Hiring a full-time or part-time staff really depends on what your practice needs. Take note of some of the pointers that Nitin Chhoda discusses to avoid having too little or too many staff members for your physical therapy business.

As you already know, without a skilled, satisfied, and capable staff, your physical therapy marketing plan for your practice is doomed.

You may be able to do it all on your own, but that might not live up to your expectations and goals.

At first, you may consider hiring just a very small staff, so that you can get things rolling without spending a lot of money.

But if you decided to invest a lot in a physical therapy marketing and management strategy, you may want to open up with a full staff so you are ready for high capacity from the get-go.

A Staffing Plan

Most physical therapy marketing practice managers or owners don’t think about writing up a staffing plan from the start.

If you wait and see how many staff members you’ll need, you may end up with too many or too few staff members, and you may end up hiring the wrong person if you do so in a hurry. Coming up with a staffing plan should be simple and exciting.

The hard part of a staffing plan will be deciding just how many staff members you will need for your practice, including your physical therapy marketing  plan. But start with the basics and work your way up.

At first, you will probably need at least one receptionist or medical assistant who can be dedicated to greeting patients, scheduling appointments, and preparing medical records for the physical therapists as patients come in.

Part-Time or Full-Time Physical Therapists

You probably have an idea of how many physical therapists you want working in your office at a time.

But think about the process as a step-by-step management and have a good physical therapy marketing plan instead of a single hiring bundle.

Perhaps at first, you should consider hiring physical therapists only part-time, scheduling them to come in and work when you have work for them.

Those part-time employees of the business that has physical therapy marketing goals may be the first full-time physical therapists in the future, and they’ll be trained and ready to go once you need them.

Additionally, you should think about when you’ll need in-house billing staff. Some practices like physical therapy business start right up with an in-house medical biller and coder, but you can also hire that out to a company at first so you aren’t adding the cost of another employee.

Your physical therapy marketing staffing plan should include expectations for increases in income, due to increases in demand for your services. When you have a big physical therapy marketing push, perhaps it will be a good idea to hire another physical therapist first, in case you have a lot of interest all at once.

Full-Time vs. Part-Time

It’s also your job to keep your business and physical therapy marketing staff happy and satisfied with the job they have. Many practice owners and managers overlook the fact that a staff member who leaves the practice costs the practice money. You’ll have to train someone new and that causes inefficiencies.

When considering whether to hire full-time or part-time, think about how each staff or your physical therapy marketing and management will benefit from the options you give them. Will they stay longer and be happier with their job if they know they might be working full-time soon? Or do they really want a part-time gig? There is no right or wrong way to hire, as long as you are paying attention to what the practice and the staff need.

Nitin Chhoda shares the real value of planning ahead and setting your goals for your practice. Although collections from your physical therapy services can be unpredictable, allocating your expenses with regards to your marketing and business plan can help determine your goals for the practice.

Physical therapy marketing and budgeting is an absolute necessity for every physical therapy business, but it is especially important for someone who is hoping to run a successful physical therapy practice.

Healthcare and physical therapy marketing professions are especially difficult to budget for, because in so many cases, you will not know whether patients and their health insurance company will compensate the practice as you bill.

Collection Is Unpredictable

Even if you do collect the full amount, the timing of collection may be very impractical and unpredictable.

Because there are so many unknowns, it is even more important to plan ahead when allocating expenses. For the first few years, it is possible that your practice and physical therapy marketing will not run at a profit.

This means that you should factor extra cash into any loan you take out. If you plan ahead for expenses, you will eventually come out on top when you do begin to make a consistent and significant profit.

Most Expenses are Obvious

The majority of the expenses of any practice are completely predictable. You know what rent will cost every month, and you even know when and if your rent may increase.

You also can determine pretty quickly what utilities will cost, and of course physical therapy marketing and management staff salaries will also be set and predictable. These are the major expenses that you can expect to pay every single month.

In many ways, expenses are much more reliable than income. This is one reason that many people are afraid of budgeting; nobody wants to stare down a long list of known expenses and only see a few uncertain income streams.

