IS NOW REALLY THE RIGHT TIME TO HIRE THAT NEW THERAPIST?
I was just having this conversation with a Measurable Solutions client and fellow business owner yesterday so I thought I would share it with all of you fellow business owners out there.
As a Private Practice business owner, it can be quite scary to take that leap of faith and decide to hire that new Physical Therapist, Physical Therapist Assistant, or even that new Therapy Technician. So many times when I speak with Private Practice Owners I hear things like: “I don’t need another therapist right now”, or “I don’t have the patients for them to see right now” and “what if I hire them and we don’t get any new patients for them to see?” So, I wanted to break it down into three easy to digest components for you to consider:
- If you were to hire that new clinical staff member and they started tomorrow, what would that free you up to do? What I mean by that is; if you had time where you as the business owner were actually able to have THE FREEDOM TO BE THE BUSINESS OWNER, what would you do? Would you work on marketing and promotional things that would drive in more new patients? Would you take a look at all of those contracts you have with those crummy insurances and work out a way to renegotiate some of them to get better reimbursement? Would you spend some time with your front desk staff and train them to handle and prevent cancellations? Or could you finally take a look at the billing department and figure out why you aren’t making as much money as you think or want to be? Or would you go play golf or spend more time at home with your family?
Regardless of whether you work on one of the things I listed above or you find something else to work on, as long as it ultimately improves the efficiency of the business and your staff then it makes perfect sense to hire that new clinical staff member. Think of it this way – another PT or PTA can see patients that you otherwise would be seeing but can anyone else: really market and promote the business like you can, can they work out contracts with insurance companies, train staff to do things the way you want them done, figure out why the billing isn’t correct, help you to relax and recoup? I have seen it many a time in my own practice where we didn’t necessarily need a new PT but we went ahead and hired one anyway with the idea that they would take some of my case load, take some of the case load of the rehab manager, etc. and in the end by giving myself or our rehab manager more time to do the things we should do, we came out way further ahead than we would have been without that new PT.
- There is a concept I have learned over my years as a Private Practice owner called “necessity”. If you are familiar with the concept in the movie A Field of Dreams known as “If you build it, they will come” then this will make sense to you. Basically, the thought is when you make the decision to hire that new clinical staff member, you will naturally make it go right. So what I am saying is that if you have a NECESSITY to fill another clinician schedule you will end up filling it, one way or another; whether you take patients from your schedule or you just go get more new patients. But in the end, you will fill their schedule and if those patients come from your schedule in order to do so, go back to #1 and do some of those things.
As much as we may want to not be that “mean boss” we have all heard about or experienced, it is important that we set some expectations of any new staff we hire. Yes we hire good staff but in the end if we don’t tell them what we NEED then we will end up getting what they want to give us. So my advice is figure out what you want this new staff member to PRODUCE and then let them know. This helps to create the NECESSITY LEVEL and if they are a good staff member they will put pressure on themselves to hit your targets and goals. Tell them:
- I want you to see more patients than me,
- I expect that you are filling your own schedule. So that means you are doing promotional actions to get lots of new patients
- I expect that you are following up with patients who have dropped off and get them back on the schedule.
- I expect that you are calling past patients, introducing yourself to them and finding out how you can help them.
This will all create NECESSITY and they will quickly fill their own schedule. If you tell them this while you are interviewing them and they know they can’t meet your expectations, they will fall off the interview process on their own. Once you hire them you keep the pressure on with questions such as:
- Which past patients did you call today?
- What promotional actions are you doing?
- What is the result of the promotional actions you are doing? HOW MANY ACTUAL NEW PATIENTS HAVE COME IN AS A RESULT?
- Who did you get re-activated that had fallen off?
Again, “IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME”. If you set the expectations, make them known, and keep the pressure on the new hire, they will make it happen.
- “All the patients want to see me, they won’t want to see another new therapist.” Well, I had that same thought once upon a time and if I hadn’t taken the leap to start to hire new PT’s, I would never have built my business into the successful one that it is today. Yes, I had to change my mindset and stop thinking that the patients “only wanted to see me”. In reality they just wanted to be well cared for by someone who would do things like me. They trusted me and we had built a relationship so they were afraid that someone “new” to them would treat them differently and they wouldn’t feel as “cared for” with this new person as they did with me. So whether you hire a new therapist to help your practice to see more patients or you hire that new PT to get you out of patient care a bit, just make sure you train that new PT to treat patients the same way you do and you won’t have to worry about patients “only wanting to see you”. Yes, it will involve a little bit of selling this new PT to your current patients but that’s a pretty easy process. It starts something like “Sally, this is my new PT, ____________, I am going to turn your care over to _________. He / she is a great therapist and I have trained them myself. I want you to know that I will keep in close contact with __________ and be checking in on your status with them on a regular basis. And if anything, ever doesn’t feel right to you, or if you miss me and just want to say hi, you can always call or email me”. Just by having this communication with those patients who have only seen you for years, you will be amazed at how eager and willing they are to see that new therapist. Additionally, I would initially slide by during these patients therapy appointments and “check in” with them. I would ask “how is it going?” and “how is your ______ (condition we were treating them for)”. I wouldn’t ask things like “how is it going with _________ (the new therapist they were seeing) because I knew that their reply would be something to the extent of “well it’s alright but I like you better” in a subconscious ploy to get me to take their care back over. Additionally, I would have checked in with the new PT who was seeing this patient and know that things are going well. This way I would be able to also say something like “I spoke with _______ and he / she told me how great you are doing”, or “I spoke with _______ and he / she told me that you guys have changed up the treatment plan a bit to get a better hold on your ________”. This way the patient knew that I was really doing what I had told them I would do before when I switched them over to seeing this new PT. And before I knew it these patients were telling me how much they liked seeing the new therapist and “they are wonderful” BOOM PROBLEM SOLVED. Now you have time to go do all the things in #1 above!!!!!
So, to answer the question I posed in the title above: WHEN IS THE RIGHT TIME TO HIRE THAT NEW STAFF MEMBER? My answer to this is simple “IT IS ALWAYS THE RIGHT TIME TO HIRE A NEW CLINICIAN”. If you follow the three things above this will make more sense to you. There is always something you are not doing that you could do if you had another PT and there are always more people in the community who need help from your awesome practice. AND ALL OF THESE THINGS RESULT IN INCREAED PROFIT FOR YOU AND THE PRACTICE.
There is a bit of a science to being able to make the decision to hire a new staff member, run our practices successfully, and make sure it is fun and give us the FREEDOM we deserve and it all starts with having the proper data on your practice. Yes, this is METRICS / STATISTICS – be on the lookout for an upcoming blog / article about this subject.
I would love to hear what you think about this subject as well as any other subject that you are interested in me writing about. Feel free to email me at mike@fortisbusinesssolutions.com and lets chat a bit.
I wish you the best in your Private Practice and I hope to meet you at an event in the future and hear all the wonderful things you have accomplished.
