Mastering Leadership and Analytics: Elevating Physical Therapy Team Dynamics and Efficiency - Andrew Schaffer

Rockstar. Today's episode is how measuring metrics creates movement towards a company's purpose as a leader. Our main job is to be the visionary. So as visionaries, it's so vital to know how we are doing. We have to measure that path. And today we're talking to Andrew Schaefer, who represents Prediction Health is software that specializes in obtaining not just metrics, but data for audits as well as accountability discussions how you're doing on a billing perspective. It automates so many of the hours we spend pulling up Excel spreadsheets and sitting down with providers and being like, hey, listen, John, you know, you didn't really hit the mark. All that goes away when we talk about group accountability and how the right tools in our hands as leaders facilitate these things for us. A powerful leader is more of a coach than a disciplinarian. Oftentimes as owners, we find ourselves in positions where we're trying to correct behavior, we're trying to inspire. But the truth is the group will always do a better job of helping people achieve their potential than we can individually. And so think about it like this. An old school general. No matter how talented they were, they were limited by the number of resources they had, the weapons, the maps, the accurate information. Information is what wins battles and wars, and the same is true for owning a business or being a leader. The accuracy and the efficiency of our information is what sets the stage for us to make the right decisions to help us win the war. In this case, Prediction Health isn't just like a map that shows us the way. It's the canon to blow through resistance and change in a way that people will love. So please enjoy this episode.

All right, Andrew, so what's a defining characteristic of a leader from your perspective?

Sure, yeah. I would say the first thing I think of is somebody that can really command a room without trying. Right. Because you don't want somebody that's just going to be overbearing. That can get exhausting. I also think someone that is intelligent, but also emotionally intelligent to understand there's different personalities in the room and that each person needs to potentially be treat a little bit differently. But potentially most importantly is somebody who can set a vision, whether it's for a group or, you know, an organization, a company, whatever it might be. It's critical because that vision is going to be what everyone follows and what sets the course of success or failure for that group or organization.

Yeah, and that was great. You know, it's interesting how you really painted the picture of someone who's like super balanced, right? Like a leader who is very powerful and yet personal, very attention grabbing, but not dominating. And it seems like in our world today, especially in politics, we don't have that kind of balance. It seems like we have a real skewed version of that and it still creates leadership. I think what you're talking about is more of like effective leadership in most groups. Is that right?

Yeah. And I think maybe different people cling to different styles, but at least for me, I've always gravitated towards not necessarily the like super domineering type of personality. Like I said, I think that can just get a little bit exhausting even when you think about sports. Right? Like the type of coaches that are just like super fireball type coaches, they're typically only with a team for a few years and then the players get burned out. So I think, you know, having obviously at times, you know, might need to, to crank up the fire of communication style perhaps. But I think from a longevity standpoint, having, you know, more of a calm, measured approach is going to be the path for success.

Yeah, I love the thing that I heard once from somebody, they described that characteristic as ethics presence. When someone walks into a room, everyone like sits up taller, they work a little extra harder. And I think that's, that's generated from respect and the fact that the leader loves and cares for that individual and yet still holds this accountable line. Because I've been that leader, Andrew, where I've been everyone's best friend. So they liked me, they loved me even. But when I held them accountable, they didn't really hold a lot of respect around it. I think people tend to gravitate more towards one or the other. Do you agree with that?

I would, yeah. And I think like striking that balance in the middle is critical. Right. Because I, like you said, if you, if you're, you know, too nice, if you will, or just, you know, always friendly and not having any accountability whatsoever, then that's not going to work over the long term because you need to command some type of a level of accountability so that the folks that are following you have some expectations and know that if they don't meet those expectations and there might be some challenges and conversations, tough conversations that occur. Then again, at the same time, if you're just always driving, driving, driving, driving with no human element, no laughter, no positivity, no happiness, that's not gonna work out for the long term either.

I love that Rockstar. Is a couple things Andrew just said I wanna really highlight here. First and foremost is that this idea that, you know, people don't care what you know until they know how much you care. All effective leaders and all organizations that make a difference in the world have leaders who truly care about their people. And yet, and this is the other balancing comment to that. For me, in my world, any success I've had is a direct relationship to how many difficult conversations I'm willing to have. So when someone's taking too much slack or they're taking advantage of the fact that there is someone who cares for them, if there isn't that accountability conversation, when people extend, boom, we get into ourselves of a employee centric culture in a negative way. We always want the culture to be about what for everyone to win. So, Andrew, who is someone that can command a presence in a calm and, like, caring way?

