Stand For PT Town Hall Recap

Okay, so here's a recap of the visit we had last night. I'm going to go ahead and send you the link of the first PT town hall to take a stand for physical therapy. Please watch it. I would have your teams watch it. I'm not just saying that this video was inspiring. I didn't even know who was going to show up on the call. Right. And then dozens and dozens of you chose out of your crazy busy days to be on this call and to contribute your voice to the movement taking a stand for PT in a different way. I want to acknowledge all the many groups that have been taking stands for physical therapy. We just need more. It's not working. We've got to do something different. And it's my core belief that leaders, entrepreneurs in particular, are the only people that can solve this. And so, yes, it takes more than just talking, but it starts with dialogue. And that dialogue last night was so powerful that any of your pts that watch that will start to feel more connected to your company and the movement as a whole, which is what we need. We need as many people on board with this as possible. I'm not asking for money. I'm not asking for anything other than an intention to make a difference and to show up. That's it. Showing up is where it's at. And so many people did last night, in my opinion. What I heard was clear to me that everyone who showed up are the leaders, are the best of the best of this industry. So join their voices next time we meet, which will be next month, and I'll share with you those stats another time. So what did we cover? The first thing we did was a start stop keep discussion. A start stop keep discussion is a technique taught by Verne Harnisch in the book Scaling Up. This is done in the best companies in the country to help really shape and form their future and what it is you get with your team. I highly recommend doing this with your practice. If you own a PT practice, saying, what should we start doing as a company? What should we stop doing as a company? And what should we keep doing as a company? It is so crazy simple, but the way that it generates voices to be productive and unifying and helping achieve better outcomes for a company transformed my business. We started that discussion last night, but we only got to what should we start doing as a company? What became really clear, there were so many wonderful comments. There's no way I'm going to be able to share them all. But here are the top two or three takeaways that I took from this. Number one, we have to change our language. Now, the language thing might feel a little ethereal, but listen, this is wildly important because we don't have a reimbursement problem in physical therapy. We have a mindset problem. If we do the right actions to take a stand for pt, but we still think of ourselves as like some service that gets referred out to. We are never going to make us what we were born to be, which is the frontline experts for everything. Musculoskeletal. Like that will never happen unless we start occurring to ourselves as leaders or doctors in the community or whatever you need to call it. And once we do, that changes. And so our language shifts that dramatically. And there was tons of examples that were in there. And in a way that was like, oh, my gosh, we really do use language. Like talking about physical therapist versus physical therapy. So I'm saying, you know, welcome to physical therapy. It's like, hi, I'm Will. I'm your physical therapist. Individualizing the experience because we're so commoditized. What does that mean? Commoditization just means that we are seen with one broad stroke of a paintbrush as one thing instead of a group of professionals. Here's an example. No one ever says, hey, I tried dentistry and it didn't work. They say, I worked with Dr. Smith and he was great or horrible. In our industry, how many times do we have patients say, oh, I tried physical therapy. That's commoditization. We have to individualize and humanize the care. As said by a good friend of mine, Paul, Kerry and Angie, this was a common discussion in that meeting. So the language we use is the beginning of shifting mindset. And we're going to talk about that in the next meeting. The second thing is that we need to unite if we're going to do this thing. We're not going to do it as a physical therapy group alone. We're going to do it as a rehabilitative team of OTs, PTs, and speech therapists. I know there's differences between those, but there was an OT that showed up last night who led the group in many cases. She has a task force, a nationwide task force that has been successful at challenging and fighting insurance companies. That's what we need to follow. She was gracious enough to be on there, and I am going to be picking her brain after this immediately. And so as. And the third thing is to stay in discussion. So I'm setting up a regular meeting and I want you to Be there. And please share this with everybody. Not only should you watch that video, you should have your team watch the video from last night. Because there's nothing more inspiring and even promotional for our own businesses, to our own teams than taking a stand for the industry together. It's a rising tide. All ships will rise on a rising tide. And that's what this movement is all about. As you get your teams involved, yes, we're going to change physical therapy. We're going to take a stand for it, become the frontline leaders of musculoskeletal disorders. But in the process, you will have a more committed team and more unified group because they are rowing in the same direction with you and they see your company as a vehicle to their dreams and not something they punch in and out of.

So for us, this next meeting is going to be a big one in December. I'm going to send the information out soon, but for now, I just wanted to acknowledge all of you who are on the call, challenge all of you to get everyone else either on the call to watch the call and just be a part of this thing called Taking a Stand for Physical Therapy. That's what the HBAA is. This HBA is the movement that's there. It's not a business itself. It's the movement. It's the stance that we take. So thank you for everyone who attended to that meeting. And just know that we are going to stick to this until it gets to where we want it to go. Until next time.