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.
