National PT Month: Are We Watching Our Profession Implode? With Will Humphreys

Are PT owners too busy to change the trajectory of outpatient ortho PT? Are they too worried about the pushback they’ll receive when they actually make a stand and say, “enough is enough”? Or do they see what’s happening and simply not know where to start to make a difference?

October is National PT Month and a time to revisit our Purpose for choosing the PT profession. Will Humphreys and I take the time in this episode to discuss how to engage our teams and patients in fulfilling their purposes and making an impact in their lives. We discuss how to find deeper meaning in our practice instead of just going with the flow that may be killing us slowly, and National PT Month is a good time to do it.

—

I got my good buddy, Will Humphreys, who I didn’t mention his title’s last episode or upcoming and wherever this one lands. He is the Cofounder and CEO of In the Black Billing . If you don’t call it In The Black Billing, what do you call it?

We call it In the Black. Usually, that’s great when people announce it that way because they know what it is. We had the weirdest phone calls from people going, “What is this?” We are like, “It is a financial term.” They were like, “Whatever.”

You are also the Founder of Rockstar Recruiter and CEO of Multiple Exit. If you are a PT owner, he can help you in many different ways. He’s a multifaceted Mr. Man in the corner of the physical therapy profession. Thanks for joining me.

I am trying to be like Nathan Shields every day. Before you build me up too much, everyone knows you are the man. They listen for you. I’m grateful to be your ethnic man from time to time.

That is if you can be the hair diversion of Nathan.

This whole episode is about how we keep complimenting each other. We could have a whole episode of why don’t I have that amazing smile?

I wish I was as sexy as you, Will.

People are like, “Are they in love with each other? Are they dating?”

We do have to qualify when we call each other partners. That’s not that kind of partner. I wanted to bring you on because it’s National Physical Therapy Month in October 2022. It comes around every year. We got to a point in our clinics where National Physical Therapy Month was a lot of fun. We put in extra effort in National Physical Therapy Month.

It wasn’t until the last few years of our ownership that we decided to do this, but it was because we decided that our culture was going to be fun. We loved creating reasons for dress-up days, games, competitions between clinics, raffles, and prizes for the patients. Not a lot of clinics do that. They will hang a banner or something like that, but you can make it so much fun. We wanted to talk about what we did.

There is such a bigger discussion behind it because, at the end of the day, I don’t particularly care most months about what the theme of the month is. I have two homeschooled kids that ask Alexa every day, “What’s today?” There was like, “Today is National Garden Naked Day.” I’m not minimizing other month’s topics. There are a lot of valuable topics out there.

If we’re physical therapists and our industry is in this situation, this should be the month where we come together. As always, we’re in an industry where there is too little time to learn how to do things the right way. We try to cope from day to day and miss out on these amazing opportunities, like celebrating National Physical Therapy Month in October.

When physical therapists share their reasons for pursuing this profession, everyone feels connected and aligned around this wonderful thing they get to do.
Click To Tweet

You said you took one of your calls. Was it a Rockstar Recruiter call that you had?

It was a coaching call for Multiple Exit. We had a number of companies online. Some companies that weren’t part of Multiple Exit, we were opening up that coaching space to companies regardless of whether they wanted to learn.

You got together and shared thoughts about National Physical Therapy Month. I like how you took it when you brought it back to why we exist. Why did we get into the profession to begin with?
That would be a cool experience to take our teams through as we’re talking about National Physical Therapy Month. Not from what are we going to do kind of thing but maybe revisit our purpose.

The why of what we do, as you know, is such an important drum to beat because it’s the thing that got us excited about going into student debt and becoming a PT in the first place. We have such a crazy cool culture in our industry of service. When we talk to PTs about why they were coming PTs, the younger ones or the new grads, they are passionate. They often downplay their superhero story.

I believe every physical therapist has a superhero background origin story. They were like, “No, I hurt my knee in high school, and I had a therapist. I thought that would be cool. I knew someone who was a successful PT, and I thought maybe he was cool. I will become a PT.” When you get right into the middle of it, you won’t go into this much debt to do what we are doing now without having some deep, meaningful drive. When PTs share their personal purposes as to why they became PT, it’s cool to see how the energy shifts in a room and how immediately people are feeling connected and aligned around this wonderful thing we get to do.

