What Does it Take to Start a Physical Therapy Practice?

If you are reading this blog, there is a pretty good chance you are considering starting your own physical therapy clinic.  You are probably slightly apprehensive and uneasy as to where to even begin.  You have extensive clinical education under your belt and you can treat a patient that just suffered a devastating injury but starting a new business seems like a frightening process with so many moving parts.

You are correct.  Starting a business takes guts.  If it didn’t, everyone would be a business owner.  It takes grit.  It takes work ethic.  But it doesn’t have to be painful and it doesn’t have to be so paralyzingly scary to the point that it keeps you from achieving that ownership goal.

The single best advice we provide to individuals considering branching out on their own – align yourself with companies who have the same core-beliefs as you.  If you are a huge advocate of strong customer service, be sure that your vendors – whether it is an accountant, an attorney, a realtor, a banker, or your EMR/Billing Company – are on the same page and provide that same level of service that you believe you deserve.  Do not settle.

As you go through the process of starting your business, you will find that initially there are a set of simple steps that must be completed – obtaining your tax id, setting up a bank account, securing a physical location, obtaining malpractice insurance, etc. However, it starts to get tricky when you enter the health insurance world.  Ensuring that you are credentialed correctly with insurance payers is the tipping point that can propel you towards complete success or tragically sabotage your plans of being a profitable business owner.  It is imperative that you find a company that can competently handle your insurance credentialing through systematic and strong follow up.

Additionally, once you cross that bridge and become credentialed, your revenue will ultimately be dependent on the team you put in charge of your billing – whether it is in-house or to a third-party.  This is not a decision to take lightly and only you will know what is best for your situation and your practice.  However, there are many factors to take into consideration.  We always encourage our potential new practice start-ups to shop around.  Billing companies should be more interested in learning about your practice and your goals than telling you what they can do for you.  If they just want to sell you their services without knowing more about you, then they aren’t looking out for your best interest.

Choosing the means in which your insurance claims will process and who will be responsible for that is ultimately the single most important decision you will make as a new outpatient physical therapy practice owner.

At StrataPT, we have helped therapists around the country take a simple idea and turn it into an extremely profitable outpatient physical therapy practice.  We guide our therapists along every step of the process.