At first, you will likely take out a physical therapy marketing plan and business loan to cover the predictable expenses. You will only be able to include legitimate income expectations once the physical therapy marketing practice has opened and your patients start to pay for visits.

Income Can be Estimated, Too

But it’s not all doom and gloom for a new physical therapy practice. With a good physical therapy marketing strategy, you can get the word out about your business even before you open your doors.

You can start scheduling appointments for the first week you’ll be open, even before you start paying your bills. And the truth is, you know how much you’ll charge for each appointment, and you know how many hours there are in every workday.

Of course, not every day will be full of paying clients, even if demand is booming. There will time  when all other things must happen in a physical therapy marketing practice. But you can probably come up with a rough estimate of how much you can expect to make if you have a decent flow of patients coming through the doors.

Bringing it Together

The really important thing to do is to figure out how you will pay your bills. If your income estimates can never cover the estimated expenses, you’re going to have a problem. But if you budget your physical therapy marketing plan and business ahead and do a good job in advance, you can find solutions before you are faced with a failing practice.

Making income goals for your practice is a must, just make sure they are limited and realistic especially if your just starting out. Nitin Chhoda explains why setting your goals with realistic income is important in order to meet the expectations of your practice.

In addition to hiring a qualified physical therapy marketing staff and organizing your practice to be efficient and effective, you should already have a plan on how you’ll pay your bills before you even sign the lease.

That means coming up with at least an estimated physical therapy marketing budget based on a few known quantities, such as expenses like rent and an estimate of how many referrals you can expect from alliances with other medical practices. There seems to be a tendency among practice owners to fluff up numbers or at least be very optimistic when budgeting.

Limiting Expectations

Don’t make your own success harder than it has to be; budget according to real numbers and realistic expectations. If your goals are attainable, you can reach them and make even bigger goals. But if you start with goals that are almost impossible to reach, you’ll find yourself barely treading water.

Every practice owner has to be at least a bit of an optimist. Now is a great time to start a business with a great physical therapy marketing plan, especially with incentives from the government to hire people and to take out loans.

In fact, the physical therapy marketing plan is likely to pick up in the coming decade like never before. The baby boomers are aging, and that means the largest elderly generation the United States has ever experienced.

The Good News

This is good news for physical therapists, but it means that things like physical therapy marketing are going to become even more important than ever before. There may be many potential patients, but there are also a lot of other physical therapy practices that are expecting an increase in business.

Physical therapy marketing is a necessity these days, so don’t forget to budget for a great physical therapy marketing plan and implementation strategy.

Just don’t expect everything to work out perfectly at first. Starting any business takes a lot of work and a huge financial risk. The only way to mitigate that risk is by keeping your expectations low and reflecting low expectations in your budget.

If you know how much it will cost to pay for your physical therapy marketing each month, find out how to make at least that much with the minimum amount of effort and time.

Take Your Time

Another easy-to-adopt mistake is to rush into a fast-paced and busy physical therapy marketing environment. Remember that every member of the staff is essentially new and they are all learning to work together.

Everyone needs to start with enough time to do their jobs right, so they can form good habits rather than bad ones.

A rushed and over-worked staff member will make mistakes and work inefficiently. That includes the owner and manager.

Plan for a slow ramp up, expect limitations at the beginning, and set realistic income goals and targets. You should always err on the side of pessimistic, if only because it’s better to overshoot your physical therapy marketing goals than to not reach them at all.

It’s never to late for your physical therapy business to provide cash-paying programs in order for your practice to receive income in real-time.

Nitin Chhoda shares how by putting up some cash-paying programs for your patients you will help them stay connected, as well as provide an alternative source of income for your practice.

The secret recipe for a successful physical therapy marketing plan of a practice sounds like something that any owner would pay a lot of money to obtain. Sadly, there is no secret recipe.

There are, however, very open and public ways that physical therapy practices have been able to increase their cash flow.