It makes me think, even as you’re talking about my history of getting into physical therapy. It wasn’t a traumatic accident or some recovery on my end. I was simply looking for a way to connect with people and help them. I came across someone who I hardly talked to but simply volunteered at his clinic to see the difference that physical therapists were able to make with their patients on a general level.

I didn’t connect with any one physical therapist, but to see a number of physical therapists, the work that they were doing, the fun they were having with the patients, and the impact that they made on the daily lives of the patients. Me, in turn, showing up 2 or 3 times a week and developing my own relationships with these patients, and getting to see how they progressed and made huge progress was huge. I come home every day with an adrenaline rush coming down. I’m excited simply volunteering and witnessing what was going on. It was obvious to me that I knew this was what I wanted to do.

It was fun to watch you treat too. I say this to people all the time, and I’m not trying to be nice to you because it could be another hour’s episode of that, but you were easily one of the best technical clinicians. You had an amazing ability. You always downplayed your intelligence. You were like, “What do you do?” “I went to a course.” Your ability to apply that to a physical implementation for a patient was artistic to me, in addition to the idea that you have the ability to connect on a relationship level.

That was the coolest part because I have met a lot of technically good PTs who are okay with the relationships. Good relationship PTs are okay on the technical side, which is honestly how I describe myself. You were excellent at both of those. You had this ability of being emotionally connected and providing this technique. The readers might get a kick out of the fact that one time I hurt my back, and you were treating me in our partnership meetings. I would be on a table, and you have me sideline. You would be working with me and doing all these mobs and soft tissue mobilization.

What I had was a kidney stone and not any kidney stone. I had an eight-millimeter kidney stone. It was like an asteroid. What ended up happening was you manually manipulated it, you passed it from my kidney through the ureter into my bladder, and it was big that it blocked my urethra. I had this whole nightmare experience with blood in a scene from The Shining. I’m not going to get into that.

My urologist said, “I have never seen anyone pass from their kidney stone such a big stone.” I remember thinking, “Nathan should be proud of that.” You can have the kidney stone as a trophy, but that passion is what derives from your purpose. This love that you have is contagious around it. It was fun to be a part of.

I can imagine as you held that conversation with those people in the group. The feeling of the group changed as you started down that path. Did that, in turn, open up ideas or a little bit more excitement? I’m imagining these people came to the call like, “You are going to teach me now.” Maybe they turned it around to, “This is exciting. This is something that we can build off of.”

As a pro hint or hack is that what we did in that call is also what I do when I’m interviewing candidates to hire or talking to an existing employee about how we’re going to create a future. When we spend time with people about their purpose, we access the deepest part of their feeling brain. We are able to start developing a long-term solution around what matters most to them. In this call, I took one young lady in particular, and we said, “Why would you become a PT?” Her whole thing was like, “Yeah, I was an athlete in high school. I had PT a number of times. I thought it would be cool to become a PT.”

Upon further digging, it turned out she is a major achiever. Sports for her was her whole life. It solved their identity as well as eighteen other adolescent trials that she was going through. When she was injured, all of that was at risk, and her physical therapist is super funny. My favorite PTs are the ones that can make patients laugh. The funny ones who are good at what they do.

She started talking about this, and it merged into like, “How was that shape how you treat?” She was like, “For my patients, I would die for them.” She meant it. It opened up like, “That’s the message for PT month.” How can we get our clients, our community, and our teams to realize that? We spent that whole call focusing on how we could leverage National Physical Therapy Month as a celebration, but more of a PR piece for our industry to save our industry by talking to our communities, our teams, and our patients.

We talked about strategies. All the millions of little things you can do to celebrate PT month, but it’s about educating people and celebrating their efforts to overcome the trial. When that happens, tons of new patients flood the door because you are out in the community spreading this message that sells itself.

If we can become stewards of this service that we worked hard to earn, but are also blessed to do in this great country, we will find those who are living in darkness under disability, pain, and weakness, and come to the light of physical therapy so that they can regain their function, identity, and passion for life by simply the interventions we get to do. It was a cool discussion, and a lot of it was the minor details of how you can celebrate it. If it is another checklist item, people aren’t going to do it at all.

