need to focus on and make improvements to and there are far less unknowns, and that makes owning a clinic much more comfortable and doable. I would tell other practice owners that are thinking about doing The New Patient Course that there is more freedom and far less headaches to be had by doing this course. And every day that they don’t do it means potential lost income and freedom.

To find out more about physical therapy marketing please
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My Practice Is Thriving

I want to thank Measurable Solutions for all they have done for me with my business and personally. Not a day goes by where I don’t hear a patient, a colleague or other business leader in the community remark on how their business is suffering, shrinking, and they are having to reduce staff, cut payroll or other benefits to their employees. They ask me if I am experiencing the same difficulties. I very proudly respond to them that I am not. I then go on to tell them how I just opened my fifth clinic, hired 6 additional staff members and saw 102 new clients just last week. Not that I am trying to rub salt in their wound but I am very proud of the accomplishments our business has achieved despite all the economic hardships that are occurring all around the community.

Inevitably the next question I get is, “What is your secret?” Again I very proudly remark to them that I have no secrets! My business is thriving due to the sound structure that I have in place so that I do not experience downturns, or if I do, I know exactly how to fix it in a very short time frame to get things moving back in the right direction. I share with them how the staff at Measurable Solutions introduced me to a system of management and physical therapy marketing and I trained on how to properly utilize the technology and I tell them that I have I trained my staff on how to use the technology. It is a sound business technology and when appropriately applied helps you spot trouble situations or potential trouble situations which if ignored can lead to serious problems down the road.

It has been over 5 years since I attended the New Patient Course. In those 5 years I have experienced several situations such as 3 hurricanes in a 6 week period, 7 physical therapy clinics opening within a 10 mile radius of my clinics, referral for profit clinics (POPs), staff turnover, and the list goes on. I am proud to report not one of those situations caused economic hardship or a miss of a beat in my operations and each time our business came out bigger and better. Back then I was 1 clinic seeing 130 patient visits per week and now we are 5 clinics strong seeing close to 1,000 patient visits per week! I know this is a direct link to the management technology and continued application of the physical therapy marketing program as well as the training we have applied. I continue to be amazed even after 5years as to how blessed I am to have Measurable Solutions staff as business associates. They have been with me since day one and I know that when times get tough they are a phone call away!

I am accomplishing most of this while I am not even in the office. My wife and I just took a spur of the moment trip to NYC and returned yesterday. The food was fabulous, the atmosphere was electric and we had some really good quality time to connect as husbands and wives need from time to time. I am happy to report while I was gone our patient visits shot up by over 100. More proof that I need to cut my hours back and take more vacation time than I am already doing.

Steve Ryland, PT, DPT

To find out more about physical therapy marketing please
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This Is What Other Physical Therapists Have to Say About The New Patient Course

The workshop enlightened me on how to be proactive and progressive in increasing volume of new patients in my clinics and not be reactive to trends and factors that I have no control over. I am extremely excited about implementing the program as soon as possible. I learned never say never to a successful business if you do it the right way no matter what barriers may block your goals! LH

Many physical therapy marketing seminars that I have attended offered bits of information but really didn’t seem to offer much to take out and utilize in the field. This seminar offers an extraordinary amount of information in regard to making one’s business successful. I had similar ideas to Measurable Solutions, but I really didn’t know how to implement them. Jeff and Shaun are extremely personable and knowledgeable, I usually am ready to go home after most seminars due to boredom or lack of interest, however with Measurable Solutions, I could stay around for a while. The New Patient Course should be a standard for all, with the exception of those in our area. TL

Perspective! I have spent many hours duplicating the efforts of my peers. My success has never been significant enough to warrant a continuation of any particular approach. Changing my perspective and looking at the problem from the eyes of a marketing principle viewpoint has opened my eyes to a whole new potential I have never considered. SJ

I am opening a new private practice in September. After The New Patient Course, I now have an organized way to approach physical therapy marketing, or should I say public relations. I also received some excellent “nuggets” that will help with administration and operation of a new clinic. NT

