Why More Physiotherapy Private Practice Owners Are Enrolling Their Therapists On The ‘Go-To’ Therapist Mentorship

More and more clinic owners are booking coaching calls looking for help mentoring their therapists. We are finding that a lot of clinic owners are spending a fortune on physios who sit in empty rooms while they see all the patients.

Some physiotherapy private practice owners are even working 60-hour weeks to increase rebook rates, stop cancellations, and find new clients while their therapists are not even at 50% capacity.

This is where the ProSport Academy’s ‘Go-To’ Physio Mentorship programme comes in. In this article I will show you the big 7 reasons Clinic owners are choosing to enrol their therapists on our ‘Go-To’ Physio Mentorship programme.

Read on to find out just why so many clinic owners are enrolling their therapists right now…

#1 Therapist’s Patient Visit Averages Are Too Low

This is probably the biggest reason of all. Many clinic owners are finding that they give their therapists a diary full of patients only for it to be empty again after just a few short weeks.

Many private practice physio owners are realising that University does not prepare physiotherapists well for private practice and that when money is changing hands at the end of sessions, some big problems start to appear.

One of the biggest problems we find after mentoring more than 850+ therapists is that initially, when the vast majority come onto the Mentorship programme, they don’t have the ‘know how’ to bridge the gap from low to high level rehab.

This results in behaviours such as telling the patient to ‘give it a go and ring me if you have any problems’ or ‘see how that goes’ without rebooking.

When we’ve peeled back the layers, we find the true cause of this behaviour is down to a lack of confidence and clarity from the physiotherapists.

This is where the ‘Go-To’ Physiotherapist Mentorship programme comes in. We install a simple and structured step-by-step system that allows physiotherapists to keep patients progressing even when the pain eases.

What does this mean for the clinic owners?

Let’s look at the maths…

Once we solve this problem at source for therapists we find the patient visit averages improve quickly.

The majority of clinic owners notice an immediate improvement in rebook rates for their therapists immediately after enrolling their physiotherapists in the mentorship programme.

#2 Clinic Owners Don’t Have The Time To Train Their Staff

Because the therapist’s patient visit average is low, the majority of patients end up being seen by the clinic owner. This leaves very little time to train the staff, try to run the clinic, and find more new patients for their staff.

To realistically solve the patient visit average issue at source and give your therapists the confidence to treat any patient who walks through the door it isn’t just a case of continuing professional development (CPD).

If you really want your physiotherapists to have the confidence to treat anyone, you are realistically looking at a minimum of 4 hours COACHING contact time per week. From our experience, spread over 12 weeks, that comes to 48 hours in total as a minimum.

These four hours would each week include giving the therapist the required skills to be able to take any patient who comes through the door and keep them progressing session by session. It also includes role play and troubleshooting any existing cases that the therapists are struggling with.

This 48 hours is a conservative estimate in addition to the self directed learning and observation times with new staff members.

When you look at it like that in combination with the amount of additional hours the clinic owners need just to keep the practice ‘running’, it makes complete sense for them to delegate the training of their staff members to ProSport Academy and the ‘Go-To’ Physio team.

We have been doing this for a long time and have the onboarding and training process now to optimise the experience for private practice therapists to be able to implement everything they learn immediately. This means the clinic owners notice an immediate difference in the diary and their bottom line straight away.

#3 The Training Clinic Owners Have Done With Their Staff Has Made Very Little Difference

A lot of clinic owners confide in us that they almost feel ‘salesy’ by the end of their in-service training, trying to explain to their therapists why it is important to keep their patients in the diary and rebooking even when the pain is easing.

We find many clinic owners have invested many hours of in-service training with their therapists yet have not seen the carry over to the diaries and the clinic’s bottom line.

This is usually due to the fact that the clinical content is not the true cause of the therapist’s symptoms (a low patient visit average and rebook rate). The real problem, from our experience of working with hundreds of therapists, is a lack of clarity and a structured step-by-step system in place.

Once the step-by-step system is installed, the majority of therapists notice an immediate shift in their confidence and the clarity on where to go next with their patients which means they are more than willing to rebook their patients back in again for more sessions.

#4 The Mentorship Is More Cost Effective For The Clinic Owner

One of the principles we teach in the ‘Go-To’ Clinic Mastermind programme is that clinic owners must be working on the higher leverage tasks in the clinic.