Some of the things that we did were easy to do. You can Google stuff, and you can sit down with your team and brainstorm. It’s a relatively simple thing. If you don’t take advantage of the time and come back to having possibly a meeting like this in September or at least early October 2022 about, “What’s our purpose here? It doesn’t have to be quick, but let’s have a discussion about why we’re here and revisit that every so often. It becomes a calendar item.”

If you are doing it right, it becomes part of your policy and procedures. You can also policy and procedure your culture, saying, “We revisit our purpose in September in preparation for National Physical Therapy Month. We do some of these things that have been successful in the past.” I have been noticing that with some of my clients as I’m coaching that. We are figuring out what those little things are that create the culture.

We figure them out and write them down. It might lose a little bit of magic, but it is important to maintain the culture by writing them down and forcing them to be part of the habit. This is what we do. At this date and time, we have discussions about it. In this day and time, we work with these charities. We were going to always work with this 5K run and support that whenever it is. Making that part of the policy and procedure, and then starts generating the culture.

I love that you are saying that because when Moses went to the top of the mountain, he didn’t come down with a good verbal experience. He came down with written commandments because if it’s important enough to do, it’s important enough to write down. That’s the part we get stuck on because we notoriously hate paperwork of all kinds, thanks to EMRs and insurance.

How we protect what matters most to us is by documenting it. In our case, what we were suggesting as a starting point, and I would say this is all you do because you can come up with a million ideas. It’s like, “I’m not going to do any of them. One simple thing that I suggested on the call that I will recommend to your reader is a simple discussion.

Have a special lunch team meeting where you get together and you, as an owner or a leader, say, “I wanted to get everyone together because it’s National Physical Therapy Month, and I wanted to share the story as to why I became a PT.” If they don’t know it. Even if they do, maybe share an aspect they don’t know and invite open discussion where you ask people, “Why d you become a PT? Why are you passionate about the front desk or whatever they do in your clinic?”

At the end of it, ask the question, “I believe what we do here changes lives as you do. How can we use this month as an opportunity to celebrate our community and get the message out about physical therapy when many people don’t even know what we do? What can we do to show respect to a charity or our community at large and let them figure it out?”

Physical therapists don't come under their power to improve other people's lives well above what they can do for a patient. They can influence others' legacy in life and even their families.
Click To Tweet

Once everyone shares how they feel, and they’re feeling that new grad energy, it’s going to quickly convert into, “Why don’t we have an open house? Why don’t we do minute-to-win games in the clinic? What if we made a patient of the week.” Let them create it. What people create, they buy into. That’s a key element of leadership. It is not spelling out the path but more identifying the target. Helping others feel inspired by that target and letting them create. That is how you get people to show up on a Saturday for a charity event because that’s they want to do it.

As you are talking, I also remember the way our National Physical Therapy Month evolved over time. Correct me if I’m wrong because I had moved to Alaska by this time, but in one of the clinics, we did the traditional Friday dress-up days. They do minutes to win games. We have anatomy quizzes for the patients. Whoever got the most answers at the end of the week would get some piece of swag. We had massage raffles for attendance and whatnot.

I remember one of them, after we branded over to Rise and got clear on our purpose at the Ocotillo clinic, had the tree. Do you remember the tree with the leaves? They put this big trunk on one of the walls. The patients had the opportunity to write down what they were thankful for. They said something on the leaf. They said, “Blank has helped me rise above.” Our name at the time was Rise Rehab. I thought that was a cool maturation process of accepting the culture and how physical therapy can help people and inviting the patients to recognize the benefits of their health or people in their lives to help them rise above, which was the purpose of our clinic. I thought that was cool to see over time.

I feel like when people were able to gamify their experience at our company and leverage sometimes a National Physical Therapy Month or a charity, that was an embodiment of the greater purpose of what we did at Rise. It was able to create this culture of buy-in. People always ask, “How do you recruit and retain?” I was like, “You got to create a company that people don’t want to leave.”