Before taking this course I was feeling a bit overwhelmed and knew that I needed some help to organize my thoughts and determine my shortcomings as a business owner. I had some fairly good ideas of what they were and attempted to “fix” them on my own, usually sacrificing another area of the business (I am currently the sole staff member, wearing all the hats). This course has given me some very concrete and practice tools to put into place right away to help me build my practice with “patients out the wazoo!” It has helped me see more clearly what it takes to be really successful in business. I now know I have a much better handle on how to “drive the ship.” The overwhelmed feelings are replaced with renewed excitement and energy! KB

I have realized the areas of my practice that need to be addressed. Each of these areas have specific numbers that have immediate and future implications on realizing a now obtainable goal. It thankfully has expanded on my prior goal of putting the patient first in their goals which then allow me to accomplish mine. DR

After completing this course I realized how much control I have over my success as a practitioner. Helping me to identify my weaknesses in turn, I feel, will lead to strengthening them and improving my practice. I am very optimistic and eager to return home and implement some new policies. Thanks for a great course. PS

After attending The New Patient Course I felt a sense of relief knowing there is an effective plan to give me direction in growing my practice. When I came to the course I was completely overwhelmed with my practice and I already feel that I will be able to empower my situation when I return home. (Plus spend more time with my kids and husband!) JH

After a long period of confusion and frustration resulting from feeling trapped in patient care I broke free, free to grow my business. Attempts to market/promote largely failed and I felt lost as to my purpose and direction. I now know what I have to do and feel confident and at peace because of a newfound direction. DC

Before attending this physical therapy marketing seminar, our business was stagnating and morale was low. Now I feel rejuvenated and with new ideas, and I found out what my purpose in Physical Therapy is. This seminar was awesome. I am taking away some incredible ideas which I sincerely believe will help our business. The presenters were interesting and made the entire experience quite enjoyable. I appreciate the opportunity to attend! CM

I have not taken a physical therapy marketing/business expansion workshop previously, but this has been one of the best and useful seminars I have done. Almost everything I had hoped to achieve from this seminar – I did. I was especially please that Shaun was a PT, because he understands the type of business we are in and was able to give us SPECIFIC information and tips that were very helpful. I look forward to applying these principles to our business and I am confident they will work. RE

When I came to The New Patient Course I was frustrated with the lack of a plan and need a course to follow to get new patients into our practice. I needed some guidance and now I have some powerful ideas and tools to use at home – THANK YOU! LD

To find out more about physical therapy marketing please
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How We Grew from 580 To Over 1000 Patient Visits

By Todd Munson, PT, OCS, CEO

David Apts,PT, OCS, started the first practice 20 years ago in Kentucky, where I joined him 16 years ago as partner. Back then a 40-50 patient week was a busy week for us. We added clinics and satellite locations due to competition from the hospital, other private practice organizations and people starting private practices. We basically added a clinic on every couple of years, to the point now where we have seven offices and close to a hundred employees including about twenty therapists (PT, PTA and supporting staff).

The town where our biggest clinic is located has a population of around 25,000. I would estimate that the surrounding rural areas in which our other six clinics are located have around 80-100,000 people in total.

Being a strong entrepreneur looking for new ways to grow our business, David had attended several different practice-building type programs, of which a lot of times would emphasize brochures, the correct advertising, the correct business cards, etcetera, etcetera. To be honest with you, we never really saw much carry over in getting our practice to grow. The different physical therapy marketing programs cost several thousands of dollars but didn’t have a significant impact on our business.

My love in the aspect of Physical Therapy is being able to market to physicians and patients and having all staff take on a role in growing the practice as well. I had a successful physical therapy marketing plan which I have used before which trained everyone on how to market from their posts within the organization. In other words, from the therapists’ standpoint: how they would market to the patients and to the doctors; how the front desk would do that too – all the way to the technicians. With this program, we increased our business by 30% that year after being stagnant for approximately four years.

