One-on-One Care
Let’s talk about the state of Physical Therapy in the United States. There’s been a push for value based services by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). What this means is that they started to look at outcome measures for each facility and provider in order to rank Physical Therapy clinics and practitioners on how well a patient/client progressed during Physical Therapy treatments. But as with any system, people started working that system. Instead of providing quality care that gives people their life back via functional improvements and overall fitness, we (speaking generally about the decision makers within the Physical Therapy profession) started to focus on easily implemented outcome measures via questionnaires.
Instead of providing quality care to everyone who walked in the door, clinics started handing each patient an iPad to fill out surveys. Then, no matter who that patient saw during their plan of care, no matter what exercises they were given, there was a metric at the end of their treatment course that could capture “objective improvements” on their final session by way of doing some lame survey again about how they performed various tasks throughout their daily lives. These surveys were a way of quantifying services provided as either below average, average, or above average. And you better believe every time a marketer or care coordinator spoke with someone at CMS they brought up the fact that their clinic was above average.
But step into any one of those clinics and this is what you’ll see: One or Two front desk staff handling patient check-ins and scheduling, a few Physical Therapists accompanied by a host of Physical Therapist Assistants and rehab aides, and patients doing exercises in small little pockets throughout the gym while others sat on treatment tables for passive modalities. What you might not see are the corporate staff who handle billing, HR, and a host of other responsibilities that have no direct impact on the individuals that walk through the front door to be treated.
The sad reality is that this is what it takes to run a “successful” practice. You need 2-3 patients an hour per clinician to be profitable. You might need even more if your non-clinical staff numbers are high. And the whole game is centered around justifying why the treatments you give to your patients are “necessary” instead of optimal. You get reimbursed as a clinic just the same if you provide sub par treatments as you would if you provide world class Physical Therapy services. Just as long as you show CMS that your surveys support that people are getting better that is.
But what if it looked different? What if you could schedule your own visits? You know with this helpful thing called the internet and a smartphone. What if you said hello to your PT when you arrived instead of speaking to someone behind a sliding glass window? What if the Doctor of Physical Therapy you scheduled your first appointment with saw you and only you for each visit? What if that same clinician gave you exercises that were specific to your needs and actually made you sweat? What if you could change things up regarding your plan of care based on the workout you did the day before or a 5k run you signed up for this upcoming weekend? Sounds pretty good doesn’t it?
At Cali Performance Physical Therapy that’s what we do. No unnecessary questionnaires just to hit certain “metrics”. Every treatment session is One-on-One with your Doctor of Physical Therapy. Treatments can be tailored to what you have going on that day and what you hope to accomplish over the next few days or weeks. And because these exercises are specific to you, your PT can dial in the intensity. If you want to experience this difference first hand schedule your First Visit by clicking the Schedule button at the top of this page. Or if you just need our hands on skills and recovery tools to reduce soreness or prepare for an upcoming event contact us on how to schedule a Recovery Session.
