Mastering This Skillset Will Net Your Clinic $100k’s – FB Live Event With Nathan Shields And Adam Robin Of PTO Club Coaching

WebPT’s annual 2018 survey of PT practices noted that completed plans of care (POC’s) are a major issue in the industry, at a dismal rate of 15%. Only 15% of patients complete a full POC! Imagine all the gains that were missed, results that never came to fruition, and lives that could’ve been changed! Financially, consider what that means in lost revenue for a PT clinic. They estimate the loss of revenues for an average clinic to be equal to $150,000 per year! A majority of that is profit! This demonstrates the absolute necessity that we, as a profession and as PT owners, ensure that our patients are clear about what the POC is, how it will benefit them, and ensure we get their buy-in on it at the initial evaluation. In this episode, Adam Robin and Nathan Shields share a recording of their recent Facebook live event and discuss how Adam and Nathan have gained patient commitment to completing their full POC’s.

—

What do we want to talk about, Adam ?

Clinical sales, selling your plan of care, and a patient experience.

I haven’t talked directly about this topic, but many times, I have talked about the 2018 or 2019 WebPT survey that showed the average PT clinic is losing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year because patients aren’t completing their full plan of care. They are dropping off after 3 to 5 visits on average. Only 15% of the average patient population completes their full plan of care, leading to losing hundreds of thousands of dollars for the average clinic owner. That is where the biggest issue comes with this.

Issue number two is we have a lot of practice owners who have a challenge hiring or delegating because they are not quite clear on how they want their therapist to communicate with the patients.

It is easy for the owner. For you and me, our metrics were the best out of the clinic. That is natural because we are a business, and it’s our livelihood. We are going to do great at selling. Somehow, we don’t translate that training. We have this expectation that things are going to go right and the people we bring on are going to do the same thing we did.

The owner cares the most. Tom tells me, “The person who cares the most wins.” When you are talking about clinical sales, and you are in that eval room with that new patient, make no mistake. That is a sales call. That is a sales meeting. They are there interviewing you. They are trying to decide, “Do I feel like this person can solve my problem? Is this worth my time, money, and energy to spend time with this person for the next 3, 4, 5, 6 weeks?” It is up to the clinician to communicate the patient’s pain points and problems in a way that satisfies that. They don’t care that you are manual therapy certified or have DPT.

The person who cares the most about their patients wins. Make no mistake when you're in that evaluation room with that new patient. That is a sales call.
Click To Tweet

They want to have faith that you can get them better. A lot of newer therapists, new grads, me included, might have had difficulty conveying that to gain the physical therapist’s trust. That is where the great owners are able to coach, train, have scripts, do role play, and say, “These are the steps you need to hit to gain a patient’s faith in you and purchase the full plan of care.” I’m assuming that is some of the stuff that you want to lay out.

Everybody got a secret sauce. That is my thing. The owner has the secret sauce. What is your secret sauce?

One of the first coaches I ever had recommended it over and over, and I never did it because I felt uncomfortable with it. She says, “What we need to do is get into an eval room with you and videotape you. We record what you do.” I was uncomfortable because I was like, “There is nothing special I’m doing. I don’t want to be recorded.” I never did it. This is what she was getting to the heart of is you have a secret sauce that you don’t know exists. That happens with a lot of owners.

Some owners have great cultures in their company. They don’t know why. When you ask somebody else to look from a different perspective, or you are able to assess a recording of yourself, you are able to see, “Yes, do that thing. Is that special?” You were like, “Yes, that is part of the checklist. That is what you need to do.”

I noticed you ask that question every time on the eval. Is that important? “You are like, “Yes. Naturally, I do it every time.” It is obvious to me when other therapists aren’t asking those same questions. They are not doing the same things and getting that connection with the patient to sell the plan of care. That is what needs to be documented to sell it.

The best place to start is with the end in mind. What are you trying to achieve? What is the philosophy here? When you are in the room, what is the point? I had a coach one time break it down to me cleanly. That helps me understand that patients come to you in a certain place. They come to you with a goal, whether it is verbalized or not, of where they want to want to go.

There is where they are and where they want to go. They will not buy from you until you can verbalize to them that you understand exactly where they are and where they want to go. When they can see and trust that you understand, they will buy from you. They are not going to buy from you unless the gap between where they are and where they want to go is big enough. If they don’t feel like their problem is big, there is no reason for them to go through the trouble.

