In our February newsletter featuring Jerry Durham, we explored how therapy practices can sometimes become "billing companies that happen to provide patient care" rather than care providers who handle billing. Today, I want to build on that conversation by examining why focusing on billing optimization alone creates a dangerous blind spot in practice management.
Jerry pulls no punches when talking about healthcare and business. During our chat, he dropped this truth bomb about practice owners: “First, there are physical therapists who effectively created billing companies that happen to provide patient care. Second, there are practices that provide physical therapy services and happen to do billing.” Ouch, right? But he's onto something. This mindset affects everything from how you adopt new tech to how you structure your patient care. Jerry's big on challenging that old-school thinking that "business doesn't belong in healthcare." As he sees it, if you don't understand business basics, you're actually limiting how well you can serve your patients.
A clinician I spoke with recently was a month behind on their notes. Another spends 2-3 hours every night catching up on documentation. This isn't just a failure of technology - it's evidence of a growing administrative burden that technology was supposed to help solve.
From AI that claims to outperform radiologists to chatbots promising to eliminate documentation burden, separating substance from hype is increasingly challenging. This guide provides a framework for clinicians to evaluate these claims and understand AI's actual capabilities and limitations in healthcare delivery.
While hospitals race to implement AI for surgical outcomes, rehabilitation therapy holds untapped potential for predictive analytics. Imagine moving beyond intuition to data-driven certainty - predicting patient progress, optimal treatment frequencies, and potential barriers before they arise. By harnessing the rich, continuous data generated in every therapy session, we could personalize care pathways from day one, ultimately spending less time in electronic records and more time delivering hands-on care that changes lives.
Nothing will have a greater impact on clinical shortages than a significant reduction in the time spent on administrative tasks.
Let's talk about the elephant in the room: money in healthcare. While mentioning "profit" might raise eyebrows in clinical settings, running a profitable practice isn't about Wall Street - it's about empowering better patient care. When your practice is financially healthy, you can invest in better equipment, hire needed staff, and focus on what truly matters: delivering exceptional care to your patients. Simply put, better resources enable better outcomes.
For Marlene Handler, burnout was the catalyst for transformation. After years of seeing 17 patients daily in an insurance-based clinic, missing time with her children, and battling health challenges, she knew something had to change. Today, her practice, The Lifted Lotus, embodies the work-life harmony she craved.
