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As Physical Therapy Practice coaches, we see a lot of bad habits. Bad habits that range from physical therapists’s who don’t fill out documentation in a timely manner to private practice owners who are sometimes clueless about running a business. We’ve said time and again that practice owners need to be business minded, not solely clinically minded.
As you get ready to plan out your 2019 business strategy – which if you aren’t doing, you should be, it’s time to break some of those bad habits that are holding your business back from the success you and your staff are working hard to achieve.
Here are the three most common bad habits we see that should be on your list of habits to break in the year to come:
Incomplete Cycles of Action
Often times owners will make observations and decisions however, they fail to act. In order to be successful and business minded, you need to velcro action to decision making. How do you do this? Three steps
- Research and observe
- Deliberate
- Decide and Act
If you don’t take action, making decisions seems pointless right? Why make a decision and do the research if you’re not going to act on it and implement a change. Those incomplete cycles of action are holding you back from success.
Running Your Private Practice like a Clinician
You likely went to to physical therapy school to be a physical therapist. You wanted to help as many people as possible. However, after practicing for a few years, you probably thought or think that you can do that. You can have some freedom over your life and run your own private practice. This is true.
However you need to be a CEO. You need to be working on your practice as a business owner, with a vision and a plan. You need to develop systems of operation to make your practice work. Systems such as a business strategy plan, an organizational chart, marketing plans to attract new patients and referral sources.
A Lack of Sense of Urgency
Many owners drag their feet, fail to act and manage their staff by personality as opposed to managing by statistics. Stats show production, when you manage by personality you manage with bias. Managing by statistics is simply a system of measuring productivity in your practice. At PPS recently, one of our team members was talking to a client about how they recently had some staff turnover but as they implemented MBS (managing by statistics) into their practice and knew how to measure the success of their staff, they saw the deadweight holding back their practice from success. For instance they had a marketing person who wasn’t great at getting doctor referrals. They weren’t great in connecting with physicians and preferred to be on the creative side of marketing – social media, planning in practice games for patients, etc… but it wasn’t getting feet in the door. As the numbers were remaining stagnant it became clear that he had to make a change. A year or so later, this practice is now ready to open up another location.
Do a little self reflecting. Think about what’s really holding you back. We’ve talked about these habits on the podcast before and we’re confident if you reflect on if you have any of these tendencies, and vow to make a change in 2019, you too will see an improvement in your practice in the year to come.
Get more practice management tips in our Practice Management Best Practices Guide for Owners. Download your copy for free.
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Brian Gallagher, PT is the founder and CEO of MEG Business Management, LLC. He has more than 27 years of experience in the field of rehabilitation and 19 years in business and specializes in Physical Therapy practice management and executive coaching nationwide. As a licensed business management consultant, Brian has helped hundreds of business owners nationwide improve their business operations through proper restructuring to achieve improved systems of efficiency and productivity as well as marketing and sales with effective public relations which have proven results for double-digit growth year-over-year with businesses around the country.
