Patients need your physical therapy services to recover or improve their quality of life, and their use of your services will increase in the future. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts a 17% increase in PT jobs by 2031, reflecting the greater demand for PT services.
Wellness services take a more holistic approach to overall care. Since the pandemic ended, consumers have been more focused on improving their well-being. This interest contributed to the rapid rise of the wellness industry into a $1.5 trillion sector with up to 10% annual growth.
Your practice has an inviting opportunity to offer your patients physical therapy and wellness services. Incorporating wellness services into your practice allows you to improve patient outcomes, raise income, attract new clients, and boost your reputation.
Consumers categorize wellness into six areas of improvement: health, fitness, sleep, nutrition, appearance, and mindfulness. When planning to combine PT treatment and wellness services into your practice, consider these areas to tap into how to best address your patients' specific needs.
For example, telehealth and fitness trackers are concepts that people categorize as ways to improve their health. You can incorporate these into your practice by using telehealth and other technologies to help treat patients. A study of 814 patients found telehealth was an effective means of delivering physical therapy.
Nutrition counseling offers another way to improve patient health and wellness. Dietary intake is so vital to overall wellness that the official stance of the American Physical Therapy Association is that the professional scope of physical therapists includes providing diet and nutrition information to the community, patients, or clients.
As you thought about the physical therapists and office staff to hire when you started your practice, you should now consider hiring wellness experts to offer these additional services. For instance, the APTA suggests consulting with or referring patients to registered dieticians for nutrition counseling. Having such experts as part of your team means that patients stay within your practice for wellness services and have quality, trustworthy health, and wellness advice.
For your extra services, you will need to create a fee schedule for billing. Estimate the average market value for your added services by looking at the prices that wellness centers in the area charge. Because you have a staff of physical therapists with greater knowledge of movement and fitness, you can charge more for personal training and similar services. If you hire a registered dietician, your nutritional counseling services can cost more than those offered by non-registered nutritionists.
The investment in adding wellness services to your practice reaps the rewards for you and your patients. With PT and wellness together, you give your patients a holistic treatment approach and give your practice a competitive edge in your area.
Patient outcomes from treatment are paramount to your practice's success. You have many options for improving outcomes, from incorporating PT patient advocates in your practice to integrating wellness services. By choosing the latter, you encourage patients to look at their overall health, which can improve recovery and prevent injuries.
In a recent study, college athletes who underwent ten weeks of yoga significantly improved shoulder flexibility, sit-reach tests, and stork-stand balance tests compared to a group that didn’t do yoga. Improved flexibility and strength can contribute to injury prevention by reducing the chances of muscle strains or tears from sudden movements.
Adding wellness services is another means of building profits for your practice. When adding wellness services, you should educate staff on billing practices for the additional services. Some services, such as nutritional counseling from a registered dietician, may have insurance coverage, while personal training may not. Your staff must know how to charge insurers or patients to avoid delayed payments and ensure your added services return revenue.
With wellness services offered to your patients or the community, you bring in a new group of clients who may not require physical therapy services. For example, offering private sessions for personal training, Pilates, or yoga benefits clients who have specific needs for athletic improvement. These services also add another source of revenue for your clinic.
To ensure that your new services attract non-patients, you must market them as you do your physical therapy practice. Incorporate information about wellness services to educate the community about your new offerings.
PT and wellness services combined meet patients' needs for greater comfort, better recovery times, and reduced pain. Patients with better outcomes from physical therapy and improved quality of life can help your practice build a positive reputation as an effective PT clinic.
Offering wellness services also enhances your reputation as a source for other types of care besides physical therapy. Your reputation will help you to effectively market your practice as a well-rounded source of physical therapy and wellness services.
With the projected growth of both the physical therapy and wellness industries, offering both at your clinic makes sense. You'll improve patient outcomes, raise client numbers, increase revenues, and grow your reputation. To accomplish your goals, hire dedicated experts in the wellness services you want to offer to ensure your practice offers high-quality care.
As you add services to your practice, you'll need a tool to help you manage your practice. With MWTherapy practice management software, you streamline processes of scheduling, billing, insurance claims management, handling patient records, and communicating with patients. Adding wellness services becomes more straightforward with a system to help you handle your practice. Request a demo today for MWTherapy to see how it can improve your physical therapy practice operations.
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