Hire slow and stick to an open and honest discussion.
By Eric Cardin, PT, MS
Can you recall the moments before your first interview? Whether you thought of the first time you were interviewed yourself or the first time you interviewed someone, this memory wasn’t hard to access. On the prospective employee side you (hopefully) reviewed (and reviewed) your resume and turned up looking your best. On the employer side? You rushed in from a meeting, or squeezed a slot in between patients, or stuck this interview at the end of a long day. When you think about it, what you are doing is spending 30 to 60 minutes with someone to decide if you want to be responsible for their paycheck and see them more than your loved ones!
Plan interventions to correct problems and reach goals.
By Jason Koenigs, PT
If you’re a practice owner, it’s very likely you’ve read a few articles on preventing burnout in physical therapy, so let’s discuss burnout from a slightly different angle. If you know someone who is displaying signs of burnout, consider this advice: A vacation will not help. When your employee gets back to work, the effects of the vacation will most likely wear off after a few days and the roots of the problem will not have changed.
While vacations are an important part of employee physical and mental health, combating burnout is (unfortunately) a little more complicated. Physical therapists are perfectly capable of producing an incredible amount of work and being perfectly happy doing it. After a long day of work it’s also not unusual to exercise, take care of a family, and coach Little League. Even with all this if you look at the data, physical therapy consistently ranks among the top careers in job satisfaction. As a group, we have the tendency to be intrinsically motivated with the daily purpose of helping people, and this propels us through our day.
Client’s insight on patient-centered care and why it matters to the private practice owner.
By Dr. Angela Wicker-Ramos, PT, DPT, CPT-LANA
Client satisfaction—also known as patient-centered care—is a driving force for any clinic owner. Providing services that go above and beyond what a client could receive elsewhere is essential for maintaining a healthy practice. Doing so engages the patient more intently on their healing journey, and has a side effect for the business owner in that patients will want to return to them for guidance on their path to better health. To have a successful practice, we as practitioners must know what is important to our patients and what patient-centered care means to them. The Institute of Medicine defines patient-centered care as “Providing care that is respectful of, and responsive to, individual patient preferences, needs and values, and ensuring that patient values guide all clinical decisions.”1 This definition is useful for caregivers, but is it how a patient would define this concept?
Social media can be a powerful tool for getting new patients, keeping in touch with old ones,
and increasing overall market value.
By Michael Lau, SPT, CSCS; Craig Lindell, SPT, CSCS; and Arash Maghsoodi, SPT, CSCS*
Have you been told that social media is vital to your practice, but don’t know where to start? Does your practice need to expand its reach to get new patients and clients? Are you interested in promoting your brand online, but unsure how to go about it?
If you answered yes to any or all of these questions, you’re not alone. The game has changed; the times of relying solely on physician referrals are long gone, and savvy private practice owners have begun seeking additional patient streams like social media.
HIPAA and security considerations when choosing an EMR vendor.
By Gwen Simons, Esq, PT, OCS, FAAOMPT
Choosing an electronic medical record (EMR) vendor can be one of the most important decisions a practice makes because it is not easy to change EMR programs once the choice is made. Therapists are increasingly choosing cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) programs for greater access and lower startup/maintenance costs. But when the program stores patient data on cloud servers, more attention must be paid to the EMR vendor’s security safeguards and contract terms to fully comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and avoid a security breach.
