Education Committee Report
By Jason Sanders, PT, DPT, OCS, GCS
When Private Practice Section (PPS) members are surveyed, the number one reason for membership is their desire for education. Arenas for education within our section include public relations, marketing, finance, government affairs, technology, and payment policy, just to name a few. It is with this in mind that the PPS Board develops its strategic plan and tasks its volunteer-based committees with meeting the needs of the organization and its membership. The portions of the strategic plan tasked to the Education Committee span several realms important to the PPS membership and require both independent development of projects within our committee as well as collaboration across committees.
This year the Education Committee continued to develop and manage our ongoing initiatives to provide and promote educational opportunities that advance members’ business aptitude for physical therapist–owned businesses. We continue to coordinate the “Essentials to Starting a Private Practice” and the “Taking Your Practice to the Next Level” courses being offered as pre-conference courses at CSM. Additionally, in conjunction with PPS staff we continue to mine hot topics to provide monthly webinars for the private practitioner.
This past year also brought to fruition one of our long-term initiatives with the launch of the new PPS learning platform. The platform houses content with choices to suit multiple learning styles. Our new video series covering Public Relations (PR) and marketing as well as finance was rolled out on this new platform this year. The next installment will include operations-based videos on key performance indicators (KPIs) and their role in a successful practice. Future videos in this series are planned to address human resources as well as strategic planning and development.
One of our more exciting initiatives has been the development of Peer2Peer Networks. These small groups of similar but noncompetitive practices meet two times a year to discuss hot topics and share expertise, analyze operations, build lifelong friendships, and work toward helping each other improve their bottom line. The beta groups as well as the first full cohort continue to run strong and give rave reviews of the program. Demand for the program remains high and the class for 2017 has sold out.
In an effort to continue to broaden the reach of PPS as the go-to source for physical therapy business education, we are in the process of developing curricula and a multimodal educational package that can used by physical therapy schools to educate students on the fundamental aspects of managing physical therapy business. We hope to leverage much of our existing content while developing additional resources to provide a comprehensive educational package that can be used to fill the void of business education for the next generation of physical therapists.
I would like to thank our exiting committee member Rob Worth for all of his efforts and contributions over the past three years. I would also like to recognize our current committee members Amy Gulledge, Yogi Matharu, Tim Vidale, and Thomas Carlton. In addition, I would like to thank our PPS board liaison Mike Horsfield. We look forward to working together both within our committee and in collaboration with other committees and individuals in an effort to continue to provide and promote educational opportunities that advance the business aptitude for physical therapist–owned businesses.