Yeah. We were chatting a little bit earlier. I think that someone that came to mind immediately was General Petraeus, and he was doing a presentation here in Nashville, Tennessee for the Boy Scouts group at a big fundraiser. And the guy has been in rooms with, with all kinds of presidents, you know, different foreign leaders, and, you know, very much, you know, could be the most arrogant person imaginable, but the, the calmness that he had and the humility that he had while clearly showcasing his intelligence and his ability to just, you know, be. Be likable, I think is honestly a big thing. Be likable and just be able to communicate with the person who's interviewing him and kind of describe different situations he's been in. You could easily tell by watching this guy for five minutes that he can absolutely command a room, like I said earlier, without requesting it. Right. And somebody that people would follow, obviously in a war situation, which is absolutely critical, high stress as can possibly be a guy that you would feel comfortable being under direction of.

Yeah. There's a book I love called how to Win Friends and Influence People. It's a very famous book. Most people have read it, but I recently read it for the first time, I'm embarrassed to say. I've read dozens of other books before I got to this book. And honestly, Andrew, it's because I thought I was a master. Like, come on. I don't need these introductory concepts. Turns out that book was written in 1932 and it goes back and is the. The quintessential leadership book for beginners. I read through it and realized how little I was living those principles. And a lot of what you're talking about with these leadership qualities are defined in that book because again, I think if someone who hasn't been trained as a leader, thinks of a leader. They think oftentimes of your Napoleons. You're real aggressive, assertive dudes who are just going to come in and like a bull in a china shop, run things around and we've got some real examples of that today. Right. But the real impactful leader is someone who is able to connect, encourage, still take a stand and still be able to like singe the hairs on the eyebrows of like a coach on the sidelines when everything matters and that game is, is the championship. Like you still need that quality, but it's, it's selectively being utilized and only from a place of when people know, love and trust you. So I love that you bring up that guy because that is such a cool example of, of someone who leads with in a powerful way.

Yeah. And I think the, the point just made about selectivity is critical as well. Right. Because if every word out of your mouth as a leader is, you know, do this, do that, you're not fast enough, you're not strong enough, then those words begin to lose weight, I would say. Right. But if you are like more of a measured person and like generally positive. Okay. Then something actually you do need to really, you know, kind of put your weight on that's going to have a lot more of an impact than like, oh gosh, you know, Andrew or Will or whoever is just on my back all the time for every single thing. Right. So like when you are more selective with that, they're like, oh man, this guy's usually, you know, pretty level headed and pretty nice. And so this, this must be something very important. And I'm going to listen, right. Like, I'm sure even in like friend situations, right. There's like the one guy who's always just getting along and then all of a sudden you're like, oh man, you know what, what's up with Tom today? So, so I think that, yeah, that, that, that's important.

Yeah. Whenever I swear, which is rare, people are always like, whoa, because it's such a rare thing. Whereas my friend who swears all the time, it's like, oh, he's just, he's just being himself. So it's really true that when we are selective in our power as leaders, it makes an impact. The other thing that I find is really useful is that leaders who focus on results tend to be able to get to that place of like singeing the eyebrows or even more caringly like, hey, I really want you to be successful here. When they're focused on the results. Right. Because when a leader has like just, they're just angry. It's like, okay, they want things to look a certain way, but they don't. The people don't know why. They don't see the connection necessarily. But when the leader's always pointing at, like you said earlier, visionary, and they're like, hey, look at the result that we're producing isn't getting us where we're going or it is getting us where we're going. Let's celebrate that. Whatever they're doing when their results oriented, that really does seem to be one of the most powerful ways a leader can command a group of people. By being results centered, different people within.

That group are going to have different pathways to get to that same result. Right. So I think like one of the most important pieces is like as a leader you need to have the guardrails. Right. But you know, let the people like bounce in between, you know, to figure out where they want to go because, you know, different, you know, folks in a group again, whether it be a company or a sports team or, you know, I was thinking like rec league hockey where I've, you know, captain those types of things. People want to, you know, be themselves and operate how they see fit and how they get enjoyment, fulfillment, you know, from professional settings as well. And so if you're directing too much, then there is just not going to be an enjoyable situation for them and they're not going to get to that result you want and they're not even going to probably give enough effort to get there. Because if that effort is being direct, directed so precisely, then it's going to take all the joy out of it.