Part of that evaluation process is to help them understand that this is a problem and is affecting their life. If they don’t get it fixed, it is going to end up with X, Y, Z. What that does is brings the problem a little bit further on this end of the spectrum. We are not going to get you back to normal. We are going to get you back to better than you have ever been. We are widening that gap. There is room for you to position yourself as a solution for that. Whenever I started understanding that, the lines and the questions you asked became a little bit more visible for me, at least.

You get a patient to buy in if you can verbalize those two things in terms of, “This is what I’m hearing from you. You have XYZ issue. It keeps you from doing these things and causes pain in these situations. Is that right? Is there anything more to it? Is there anything else?” You can get the full picture. As you push them for more, more will come up until they say, “There is nothing more.” You can feel rather complete that you understand and they have been heard.

When you say, “Your dream outcome is what?” They were like, “I want to run a marathon.” If it is an 85-year-old lady with a total knee replacement, you might need to bring those expectations down a little bit. You can get clear on what she wants to do. You are like, “Is there more?” They were like, “I want to get out of this pain.” You are like, “Is there more than that? Is that it? Is that all? What would life look like without pain? What would you be able to do?” As you get clear on those two things, the patient can feel heard, that you have heard them, and you understand their condition. At that point, if they are heard, the sales part of it could be easy.

Congratulations. You completed the subjective part of your initial eval. That is subjective. Find out where they are and where they want to go. More importantly, how is that impacting their life? Here are your pain points. How is that negatively impacting your life? Here is where you want to go. What would life be like for you if we could achieve XY? Once we get clear, we are ready, and we can go into the second part, the objective.

Is this part of the checklist? Do you have certain scripts?

I have a checklist that all of our therapists use. If anybody wants a copy of that, join the Facebook group, shoot me a DM, and I will send you a copy of that checklist.

How many items do you have on your checklist? Is this the laundry list of things? Are these the points that you hit?

I got eleven checklist items.

Some of them are basic and understood, but you got to need to make sure you hit it.

1) Verbally acknowledge the patient’s pain points and ask them if that is accurate. 2) Verbalize the ideal outcomes and ask, is that accurate?

If they have answered yes to those, you can check it off.

It could be, “Is that it? Do I understand you correctly? We want to make sure that that point is solidified before we move on to the next.” We can run our tests and measures. That is everybody’s favorite part. If you are a new grad, you got about 99 that you want to do in an hour.

None of them are specific or sensitive, but you will do them anyways.

That is right because we have to.

We are talking about being heard. Does that switch to selling the plan of care? It is important to be heard, lay the groundwork, and say, “I’m a professional.” When do you get into the nuts and bolts and have to sell something according to the checklist?

That is when you are going to get to the plan section. The point of the objective is for you to reinforce objective findings that tie into their pain points.

You have some parts of your checklist related specifically to the objective portion.

This is the point. Whenever you feel like you have 1 to 3 objective reasons why the pain points exist, you are done. Move to the assessment.

You have some data, lack of range of motion, poor strength, pain points, and laxity in a joint. You connect those to the pain. You verbalize that. You are like, “These are the 2 or 3 things generating your pain.”

“Do you understand that? Does this make sense to you?”

Get a whiteboard out. “This is your shoulder.”

We are moving on assessment phase. It is time for you to communicate the why to that patient. You are on the stage. Every good PT who loves clinical stuff, this is your chance to use all your knowledge and to communicate why the person’s objective findings are attached to their pain points.

For every good PT who loves clinical stuff, assessment is your chance to use all your knowledge and to communicate exactly why the person's objective findings are attached to their pain points.
Click To Tweet

This is hand gestures, spine models, and the whiteboard.

The main things here are 1) Used pictures and models. It is much more powerful. 2) Before you move on to that plan, ask them if they understand.

If you are going to move to the next time on the checklist, you have to get a verbal yes again.

If you get a sideways look, I’m staying right here as long as I need to because I want to know that you understand what I’m saying. If you get a yes, it is time to go to the plan. Let me tell you what I’m going to do to help you. This is the sales part. You have to summarize what successful treatment looks like to them. Deliver the plan of care, handle any objections they have, and get them to buy into what you are selling.

