FYZICAL Therapy & Balance Centers offers an exciting franchise opportunity for entrepreneurs, physical therapists, and current physical therapy practice owners. Our clinics provide a wide range of services that are in high demand, from physical therapy to balance and vestibular retraining, audiology, and more. Every day, we empower private practice owners to take control of their business and their life through knowledge, relationships, and support only available through FYZICAL. We believe that when you love your business, it's easy to love your life!
Join Rick Douglass, President of Operations at FYZICAL and practice owners Tony Macaluso, PT and Sanjeev Joseph, PT, DPT for a panel discussion on the state of the physical therapy industry today and what to examine closely and prepare for in the future. The private practice sector has faced numerous challenges over the years but has been continuously resilient. In the face of consolidation, mergers and acquisitions, and reimbursement decline - what can private practice owners do to get ahead and stay ahead in 2022?
Learn more about the state of the industry, some sensible opportunities & solutions, and hear from two special guests as they elaborate on the strategies for you to find success in your practice.
Rick Douglass, PT, DPT: “When we’re preparing our operating budgets and we’re preparing for the coming year, we really provide hours and hours of training. We know that when we’re talking about, for instance, reimbursement per visit, that we need to train on the proper codes so that the billing department can bill things properly and legally.”
Rick Douglass, PT, DPT: “Another piece is diversifying your payment sources. When we face potential Medicare cuts, we start to look for different opportunities to diversify these revenue streams and think about adding new strategic partners with workmen compensation, going directly to the employer, or cash-based clients as well.”
Sanjeev Joseph, BPT, MSPT, LSVT: “I would say the cash-retail side is a big thing to discuss. It’s shifting the paradigm that we use as physical therapists. Physical therapy is more than just providing great service to patients. Today, we can be focusing on the retail side of things such as lasers, shock waves, etc. that can really add character and personalization to our practice. Focusing on branding the FYZICAL name has also been a huge thing for us. Creating the uniformity and brand that people recognize really connects for our patients.”
Rick Douglass, PT, DPT: “Schedule maintenance is another important piece to make sure that you can be successful in your clinic. This includes managing the schedule appropriately, creating a list of patients without appointments and working with the PTs and PT assistance on a regular basis to be sure that if anyone was to no-show or cancel at any point during the week, that we can re-fill those appointments on the schedule. These are the things we focus on at a clinical level to achieve success.”
Anthony Macaluso, PT: “Before we joined FYZICAL, we thought that we had really focused on balance with our patients. After joining FYZICAL and adding the ancillary service and balance center, we realized that it was a business component that we had not had previously. Our balance specific patient ratio went from 0% to 33% since then, so we’ve seen tremendous growth there.”
Anthony Macaluso, PT: “I would say just the ability to scale what we want to do, at the best available pricing and be independent and to still be in the FYZICAL brand, but offer the things that I want to offer. We're not limited to just offering balance, we can go do anything we want. We can go into pelvic health, we can do a lot of orthopedics, et cetera, so we’re not limited to being a part of FYZICAL.”
Sanjeev Joseph, BPT, MSPT, LSVT: “For me, it really boils down to personnel. It’s always the most important aspect of the business and obviously my biggest expense in the business. When we spend money on our personnel, we really want to get as good as we can get. So part of that involves finding this skillset, then you want to go and look at the personality match to make sure that the personality matches with the team that we already have, the brand that we have, and the type of business that we're putting out there.
Then after that, it goes into training, making sure that they are ready to learn and that we can put them through the FYZICAL paradigm and just the FYZICAL way of managing everything. And again, not looking at it just as a physical therapy office, but as a physical therapy business, because every team member really has an important role and I would say probably one of the most important roles is going to be the clinician.”
Anthony Macaluso, PT: “You know, we used to run our business based on if we had money in the bank account at the end of the month, we were doing good. Now, we run off a budget. So I know percentage wise what we should be spending on our clinical staff, our administrative staff, our marketing, all that stuff.
Today's a prime example. I was hiring a therapist and, and I knew what I could spend on that therapist. It's about negotiating the best price possible for us. But knowing that I had a certain amount of leeway, I could go with that person. And prior to FYZICAL and having a budget, it would have been a shot in the dark.
So using and having a budget, living with it and breathing it, and not making emotional decisions for my business, I'm making decisions based on facts and numbers.”
Rick Douglass, PT, DPT: “Prior to joining FYZICAL, my company was Douglass Orthopedic and Spine. We focused on orthopedic manual physical therapy. I had developed a relationship with surgeons who would send me all of their rotator cuff repairs.
We had developed a great reputation in the community for doing great work with these patients. And I'd evaluate and treat them and get them back to doing their overhead activities and, or playing golf or throwing a cast net or whatever it might be. Yet, the piece I was missing was asking them how they tore their rotator cuff in the first place.
And in many instances it was due to a slip and a fall or a loss of balance. And so certainly adding balance and fall prevention needs to be additive. And one of the concerns that my clinicians had when we started to convert into a FYZICAL franchise was, ‘Hey, I don't want to just do balance, I'm a, you know, I'm a manual physical therapist. I want to treat backs and necks.
So when you do add balance and fall prevention, it needs to be additive. We don't want to take away anything that you're currently doing. We want to add balance and fall prevention to better treat the community and take care of the whole person.”
Sanjeev Joseph, PT, MSPT, LSVT: “It really boils down to the 10 Point Management System, you know, the fundamentals. When there's uncertainty and fear and doubt in the air, everyone tends to get scared, and much like what we say to our patients, let's get back to the fundamentals: How did you get this injury? What caused you to have this? Let's fix that at a fundamental level and figure out how to never let that happen again. You can't control what happens outside your walls, but you can certainly control what happens inside your walls. And that goes right back to the 10 Point Management System. Maybe you're not going to have the same traffic, but it doesn't mean that you run away from your fundamentals.”
Anthony Macaluso, PT: “When COVID hit, I think that everybody nationwide, worldwide didn't know what they were going to do. And the FYZICAL brand had gotten together, the upper managers, and we had weekly phone calls on Monday nights to address concerns. They brought so much to the table to run our business properly, what we needed to do, the decisions we needed to be making and I can just tell you, if I had to do that on my own, I would have been out of business. There was just no way I could have figured all that out. And so the FYZICAL brand has been a strong partner for us.”
Anthony Macaluso, PT: “I'm very optimistic because I think that FYZICAL has given me the tools to be successful and grow. Prior to them, I did a lot of different things trying to grow, and I just kept going in the wrong direction. But with FYZICAL, we have continued to grow year after year, even after having some difficult times.”
Sanjeev Joseph, BPT, MSPT, LSVT: “I'm extremely optimistic. I think there's just nothing but growth potential right now. Again, having strength in the brand, but also finding strength within tough times.”
Rick Douglass, PT, DPT: “Yeah, I'm certainly optimistic. The primary reason is that we know, and the industry knows, and healthcare knows that we are a lower cost, better outcome alternative in the new healthcare environment. And our patient base is only continuing to grow.”
Want to learn more about FYZICAL? Contact us today and learn if partnering with us is the best fit for you.
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