Knowing when it’s time to hire additional physical therapy staff is a challenge we hear about a lot from the practices we work with. If it’s not well thought out, you could wind up paying more in payroll than you are getting in return for the services being delivered. This is especially true when you are a new startup practice just starting out; you cannot afford to spend more money than you make. To combat this, you need a proven hiring system that tells you when and who you should hire based on the numbers. You should never be guessing or hoping that your new patient numbers will sustain the new physical therapist you just hired. You should be driving those numbers and hiring based off a sequential plan of growth that you are in control of. This week, we’ll dive into the strategy to know when to hire the next therapist that your practice can sustain that will contribute to the growth of your practice.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Learn about the system called “The Compliment” and how it ties back to your weekly patient visit numbers and the maximum treatment slots in your schedule.
- Weekly patient visits will not only tell you if you are over-staffed but also if you are disproportionately staffed between clinical and admin.
- Crucial elements to your hiring process and human resources including bonus systems, onboarding, stats and targets, and how to work the production center formula.
- Why your annual marketing program and marketing campaigns need to be in place to drive the number of new patients necessary to grow your practice.
- Why your first clinical hire should be a DPT, not a physical therapy assistant. Typically, they will walk into 35% of a max schedule and all new patients should go on their schedule first to run their numbers up to 85% of max.
- It should be the owner/DPT who rides the ups and downs of the schedule, not the clinical staff. For every minute the owner is not treating patients, they can be doing many valuable things to work ON the practice whereas the clinical staff simply falls into non-productive time.
- It’s important that the owner holds the mindset of they are a CEO and owner first and licensed physical therapist second.
As the CEO, you must be able to accurately calculate the production center formula in order to target and work toward the clinic volume that the facility has been designed to produce. To learn more about this process, contact us or schedule a no-obligation practice assessment where you get 30-60 minutes to tell us what’s going on in your practice.
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.