In the same way that you connected 2 or 3 things objectively that related to their pain per se, are there 2 or 3 things you expect your therapist to lay out in a plan of care and a certain order? Do you present it a certain way to the patient?

When patients come to the clinic, they want to be taken care of. They want direction. They want to know that you know what they need. “I know what you need.” Not, “I would like you to maybe.” We use the word need. That is a big thing. You are like, “Does this make sense to you?” They were like, “Yes.” You are like, “I need you to come three times a week for four weeks.” Not, “Is it okay if you could, maybe if it is not too big of a deal for you?”

“Maybe we can do this with many visits.”

“Whatever you feel like it.”

You are talking. Be specific and direct. This is a prescription. You are providing the prescription. No prescription ever says, “2 or maybe 4 pills every 4 or maybe 8 hours.”

Unless you don’t feel like it, you don’t take it or take double.

If it is raining, don’t take it.

That is not what we do. It is like, “This is going to take twelve visits. In order to get you there, I’m going to need to see you 3 times a week for the next 4 weeks. Is there any reason why you can’t make it?”

You are laying out the prescription succinctly. You are not even getting into the details of what you are going to do. Do they care or know, even if you said, “I’m going to stretch you?”

It is helpful to lay out the summary. It was like, “This is what we are going to do. Phase one, we are going to start XYZ. Phase two is going to be XYZ. Ideally, once we hit that, we are going to do XYZ in phase three. Does that make sense? Do you feel like something like this would work for you?” “Yes.” “It is going to take twelve visits to get you back to fully recovered. I will need to see you 3 times a week for the next 4 weeks. I need you to make it to all twelve of those visits. Is there any reason you won’t be able to commit to that?”

I love how confident it is because it goes back to this quote from Craig Ferreira on our show years ago. He said, “The patients will only take the therapy as seriously as the physical therapist does.”

If it is not serious to you, it is not serious to them.

If you are waffling and non-committal, guess who is going to no-show and reschedule? It is the same patients you are sitting in front of when you are waffling about your plan of care and trying to sell it. It is imperative to exude confidence and say, “This is what is going to happen. This is our timeline.” We can always go back to that pain relief model. There is a period of time where there is some resolution, and it is a strength-building period. There is a pain management period and a strength-building period.

It is a range of emotion, strength, and functional endurance.

We should all be able to do that. That is templated. You might even have a poster in your eval room. You are like, “This is where you are on the spectrum. We are going to get you here, which should take many weeks, and here, it takes many days.”

People love a process.

Think about that. I remember a doctor had that in his office. I thought, “I should have that in my physical therapy clinic.” On their return visits, you could point at the poster and say, “You don’t want to come in anymore, but you are right here on the timeline for recovery. I thought we agreed that you want to get over here.” Make it an object lesson for them at that time. “If you are not coming in and you are still in pain, you have missed the last two visits. That means we are still over here at this stage. We haven’t got out of the pain relief part.” An objective poster like that would be helpful.

This is an enrollment process. You are enrolling them into your secret sauce plan of care that you do to help people get better. It is important for you to handle all of those common objections in the eval. “There is a chance you are going to be almost pain-free by visit four, but we are not quite done at that point. Does that make sense?”

It is the objective for them.

You are like, “I can get you outta pain quick. In order to get you to this, I need twelve visits.” It’s handling that early in the eval. If it comes up after the eval, it is too late. You are fighting them at that point.

What instructions are you giving your providers on handling financial concerns that come up during the course of the eval? How are you training them on that?

Depending on where you live, some people can’t afford care. Everybody got a different approach to this. For me, I’m not going to force somebody down a path they can’t afford. I’m not going to make that decision for them either.

What do you mean by that? I know what you are saying, but I want to delve into that.

I’m going to give a shout-out to Dee Bills because she hit us with a one-liner one time that said, “Keep your money problems at home and don’t push them on your patients.” If you have a relationship about money and you think $100 is a lot, not everybody thinks $100 is a lot. Some people are willing to pay $100 to get their life back, even if it’s the last $100 they have. Don’t devalue what you do and what you do for people, and try to put your dollar amount on it. Leave that up to the patient. That is their decision to make.

