As an audiologist, you often diagnose balance and vestibular dysfunctions. However, some balance and vestibular treatment may be beyond your scope of care, requiring you to refer patients to the nearest physical therapist.
Not only are you turning over control to another practitioner, you’re losing the opportunity to collect any additional revenue from those patients. Money is quite literally, walking out the door.
If it sounds like turning patients into dollar signs, that’s not the purpose of this explanation. As unfortunate as it is, money is important in order to provide the best patient care. If your profits aren’t growing, then they’re stagnant or decaying. You can’t provide the best care if you can’t keep your doors open.
So, yes, it’s important to consider the revenue potential of your patients. Balance and vestibular patients are often bounced around between specialists because no one knows what to do with them. They finally end up in your office—only for you to send them away once more to a physical therapist for treatment.
Why not provide that treatment under your roof?
By hiring a physical therapist to work in your clinic, you’re opening up a whole new world of ancillary revenue. Rather than referring your patient to another therapist down the road, you can refer these patients to your therapist. Then, you are able to oversee his/her care from start to finish and ensure they’re getting the treatment needed. As a result, you’ll have a happier patient with a better outcome, and income generated whether you’re in the practice or not.
Think about the balance and vestibular patients you could be helping. You know as well as any other physician that there is a huge population of dizzy patients in need of great care. But have you also considered your fall risk patients?
Most likely a large portion of your patients are elderly… Isn’t there a chance these elderly patients are at risk of a fall, or have fallen in the past? Ask these patients! You’d be shocked at how many have fallen in the past and are nervous about falls in the future.
Your physical therapist can be trained in fall risk assessment and fall prevention. Physical therapy is proven to help imbalanced patients regain their confidence and quality of life—at all ages!
It’s worth your time to explore this opportunity further; your patients and your practice depend on it! Physical therapy could be the ancillary service that sets your audiology practice apart from others, leaving your competition in the dust. Private practice audiologists across the country are already experiencing the benefits from this ancillary.
Click here to read more about this balance and vestibular opportunity!
