PT's Unshakable Why & Bright Future with Dr. Heidi Jannenga and her Scholars from Rizing Tide Dav...

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Thank you for tuning in to the Willpower podcast. This episode might be the most important episode that we listened to this year. And I'm not being dramatic or overselling this thing. I just stopped recording it. And the three guests I had simultaneously is Davion Enders Jones, a third year physical therapy student in Texas, Christy Effendy Peterson, who's been out of school for three years working in California, and Heidi Jananga, who needs no introduction. The three of these individuals came together to talk about the future of physical therapy, why we believe it's bright. And I, as you're listening to this episode, you will actually understand why it's going to be better. It's, it's been a transformative episode. As we talked about the purpose of why we became physical therapists, it transitions into the suppression that we experience around reimbursement and high cost of education and all these things that are in some ways demoralizing the industry. But then the answer to all of this comes together in such a beautiful, inspiring way. There's no way we could have scripted this. So please listen through the entire episode. I promise you, you'll think of things completely different. You'll, you'll be way more inspired and you will leave empowered to start doing actionable things that will change the profession and your life, as well as impacting others. Enjoy the show. Man. Heidi, it is so great to have you on the show with two amazing physical therapists that I can't wait to dive into today's episode. As you know, we're talking about the future of our industry at large and what a great privilege it is to have you on the show to talk about that. You've had such a journey in this industry. So let's just kick it off with something really light and easy. Where do you see the future of our industry going in physical therapy?

Well, first of all, will thank you so much for having me and these amazing students today. Yeah. Starting off light, the future of pt. Well, I think it's evolving rapidly. I think that we're kind of at, you know, a crux of lots of things coming together. Whether it's the addition of technology in terms of AI, we have, you know, a new generation coming in with changing expectations. Whether we talk about it from the employee side or we talk about it from the patient expectation side.

You know, insurances are getting tighter and tighter in terms of what they are looking for, for payments, whether it's the, the number of visits that they're willing to approve. We haven't quite got there in terms of managed care yet or value based care and with the actual outcomes having an effect on payment. But you know, we see that coming hopefully sooner than later. I know we've been talking about it in our industry for a really long time.

I think there's also a big growing focus on the more holistic side and preventative care, which is also fantastic.

And then, I mean we could talk about this for the whole show, but I think probably the newer practice models that have started to evolve with increasing cash based services, more of this concierge style of pt.

And you know, just in general, if we're talking about outpatient, but we love the fact that, you know, in our profession there are so many different ways that physical therapists can add value.

To and for patient care. And so obviously today we're looking at more of the hybrid model as the future. I think in my opinion.

Sure.

To, to balance the expectations of what patients and also the future employees and how they think about working with patients. I think that's where we're going. So it's a lot of change. I think it's slowly becoming more adopted and we'll see sort of where the puck lands. We've all gone through it. I know I've been in this industry for, gosh, going on 30 years.

And seen a lot of change from when I graduated PT school to where we are today.

Man, you said it best at the end. It's changed since we started PT school. My word. Like I think back on those early days of like, you know, soap notes being patient tolerated, treatment. Well, C plan for, you know, like the daily note was this big. I don't think it was even encouraged to do it back then, but it was common.

And now you're writing it with pen and paper.

Yeah, we were like literally pinning each visit, talking to people and checking boxes for units to bill. Yeah, it's changed. It has changed. And I love. But here's the thing I heard in your voice, Heidi, was you sound optimistic about things.

I am very optimistic about things. I think that there's a lot of doom and gloom happening just especially on the payment side which you know, for sure stress causes evolution. Right. Stress causes need for change. And as long as we're willing to embrace it and don't get stuck in our ways of which this is the way we've always done it. If we're willing to really embrace it. And I think we.

The way that our industry is structured, entrepreneurship is part of who we are.

As providers. I think that that innovation is going to come. And we're going to continue to grow our value and have more access to even more patients as people understand.

More.

Of what we do. And we still are the low cost, high value provider. And I think there's just a lot more opportunity for us to embrace. I will say, you've heard me talk about the 90%, right? 90% of patients who could, you know, come into PT and receive value from PT. 90% of them are not getting to us. Right. So we've only been seeing 10% of the population that could actually benefit from PT. That number has changed over the last 10 years by a couple of percentage points. It's not at a great time because of the PT shortage.

Right.

So we have a volume of patients, but not enough people to serve them. And so that's why I think the future is bright in terms of, you know, seeing these two amazing individuals that we have with us today, with Christy and Davion, who are. Who understand and are willing and wanting to embrace those communities and other people that perhaps weren't having access to PT that are going to now be able to do that.