Keep your money problems at home. Don't push them on your patients.
Click To Tweet

I can see what you are talking about because, in some situations, I might be softer on my sale of the plan of care because I wouldn’t pay $50 a visit to come and get physical therapy three times a week. I’m using an example. I probably would, but whatever. If I’m not willing to pay it and I’m trying to sell a plan of care, and I know that the patient’s copay is $50 a week for 12 visits, I know that is a lot of money. That might make me hesitant to try to sell that plan of care.

I’m sure I’m not the only one. That is why I wanted to talk about the specific part of it because there are plenty of providers that will modify their prescriptions for the plan of care based on the patient’s copay. Dare I say, “That is unethical?” Don’t you think so? If overtreating is unethical and you prescribe something you know is undertreating the care they need, isn’t that equally unethical?

I don’t think new providers would understand some, and even some seasoned providers would be willing to understand that. Prescribing a one-time-a-week plan of care for six weeks when you know they would get better at 2 and 3 times a week for 4 to 6 weeks is unethical. You shouldn’t be prescribing that if you truly think you are a doctor.

It’s hard. You have to separate your emotion from the money. Everybody’s got the money button. If you have ever done an eval, they are going to come up. They were like, “I don’t know if I can afford this.” That is going to happen. Handling objections is a level two sale at that point. Not everybody can get to that level, but at that point, you want to try to make sure that this is something the patient wants.

“Nathan, I don’t think I can afford to come three times a week.” Your response is, “I understand. Let me ask you this. Money aside, is this something that you want to do? Is this something that makes sense to you? Do you feel like this could help?” They were like, “Yes.” You are like, “Are you willing to work with me on that?” Getting them out of that mindset of money when we need to be focused on, “Let’s get your shoulder fixed. You can be the father you want to be and get your life back.”

One of our questions on the checklist was, “Where do you think you will be if you don’t handle this? You have tried the doctor, the prescriptions, and some chiro, and now you are with me. If you don’t get this handled now, what is going to happen in 1 or 2 years?” Give them a sense of, “This could get worse. I haven’t gotten better. I’m not getting better on my own.” You can even phrase it that way, “You have tried this. You have tried to do things on your own. Now you are here before me.” What is going to happen if you continue to go in this route?

Giving that perspective, like, “It could get worse, and it is not changing because it has been going on for this long.” Couching it in that and helping them understand, “This is what I believe you need.” To go soft on that is where I have faulted in the past because we are compassionate. We want to help, but that satisfies us. That is selfish. We know they need more. We need to stand up and say it.

Hopefully, if you do this well, you understand where they are and want to go. You communicate clearly. You use your models and pictures. Ask them if they understand it and they say yes. You map out your process. They feel like it is going to work. The likelihood of them agreeing to that plan of care is going to be higher. At that point, it is time to deliver the plan of care.

We have to walk up to the front office and deliver and prescribe the plan of care to that front office person. That is a special touch point as well. We want to make sure that it is done in a certain way. You are the doctor of physical therapy. You are the authority in the clinic. You want to present yourself as the authority to that front office person.

“Nathan, here is Mrs. Smith. We have agreed to a twelve-visit plan of care. She has agreed she is going to make it 3 times a week for 4 weeks. We are going to help her get her life back by doing XYZ. Can you please make sure we try to get her on the schedule as convenient as possible? Mrs. Smith, are there any questions you have? Thank you. See you next time.”

As opposed to, “Nathan, do you have a second? Can I borrow you for a second? This is Mrs. Smith. Can you try to put it on the schedule whenever you feel like it?” I know we are trying to be nice, and that is fine, but you got to remember we are responsible for the way that our patients perceive us. We want to be perceived as an authority figure in that clinic that can deliver who is clear, confident, and in control so that they can listen and get better.

That is where there is an added value for physical therapy clinics in general. That is in prescribing the full plan of care at the initial eval and scheduling it out. It is something I never even considered when I was an owner a few years ago, but I know that is what a lot of clinics do nowadays. I coach a lot of my clients to do the same. It is to get the patients to schedule the full plan of care at the initial eval instead of going week to week and saying, “We are serious. This is a commitment. It is not a week-to-week commitment. This is a full plan of care commitment.” How else can you show that externally besides putting it on the calendar?

