By Paul Martin, PT, MPT, CBI, M&AMI
As an independent provider of rehab services, you have the ability to make decisions and act on those decisions quickly. This attribute quite likely gives you an advantage over larger regional, national, and system competitors. So, if you have identified a specialty area within your practice that you are already providing for patients and physicians, now it is time to “bulletproof” that program by taking the following steps:
- Identify a therapist on your staff who has a special interest and/or training in the identified specialty program. Provide them with the necessary resources to become an expert in the program.
- Charge your new program leader with the task of building an operational and financial model for the program.
- Create a work group to identify specific referral sources (physicians and community) that are currently and/or could benefit from this program. Utilizing these sources, this group should build a marketing plan to promote and build the program.
- Develop ways to include referral sources in the development of this program.
The growth and development of a specialty program should be accomplished in a matter of a few months and become profitable in four to six months
Paul Martin, PT, MPT, CBI, M&AMI, president of Martin Healthcare Advisors, is a nationally recognized expert on health care business development and succession planning. As a consultant, mentor, and speaker, Paul assists business owners with building value in their companies. He has authored The Ultimate Success Guide, numerous industry articles, and weekly Friday Morning Moments. He can be reached at pmartin@martinhealthcareadvisors.com.
By Tannus Quatre, PT, MBA
Ever set a commitment for yourself and fail to get it done? Sure you have—we all have.
It might be that 5 a.m. run we carefully planned the night before, or it could be to get through our unread emails by the end of the day.
Sometimes the stakes are even higher—like carving 5 percent from the expense budget or having a sit-down with an underperforming employee.
Despite our best intentions, being accountable only to ourselves for getting important things done is a system rife with flaws.
Now, of course we did not become physical therapists without a healthy dose of self-discipline and an unwavering drive. We all have that—but it is not always going to be enough. It is easy to let ourselves down from time to time because often there is little immediate consequence.
But letting others down is much harder.
The thought of looking in someone’s eyes and admitting to failure makes me quiver.
And this discomfort can be used as great leverage in our pursuit of execution.
By making ourselves accountable to others, we will get some really important stuff done. And it is easy to do.
When setting a commitment, start by defining it for yourself—clearly. Tell yourself exactly what you will do, and by when. If you need to be more disciplined with your spending, set a measurable and time-based target such as, “I’m going to commit to reducing my variable expenses next quarter by 5 percent.”
Once you have established your commitment, then you need to set what I call the “accountability trap” for yourself. The accountability trap ensures that you will not be able to slide by with anything less than a valiant effort toward your commitment. Set your trap by voicing your commitment to someone who will hold you accountable.
In your business, your accountability options are plenty, but I prefer confiding my commitments to someone who I can trust to actually keep me accountable—someone who I respect enough to care about what they think of me, and someone who respects me enough to hold me to task.
This could be a business partner, a member of your management team, or a mentor. The possibilities are endless as long as you share your commitment with someone who will actually keep you accountable.
Not only is this exercise as easy as it is powerful, but it also serves the benefit of modeling a culture of accountability within your organization. By demonstrating the importance of accountability for your own behaviors, those you entrust to hold you to task are also learning an important lesson in accountability for themselves as well.
Performed strategically, you might be surprised at the difference this technique can have on a bottom line.
Tannus Quatre, PT, MBA, lives at the intersection of physical therapy and entrepreneurship, spending his time helping physical therapists build and operate successful practices through his company, Vantage Clinical Solutions. He specializes in marketing, finance, and business planning, and authors and speaks regularly for the APTA and PPS. He can be reached at tannus@vantageclinicalsolutions.com.
By Paul Martin, PT, MPT, CBI, M&AMI
In the current outpatient rehabilitation market, growth is not an option. There are multiple companies acquiring businesses across the nation and rapidly growing in their local markets. One of the best ways to grow your business is by establishing new clinics in contiguous markets. The challenge in most cases is finding therapists who can treat and manage these new locations.
We recommend building a program to mentor your existing staff to become those next clinic directors. Develop a career ladder in your business that points to a staff therapist growing to become a manager. Then create a training program that helps a therapist build those skills to become your next successful clinic director.