This doesn’t mean that physical therapists are charging more for services or scheduling shorter sessions and charging the same amount. Cash paying programs from an effective physical therapy marketing are ways that a practice can offset the lag that comes from billing insurance companies for most patients’ expenses.

Making Insurance Companies Pay

The best way to get the cash to your practice is to streamline and improve your claims submission process. For some practices this will mean hiring a medical billing and coding service.

For others it will mean implementing a medical EMR that integrates the clinician’s notes with the coder’s system and the biller’s system. An EMR can drastically improve the rate of accepted claims and that is big physical therapy marketing business plan for any type of service.

Changing the Way Patients Pay

Some EMR systems of business actually improve the way medical billing and physical therapy marketing happens to the point that the biller or receptionist can collect the patient portion of the payment the same day as the appointment. Getting to that point may take a bit of time and energy, but getting payment up front is well worth your time and effort.

An incorrect claim to the insurance company will be rejected. If you have done the research and figured out just what the insurance company will cover before you send the claim, you can not only improve the rate of accepted claims, but you can ensure that cash owed by the patient is paid in a timely manner.

Changing the Way Patients View Physical Therapy

This point cannot be made strongly enough. If you want a real cash paying program to exist as part of your physical therapy marketing practice, you must incorporate preventative and non-billable programs.

Because the challenge for physical therapy practices, as well as almost every other healthcare practice, lies in the billing of insurance companies, it can be hard to change the way you think about cash income.

These can be as simple as exercise classes for elderly patients who want to avoid injury. Each patient may pay in cash for the class, and overall, the practice earns the money that is paid.

All businesses, including physical therapy, have to have an effective marketing strategy. Nitin Chhoda reveals a few techniques on effective physical therapy marketing that will help your practice succeed.

Physical therapy marketing has changed dramatically over the past decade. Nobody looks at the yellow pages anymore, and people move so frequently that relying on word-of-mouth is less and less practical.

Instead, everyone is finding the information they need online, using online word-of-mouth tools like social networks and consumer review websites.

Health care providers such as physical therapists, have to market themselves too, and they have to have effective physical therapy marketing even to their current patients.

Knowing the Physical Therapy Marketing Niche

The first step toward effective physical therapy marketing is to understand the market that you are trying to appeal to. Most people don’t want to have to go to the doctor, or to the hospital, or to a physical therapist.

When they do go, they are apprehensive, and not just because they are concerned that something may be wrong. They are also always worried about what it will cost them to find out if they need more healthcare.

One way to attract patient using modern physical therapy marketing is to present a modern and confident sense of health care and great physical therapy marketing. Of course, having a comprehensive, integrated EMR in place will put you in the position to demonstrate modernity and efficiency.

But beyond that, you will want to let you patients know that they can trust you to deal effectively with their insurance companies.

Because so many patients don’t even know what is covered by their insurance plan, they are even more anxious about the billing process. One way to help patients is to talk frankly and openly with them about what they can expect.

Insurance Plan Coverage

Finding out just what the insurance plan does cover before the patient comes in for an appointment is not always easy, but it does give you an incredible physical therapy marketing message.

What if you could tell patients that you will work with their insurance company even before they walk through the doors, so they know what they’ll pay even before they accept any health care services?

Patients are a difficult market to target with a convincing and inoffensive physical therapy marketing ideas and strategy.

You don’t want to infer that they aren’t getting the care they need or that they have been doing things wrong. But you do want to offer them something they haven’t been getting: convenience and transparency when it comes to paying bills.

Establishing Relationships

Physical therapy marketing doesn’t have to be focused solely on commercials and advertisements. You should also establish relationships with the complementary practices that may be able to send you referrals.

You want the confidence of anyone who can send you a referral, because referrals are one of the most consistent forms of marketing you can get. Patients are much more likely to go to you because someone they know and trust sent them.

And physical therapy marketing doesn’t stop when the patient makes an appointment. You’ll continue to share your marketing messages with your patients during and after each visit.

This may mean improving as you go and taking feedback, but the end result will be a practice that actually caters to the needs of patients and ensures that when they do need health care, they will come to your practice.