It was like, “I need you to clear your schedule for the next four weeks. Not forever, not for life, just for the next four weeks. I need you to commit to me for the next four weeks. Can you do that? We are going to go up front and schedule all twelve appointments. Make sure you pick some times and dates that make perfect sense for you. You can pick the spots that are convenient. Do you have any questions? Do you have anything coming up over the next four weeks that we need to know about?”

Let’s figure that out now. Instead of coming up against that weekend and being like, “I will have to call you when I’m available.”

You would be amazed, Nathan. I don’t know if you’ve experienced this. Some people in our Facebook group have had tremendous success and practice. Some of this isn’t relevant to them, but whenever we dialed in our sales process, and I was able to get clear on what I wanted that experience to be like, and I was able to share that with my team of like, “This is what quality care is like.”

Everybody’s got that quality of care. It is about what is quality to the patient. It is not about what’s quality to you. Let’s get clear on who we are here to serve. People came through my place, got in front of us, and they left differently. They were like, “Those people got their stuff together. They changed my life. I showed up for twelve appointments. I didn’t want to go, but I went and got my knee better. That place is awesome.” It is an important thing to get dialed in.

It goes back to that KPI we were talking about in the study. I might be misrepresenting, but if 30% of our patients completed their full plan of care, it is a resounding failure. If there is one measurement that we could use, maybe two KPIs we can look at to see if we have been successful at selling our full plan of care, it could be, “What is our percentage of completed plans of care”? I don’t know a lot of EMRs that do that well, if at all, to provide you with that.

It also requires your physical therapist to be on top of who is discharged. You got to be on top of your active patient list and discharge list but also the KPI of how many visits per new patient and how many visits per plan of care a patient comes. The national average is 11 or 12. It is somewhere in there from the benchmark studies that I have seen.

When you consider that 30% are completing their full plan of care, that metric needs to be closer to 15, 16, to 20 to account for all the people that stay long-term, the total needs stay a long time, or the neuro patients or shoulder repairs that take a long time. If you consider those and all the people that did complete their full plan of care, maybe 66% or 75% of the time, that metric of visits per new patient or visits per plan of care would skyrocket.

Everybody wins when the patient shows up.

Expecting your clinic to be at the national average benchmark, 11 to 12 visits per plan of care, is shooting low because our industry as a whole is not doing well at it.

I like to hope that we are getting a little better. We do have some thought leaders in the area that are pushing some stuff around, but holding patients accountable is part of the job.

To go back to what we were talking about there as far as the patient, therapist, and front desk coordination meeting right there, is that your last checkbox on the checklist? Once they have scheduled their full plan of care at the front desk, we are done. Success.

A patient who schedules out their full plan of care that is the product. Maybe even a percentage of patients who schedule out their full plan of care.

Have you ever presented it to your team that way? What is the product of an initial evaluation?

That is it.

I would have been stumped if you had asked me that question prior to this conversation. What is the product of initial evaluation, goals, and data? What a great question for your team, and to have the opportunity after that to say, “If our patients aren’t willing to commit to a full plan of care as evidenced by their willingness to schedule out the full plan of care, we are not doing our jobs at initial evaluation.”

We don’t care enough.

We haven’t done enough to care.

We haven’t understood where they are and where they want to go. We haven’t found those objective findings that tie to their pain points. We haven’t communicated the plan clearly in a way they understand. They haven’t agreed. We didn’t do a good job. We failed.

A new therapist’s mindset is if they think the initial evaluation is like, “What tests do I need to do? What measurements do I need to get? What special tests do need to be involved here? What is my diagnosis?” That’s what I was thinking back in the day. I was barely thinking about goals. I wanted to get the measurements I was supposed to get, but that might be next level, create a nice plan of care. What we are saying is you are not done.

At that point, it is a lot of, “Let’s make sure you are bought into this. Have I heard you correctly?” In my clinic, I used technicians. They were going to meet 1 or 2 technicians during the course of the mini-treatment I provided that day after the initial eval. If they happen to see other therapists because schedules are dictated, they are going to meet other therapists. These are all things that are part of the initial evaluation to ensure they have a great experience at the initial eval and going forward. There is a lot of work to be put into that initial evaluation, but I love that you simply said, “The product of the initial eval is a fully scheduled patient.”