People hate to hear that because up until they talk to me, usually most of my clients are their company. It feels like a personal thing. There is something about me that they don’t like, and that’s why when people quit, it feels like you’re being fired every time as an employer. At the end of the day, it’s not about you. It’s your vision, and you have a chance to lead a team. It’s creating a culture that’s about a charity or the industry at large or celebrating a community. Some of our clients are in these rural communities, what an incredible opportunity to make a huge impact.

My greatest gift as a PT was working for you before we partnered in Florence, Arizona, where the community was small but vibrant. It took me showing up for them to buy in and be excited about it. Leveraging that for a month and being able to celebrate the team, community, or both is one of the best ways we can get buy-in. It’s such a funny thing.

We are super stressed and we were like, “I don’t have time for these things.” When we can celebrate our community and our teams, we retain them. We get them to create initiatives that would feel like work otherwise if we presented it in a different light. It produces more buy-in, patience, and revenue. That is why revenue is always where it ends up. If we’re doing all this right, we will have more money. That is the difference between having a physical therapy company to make money versus making money to build my physical therapy company.

I love your recommendation there in your last comment about inviting the team to be a part of it. A lot of times as owners, or at least I felt this way if I heard a show like this episode about, “You need to do something for National Physical Therapy Month. That is on you.” I’m feeling like, “I got to do all of this.” That’s not how you get your team engaged.

One of my clients was great at this. She was like, “I don’t know why my team loves working for me.” I started probing like, “What are some of the things that you are doing? What are you doing during your weekly meetings that invite engagement?” It all came back around to, “They come up with the ideas. I support them 100% and take almost zero responsibility to make sure it was fallen through with.”

As you said, invite them to revisit their purpose, but invite them to say, “How can we fulfill your purpose greater in this facility? How can we get that love out to the community? What are some ideas, guys? Let’s go.” If they are excited about it, they will take it on themselves. If they are excited about the charity and fun run, they will show up, and they won’t expect to get paid for something that is mandatory. They will show up because they want to be there and love the people that they work with.

Take it off of yourself, not feeling like, “I need to figure out all these games and the surveys.” It was so much more fun when the team was doing it all. We would show up, and we are like, “What is this? Why are all these pictures on the wall?” They were like, “We got everybody’s baby picture. Now the patients have to decide who is who.” That makes it more fun and engaging for the team.

You are on a key concept here that at the end of the day, if we do anything else in National Physical Therapy Month is to celebrate our PT team. If that’s all we do, we are living the right way because our teams are our legacy. It is not the patient care and community impact. It is the team that we build. That is our legacy as owners.

It sucks because, for years, I didn’t understand that. I always felt that was my biggest trial. It is like having children. The value is learning how to nurture and lead people. We do it wrong for a while, but this is how we do it right. We take these opportunities. One of the ideas that came up in that call was to have a meeting of celebration, like a dinner.

Maybe it’s a dinner and award ceremony in the office where they used to do in Dundee’s. We used to do that at Rise. It wasn’t during October, but we used to do this for the annual party. This came from Sean Miller at Kinect back in the day. I’m giving him credit for this idea. We would do this cool game that he created. We also create awards based on values. We recognize team numbers like, “For showing professionalism, we recognize you for what you overcame despite your mom having cancer.”

We were able to honor people. It was cool because on that call, Michelle Bambenek, who is working with me and my partner on that initiative. We were talking about awards ceremonies, and she had an old plaque that I created at Affinity Physical Therapy before you and I merged. It was for recognition of outstanding achievements in the value of whatever. She goes, “This wasn’t something I pulled out for this call. This has been sitting on my desk for several years.”

As owners, I don’t think we get it. We feel disrespected by our team so often and we’re struggling against it. We don’t understand the power we have to improve these people’s lives well above what we could do for a patient. When we have a team member on our team, we have the ability to influence that person’s legacy of their life. For their children and grandchildren, we have a chance to teach them leadership and acknowledge them.

In this case, even if you don’t believe that you do if you are reading this, you have the power to create an event where you bring someone up in front of their peers at work and say, “This person is special.” For that person to believe it because of your position of authority, even if you don’t deserve it, hopefully, you do, but even if you don’t. If you are doing the right thing, in that case, it has enough potential to motivate someone to make better life decisions to care better for their kids. We are busy with our notes in keeping up that we lose this gift to influence teams in a way that changes the world. It’s a pretty awesome thing to recognize for National PT Month to recognize PTs that we get to work with and who we employ.

