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Category : Physical Therapy
The private practice website: Which solution is right for your practice?
Do you know which website solution is right for your practice? In this article published in the May 2009 issue of Impact, I discuss three tiers of Internet existence for those in private practice: The online brochure, the online resource, and the online community.
In this article, we will examine three tiers of Internet existence for the physical therapist in private practice. We will explore the online brochure, the online resource, and the online community, looking specifically at the main features of each, with the intent of providing you with the information needed to develop an online presence that is right for your practice.
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Tannus Quatre is a private practice consultant and principal with Vantage Clinical Solutions, Inc., a nationwide healthcare consulting and management firm located in Bend, OR and Denver, CO. Tannus specializes in the areas of healthcare marketing, strategy, and finance, and can be reached through the Vantage Clinical Solutions website.
Article: We Are the PT Brand
Here is a snippet of an article I wrote which was published in the March 2009 issue of PT Magazine titled, “We Are The PT Brand.” I wrote this on behalf of my own profession – physical therapy – however I do believe the message is quite relevant to any and all within the healthcare profession.
I hope you enjoy it.
Chances are that no matter who you are, where you work, or how long you’ve been in practice, you didn’t just stumble into the physical therapy profession. It’s likely that long before entering the profession you dreamt of becoming a physical therapist, both because of what the profession would offer you personally and because of what it would allow you to offer others.
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Tannus Quatre is a private practice consultant and principal with Vantage Clinical Solutions, Inc., a nationwide healthcare consulting and management firm located in Bend, OR and Denver, CO. Tannus specializes in the areas of healthcare marketing, strategy, and finance, and can be reached through the Vantage Clinical Solutions website.
Vantage client, Leg Up Farm, prepares for opening in May
A Vantage Clinical Solutions client, Leg Up Farm, plans to open its doors to a new 20,250 square-foot facility this May.
A culmination of the decade-plus vision of the project by its founder, Lou Castriota, Jr., the planning for the facility that will serve the rehabilitation requirements of more than 1,000 special needs children has been in the woks since 1997. Funding has included $2.7 million raised by Castriota’s family, friends, and project supporters (including a state grant), and a $5.6 million loan. A capital campaign is currently being considered in order to raise the additional funds necessary to secure the $10.4 million required to complete the project.
If you’d like to learn more about the project, or how you can help, visit Leg Up Farm online at www.LegUpFarm.org, or this article in the March 30th online edition of York Today.
Productivity Question
The following is a Q&A with a seminar attendee (CSM 2010, San Diego, CA) on the topic of productivity:
Q: On the financial production assumptions, my productivity is showing 236%. What does this mean?
A: Productivity is defined in this model as billed hours divided by total hours worked. If a PT bills out 4 hours in a day and worked 8, they would have a productivity of 50% for that day (4/8 = 50%). A clarification of this model is that productivity is not an “assumption,” it is a “metric.” In other words, productivity is calculated by the model (an output) and is not assumed prior to running the model (an input).
For a productivity of 236%, this means that your particular model is billing out 236% of the hours worked by your staff. This is not possible under a traditional 1:1 care model give current regulations surrounding 3rd party reimbursement. Again, the productivity is an output, so other inputs must be altered in order to achieve a productivity in an acceptable range (less than 100%). The most obvious input to adjust will be that of FTE’s, increasing to a number that places your productivity at appropriate levels. Remember though, that increasing FTE’s will also increase staff expenses, therefore decreasing profitability. And herein lies the iterative beauty of financial modeling!!
via Vantage Forums: Productivity Question.
Vantage Forums: County Health Rankings Website
During a recent Market Analysis presentation at CSM 2010, I mentioned a website link that was referenced in a recent email by the APTA. The website is called “County Health Rankings” and the url is www.countyhealthrankings.org. This is an excellent resource for market health data at the county level and provides a number of data categories as well as an explanation of the data collection methodology and relevance for each. Really a great resource and I recommend you bookmark it…remember, data is EVERYWHERE!
via Vantage Forums: County Health Rankings Website.
