What if there was a way that you could broaden your referral base and get many doctors sending you a few new patients every month to create a more long term stability, so when one goes on vacation stats don’t crash?

In order to understand how things work in regard to getting business and growing your practice, you have to take a good honest look at what does not work consistently with every private practice physical therapist. For example, we go out and knock on doors of doctor’s offices when we don’t know doctor and doctor does not know us. We think that we are going to get this opportunity to sit down and talk to him and he will just be elated and send us droves and droves of new patients. Deep down we know that if doctor doesn’t already love us he’s really not interested in talking to us, but yet we go out and do it anyway.

Now let’s draw a parallel to a vendor that comes in wanting to sell you some piece of equipment, say an e-stim machine. The guy comes in, he brings his device with him, and he sits in waiting room and waits for you. You come out and say hello. You talk to him for a few minutes and you have no interest whatsoever in buying another e-stim machine. But instead of telling him you’re not interested, you’re polite and you ask a lot of questions about it. You ask how much it is and are their any kind of payment plans for it, etc. But you know you’re not going to buy it. Why? Well, one, you may not need it and two you may have a vendor you prefer to work with. But it’s somewhat rude to tell guy to get lost. It’s same thing with doctors. If you get an opportunity to meet with doctor he or she most likely is not going to be rude with you. They’re going to ask questions like; "Tell me a little about your practice?" And you will go on explaining your philosophy and what kind of treatment that you do and all letters after your name and what makes you better than anybody else. Have you ever noticed that when you’re talking he’s looking at his watch? He’s got his hand on wall, leaning towards door and yet you continue on. It’s same kind of thing you do when vendor starts talking to you about that e-stim machine. You say “Well, tell me a little about it.” And you look at your watch and you lean towards door and you dart your eyes left and right towards other patients or other staff hoping that someone will bail you out. Doctors do same thing. Hopefully we can see that.

Well, I’d like to tell you, when I was in practice I experienced same thing. I was working too many hours, not seeing my family as much as I should; my staff always came to me looking for solutions to day-to-day scenarios and so on. I found I was lacking amount of time necessary to really do what I loved best which was working with my patients, seeing their results and being able to live life.

After 5 years of burning wick at both ends, I decided something needed to change quickly because my candle was getting ready to burn out.

I realized that in midst of running my business with all its stresses and being a husband and father, I needed to get my priorities straight, re-evaluate my purposes and really become very best administrator possible to make my practice and personal life efficient and enjoyable again.

You’re probably thinking what you’re going through is normal or that’s just way it’s always been or supposed to be. Take a patient who’s had headaches all this life and has lived on drugs to handle it. As a physical therapist, I know there is a solution to that and that he doesn’t have to live with headaches or be on drugs. Well, I’m telling you same thing. It’s not normal, that’s not way it is and you don’t have to live with these administrative difficulties or be controlled by your business.