One of the biggest excuses or hurdles to overcome is the fact that we’re busy. We are too busy. Unfortunately, we wear that as a badge of honor. I have purposefully made it my decision when people say, “You don’t have a lot of time.” I’m like, “No, I’m not busy. I will make time for what is important.” I want to discount that as much as possible. I try to avoid telling people that I’m busy because everybody is busy. Who is not busy? If your water heater went out, you would not be busy enough to fix it. You do what is important.

It is important for us to recognize that some things are more important than others. Finding ways to live out our purposes better and to encourage our teams, especially for an owner, some way to improve their lives is much better than paying bills. You can put off the bills and cut the checks later. Let’s take 30 minutes and figure out how we can improve the lives of our employees and have a little bit more focus on our patients and living out our purpose. If not doing it by yourself, set aside that time in the weekly or monthly team meetings, whatever that takes, to do what is most important. It is that busy word that tends to get in the way.

I will speak from experience reading what you said that when I was overwhelmed with patient care and notes, I had an excuse for not being better. I had an excuse not to hold those crucial conversations that I didn’t know how to hold back. I had an excuse to come home, be burned out, and not be the father and husband that my kids and my wife deserve. I had an excuse because, as a provider, that is such recognizable stress. I’m like, “They are busy.” If they are an entrepreneur, they are especially busy, and how lucky everyone should be for my burnout.

It can be scary for people, but the thing that I want people to hear is that there is a big difference between movement and motion. Motion is like a dog chasing its tail. There is a production and an energy that is created, but there is no progression. There is movement. There is that circular motion versus movement. Movement is achieving progress in a way that changes lives. If all we are doing is coping, we are making impacts on our patients, but we’re missing the greater opportunity where it matters most at home and with our families and our teams.

People don’t know. They were like, “How do I get started on that?” People know if they are in motion versus movement. If you have been doing the same thing over and over again and you have been going home and telling the same story to your spouse or friends about how stressed you are at work for the same things over again, “I can’t hire, recruit, and retain. I’m too busy treating all these patients to do anything else. You are in motion. That sucks to hear. I had an experience with my recent mentor that will give some color to this.

I have this new mentor through Entrepreneurs’ Organization. He is a retired CEO of a billion-dollar software company. He meets with me for no money once a month and I had my first meeting with him. I was talking about one of my companies. I was telling him where I was stuck. He told me this. He goes, “Will, it feels like your focus is on the wrong thing.” I said, “What do you mean?” He was like, “You are looking at your business from a place of like, in my situation, trying to produce more and you are fixated on that. What if you took a step back, focusing on developing like a coach of a football team? What if you developed strategic plays that would create that outcome, but would also impact the people in the way that you want?”

I couldn’t sleep that night. I was like, “It’s true. I have been focused on the revenue, all the steps, to-dos, and motion that has to go.” When I thought about strategic plays, it became more of like, “I got to get all these other things off my plate. I identified the plays I wanted to execute. It became everything else I needed to get off my plate immediately.” It was, “Who can I delegate that out to? Who do I need to hire to replace that?”

There is a big difference between movement and motion. Motion is like a dog chasing its tail. There is energy created but no progression. Movement is achieving progress that changes lives.
Click To Tweet

What was weird was that the next day, I was “busy,” but it wasn’t busy. It was productive. My actions were focused on offloading my calendar and schedule to create space to build these two initiatives. There are only 1 or 2 things we can focus on at a time. I’m building those initiatives. I feel purpose. That is where the video I created came from being in that space of trying to feed people’s souls instead of trying to sell a product. I can do that all day. Who can’t? Every one of us gets so much energy when we are operating from that place of passion. Immediately, all the crap that we feel we have to do is we see it for the crap that is, and we offload it.

You mention the video that you made. If you haven’t watched it, we will release this video, and I posted it on the Facebook group because it put words to what has been out there. That is the fear of what’s happening in our industry. We, as owners, simply aren’t taking the time to move the industry forward. There is plenty of motion like you are talking about but not necessarily productive action. We are too busy treating patients and pushing production, but it’s not getting us anywhere further as a profession, and your video hit right to the core of it. People need to watch it. What was the title of the video? Do you remember?