Physical therapy marketing course coming to Portland, OR
Vantage Education is proud to announce that a new physical therapy marketing course will be making it’s way to Portland, OR on Saturday Nov 7th, 2009 titled, Six Step Marketing for PT’s: A sustainable approach to physical therapy marketing. The one-day workshop will be lead by Vantage Clinical Solutions principal and marketing consultant, Tannus Quatre PT, MBA, and will take place at the Courtyard Marriott City Center in downtown Portland from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm.
The one-day physical therapy marketing workshop will introduce a simple and effective physical therapy marketing framework through which any physical therapy practice can achieve successful marketing results. The physical therapy marketing approach presented in the workshop has been developed by Vantage Clinical Solutions and is the same approach used in the development of physical therapy marketing strategies for physical therapy practices throughout the United States.
The physical therapy marketing course will present practical concepts, marketing techniques, and marketing tools that can be used quickly and effectively in the marketing of physical therapy services, regardless of practice setting or location. During the physical therapy marketing course, attendees will also be provided with the Six-Step Marketing Tool which can be implemented immediately upon course completion.
The Six-Step Marketing for PT’s workshop is intended for physical therapy practice owners, administrators, marketing coordinators and staff, and is guaranteed to change the approach used for physical therapy marketing practices. For more information on the course, or to register by phone or fax, please download the Six-Step Marketing for PT’s flyer or call Vantage Clinical Solutions at (888) 827-5613.
Seats are still available, but registration for this event ends on October 30th, 2009 at 5:00 pm PST, so hurry to guarantee your spot today!
Medical practice management 101: Budgeting
Creating a medical practice budget is one of the most important elements of running a profitable physician practice, doctor’s office, or physical therapy clinic. The medical practice budget provides physicians, office managers and administrators with a gauge from which financial performance can be measured and operational issues identified.
There are many ways to create a medical practice budget, however our firm often recommends use of a budgeting format which clearly distinguishes those revenues and expenses that are variable in nature (change from month to month) from those that are fixed (relatively consistent from month to month).
To create a medical practice budget which outlines revenues and expenses in this way is quite easy to perform, and the reporting that comes from this type of budget is of the most easily understood.
Starting with revenues, create a list of all sources of revenue for your medical practice. Use large categories to capture the largest sources of revenue, then gradually break down the large categories into smaller subsets of revenue.
For example, if your physical therapy clinic provides two main types of services – physical therapy and fitness classes – then these might make up your two main revenue categories for your medical practice budget.
You may wish to further break down the “physical therapy” category into subcategories such as “orthopedics,” “pediatrics,” and “women’s health.” Your fitness classes may also be broken down into subcategories such as “weight management,” “strength training,” and “flexibility.”
It is a good idea to capture your “adjustments to revenue” within your revenue section as it is normal to collect much less than is charged to insurance companies. These adjustments are captured in the revenue section of the medical practice budget, along with any refunds that are credited back to clients through the course of business.
Moving to the expenses category, start by breaking all of your expenses down into “variable” and “fixed” expense categories. A rule of thumb that is often used to determine which expenses are variable versus fixed is to consider all expenses that would diminish or cease upon closure of your medical practice for a period of a month or so. Expenses such as clinical staff (often paid based on production or hours worked), hourly office and administrative staff, most utilities, office supplies, and repairs/maintenance would likely diminish or cease, and are therefore examples of variable expenses in some medical practices.
Expenses that would remain unchanged if your medical office closed for a month or so are considered “fixed” and would likely include your fixed management salaries, lease payments, loan repayments, dues/subscriptions, and contractual advertising expenses.
The rules for breaking medical practice expenses into variable and fixed categories are not hard and fast, but are rather dependent upon the operations of the medical practice, as well as the reporting that is desired of those that will be managing the medical practice budget.