David had seen the advertisements from Measurable Solutions as far as how to increase new patient referrals and to build your physical therapy practice and came down for The New Patient Course. At The New Patient Course we were able to evaluate our practice and set forth a physical therapy marketing plan of where we should be at with the number of employees; patient visits and percentage of arrivals as well as exactly how profitable our company should be where we were currently located. We saw that we could do significantly better with our current staff than what we were doing.

At first I was a bit hesitant because I had just instituted a program that was very successful with 30% growth and I thought that it might muddy the waters having something else added to that and make it not as pure. The neat thing was that we had a site visit from Measurable Solutions where they visited our practices, interviewed a lot of our employees and looked at the manual and program that we’d developed and to my surprise, actually complimented it and said that if anything works, don’t discount it -- Measurable Solutions only helps to accelerate successful actions. So that kind of opened my eyes that Measurable Solutions wasn’t there to knock down anything that already worked or that was effective – the technology would only enhance and increase the performance rate of our successful actions. Of course I was excited about this, so immediately after The New Patient Course we started the executive training at Measurable Solutions.

Prior to Measurable Solutions both my partner and I kind of prided ourselves in being the “best therapists possible.” In other words, orthopedic manual outpatient therapists where a lot of the manual skills were brought to us and we always treated patients. We felt that within our scope in the community, we were able to offer the best as far as Physical Therapy and in doing so we got most of our self-worth from actually being in the clinic and doing. We prided ourselves in “nobody is going to out-work us -- we are going to get there early and nobody is going to stay later” and we could out-hustle anybody.

Our decision to do further training at Measurable Solutions was based on two things: firstly, I was impressed that they didn’t discount what already had worked and secondly, one of the owners was actually a physical therapist in private practice who was successful and could speak our language and understand our nomenclature and what each one of us went through. I felt a special liking that there was somebody in this business that actually had performed the profession themselves. So that helped.

With the physical therapy marketing technology that I had prior to Measurable Solutions, we increased 200 patients per week that year. When we came down and got the training from Measurable Solutions it did several things that we never had before -- that being a structure, putting the organization into place. It took us out from doing to being the executives that we should. If that had not occurred, we wouldn’t have had the structure in place for the growth we’ve been able to see. Through the technology we have learned, we have gone from the 580 to 780 and now over 1000 patients per week for the last 3 months. The significance of this was we were able to accomplish this with my partner being on vacation for several weeks and myself seeing only 7 or 8 patients per average week. Before Measurable Solutions, there would be no way that I would ever believe that this could ever take place!

Our staff has become responsible for their areas that they are working in. We have been able to develop people within our organization to move up to certain levels and oversee tasks that we no longer have to see on a day-to-day basis. In doing so it freed me up to be at the executive level versus being at the staff therapist level, so my work wasn’t so much in treating patients hour by hour, but being at the executive level helping to see that the vice presidents were facilitating the operations.

The biggest thing with practitioners is there is a tendency for physical therapists to be hesitant. Many people are successful in their private practice, however most of their success is really based upon what they feel they personally can do, i.e. how many patients they can see. With Measurable Solutions, you are allowed to go much further than what you anticipated you can personally do, because you are the executive within your corporation and work on it versus being in the corporation. It allows you to excel much higher as far as seeing patients, profitability and growth of your organization that you typically wouldn’t be able to do in of yourself.

I’m appreciative that we do have the technology that’s allowed us to put this in place, that’s allowed us to train our staff so that they can perform their functions at their posts, and allow significant growth, all with less-in-the-trenches work, and I thank the Lord that he’s given me the energy and strength for this information to be able to implement it and the growth that we’ve had and looking forward for even greater growth.

To find out more about physical therapy marketing please
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An Interview with Alan Henley and Merlin Johnson, PT:

Alan Henley: We’ve been in private practice going on 8 years. We’re in the town of Bartlesville, Oklahoma, which has a population of around 35,000. The surrounding area has about 50,000 people – somewhere in that range. We are about 40 miles away from Tulsa, which has a 1 million population.

I’m not a physical therapist and Merlin is of course so we kind of had a good partnership from the start. He was able to handle all the clinical aspects and I was able to handle all the administrative aspects and we’ve been very successful, really, all along. The practice grew right away.