When you talk about clinical sales, we are talking about the patient lifecycle. There are touch points all throughout the lifecycle, but none of that works unless they show up to the eval. The first touchpoint they have is going to be that first phone call. When you think about, “What is the product of the first phone call?” It’s an eval that schedules and arrives on time. That is the product.

What are the sub-stats to that? How do we communicate clearly? How do we get to know them? How do we make sure we understand? How do we build that relationship with them on that first phone call? They can show up, and our therapist can deliver an amazing experience with them on the eval. They can buy in and get better. Tell the whole community about how great your place is. If the patients get better, the profession and business win. That is where it is at.

Since you used the word products, it is the same thing with your front desk person. You already said it. It is to get patients scheduled and show up. If there was a third, know what their copay is and be ready to pay it. You don’t have to use that third one if you keep the credit card on file, which is a big recommendation. Nonetheless, getting them to show up.

We focus on other things that are vital to an initial evaluation, answering the phone call for a patient and setting up the initial evaluation. We forget the product of what those are. I’m answering this phone call and talking to the patient. I can get them scheduled and show up. I’m doing this initial evaluation to generate a complete plan of care, which incorporates all the things that we talked about in terms of understanding the patient and getting them scheduled so they will show up for the full plan of care after the initial evaluation. That is our product. Helping our team members recognize those products can clarify what they are there for and what their real job is as it pertains to that particular role in the company.

It is mind-blowing. As a young business owner in stage one, getting started and getting busy, I had a lot of doubts about whether I could get people to do this. Would they listen to me? Could they even do it as good as me? Do they even care to do it as much as I care? I recommend doing this process early in your business. If you don’t have this built out in your business, you are way behind. We need to get this process built into your business quickly.

If you take a couple of days off of work, write some stuff down on paper, get clear on what you are trying to achieve, and share that with your team, give them some time, and you will be amazed at how the conversations change with your team members. It will be more like, “Nathan, I had three evals. All three of them scheduled their plan of care.” They will come to you with that stuff. All that to say, “Step out of treatment, get this built, and implement it in your practice.” It will help with your culture.

Are there certain metrics you noticed significantly changed after implementing this sales process?

All of them were influenced, but the biggest one was volume. We grew. Our patient experience went through the roof. Word of mouth and referrals went through the roof. People became more comfortable with having these types of conversations with patients. They got better at it than I was. Not only that, it helped me lead down the road of starting to get comfortable role-playing with my team. That is the ultimate pinnacle.

When you can have a meeting once a month, and you are like, “We are going to break off into groups. The speech therapist goes over there. OTs, you are over there. The avatar is a disgruntled patient with a total knee. His big thing is he doesn’t want to pay his copay. Ready, go.” Everybody has to role-play that. You are the owner walking around and watching. It is not something comfortable for people at first, but you talk about building some team and building the team together. Doing some things like that is fun.

I was uncomfortable at first doing it myself. As I started doing it more, it became easy and cool. It allowed me to come up with my own words. I was like, “As my supervisor, you might give this checklist. I want you to ask these questions.” I can do that. I feel comfortable when I use my own words, which are maybe slightly different from the same idea. It is the same thing. It is my script, and it is not what you are telling me to say. I feel comfortable in that space.

I don’t think you can get there without the role-playing. I also don’t think you can handle objections confidently without role-playing because a lot of people are put on the spot, and most people when put on the spot, don’t do well verbalizing responses and thinking that quickly. There is so much value there. Our team was the same way. We talked about role-playing. They were like, “Crap. Here we go.”

After a while, that is what we did. They were cool with it. They would do it in front of each other. Here are ten people watching two people handle a conversation. They critique it, give feedback, and appreciate the feedback. They were like, “Maybe I should say it this way. It became a team-building thing. That could be a positive thing for your culture to have the opportunity to be vulnerable in those situations.

It is powerful stuff when you get your team aligned and all focused on the same thing.

If you are going to implement what you are talking about, selling a plan of care and the checklist, and you are not role-playing, I would question that success, especially off the bat, because once they have some unsuccessful attempts at it, they are going to ditch it and say, “That doesn’t work.” I’m assuming that is what you had to do. You had to role-play. You role-play with your new providers that come on the team as to how to go through this.

We have our checklist. Our team lead is part of their onboarding process. They have to sit in on as many evals as it takes to hit every check mark.