After all revenues and expenses are accounted for within the medical practice budget, all expenses are subtracted from all revenues to come up with a number known as “net income.” Net income reflects the profitability of the time period examined by the medical practice budget, accounting for all recorded revenues and expenses.
You can likely see that without a medical practice budget, the ability to truly understand where, why and how revenues and expenses are generated is nearly impossible. By creating a medical practice budget, sticking to it, and revising it annually, your medical practice will have much more chance of success and profitability, and is therefore highly recommended.
If you’re interested in starting or improving your own medical practice budget, please visit the Vantage Clinical Solutions website to download a free medical practice budgeting tool that can be used within your medical practice, doctor’s office, or physical therapy clinic.
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Tannus Quatre is a private practice consultant and principal with Vantage Clinical Solutions, Inc., a nationwide healthcare consulting and management firm located in Bend, OR and Denver, CO. Tannus specializes in the areas of healthcare marketing, strategy, and finance, and can be reached through the Vantage Clinical Solutions website.
Medical practice management 101: Scalability
In this new series on The Healthcare Entrepreneur Blog, we’ll be taking a look at a number of medical practice management concepts that medical practice managers, administrators, and clinic owners should consider as part of their planning and day-to-day management. The principles we’ll be outlining as part of the Medical Practice 101 series are applicable to all types of medical practices including general medicine, the surgical specialties, and rehabilitation services such as physical and occupational therapy.
Here, we’ll discuss the concept of scalability as relevant to medical practice management. Scalability is the ability for a medical practice to expand its current systems, infrastructure, operations, and staff alongside the growth of the practice over a number of months or years. Scalability is an area of medical practice management that is not always fully considered when planning for the implementation of electronic medical records and business systems used to run and administer the medical practice, and can end up costing a medical practice severely in terms of time and money in order to meet the changing demands of a practice over time.
When planning for the use of electronic medical records (EMR) and practice management software (PMS), one of the scalable solutions that we like around here is the the use of web-based software or software-as-a-service (SAAS). The use of web-based or SAAS solutions allows a practice to operate one medical facility just as easily as operating two or more sites because the infrastructure used to link each user with the medical practice database exists via the internet. The need for a robust hardware infrastructure, including servers and virtual private networks (VPN’s) is minimized, and with it – the upfront cost of implementation.
Web-based software is typically provided on a per-user license basis, meaning that as additional providers or staff join the practice, additional licenses (or ’seats’) are purchased which allow the medical practice to easily grow, or ’scale’ their investment alongside the growth of the medical practice. Web-based software is a very scalable solution when it comes to medical practice management, which is why our medical practice consultants often recommend web-based solutions to our clients when determining solutions that will allow them to continue with their medical practice management infrastructure over the long haul.
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Tannus Quatre is a private practice consultant and principal with Vantage Clinical Solutions, Inc., a nationwide healthcare consulting and management firm located in Bend, OR and Denver, CO. Tannus specializes in the areas of healthcare marketing, strategy, and finance, and can be reached through the Vantage Clinical Solutions website.
Keyword advertising: The new standard in private practice marketing
Do you advertise your practice in the yellow pages?
It’s likely that you do, and for good reason. Your competitors probably advertise there, and historically speaking the yellow pages have come to be recognized as the gold standard for private practice advertising.
Over time, standards change though, and we’d like to bring you up to speed with an effective advertising channel that has become popular over the past several years in private practice – keyword ads.
Keyword ads, also known as “pay-per-click” or “sponsored search” advertising, do exactly as the name implies – they display your ad next to search results for specific keywords online.
So, if you have a physical therapy practice in Denver, CO, then you might want to have your ad show up when people type “physical therapy Denver, CO” into Google.
That same practice might also want to reach people that haven’t even thought of physical therapy after an injury. This could be achieved by sponsoring the keywords “back pain Denver, CO” or “sports injury Denver, CO.”