Before we did The New Patient Course, we were too caught up in the day-to-day activities of the practice. We were not able to do necessary administrative tasks such as physical therapy marketing.

Merlin Johnson, PT: After we took the New Patient Course, things really just started to take off. We started implementing the things they taught us and the ways to actually do the physical therapy marketing. And our new patients actually went up substantially. We went from about 12–15 new patients per week to 25-28 per week. Last week, we did our highest ever new patients: 39. It was fun!

A: It was kind of interesting, because we were already a
successful practice and thought we had pretty much plateaued. What kind of intrigued us about coming to The New Patient Course was a technique that could be implemented, that would not require us to be out of the office.

M: Because we would spend time out of the office, it was something that was easily implemented. Alan and I experienced a tremendous amount of growth and found out that we had not actually plateaued.

A: The biggest problem that we were running into prior to coming to Measurable Solutions was time.

M: Time and management of our clinic. Our staff got too big for the way we were handling it. Alan and I were handling everything.

A: We were really overworked and didn’t know how to get out of it, or even that we should get out of it.

M: We didn’t have a clue how to get out of it.

A: We didn’t seek anyone else to get training or assistance of how to get things resolved, really. We didn’t even know we were overworked. We just thought that’s the way it was and supposed to be.

M: We had to answer every question from staff and everyone. We became very good at coping. I was working 50-55 hours a week – I do around 40 now, which is really nice.

A: Yes, it’s really nice. It’s definitely given me more time to spend with family and to be able to re-prioritize, if you will, what’s really important. I mean, you’ve got to be successful because you’ve got to create income to support your family and your practice. But the bigger emphasis is now on family time, and now, that time is available.

What made us come to Measurable Solutions was just to see if their program was something that we could easily implement and made sense to us. Shortly after we got here, we saw some problems that we were having as regards our practice. We didn’t really admit that we had problems at the time, but suggestions and recommendations were made to us at that point, on some ways that we could change things to make them more efficient, better. We have found that everything we have been told and taught has been easily implemented.

M: We were able to take steps immediately to get things going. Probably two weeks after The New Patient Course, we were brought together as a team, dealing with the company.

A: One of the first things that the New Patient Course did was to enable us to improve our relationship with the patients. I thought that we had this all along, but there’s a definite, key technique to have in place to make this really occur.
We put to use further training from Measurable Solutions that allowed everybody to understand how to control their own environment, using fundamental administrative tools. Our front office staff saw relief, almost, saying “gosh, we should have done this a long, long time ago.” From our front office aspect that was immediately helpful in terms of efficiency.

M: Another thing that the course did for me was handle something that was keeping me up at night – the feeling that we were not really cause over our business and the flows of new patients, but just an effect of what the physicians thought of us or thought of our business. That went away. I don’t even worry about anything like that anymore. I care of course what the doctor thinks or what one doctor may think, but I just don’t worry about it any more. I fix the problem, or whatever, but I know that the doctor is not going to be cause over my company and my business.

A: Regarding referrals, we had a pretty good relationship with a majority of the physicians in our area, however there were some that were very loyal to the hospital (our main competitor in town) and some that would just come right out and tell you “my loyalties lie with the hospital.” Since Measurable Solutions, we’ve actually got some referrals from a few of those physicians that we thought we would never get referrals from. And some referral sources that were sporadic have become more consistent. There are some people in our area that go to Tulsa for their specialty care and those are generally really big orthopedic groups or very closed or very difficult groups to market to. We’ve actually had some doors open to us since the New Patient Course and I think it’s a direct result of what we learned on this physical therapy marketing course.

M: For me, my responsibility has risen tremendously. I thought
I was a responsible person, but I found that I had projects that weren’t getting done and things that I wasn’t doing or confronting. And that has changed tremendously.

I would say the stress level has pretty much gone to zero. And the things that do stress us, we’re able to confront and fix.

A: We can manage it better.