Yeah. And so that's where it kind of boils down to numbers. Kind of tying this down to metrics and numbers. Looking at it from a perspective of like when I was a PT owner, Andrew, it was really rough when I wasn't understanding the power of numbers as a measurement of result and that's it. Like, where this new generation of healthcare providers gets off track is that they were trained that money is bad and numbers are about money. And if you're pushing numbers, then you're being bad. When the truth of the matter is the money and the metrics are only a measurement of the movement of the company towards its purpose. I'm going to like, coin that phrase. The money and the metrics are measurements of the movement of the company towards its purpose. Like this idea of like a leader. So I had metrics, I knew what metrics were as an early PT owner with my one practice. But once I started having my people measure their own product and they were like reporting to me, things changed. So that phrase of what measured gets improved is true. And I love the follow up phrase of what gets measured and reported improves exponentially. And that as a leader is what gives us our power. When we have people who understand how their numbers actually drive a greater purpose beyond money, it changes the phrasing from like we're doing healthcare to make money to we're making money to provide better healthcare. And so let's talk about your company, Prediction Health. Prediction Health is a metric driven solutions. Could you describe the company and let's make that connection between what your company does and how that could be used as a tool for a leader to generate power so that they can push forward a vision?

Absolutely. Yeah. A lot of times I like to refer to it as like a COO's best friend. So what we're doing is we are pulling in 100% of the documentation information from the EMR. So all the note data, the minutes, the units, the CPT codes, all of that, running it through our systems and then the output is a series of dashboards, many of which are unprecedented. So the critical areas we're helping folks with is CPT coding optimization. That's both from a standpoint of helping people to select the appropriate CPT codes, but also where they might be leaving entire units on the table in terms of them not understanding the AMA rule versus total minute rule, et cetera. And then another big, big piece of it is documentation compliance. So we again are analyzing 100% of every note, running it through our system and giving you back a detailed report on what folks are doing well, what they're doing poorly with. Are they over documenting, are they copy forwarding information? And all that kind of generates to a score about how well or poorly they would do in the event of an audit. So thinking about that from like a leadership standpoint, we are delivering unprecedented analysis and insights to the leaders of physical therapy practices so that they then can take that information and pull all the appropriate levers to optimize the practice as best they can. We like to talk about we help you to optimize revenue compliantly because like you mentioned a minute ago, Will, if, if the group isn't making money, then you're not taking care of any patients because you're gonna be shut down. Right? So it all gets back to the patients, all gets back to being able to provide the best care possible.

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Yeah. Predictions Health's ability to empower leaders to be powerful. Like that's it's going back to results driven. It's helping them create the measurements that define the movement so that we can be with people in a way to where we command their respect. And Rockstars. What I want you to really understand about this part of the dialogue here with Andrew is that the most impactful accountability doesn't actually even come from the leader. I want you to think about that. The most impactful difference we make as leaders is to develop a team that creates group accountability. That is like the biggest mindset shift as leaders that it's not about us, it's about what we build through and with other people. And if we can have the tools like Prediction Health and we can find rock stars to help us develop that team, then we can put like a clinic director in charge whose job isn't to sit down with the lowest performing physical therapist in a physical therapy business and go, hey look, here's what you did last week and here's what you should have done. What are you going to do next week? And then get frustrated. Why? The therapist never seems to care. And again, you can tell they want to care to some degree, but they don't really ever seem to get it. This is why is because if they don't understand how their metrics measure movement in not just the company's sense, but what they want to create and they feel ownership of that, they will never care. So when you have a group environment. This is true, Andrew. In my world I got to this place with lots of coaching where we had four locations with clinic directors who were amazing, powerful leaders just like you described with General Petraeus where they were very, very kind. One guy in particular who has since passed from cancer, his name is Josh Hamilton. He had this quiet dignity about him but he commanded respect because he was results driven and he used metrics in a group format to help everyone hold themselves accountable. It changed the dialogue from like, hey guys, we need to be hitting these many visits a week to hey John, as you can clearly see, you're the one who's below things. How can I help you be successful? And John actually feel cared for because of that. So that's what prediction health does. Prediction health in my mind accelerates the group accountability because I've having seen your platform and I have to give a complete disclosure. I get nothing financially if people sign up with you. And I don't want, I don't want that. I think you guys are going to dominate the industry because when PT any healthcare company, but like in this case physical therapists, if they are leveraging that software, they are going to create a group experience because they see themselves in comparison with others. Others. Right. Can you share a little bit how you're able to pull data for people so that it helps them understand as individuals how they're doing compared to others?