The beauty of this is threefold.
First, people who Google “physical therapy Denver, CO” are probably looking for one thing – physical therapy in Denver, CO. It’s likely that this is your target market.
Second, you only pay for the ad when somebody clicks on it. And if they look at it and don’t click through to your website? You guessed it – you don’t pay. It’s pay-for-performance at it’s best.
Third, you have full control of your budget. If you want to pay $1.00/day for your ad – go for it. Your ad will be pulled immediately after you hit your daily budget. If you want to pay $5.00/day for the week prior to an upcoming special program or event, you can do that too. You have full control, and can change at any time.
So let’s say you pay $50/mo. for your yellow pages listing. This equates to $1.64/day. You pay that amount whether or not someone ever looks for a physical therapist, and regardless of whether or not they ever give you a call.
That same $1.64/day could be applied only to clicks through to your website, a much more targeted, performance-based, and controlled use of your advertising dollar.
So, if you’re advertising in the yellow pages, make sure the investment is paying off for your practice. There are reasons that the yellow pages still make sense.
But if you’re interested in paying only for clicks through to your website, know that keywords ads exist as an effective alternative to reaching your target market.
As always, we’re here to help, so if you have any questions about your advertising performance, know that we’re just a call or click away.
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Tannus Quatre PT, MBA is a private practice consultant and principal with Vantage Clinical Solutions, Inc., a nationwide healthcare consulting and management firm located in Bend, OR and Denver, CO. Tannus specializes in the areas of healthcare marketing, strategy, and finance, and can be reached through the Vantage Clinical Solutions website.
Patients have a voice online…and they’re using it
One of the best things about the Internet is ease of communication. Whether you want to learn from others or share your own story, the flow of information is a mere click away. And it just so happens that learning, sharing, and clicking is exactly what patients are doing.
Through a growing number of business and healthcare review websites, patients are speaking openly about their healthcare experiences, and in a candid manner. From the best of experiences to the worst, your patients have a voice online…and they are using it.
The opportunities and threats that lie within online reviews is staggering. Several 5-star ratings and your practice stands clearly apart from the crowd. One or two bad ones however, and online window shoppers might decide that taking a chance on your practice isn’t going to make their “to-do” list.
The good news is that you likely have many patients in your practice this very day who would be honored to provide you with the highest of online marks…if they only knew where to start.
The trick is to (1) Know what your patients are already saying, and to (2) make sure your most pleased patients are speaking about you online.
And how do you start, you ask? It’s easy.
Step 1: Know what your patients are saying
Visit the most popular online review sites, and see first-hand what is being said about your practice. Many sites exist, and we recommend you stick with the big ones, at least to start. General sites like Yahoo Local, Google Maps, Yelp, and Angie’s List are some of the most popular.
Following this, healthcare specific sites such as HealthGrades, RateMD’s, and Vitals.com are good places to look for categorical reviews of your performance by your patients.
And if you’re not seeing reviews of yourself or your practice, don’t feel left out. It’s simply time to proceed to Step 2 and start building your online reputation.
Step 2: Get your pleased patients talking
This part is easier than you might think. Simply start by educating your Internet-savvy patients as to the benefit of online feedback for your practice. You’ll be surprised at how quickly your patients will flock to tell the masses about how you’ve cared for them, helped their family, or saved their life. If you want to make it a step easier, provide links to popular review sites from your website. Help them out by providing these links, and they’ll be a-clicking away in no time.
Everybody wants cheap advertising, and leveraging the benefit of online reviews is about as cheap as it gets. Don’t forget however, that online reviews work both ways. For every possible good remark, there is also the potential for a bad, which can work in the wrong direction for your practice. Putting some time and energy into making sure your practice’s online reputation is a good one is an investment well made.
As always, we’re here to help, and if you have any questions about how to build your 5-star online rating, or to clean up online reputations that need some work, know that we’re just a call or click away.
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