It was My Desperate Plea to Each Physical Therapist. The thumbnail was saved physical therapy. I sent an email out to my audience. The subject line was calling all passionate physical therapists.

It is something that I have been concerned about for some time because if we continue to go down the path that we’re going, there is going to be an end to what we know of outpatient physical therapy owned and privately owned outpatient physical therapy. There is going to become an end at some point because we have our heads in the sand.

At the beginning of the video, I’m like, “You guys are probably too busy to even watch this video.” I created it without editing. There is no music. I was upset after a particularly stressful coaching call. To film this thing, I threw it out to the universe at a time that I have never done. I did everything wrong that I was coached to do to create my YouTube channel. I sent it at an obscure time that people probably wouldn’t listen to. The thing that I did was I spoke straight from the heart about, and it’s how everyone feels. What is funny about it is there is nothing revelation amazing about the video. It’s how people probably feel, at least the people who watched it.

I’m glad that people liked it. I don’t care that people liked it. I did that for me because greatly to this mentor, I was in a headspace of what matters now. I was able to communicate that out into the universe. I’m scared. At the end of the day, it’s not the wrong kind of fear. It’s the right kind of fear for me. It’s like this clarity that we all have that we are losing what we have. We are losing it to chiropractors, athletic trainers, and here and there.

Reimbursement keeps going down, inflation’s going up, and we take it. What happens is we have this huge movement within physical therapy, especially the younger PTs that are like, “Why would I do this? Why would I take a $150,000 loan to become a $70,000 therapist and be stressed out all the time because I’m supposed to see 80 to 90 visits a week?”

I had one troll on that video, and you’re not supposed to feed trolls, but I want to bring it up because I think this was interesting. His whole thing was like, “Be more optimistic.” I’m like, “This is me being optimistic.” Me even saying that there is a chance is being optimistic because there is no future that we can see where it is not going to get watered down to be diluted that we can’t do what we love.

It sucks for us that we can’t do what we love in terms of serving people and helping them achieve their identity through physical function. What sucks is those patients who are underserved, who don’t have a love of and the humor of great PT to not change their physical condition but change their life. My PT, when I was seventeen, didn’t save my life. She changed it forever by loving me, being in a relationship, caring, and crying, which I wanted the first time. That’s what goes away.

It does not completely go away. It’s going to get watered down that it’s going to be some ancillary service that is going to be a medication that gets prescribed and nothing more that almost anyone can do, and we take. I didn’t have any solutions either. It’s not like I was like, “Here are the three things we need to do to save the industry.” I don’t know it anymore. People rip it on APTA.

I have ideas, but you and I both know that we can throw those ideas out there. Who is going to act on them because they are too busy? They are thinking, “Maybe that is good. I will get around to that someday.” That is how it’s going to land. That is why our membership in the APTA suffers comparatively.

The AMA, American Medical Association , is a huge productive group because people are engaged. We don’t have a lot of that with us. As a whole, industries have taken advantage of our lack of business acumen as a profession, and we always play the nice guy. That is the personality of PTs in general. We want to be nice guys to everybody. Let’s not step on any toes because we have to get those referrals from the physicians. We better play nice to them or the big collusion fake news that is out there if we do anything as a group. There is plenty of opportunity to do more and stand up for ourselves. Yet, we rarely do it for fear of fill in the blank.

We are ruled by fear as a profession. Fear of the audit, losing our license, patients and physicians not liking us. If Medicare comes in down and does its things, we take it. We don’t have a PT organization that has the skill and capability to do more for us. It’s hard, but even if we had a couple of things out there, we are too busy to take care of it and do more.

That motion versus movement piece that we talked about is keeping us and spinning our tails to the point. One friend of mine said, “It’s like we are sharpening the knife that cuts our own throat.” I loved how he said that because it’s true. We take it. When we don’t stand up to fight for this, it’s the same thing as us actively destroying it. There is no difference.

