NEW PRIVATE PRACTICE LEARNS THE VITAL STEPS TO EXPANSION

This week I am bringing in a guest blogger who is one of our clients. I hope you find her story to be helpful.

Best,
Shaun

Having seventeen years experience in physical therapy, Kim Chastain decided to open her own private practice.

“I knew that I had the skills as a clinician, but that I’d need further training as an executive in order to run a practice fully on my own. I knew I didn’t have all there was to know about marketing to have a stable referral base. The only option I’d seen out there was to go out and knock on doors, meeting with doctors in person, but I was looking for a way that was less time consuming and that would result in stable success.

I knew I was lacking skill as an executive also. I’d observed another clinic run with all the staff wearing all the hats, with no real organization, no method to grow predictably. They were doing duplicate work and no one really knew how to measure how well each was doing individually. I knew I needed training in the subject of organization itself.

I had Measurable Solutions’ newsletter for a few months, sitting in my briefcase – I would read it once a week at least. I realized that all that they said, all the myths that they had listed – that was exactly how I thought. I thought, this is too good to be true…this newsletter was almost too good to be true. I decided to gather as much information as I could because I knew that everything that I had been taught, If I kept doing that, I was going to be in the same boat. I would never get out of my practice. I would never be able to work part-time.

Shortly after I made this decision, I took the New Patient Course, as I wanted control over my expansion. I knew I would really need to get the word out as I was going to be building my own practice from the ground up. I also realized that despite a respectable degree of success I really didn’t have the knowledge it took to effectively manage a practice.

I completed the New Patient Course two months prior to the opening of my facility. I felt so confident after the New Patient Course that I decided my “dream” was a little too small. So I contacted my contractor and had him double the size of my building. We opened our doors in February, immediately implemented the New Patient Course techniques and never looked back. We went from 0 patient visits to over 225 patient visits per week in just over 4 ½ months! The most amazing thing is that I didn’t have to spend a bunch of time meeting with doctors to do it. Clearly I did not have the time because I had to treat the patients! My biggest problem was getting physical therapists hired on fast enough to keep up, which is a better problem to have than waiting for the phone to ring.

I then rolled up my sleeves and became trained as an executive as well at Measurable Solutions. I can say that I now feel 100% certain of success. Before I believed that only my relationships with doctors would determine my growth. Now I know I can grow as fast as I want to grow and that I can create a diverse referral base through what I now know about public relations and marketing.

I can also say with total certainty that I understand what it takes to make a team and how important every staff member is to the expansion of the practice. Having the ability to manage each individual’s production with statistics allows everyone to be self-sufficient and to determine their own pay as well. We are also starting out with a way to communicate internally which will not waste each other’s time and will allow each individual to do their own job; something which we never had before.

I feel that I really can have the dream that I wanted, I feel that I can opt, if I’d like, to not work the practice at all. I feel that I have all the training tools that I need to create another CEO (that is not even me) and I could leave. That blows my mind -- that I could not be there, and it can be a lucrative business.

With the training, it’s whatever your goals are. Depending on how much you choose to expand is how much you will expand. And I can step out or not. That’s definitely being able to do what I want to do with my own personal life!

I have seen what’s out there by the so-called experts. This is the only workable technology that I have seen. Just the New Patient Course alone, you go back to your practice and you know exactly what you need to do when you go back. No other course has given me that -- even those courses specific to physical therapists.

Prior to Measurable Solutions’ training what the philosophy was to buckle down and shrink. Measurable Solutions’ philosophy is the complete opposite, you know, you have to expand! I never thought that I would be seeing 200 patients a week! I never thought that would happen!

My advice is, if your goal is to be a slave to your practice and have it totally dependent on whether you are there or not, continue to do whatever you are doing. But if you want some freedom and you want to be able to work part-time or not work at all and still have an income, you need to have these tools or you are never going to get out.

I am glad I took the opportunity to do things right the first time in my new practice and would encourage anyone in practice for a long time or just starting out to get trained as an executive.”