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
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