Yeah. And that's such a great segue because we were talking about how wonderfully bright the future is of our industry. I always tell people like this, guys, I say that this is the best time. And people, when I'm on stages, I'm talking like that, and people just look at me like I'm crazy and I go, but here's why. You know, when was the best time to buy real estate? In the early 2000s, it was 2008, 9. And people were just like, this is the worst time. It's because we have gone through so much painful transition, as Heidi pointed out, that now the outlook is super positive. But here's where I get concerned and I'm so glad that we have Christy and Davion.

I.

The show is that I am super concerned about the next generation. We had a recent year where more people left the industry than joined the industry. And so I'm so honored to have a current student and a recent new grad within the last three years to be on the show as we talk about what was like for you to make this decision. So when. Let me ask. I'm going to start with Davion. Davion, did you, when you decided to become a physical therapist, were you aware of some of these challenges in the industry? And then I'll ask Christy the same question.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I always kind of heard it. And, you know, when you were a tech or a patient. At times, you would kind of hear the jokes or the rumblings of how we're not, quote, unquote, doctors or, you know, we're not looked at the same way. I mean, I'd always heard it, but I don't know. I've always been somebody that's like, I want to leave whatever I found better than I found it for the next generation. So, you know, hearing those things, it never really bothered me too, too much. I always was just like, well, why is that? I always ask the question, why? And then I want to go down the rabbit hole of, well, how do we start solving that? How do we start commanding a little bit more respect or, you know, start, you know, marketing ourselves a little bit better and putting physical therapy on a brighter map? So I always did kind of hear it, but it never. It just never really bothered me because I was always kind of always had the mindset of, let's just advance this thing then.

Wow, that's inspiring. Christie, same question to you. Like, were you aware when you were going through school, you've been out of school now for three years? So when you were going through school, like, was your class aware of some of these challenges? And, like, were there. Were there any rumblings of people saying, I got to get out of here?

Oh, totally. I think, too, like, I went to a private school in California for PT school. And so there's a lot of talks, too, on, like, return on investment, right? So we invest a lot of money into our tuition, into our education, living in California to then, especially in the private practice space and outpatient, not always seeing that match, right. Of return and investment and how much you're making an annual income. And so I think that's where a lot of pts, especially new grads over the last couple years that I've really seen really grumble, had a couple of classmates even leave and kind of pivot into other medical spaces or even, like, medical device sales or anything like that, consulting because of some of that return of investment that they wanted to see increase. But I think the thing that always challenged me was seeing a lot of the people that I worked with having gone through the process of being a patient, an intern, a student, is how happy all the pts that I worked with were. And that doesn't say that there wasn't a lot of challenges. It wasn't to say that they weren't tired or even went through seasons of burnout. But one of my mentors always challenged me in saying, she goes, I've been in this profession for several decades. And she goes, PT continues to be ranked as one of the top 10 happiest careers. And so why is that? Why is that? Even though the return on investment isn't necessarily as high as maybe we would like it to be, especially for our newer generation of graduates, but we're still seeing this high level of overall enjoyment in the career and seeing how our employers, how my employer does it to try to mitigate some of that burnout, how to try to improve employee satisfaction. So that way we do want to stay in this career long term rather than the turnover rate of early in the first three to five years.

Yeah. I have to say to both Davion and Christie, already I feel even better about the future of our industry. What in the. Like both of you guys are telling me you're completely aware of all these challenges. You were aware of the Facebook groups that have, that we won't mention by name, that talked horribly about the industry. And then you guys, like, we're now we're going to. In Davion's case, it was like, well, let's just make it better. And in Christy's case, she did research like a good provider would and discovered that people were enjoying it in despite of that and chose to move forward anyway. That is so inspiring to me and I want to thank you guys both especially for being on today's show as we dig into this future of physical therapy and what it is that we're, we're going to be accomplishing together. So Christy, I'm going to continue with you a little bit in your case, as you're currently working, how are you dealing with those stresses? Burnout is the big four letter word in our industry. Now that you've been out in the field, how are you dealing with that stuff?

Yeah, good question. I think foundationally when you're looking at a career. And for me, one of the reasons why I decided to go into PT is it met the triangle of what I was looking for. So the triangle between what my skills were, between being more of a people person and having some of those soft skills for a lot of one on one time with people and educationally, my background in physiology, but then also my passions, specifically right now with like athletes and sports, I knew that was a passion of mine. I knew why I wanted to do that. And then also my experience, having worked in college athletics prior to PT school, I think finding a career and a profession within that triangle was really key to going, being able to go back to my why. Right. And so when I am in those phases of burnout. Hey, why am I why? What is my why? And can I go back to that? Is PT continued to be in that triangle? And so I think that for one, helps as just a foundational aspect, I think. Secondly, our clinic does a really good job of outside of traditional clinic care. And we do see a lot of clinic care is each one of our pts is set up to have something outside of the clinic. So. So we partner a lot with our local fire department. SAC Metro is our major fire department. We work a lot with a lot of the local club soccer programs, ECNL programs. Some of you in the professional program.