M: That would be a good way to put it. The stresses don’t prolong and irritate for weeks. Before we came for The New Patient Course, just dealing with our personnel, we had some difficulties. We had a staff member who was keeping everyone else down, who was causing major conflicts. It really split the plans — really. We were able to target where the trouble was coming from and fix it.

A: It was a situation where deep down we knew it, but weren’t really ready to admit it or confront it and Measurable Solutions offered a way for us to handle it. Solving that situation was a tremendous relief, not just for us, but the improvement in the morale of the clinic was night and day.

M: I would suggest to private practice physical therapists that they’d be foolish not to take advantage of The New Patient Course. Measurable Solutions has shown us things that we’d never have dreamed were problems or obstacles. And you know, we thought we were doing great. But we found out things that we weren’t aware of — that we weren’t doing, that would help our production tremendously. Even though people may think they’re doing really well, you typically are really blind in what you are not doing or what you are missing. We didn’t know what our top was and we found out that we have a lot of room for growth.

M: The return on our investment is three or four fold at this point. It has actually been exponential in return.

To find out more about physical therapy marketing please
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PT Owner Doubles Patient Visits!

I started out as a director of a practice that was owned by a large healthcare corporation. The corporation eventually sold out to another larger healthcare corporation who decided to not keep our clinic open. I became partners with an occupational therapist (who also worked at the clinic) and we stayed competitive for about 4 years. About 8 months ago my partner decided to take an employment opportunity elsewhere and I have since become the sole owner of the practice. I have added 4 staff members since taking over the practice.

The practice is located in a community of 21,000 in Columbus, Nebraska. We have around 90-100 doctors within a 100 mile radius. There are four outpatient practices in town. There is also a hospital nearby with its own outpatient group that has recently greatly increased its marketing efforts.

I was doing the same physical therapy marketing thing that most everybody does. I took food to the front desk and to the doctors and then tried to take the doctors out individually. I did basic external advertising such as an ad/listing in the Yellow Pages and a newspaper article every two weeks regarding some area of physical therapy. I did a few workshops here and there and some public speaking arrangements. I placed various press releases in the newspaper when I attended a course and that sort of thing.

I wanted to increase my physical therapy marketing results so I went to a weekend conference at a company that specialized in external marketing. They mainly dealt with branding an image for your practice and did things like printing and producing brochures, business cards and things of that nature. I didn’t take their services but I took their information and tried to implement it as best I could without using their services. I also spoke with another management consulting company over the phone but I didn’t sign up. I then saw a Measurable Solutions ad in one of the Physical Therapy magazines. Their yellow postcards really stuck out as well. So I attended their New Patient Course.

The immediate result of The New Patient Course -- new patients! That was it, they started coming in. A lot of the flow was, of course, patients that had been here before but they were kind of “reactivated” and started coming back in for various things. But then doctors obviously started sending new patients more frequently! So an increase in new patients is what I saw.

Since implementing The New Patient Course physical therapy marketing program I’ve become too busy! The Executive Training I did has given me control, though. I know that if my numbers do dip or my volume changes somewhat that I can correct it. That has happened and I have control of what volume we do have.

What made Measurable Solutions unique is they give you implementation steps for the technology that you learn. When you do the Executive Training a consultant follows your progress weekly on these implementations. I had looked at enough of the improving statistics of other practice owners who had attended Measurable Solutions’ training to make the decision to attend myself. I thought, “Look, everybody else has obviously been able to make this stuff work for them, so I can too. Let’s try it.”

The training that I’ve done has certainly taken some barriers off the vision I had for my goals. Obviously as a practice owner you have a dream that you want to achieve and sometimes you get caught up and it gets convoluted and it gets confusing. You’re not really sure in what direction to go after a while. A lot of what I’ve learned has cleared that up. I know that if I do these steps right here I can get to the next level. I can push the other stuff aside that blocks production. That has really cleared up a lot.

I recommend to PT practice owners to certainly do Measurable Solutions’ training, because they will get a real quick return on their investment, there’s no doubt about that.

Steve Line, PT, OCS, ATC

To find out more about physical therapy marketing please
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