I don’t even claim to be annoyed. I want people to get more angry. People are angry, but they don’t feel comfortable. I want to ask people to start getting a little bit more pissed off to start looking at things from a place that is not right. It is not raining. If we got loud and angry enough, we would organize and do something in a way that would be useful. For now, maybe it’s a matter of saying the obvious. It’s not that we are afraid to talk about it, but we are too busy to talk about it.

Physical therapy is going to die as we know it if we don’t start getting angry at UnitedHealthcare you were talking about before this call. We don’t get the same support in our industry as PT owners. There is so much support in other medical outpatient services. Many industries provide educational resources, and why should we blame PPS or the APTA when we don’t even go to those events?

I hear people complain about PPS and APTA. Maybe they are right. I don’t know what I don’t know, but I know that when you and I go to PPS, there are 600 people there. I got my list. Six hundred people are coming to PPS in 2022. That’s how many total emails we have. We have 22,000 physical therapy practices in the country. We have 600 people.

Let’s stop blaming the APTA. Maybe it is. Maybe it is not the solution. People need to start getting pissed off more. If maybe they went there to go complaint, that could be maybe the start of something big. I’m getting tired of it because it makes me sad to think about what my life would have been like if I hadn’t had my PT step up and give a crap about me. If we don’t do something, it’s going away. I don’t know what that’s going to look like, but it won’t be as awesome.

People might be out there were like, “It is easy for you guys to say because you sold your clinics.” Maybe they don’t recognize that we are still closely involved with a lot of physical therapy clinics. A lot of that work. We care enough for people that we want to give back, and we give freely of our time to do that because we want to see people do more. Because we are separated from it, it gives us a greater perspective to see this.

Owners might be thinking that it maybe that’s happening within their own clinics, but we are seeing nationwide across the profession that things are going this way, and things need to change. I told you before the call I have Physical Therapy Owners Club t-shirts that I passed out to friends, readers, and clients. On the back, I might put drop UHC now. I doubt that anyone is making any profits on UnitedHealthcare right now. Considering they’ve kept the same contract reimbursement rates for the past few decades.

That’s a place to start standing up for yourself right there. Find your lowest payer and drop them. If they disrespect you, drop them. Figure it out on the back end. I’m sure you can make a profit still. You will probably make the same profit or, if not better after you drop those lower payers. Do something. You are going up for an APTA PPS position on the nominating committee.

I’m running for the nominating committee in 2022.

Do something and write an article. Start with your team and talk about purpose. Something can be done and needs to.

We were given such an incredibly rare opportunity in our business because we were surrounded by coaches outside of physical therapy that helped us create the ideal practice. It might be like, “They are bragging.” I have no problem bragging about that team of human beings or the coaches that helped us get there. I am not saying that Nathan nor I naturally did anything that we figured out. We were big believers in R&D, not research and development, but rip-off and duplicate. We hired people to teach us.

Physical therapists are too busy to talk about what's happening in the industry. It will die if practitioners don't start getting angry at United Healthcare.
Click To Tweet

We got to a point where the business was running almost completely without us, with some of the most amazing human beings that have ever walked this earth. It grew, and it was a huge money maker because we kept investing back into the patient and therapy therapist experience. We exited. Nathan and I could have gone in any number of directions, but we have doubled down in PT because of what we care about.

The reason I’m running for this office of the APTA is because I’m trying to be the solution that I am tired of ignoring and started complaining about. Here is the evolution of our industry that I like to see. We are aware of it and ignoring it. I don’t think it is a brand-new idea that is physically imploding. We are all aware of it, and we go about our day because, at the end of the day, we want to get our notes done and go home. We’re moving. It keeps worsening, and we’re upset about it. People are starting to leave. We are upset. We’re like, “What can you do? I’m too busy” We are actively ignoring it.

I want people to go from that to pissed and angry, from angry to start acting. If we can get to the acting stage, we stand a chance. If we can get to the place where people are going to be like, “It stinks that I’m a director in Wyoming. I’m driving to work, and I’m dealing with the same HR crap over and over.” Maybe if I start speaking up, I go to PPS, and I start complaining with other people about it, I will network and step out of my comfort zone and start getting the discussions going that will end up doing things like dropping UnitedHealthcare. There is no world where we shouldn’t be dropping this insurance like a bad habit. It is a joke. What are they doing to you and our patients? We take it because what are we going to do?

