Where Did The Physical Therapists Go? | Physical Therapy

Do you know where all the physical therapists went? Every time I take a coaching call, whether it's for in the black or something else, it always leads to talking about recruiting. So if you need a physical therapist, you're not alone. As a matter of fact, if you don't need a physical therapist, you probably are alone and aren't watching this video. So in this video, I'm going to go over the top three reasons why physical therapists have disappeared.

And the first reason has nothing to do with the recent climate changes. It has everything to do with the already growing economy of physical therapy. Physical therapy as an industry is growing at a rate of 18% over the next 10 years. In a forecasted model that is one of the most aggressive growth rates of any industry in the United States to date. So as a result of that, without Covid, without all the things we're about to talk about, physical therapists were already in high demand and it's getting dramatically worse. Of course, we know a lot of reasons as to why with the aging baby boomers who are way more active, getting hurt more. In addition to that, physical therapists are doing a way better job, even though we still stink at it overall, but we're doing a better job of going direct to consumer for marketing. And so we're getting people interested in physical therapy who've never been interested before. So that just continues to widen the gap between the supply of physical therapists and the demand of physical therapists. And that leads me to item number two, which is that less than 1% of physical therapists normally are looking for work anyway. Physical therapists, we're a fearful bunch. We were told from our early days of school that our license is our livelihood. And so we tend to treat and operate from a fear based model. Not all, but the majority of our industry wants to stay put as long as possible. In a study that came out before COVID physical therapists were less likely to leave their job than any other job in healthcare, because I believe physical therapists are really comfortable in that space and they don't want change. But that also plays into how physical therapy companies do a poor job of differentiating themselves to give physical therapists a reason to lead. Most PT owners are some of the best people I know, and they have no clue what makes them different than anybody else. I get told it's the quality of care, it's the quality of care, and that's not what makes you different. There's something about your company that makes it better and different than any other company. In the world. And until you can see that and message it, we're not going to give our pts a reason to come over. Which leads us to the third reason why pts have disappeared. And that is because of the COVID climate. I'm not blaming Covid, but there's objective, measurable data that shows that during the COVID outbreak, a lot of physical therapy companies had to downsize and let go of a number of pts. A year ago it was actually very easy to find a physical therapist if you knew where to look. And so where we are today is that that climate has been recovering and PT owners who had let PTs go are now needing them back. Then you take into the fear that the pts already have on changing. They saw people lose their jobs or they lost their jobs, so now that they have one, there's no way they want to leave. And it turns out that as the company, as the economy has recovered from this or has been recovering, that the physical therapy demand has accentuated, it's gotten even higher because people who had been waiting for elective surgeries are now getting those done and now they're flooding the PT clinics causing a huge supply demand discrepancy. And so as you look at these three factors, it's really easy to see why our physical therapists have disappeared. But don't worry, there's plenty that we can do about it. In future videos, I'm going to share with you some tactics and some hacks that I've learned when I was VP of recruiting for a large multi state company that will absolutely make the difference to help you stand out and capture your pt. So if you want to have that, please hit like and subscribe. Please comment below on any other items that you think I missed as to why pts are harder to find now more than ever. And we'll see you next time. Until then.