If a clinic owner’s time is worth £100+  per hour and are spending 4-5 hours a week training staff…

And then another 4-5 hours fixing their problems with their current patients…

And possibly another 4-5 hours trying to find new patients because their therapist’s diaries are quiet, it soon adds up.

The majority of clinic owners who enrol their therapists in the Mentorship programme want to eliminate the ‘trial and error’ and save themselves time, money and effort.

Let’s revisit our return on investment graphs again and the importance of your therapists being able to keep patients progressing.

How many hours do you think you would need to invest in your marketing efforts to find 100 new patients?

The most effective clinic owners are now working smarter not harder, keeping their existing patients on track by delivering exceptional quality of care whilst creating raving fans and referrals in the process.

#5 The Clinic Owner Wants A Great Quality Of Care Across Their Clinic And Understands Private Practice Is A High Pressure Environment

Just like the time restrictions above, clinic owners are now understanding that physiotherapists are not trained to excel in private practice.

When money changes hands at the end of a session everything changes. This is why a ProSport approach is so important in private practice. It gives therapists the ‘skills’ and ‘know how’ to balance hands-on treatment and a progressive step-by-step graded exposure approach to deliver long-lasting results for patients quickly and safely.

We are also finding that clinic owners are looking to enrol their therapists on the ‘Go-To’ Physio Mentorship programme so they can have peace of mind that the quality of care is high and consistent regardless of which therapist is seeing their patients.

This protects the clinic owner’s and the clinic’s hard earned reputation.

#6 Recruiting Staff Is Becoming Harder And So More Clinic Owners Are Recruiting New Graduate Physiotherapists

Clinic owners are really struggling to recruit therapists at this moment in time and so more are turning to new graduates. Similar to the previous point, private practice can be a daunting and ruthless environment. Not every physio is built for it.

Therefore, mentorship solves this problem at source by giving the therapist clarity and confidence to treat any patient that walks through your door and have the real life skills and ‘know how’ to keep patients progressing while delivering results.

Many clinic owners are now finding that new graduate physiotherapists are actually excelling in private practice with the right mentorship and structured step-by-step system in place.

#7 Clinic Owners Want Something Extra In Their Sleeve For Enticing Staff To Choose Their Clinic

Some clinic owners are using the ‘Go-To’ Physio Mentorship Programme as an additional tool to entice staff to work in their clinics. With a shortage of good physiotherapists to work in private practice, the ‘Go-To’ Physio Mentorship programme is a great way to demonstrate to therapists that they will be supported in their journey and set up to succeed in private practice.

Here is an example of one such clinic using the mentorship in their job adverts;

What Does The After Results Look Like In Real Life For Clinic Owners?

Marty Loughran and Julie Loughran are two experienced and successful physiotherapists who own their own practice, Elite Physio in Northern Ireland.

Marty was working 60+ hours per week…

While Julie was working 30 hours with twins due to arrive in January 2021!

They had one therapist working for them and felt stressed, overwhelmed and burnt out. They enrolled this therapist onto the mentorship programme right away.

Marty and Julie also installed the ProSport Business & Head Physio Frameworks into their clinic using the ‘Go-To’ Clinic Mastermind programme.

They then hired their next therapist and also enrolled them straight into the Mentorship programme.

By January 2021, Marty had reduced his working hours to 20 hours per week and was able to pursue other sporting opportunities that he wanted to do for a long time, such as working with Tyrone Gaelic Football team.

Julie was able to take a full year off to spend with her family.

And now fast forward to June 2022…

Elite Physio now has 4 full time therapists and is growing.

They have a high functioning admin team and everyone is working towards the vision, all the while having a common treatment approach across all therapists.

Marty is working less than 4 hours per week in the clinic and most of his time supporting his therapists to continue to grow. Julie is back, yet now actually able to work on the business instead.

And best of all is that they hit their 3 year highly achievable goal in just 18 months.

This is the true power of working smarter not harder and clinic owners working on the higher level tasks while the ‘Go-To’ Physio team takes care of the heavy lifting.

Are You Considering Enrolling Your Therapists But Still Have Questions?

So there you have it, the 7 most common reasons private practices and clinic owners all over the world are choosing to enrol their therapists on the ‘Go-To’ Physio Mentorship programme.

If you are considering enrolling your therapists on the ‘Go-To’ Physio Mentorship Programme then click here to book your coaching call and see if we are the right fit for what you are looking for.

We will show you around the Mentorship programme and answer all your questions. This will be a no-obligation call and is completely free of charge. To schedule your call and get back your time, energy, and make the best use of your assets and staff, click here now.