Physical Therapy Business Tips
May 20, 2024
Owning a physical therapy clinic isn’t always easy. In fact, many successful physical therapy clinic owners need to have every tip and tool at their disposal to get a competitive edge and keep their practice thriving in the long term. If you’re new to owning a clinic, this can even feel overwhelming at times.
Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. In this article we’re going to break down the 3 most important tips for successfully owning and managing your physical therapy clinic. From client referrals to glowing reviews, you’ll want to keep each one of these tips handy as you brave the challenges ahead of you with confidence.
Let’s get started!
If you’re a physical therapy clinic owner, it’s important to look for ways to increase the profit of your clinic, use intuitive physical therapy software to manage your business, and leverage reviews as much as possible in order to be successful in today’s competitive market.
Of course, having a great way to manage digital soap notes, and a reliable template for SOAP notes can take you a long way with your physical therapy clinic. ClinicSense is an innovative SOAP notes software with plenty of other intuitive features to help your clinic thrive.
To help you make the journey of owning a physical therapy clinic more manageable, let’s zoom in on each of these three tips in more detail.
Increasing profit for your physical therapy clinic can be done using proven business strategies such as creating a patient referral program, reducing cancellations and no-shows, upselling physical therapy services, networking with other healthcare professionals, leveraging email marketing campaigns, and even offering gift cards to your clients.
One of the most obvious ways to increase profit while owning a physical therapy clinic is to get more patients in the door, and one of the best ways to do that is with a compelling referral program for your current clients. This might even be something to consider when you create a business plan for the first time.
For example, you might offer one free session or service for any client who successfully refers one of their friends to your clinic for a consultation. This is an effective way to build a community around your clinic and gives you access to clients you might not be able to reach by other means.
One of the biggest money pits for any physical therapy clinic is late cancellations and unexpected no-shows. After all, missing your appointment with a client means missing the revenue that appointment brings and this can add up very fast.
One of the most effective ways to reduce late cancellations and no-shows is with a standard 24-hour cancellation policy. This will help motivate your clients to follow through and communicate with you when they have an issue making it to an appointment. Most clinics who use these policies assign a fee, which typically starts at $50 but can go up to the full expected cost of the missed session.
Of course, if you’re worried about losing rapport with your clients over charging a fee, you can allow your patients to reschedule their appointment within the same week at no charge. Just keep an eye on the patients who are creating more trouble than they’re worth with consistent cancellations or appointment changes and set expectations as clearly as you can!
Most physical therapy business owners are well positioned to provide excellent physical therapy sessions to their clients, but it doesn’t need to stop there. In fact, any licensed physical therapist is also able to offer additional services that can potentially bring in more clients.
For example, offering one-on-one exercise sessions with your clients after they’ve finished their rehabilitation is a great way to keep them coming back for several more weeks or even months. Other examples of services include stretching sessions, massage or IASTM sessions, and sports performance coaching.
In many business situations success is more about who you know than what you know, and owning a physical therapy clinic is no exception. In fact, networking with other healthcare professionals and physical therapist clinic owners in your area can be one of the single most valuable ways to increase profit for your physical therapy business.
In the most basic terms, more connections with other healthcare professionals means more referrals for your clinic, which translates to more earnings. Of course, there are other benefits to having strong connections in your area, such as improving your advertising strategies, anticipating new industry trends, and keeping up on best practices for your practice.
Even if you’ve designed a great selection of physical therapy services and packages for your clients, they won’t be able to buy them if they don’t know you offer them! This is the big benefit of effective email marketing through tools like email newsletters.
With a well-crafted email newsletter, you can show your patients what they’re missing by featuring your current promotions, treatment packages, and any new services or events that are being offered by your practice. Always make sure to give your readers an easy way to take action, whether that’s opening a link, calling, or mentioning the email at their next appointment.
Everybody loves a good deal, even when it comes to physical therapy. Packages are a great way to boost your revenue because they offer your patients or potential patients a clear way to save money on your services while giving you a more consistent income.
For example, you could offer your current patients an 8-session package at 10% off, giving them a way to save on the physical therapy sessions they know they’ll need. You’ll get a steady client for weeks or even months to come.
Similar to treatment packages, gift cards are a great way to boost revenue while encouraging new clients to come through the door. When you’re designing your gift cards, it’s helpful to think about who is most likely to buy them. Is there an upcoming marathon in your city? This might be a good opportunity to offer a gift card for running analysis combined with a running technique coaching session. The opportunities are endless!