We work with some of the best rehabilitation businesses in the country, and one of the key attributes to these companies is a strong bench of therapists who can be called on to fill a need for a new clinic director.
Paul Martin, PT, MPT, CBI, M&AMI, president of Martin Healthcare Advisors, is a nationally recognized expert on health care business development and succession planning. As a consultant, mentor, and speaker, Paul assists business owners with building value in their companies. He has authored The Ultimate Success Guide, numerous industry articles, and weekly Friday Morning Moments. He can be reached at pmartin@martinhealthcareadvisors.com.
By Paul Martin, PT, MPT, CBI, M&AMI
As we analyze the best therapy businesses in the country, we are seeing more and more staff therapists becoming “owners” within the companies in which they work. This is a great strategy to retain your most valuable asset—your clinical staff. The challenge is to make sure that you structure these relationships in order to align your interests with your therapist partners, and to protect the parent company from potential legal issues in the future.
The most common form of partnership, if your state laws allow it, is to create a separate Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) in which the parent company becomes the majority owner, and the staff therapist becomes a minority owner. Be sure that ownership is purchased and never given away, and that the resources that are being provided by the parent company are properly valued and paid for by the newly formed company. These partnerships become a great way to build value in your company and create a strong foundation for future growth.
Paul Martin, PT, MPT, CBI, M&AMI, president of Martin Healthcare Advisors, is a nationally recognized expert on health care business development and succession planning. As a consultant, mentor, and speaker, Paul assists business owners with building value in their companies. He has authored The Ultimate Success Guide, numerous industry articles, and weekly Friday Morning Moments. He can be reached at pmartin@martinhealthcareadvisors.com.
By Tannus Quatre, PT, MBA
At a recent lunch with one of my business mentors, we discussed the importance of execution: getting things done. Despite the best of intentions, it is hard to do.
For entrepreneurs, ideas are a dime a dozen. They are everywhere. If you own or operate your physical therapy practice, you know what I mean. The scarce commodity is execution—what my mentor coined “the gift of constraints.”
Handed down to him from one of his mentors, “the gift of constraints” is the application of parameters to any task with the specific intent to limit the scope so that something meaningful is accomplished on time, but not necessarily perfectly.
Perfection (or lack thereof) is a topic for another article; however, it is important to note that perfection and execution do not correlate. Perfection is about you—completing something that meets your definition of ideal. Execution is about everyone else: You accomplish something so that others can move forward with their needs.
And the gift of constraints helps us achieve this.
The gift of constraints is a parameter or limitation that allows one to focus on execution, not perfection. The constraints require it. You cannot spend two weeks to get this done, because you have been given two hours. You cannot write a 10-page plan, because you are constrained to just one. You do not have $1,000 to complete the project—you only have $100.
The gift of constraints is a powerful mindset. It forces one to be better: faster, more creative, and results driven.
For me, constraints are liberating—they remove the infinite iterations from the realm of possibility and actually force me through to completion.
Here are some examples of constraints you may choose to use in your practice. I would love it if you would share with me some others you will be using:
- If you want a proposal for your new program launch, require that it be delivered to you on one page. This will cut down on the time necessary to draft and proof the proposal, and will require that each sentence carry significance.
- If you want ideas for how to recruit for your next staff member, ask for three specific ideas by the end of the day. The ideas will not be perfect, but they will be building blocks for launching a recruitment plan as soon as possible, rather than when having free time.
- For your next marketing campaign, specify your exact budget in advance. We should all do this, but we do not. Providing a specific budget constraint will limit the possibilities (especially if it is a low budget).
- For your next staff meeting, require a three-minute update from each of your clinical leads on new program development, training, and personnel. This requires efficient and relevant information only with no space for tangents.
Place a hard stop on your team meetings so that all items must be covered in the time allotted. Meetings will always fill the space available and you may be able to cut your meeting times down significantly.
The gift of constraints is a powerful tool that can transform execution in the mere statement: “You have X to work with.”
Try it out and let me know how it goes.
Tannus Quatre, PT, MBA, is a physical therapist and entrepreneur dedicated to improving the profession through innovative business and marketing solutions. His work can be seen in such projects as PT Pub Night® and BuildPT.com. He is president of Vantage Clinical Solutions and can be reached at tannus@vantageclinicalsolutions.com.
