PT Walks Away From His Practice (and still gets paid)….

I just finished a mastermind meeting with some of the top private practice owners in the country. We met for a weekend of intense brainstorming, dissecting each others business as a group, and came up with new and innovative strategies to spark MASSIVE growth in our business. We had a blast – were engaged in brainstorming all day and decided to wind down and relax with a fun evening of food and drinks at a Brazilian restaurant in Manhattan NYC. The energy was MINDBLOWING, to say the least.

The weekend reminded me of one of my coaching clients, who has managed to walk away from his practice (and still gets paid). More on that in a little bit….

Here’s a quick video of some of the masterminding. There were some MASSIVE take-aways and this blog post will help you put the pieces together, to give you the private practice you deserve.

One of the cool things about this weekend was that all of us use very different tactics to get what we want in our private practice. The ingenious group was brimming with concepts that left every single member of the group speechless. All the individuals in this group are very successful, and they ALL play to their strengths, delegating the rest.

They understand the reality that these days, “good enough” just isn’t “good enough.”………..

………At least not when it comes to running a successful private practice.  And certainly not if you really want to run an automated practice with positive cash flow and high paying patients.

Now, if you want to live a life of freedom and independence, you could try and build it yourself one little step at a time….but here’s another reality check. Even surgeons don’t do their own plumbing.  They call in a professional.

The problem is, some private practice owners implement a one dimensional, cookie-cutter copy that does NOTHING to identify growth areas and build a successful practice.

It’s Not Their Fault.

Not entirely at least.  It’s simply a matter of redefining your self image. Your self image defines and limits your possibilities. If you think patients won’t pay for cash services or doctors won’t refer, you are widening the gap between your self imposed limits and actual limits, increasing the area of under-utilized potential in your life. This mindset can cost you a fortune in worthless strategies and lost patients.

The private practice owners who struggle also tend to have several week areas that they do not delegate in an effort to save money.

I’ll be honest here, and I’ve never said this before. It makes my blood boil when I see hard working, dedicated practitioners toiling away making a fraction of the money they should be making, just because they are trying to do every single thing themselves in the interests of saving money!!

The most successful private practice owners live the life of their dreams because they are able to work on the critical 5% that drives them forward, instead of holding themselves back with the little things that suck up time and energy. Here are a few examples.

This morning, I got a call from another coaching client who has created a SYSTEM in his practice that allows him to step away from his practice and treat when he wants to, who he wants to. The reason he could do this was because he has systems and procedures for EVERYTHING.

This therapist went from slaving 10 hours a day in his practice (including 2 hours of paperwork) in his Orange county clinic to spending hours on the beach every day, and his physical presence is required in his clinic once every two weeks.

This was very odd timing, because the reason my client was able to achieve these goals was EXACTLY what we discussed this past weekend.

• He joined my coaching group last year and was able to create a SYSTEM for everything from front desk phone calls, collections, follow ups, physician communications and post discharge patient follow ups. He submitted an application to join (since not everyone is accepted) and was among the select few who qualified to be a part of the group, based on the detailed application form that he filled out.
• He was able to REDUCE his in-network participation with most insurance companies and DRAMATICALLY increase his volume of out-of-network and cash paying patients, which allowed him to boost his revenue by 40% without seeing any additional patients. His visits are now QUALITY based and not QUANTITY based
• He was able to BETTER MANAGE HIS STAFF and enlist their involvement in marketing and customer service
• He was able to MANAGE HIS TIME EFFECTIVELY, which included completing documentation on the fly.. allowing him to become more efficient with his time and NOT spend hours doing paperwork at the end of each day
• He was able to effectively analyze his payer list and identify which the low paying payers were, cut them out and focus on the high paying payors
• He was able to implement a systematic marketing campaign to market to patients and doctors in the community
• He was able to implement a cash paying group exercise program, a massage program membership and a post rehab exercise program to keep cash flows consistent.
• He had a reliable, effective billing solution to help him with collections.

What is the moral of the story?

SYSTEMS will set you free.

Most private practice owners handle their businesses BACKWARDS. They stumble through their clinic, copying their previous employers and by the time they discover the value of systems, they have spent months (sometimes years) and several thousand dollars creating habits that enslave them, instead of setting them free.

In case you are wondering how to join my mastermind group, I am sorry to say that we are currently CLOSED and not accepting any new members. We open up our mastermind group once in a while, but it’s not going to happen in the immediate future. Our current goal is to focus 100% of our efforts on the current mastermind group.

This PT now lives the life of his dreams, is able to take time off whenever he wants. He runs his practice, it does NOT run him. He enjoys the profits it brings him, and has walked away from his practice while still getting paid. Essentially, his practice is a fully automated machine, with the right systems and staff – a machine he only has to check in on once in two weeks.

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Tags: physical therapy business, physical therapy marketing