The lead is watching them do the eval and making sure they are hitting each point on the checklist. They are not let off the chain to run and do whatever they want. They are going to be supervised until they let go.

We are not trying to build robots. Everybody has their own flare of things, personality, and level of directness. That is fine. The key is that as long as it is done with intention and we are focused on the product, that is it. As long as we have those things dialed in, that is important. Otherwise, they are going to make their own product. That product is going to be co-signing notes and getting their lunch ready. They are going to get confused and not clear on what is important.

They are going to think that the initial evaluation is to provide a great initial treatment.

I need to make sure they have a home exercise program.

The home exercise program is the product. I love the focus on the product. If you can get clarity on it yourself, and hopefully what we have provided now is some clarity for you, you can get them to verbalize it. When asked randomly three months from now and they can verbalize the product, you have done enough training. If they can’t verbalize it three months from now, even though you did the training, you haven’t done enough to reinforce what the product of their position is.

I will also speak to that and say that it doesn’t have to be perfect, especially in the beginning. Get a piece of paper out and start writing stuff down. Go with that for a little while. Have fun, learn from it, have some meetings about it, and you can start putting something a little bit more formal together. Maybe you make a checklist. You get your checklist made. You can start sitting in on evals and roleplaying.

It can come in stages, but I will tell you that it is not hard. A lot of people are worried about the big hospital systems coming to town and taking over and gobbling up all the practices. If you could spend 5% of your time when something like this, you would separate yourself from them quickly. Give it a shot. Have fun, and it will make a big difference.

We didn’t take any time at the beginning of this to talk about you and me. I didn’t even do my typical, “Hello. Welcome to the show.” If they are reading at this point, you are assuming that they know who we are. We are coaching our clients at this time to help them implement stuff like this so they can make significant changes in their business.

If you are interested in talking to us about your particular business and where your stuck points or pain points are, you can go to PTOClub.com . Book A Call is a button that is all over the page there. Adam, I will get a chance to talk to you. It has been cool having some of those conversations with clients to see where they are stuck because it is all over the board. It is recruiting and marketing,

If we could get a little bit more focus, there would be a lot of fear about stepping out of treatment and focusing on things. That is a whole other topic, but it is all over the board. To me, it always comes down to that key thing of like, “Let’s get focused here.”

Let’s get clear on the owner.

Why wouldn’t you be? Reimbursements are declining. Inflation is going up. Salaries are going up, and patient demand is not an issue. There are patients on your schedule. You are having a hard time getting off the schedule. It is hard. Margins are thin. It is almost impossible to build a business that gives you freedom by yourself. I couldn’t do it. I don’t know anybody that has done it. Take a chance. Step out of treatment a little bit and start working on your business. You will be happy.

Build a business that gives you freedom by yourself.
Click To Tweet

Step out of care. Reach out, get some help, and network. We are looking to do the Facebook Live events every couple of weeks.

We are going to try to go every couple of weeks. I am going to start polling the group, which I did once and got some great feedback. I know a lot of people want to start talking about marketing. We will start talking about marketing stuff. Let me know what you want to talk about. We will go for it.

If you want to be in on the poll, you got to go to the Facebook group, Physical Therapy Owners Club . Ask to join. You can ask PT owners what they are doing for certain situations, but also be a part of these polls we are doing to see what you’d like us to talk about on the show or bring up on the Facebook group itself. We will talk to you later, Rob.

He continues to work closely with business consultants to continue to grow Southern to be everything that it can. During his spare time, Adam enjoys spending time with his family and friends.

He enjoys challenging himself with an eager desire to continuously learn and grow both personally and professionally. Adam enjoys a commitment to recreational exercise, and nutrition, as well as his hobbies of playing golf and guitar.

Adam is inspired by people who set out to accomplish great things and then develop the discipline and lifestyle to achieve them. Adam focuses on empowering and coaching his team with the primary aim of developing “The Dream Team” that provides the absolute best patient experience possible.

He believes that when you can establish a strong culture of trust you can create an experience for your patients that will truly impact their lives in a positive way.

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

The post Mastering This Skillset Will Net Your Clinic $100k’s – FB Live Event With Nathan Shields And Adam Robin Of PTO Club Coaching appeared first on Physical Therapy Owners Club.