What are we going to do, Nate? If we can’t take those patients, maybe the doctors won’t send them to us. If they don’t send it to us, maybe I will have to work harder. If I have to work harder, I will never be able to see my kids play soccer. It’s the dumbest combination of fears, and I’m not judging you. That was me. That is 100% how I operated for the longest time. It’s not even true.

The truth is we should be afraid of what we’re going to lose if we don’t get pissed and start doing things about it. I love your idea. A big movement around dropping UnitedHealthcare would be the coolest thing ever. If we did that one thing successfully, Nate, I bet all the other insurances would crap their pants and be like, “We don’t want to be in that position.” If everyone does it, we don’t have to worry about our small mindset of thinking we’re going to lose business with the other therapists.

Let the other therapists who don’t want to drop it take all that crappy insurance. I know what you are thinking, “Those are human beings.” When you keep taking it, you are the one who is causing the problem to them. If we all drop them together, that patient would have better insurance, less out-of-pocket cost, and better results.

Thanks for posting that on YouTube. It is one of those things where I don’t think I hear it enough. Joey Allbritton has been good on his Facebook groups about posting concerns. It’s interesting to see the replies about whether it is owners focused on profits or complaining about employees or that stuff going back and forth. It’s rarely led to any solutions. That’s where the conversations did not need to be had. Until we get fed up, we are not going to do much about it. We are going to keep doing what we are doing. Hopefully, the profession doesn’t implode before I retire. It can implode after I retire, but not before.

Your show is one of those examples of fighting. People are reading because they care enough to try to put an effort in where they can. I hope that no one reads this and feels bad. That is not the point. I want them to get angry. That’s it. I want them to read this and get like, “Will and Nathan are right. This sucks.” We want this to change. Maybe we can do something about it. What do you need to do? Keep reading and look for opportunities.

I’m going to create a meeting or something like that on the back end of that video. I was overwhelmed by the response. There are thousands of views, dozens of comments, emails, and Facebook posts. I’m honored that I put something out there that showed me personally that people do care. If I want to put something together, we can announce it, but the point is that for now is to be angry. Be sick and tired of it. Let the pain of change be less than the pain of not changing.

People are simply aware that action needs to happen. Putting that in your mind might not generate ideas of what to do now, but thinking, ruminating, and recollecting that occasionally down the road, something in the universe will come before you and say, “Here is my opportunity to make a change and act.” I want to do something. I’m not sure what it is right now, but I’m going to reflect and be mindful of what the universe brings before me here in the near future. When it does, I will see an opportunity in which I could act and do so.

That is a great place for us to leave things off because, ultimately, if we can put that intentionality out there, opportunities will come. One important simple 3 to 5-minute video that I threw out there because I’m one of many was enough to start igniting this fire around it. What is your fire? What can you do to send a spark out there?

The important thing is what I can do in my space that can make a difference once or twice and have a greater impact. That could be simply sharing your video. It could be reading Impact Magazine once in a while. It could be tuning in the show and sharing this episode with other people. Maybe even talking about purpose because it’s National Physical Therapy Month.

Let’s start getting our teams super passionate about what they do. Make an impact in your community.

Will, if people want to get in touch with you and talk, email, or join the next webinar, how can they connect with you? Maybe get on your email list.

You can email me at Will@UnlockHBA.com. HBA stands for Healthcare Business Academy, teaching us all that we wish we had learned in PT school. If you want to email me, that’s great. You can go to my YouTube channel. I produce videos every week or reach out to Nathan. He will put you in touch with me.

Thanks for joining me. It’s always good.

Thank you.

We will talk to you later.

His exposure to the medical field led him to becoming a physical therapist. Later, he became a private practice owner and built a company to multiple locations prior to exiting at 3 times the national average.

Today, he teaches others the lessons he learned from decades of practice and hundreds of interviews, hires, and fires. His greatest joy is his wife of 20+ years and four sons.

Love the show?  Subscribe, rate, review, and share! https://ptoclub.com/

The post National PT Month: Are We Watching Our Profession Implode? With Will Humphreys appeared first on Physical Therapy Owners Club.