Sure, sure. Yeah. So like the main thing that mine goes to is on the, the CPT coding side. So a lot of folks watching this I assume, will anyone in the therapy space know about the, the battle of therapeutic exercise versus therapeutic activity and when we can actually give a representation to the organization on the therapist by therapist level and say hey, you know, this person has you know, 2,000 units over the last 12 months that they coded as therapeutic exercise that by the AI's analysis is saying they could have coded as therapeutic activity. It really helps to open eyeballs both from like the ownership standpoint but also from the individuals and say like hey, you know, we have a organizational opportunity here to really better educate about when that therapeutic activity is appropriate appropriate or when the neuro rehab is appropriate versus the therax or the manual and then can really, you know, have the opportunity to right the ship and you know, you can see a, you know, quite significant financial opportunity. I also like to point out that a lot of practice owners will, will you know, mention oh that you know, PTs are asking for a raise or a bonus or this types of things and when you can actually point to, hey, well if you, you know, brought your therax from, you know, 60% down to 30% and increase your Thera act from, you know, 20% up to 40%, there's going to be a lot more money for that raise and for everybody to get bonuses and, and whatever else might come along. So it, it really takes the transparency and object, objectivity to another level where the feedback is, you know, just the, the numbers are what they are like to your point earlier, you know, versus a certain person, you know, feeling like they're getting picked on by their clinic director or by their practice owner or something in that regard. So it just, it brings a lot of objectivity and understanding. And so where exactly therapy practices have an opportunity to improve, it just, it.

Just, it creates this experience like you said, where it's not like they're being picked on. And you know, so many times as, as leaders and owners, we have people coming and saying, hey, I need raises, I want a raise, I deserve a raise, I've worked really hard. And we haven't, we haven't established the criteria for success or raises for them. So it's, it comes back to us. It really does. And that's what this software does very easily because it's so much extra learning for us to go figure out how to have those conversations and develop those things. Whereas the software you produce, it automatically shows John how he does compared to Rick and Susan and Nancy and when they can self manage and see how they're doing. And then our job does still require us to say, hey, listen at these benchmarks, here's, here's a bonus that we'll put in place. But creating the right measurement is what I think drives that for you. So for your clients, what kind of successes have they seen both in terms of like ease of management of team and, or increased revenue because people are actually looking at what gets reimbursed.

Sure, sure, yeah. So from, from a revenue standpoint, you know, one specific example comes to mind where we had a group that rose their, their dollars per visit by 15% in just the first three months on the platform. And that's actually before we have like some of the real time capabilities which I haven't mentioned yet, that's just from looking at historical data, retrospective analysis of their coding. And I think a big part of that is simply when therapists understand that they're actually being monitored to the number, they are a bit more likely to pay attention because they know it's not just going to fall by the wayside. And fall into darkness in their coding practices. So. So yeah, so I would say that that would be one marker, 15% in three months. The other piece is the documentation compliance, which I mentioned a little bit earlier. And we can see some, some pretty dramatic increases there. Like somebody who would be scoring maybe a 40 out of 100, I remember one specifically increased their score up to a 75 out of 100 within just the first four months on the platform. So that can be some pretty sharp increases. A lot of times on the compliance side, it's just not really understanding exactly what's required. But once that light bulb kind of switches on, they can improve their documentation compliance, which dramatically reduces the financial risk to the organization in the event of an audit.

Amazing. So it's just, again, it's a tool that immediately creates awareness. I think obviously the financial return on investment is pretty straightforward. But Andrew, the thing that really gets me excited is the idea that you have a team of people that are, because they look at your software, they're going to self educate on the hardest thing that our industry struggles with, which is understanding metrics and money. When they look at that and they see impact compared to what they were able to do, they can see how they compare against others. They can see how they compare and how things get reimbursed. They can, they start. They no longer are people on the sidelines trying to find balance for their personal life. They join the movement in our industry to take a stand for what we care about, which by the way, takes care of their family. Because the more money we increase, profitability unlocks possibility. Right? The more profitability they create, the more raises or bonuses they can earn, the less stress there is because we don't have owners who are just piling on patience to make up for what they don't understand. So I love that you have that. How has developing Prediction Health impacted you as a leader?

