Recently, I delivered a practice management seminar in a client’s office. I saw something that was shockingly good – but it used to be the norm.
When you ask a PT, “How often should a patient come to physical therapy per week in order to get the best outcome? They uniformly say, “Two to three times per week.”
When I travel to offices I determine their average patient frequency. For many, they have never looked. Most practice owners are shocked to see this number as low as 1.5 times per week. It didn’t used to be this way.
Healthcare is expensive. Health insurance is expensive. For many, they roll the dice and select a very restrictive plan that may have a higher out-of-pocket. That’s fine. I have no problem with that, but it can be a financial challenge for the patient when they really need your services.
Raising the patient’s out-of-pocket increases self-discharge rates significantly.
Now, it is very common to run into practices averaging 1.5-1.7 patient visits per patient per week. It should be above 2.2 at the very least. In the practice I was in this week, they averaged above 2.4. So rare.
An insurance plan does not enhance patient outcomes, you do. Learn how to communicate the value of your services to your patients, even if it just might cost the patient more money in order to fully recover, versus a patient who experiences some pain relief and disappears off your schedule.
If you would like to schedule a free coaching call to help you in this area, simply reply to this email and I would be happy to speak to you directly. This is a massive area of lost income in most practices but not in the practice I visited this past week.
Remember: Little Changes Lead to Massive Success!
To your success,
Shaun Kirk, PTs