Physical therapy software is one of the most important tools for any physical therapy practice. It helps streamline workflows, save time, and improve efficiency. Look for key software features like online appointment booking and appointment reminders, invoicing and payment processing, patient check-ins, and streamlined client outreach for feedback and reviews.
Let’s take a minute to focus on each of these key features in modern practice management software.
Few software features make patient management easier than online booking (okay, maybe online SOAP notes). With a constantly up-to-date source of truth for who you’re seeing and when you’re seeing them, you can spend less time worrying about filling your schedule and more time focusing on the patient right in front of you.
With ClinicSense, you can schedule your patients quickly and enjoy more face-to-face interaction with them. Curious what else ClinicSense can do? You can get a free SOAP notes template here.
By now it’s clear that late appointment cancellations and no-shows can be a huge revenue loss for anyone owning a physical therapy clinic. Appointment reminders are a big win for your revenue because they take the guesswork out of appointments for your clients. Patients are more likely to show up and more likely to communicate early when they won’t be able to make it.
Unclear or late invoicing and payments can quickly lead to missed payments and unhappy clients. On the flipside, clear and timely invoices mean more on-time payments and client satisfaction. By sending intuitive electronic invoices to your clients, you’ll be able to keep your financial books cleaner and reduce the risk of missed payments that can hurt your practice.
Scheduling your patients for future appointments can be a long process and the time to actually do it is usually in short supply. Being able to see your availability summary at a glance is a huge win for both you and your clients because it lessens ambiguity around your schedule and encourages a quicker scheduling process for everyone.
Getting new clients is seriously important for successfully owning a physical therapy clinic, but keeping in touch with your current and recent clients is equally important. Wellness check-ins are a great way to give your clients more touch points with you while also reminding them of your clinic and the services you offer – without putting more work on your plate. As a general rule, aim to provide wellness check-ins to your current and recent clients once every few weeks at first. You can make adjustments based on how successful those check-ins are for your clinic.
There’s no denying the power that feedback and Google reviews have on the success of a physical therapy clinic, so it’s better to lean into them than to try and avoid them altogether. When you’re choosing the right physical therapy software for your clinic, make sure to look for easy and intuitive support for getting this valuable feedback from your clients.
Like any business in today’s world, reviews are critically important for the success of a physical therapy clinic because they help create a reputation for your practice, improve the visibility of your clinic, and give potential clients a preview of what their experience could be like at your clinic.
Now that you know the importance of reviews for your clinic, let’s dive into how to get those reviews.
The first step in getting a strong collection of reviews for your physical therapy clinic is setting up your Google My Business account. This account will help you track and respond to your reviews, track key business metrics, and cash in on the benefits of better visibility for your potential clients.
After key appointments, such as an initial evaluation or a discharge, following up with your clients to gather feedback can give you valuable information. Once your Google My Business is ready to go, you can include a link for your practice with a message encouraging your client to leave a review.
Emails and posters are great, but nothing will ever be as effective as verbally asking your clients to leave reviews for your clinic – especially right after an excellent appointment with you. For better results, try to feel out the situation and get a sense of how satisfied your patient was after their appointment before asking for a review.
There are usually two big reasons why clients don’t leave reviews for your clinic. They don’t have the time or they didn’t know you wanted them to leave a review in the first place. You can solve these problems by creating reminders and making it as easy as possible to leave a review. For example, put an eye-catching poster at the front of your clinic with a QR code that links to your Google review page.
With great power comes great responsibility, and the power of your customer reviews should be met with the responsibility of responding to all of them – good and bad. Responding to customer reviews is important for several reasons. It shows your current clients that you are responsive to their feedback and shows your future clients that you care about the feedback you get from your clients and want to constantly improve your practice.
Owning a physical therapy clinic requires you to wear a lot of different hats, but reducing the weight of one responsibility frees up your time to focus on another. Having the right physical therapy software for your clinic is a game changer for providing better care, making your patients happier and – of course – managing a successful clinic.
You can get a SOAP notes free trial today to start improving your practice easier than ever before. ClinicSense makes owning a physical therapy clinic easier by providing all of the key features you need to boost revenue, manage your practice seamlessly, and get valuable reviews from your clients.
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