Wow. A lot. So I came to Prediction Health in May of 2021 and I wanted to join a company in this mold, a smaller company in the healthcare technology sector where I could have a larger impact on the organization versus the larger organization I was with previously, which was a great role, you know, very, very. All good things to say. But again, I wanted to get to a place where I could have more of an impact on a wider variety of things or the strategic direction of the organization operations in addition to sales, which is my core function over the period of Prediction Health. Anytime you're in a startup environment, you get to wear quite a lot of hats, for sure. Sometimes, you know, hats that I didn't even know were hats. But that's, that's all part of the, part of the fun. But yeah, I've had quite a lot of different roles, you know, growing out a team, you know, getting the first even description of what the product is, you know, putting together the pricing, you know, outlining, you know, what's going to be most impactful for these practice leaders along with the rest of the group. Um, so it, it's been quite the experience for me personally, very difficult again, in a healthcare startup, or any startup for that matter. In a startup you have again, just a whole lot of work to do and the work, the work never goes away. So, you know, managing, managing that has been, has been an interesting challenge, but, but yeah, the reason I wanted to get into it is just to be able to, you know, have a hand in a whole lot of different things. And it's allowed that and then some.

Man, the impact is so massive. You guys are continually growing and expanding. You guys are adding some documentation elements down the road to your software currently, is that correct?

We are, yeah. So that's super exciting. And just a quick aside, like years ago, before we started getting to the practice intel, when the company was much smaller, documentation creation was actually the core function of the program. So we have a great historical reference to move forward with as we jump back into it now. But yeah, we basically can read what is on the screen of the EMR already and then utilize that information to make suggestions into different text boxes in the EMR about what should go where. Two easy examples are an assessment and an initial eval, and then also goals and initial eval. So in the goals, for example, we're going to read what's going on with that patient, you know, what their problem type is, any other information, you know, what they're having trouble with. And then that exact thing that they're having trouble with can now be a goal to no longer have trouble with said thing. And that's all happening automatically where therapists can just click one button and pop in the goals one by one. And then also we are now getting into, or getting back into, I should say audio. So both from an ambient listening standpoint where therapists can, can capture the conversation with the patient and we can generate documentation out of that. In addition to smart dictation where, you know, perhaps there's something that wasn't covered, you know, during the conversation, therapists can just, you know, chat to, the, chat to the device and, and we should be able to put Together some. Some extra documentation benefit from there as well.

That's amazing.

So we've had some early feedback's been pretty, pretty remarkable. The other day our COO was visiting with one of our clients and he saw somebody do a follow up visit note in 22 seconds. So that was rather exciting. I think people be on board with that. And then also initial evals, you know, everybody knows, takes a long time to document. Some say 10 minutes, some say 25 minutes. We've had some pretty consistent feedback that evals now take under five minutes to document. So think about that over the course of a week or a month and.

It can certainly add a. Unbelievable man. I love it. You know, the only thing that scares me about your company is the day that that software starts talking back to me. I mean, with AI going, you just never know what's going because up until then, it's going to be wonderful to have a situation where PTs go home with their notes done at the end of the day. Unbelievable. But it's not just that, like, that's one piece of it. If we had time for them to use your software to understand how their billing impacts each other and themselves, that's going to be huge. So, Andrew, thank you so much for being a part of today's episode. We, we had talked about a different topic, but this really became a powerful connecting piece. How your defining characteristic of a. Of a leader really turned into something that you live and represent every day, which is a tool that helps leaders achieve that power by giving them the understanding. And I want to thank you so much for being a part of our show today. It's been phenomenal to be with you.

Absolutely. Thank you so much.

Thank you guys. Thank you for taking time to listen to today's episode. If you found today's information to be useful, could you take a minute and help me? I would love it if you could leave a podcast review in your app so that other people who are looking for this information can find it. Plus, my dream is to have the largest network of medical entrepreneurs and leaders in the world so that together we can change healthcare to make it better for all. So in addition, if you can think of anyone that you could send this to, not only would that mean a lot to me personally, but it would build this network so that we can make healthcare the way that we want it.