E773 | What Should You Be Doing With AI?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer a futuristic concept—it’s here, and it’s shaping the way businesses operate across industries. In this week’s episode of the PT Entrepreneur Podcast, Doc Danny dives into the role of AI in physical therapy practices and why business owners should see it as an opportunity rather than a threat.

Why AI Matters in Physical Therapy

AI has rapidly evolved from being a "fad" to a tool with real-world applications that can transform businesses. While AI can’t replace the human-to-human interactions essential in physical therapy, it offers significant advantages in streamlining operations and boosting efficiency.

“Anything forward-facing, like hands-on care or coaching, is irreplaceable,” Doc Danny explains. But when it comes to behind-the-scenes tasks—think scheduling, billing, and data management—AI tools can help reduce overhead and improve profitability.

Breaking Down the Benefits

1. Increased Efficiency
   AI can handle repetitive administrative tasks faster and more accurately than humans, freeing up valuable time for clinicians and staff to focus on patient care. For example:

   • Automated appointment reminders
   • Efficient billing systems
   • AI-generated reports for data analysis

2. Reduced Costs
   By replacing or augmenting roles with AI tools, business owners can cut down on expenses without compromising output. This can lead to higher profit margins and financial stability, especially in the face of rising costs.

3. Better Decision-Making
   AI can analyze trends and provide actionable insights, helping business owners make data-driven decisions to improve patient retention, marketing strategies, and overall operations.

Addressing the Fear of AI

Adopting new technology can feel overwhelming. Doc Danny shares a story from a recent coaches retreat, where reactions to AI ranged from enthusiastic adoption to outright avoidance. “Don’t dismiss AI because it feels unfamiliar or scary,” he advises. The same skepticism surrounded the internet when it first emerged, but those who embraced it gained a massive advantage.

AI isn’t here to replace clinicians—it’s here to support them. By leveraging tools that improve efficiency and profitability, business owners can position themselves for long-term success.

How to Start Leveraging AI in Your Practice

1. Identify Repetitive Tasks: Look for areas where time is spent on repetitive processes that could be automated.
2. Experiment with AI Tools: Test tools for scheduling, patient communication, and marketing to see what works best for your practice.
3. Stay Educated: Engage with industry conversations about AI and its applications in healthcare to stay ahead of the curve.
4. Focus on What Matters: Remember, the core of your practice—human connection—will always be irreplaceable. Use AI to enhance, not replace, your expertise.

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: Physical therapy. I don't see any, any point anytime soon, that's going to be, uh, significantly disrupted, especially if it involves like manual therapy or somebody that's doing like actual, like hands on coaching work, you know, uh, moving based work, things like that. Hey, are you a physical therapist looking to leverage your skill set in a way that helps you create time and financial freedom for yourself and your family?

If so, you're in the right spot. My name's Danny Matei and over the last 15 years, I've done pretty much everything you can in the profession. I've been a staff PT. I've been an active duty military officer, physical therapist. I've started my own cash practice. I've sold that cash practice. And today my company physical therapy business helped over a thousand clinicians start growing scale, their own cash practices.

So if this sounds like something you want to do, listen up, cause I'm here to help you. Dr. Danny here, the PT entrepreneur podcast. And today we're talking about AI. This is something that I have. Okay. Uh, I've been talking about more and more over the last year in particular and the reason that I am leaning into this more is that Initially, you know, I kind of thought this was like, Oh, it's a bit of a fad, whatever, right?

It's a little gimmicky, uh, chat bots and large language models, like a chat TPT, whatever. And the more that I have started to, uh, leverage AI, even within my own workday, but also in particular, just within, um, our own companies. It, the more I realized that this has some, some really great utility to it. And the more I have started to try to learn about it, as far as how it impacts the clinics that we work with.

Right. So, um, you know, on the, on the education consulting side, when we're helping businesses. Start, you know, and scale and sell if that's the end goal. Um, you know, there, there's definitely things that we can use that help us improve that. And the other thing is I think that AI scares people and I'll give you a good example.

We had a coach's retreat that, um, we brought all our coaches together at a, at a beach house in November. And we started just kind of chatting with them about things that, They're using technology wise in their, in their companies and in their physical therapy clinics and, um, the variance of people's opinions that AI is really, really interesting.

Like one of our coaches basically said, Nope, not messing with that. It scares, it scares me like not interested. And the other, uh, One of our other coaches is basically walking around a grocery store having a conversation with, uh, with AI, you know, while she's shopping. And so it, it's the gamut, right? It's, it's anywhere from that to not wanting to touch it.

And generally, I think what'll happen is people will, will deviate towards the middle, um, in how they're using these tools. And, um, I, Was recently having a conversation with a friend of mine who's an actual AI developer, um, and has been now for a decade. So he, uh, went to school and did his undergrad and, and, uh, master's degree at, um, at a, uh, you know, technology school for machine based learning, which is basically what.

Considered. So, you know, interesting to talk to somebody who actually builds AI models, not just uses chat GBT. And one thing that he told me that I thought was a good way of looking at this was, you know, basically if you, uh, do something that's forward facing. Like human to human, that's going to be, it's very hard to offset that with AI.

Like it's just very, very hard to do that digitally. Maybe right. Conversations, text, uh, interactions online, things like that. But like, if you're going into somebody's office, like that's a very difficult thing to, um, to, to be able to replace. So, you know, anything human to human. Uh, is going to continue to be very important, uh, in human interactions as well.

Like, uh, people getting together in person, there's, there's really like an increased amount of depression and loneliness and people feel more isolated. Now that technology is a bit more, uh, a part of our day to day life, uh, people are working more remotely, uh, maybe not physical therapy clinics so much, but maybe you have a spouse that is purely working remotely.

And, you know, the interesting thing is I think a lot of people want to work remotely, but when you do actually work remotely, there's some serious downsides to it. And one of them is you're just by yourself a lot. Uh, when, especially if you're a clinician, you're not used to that, you know, you're used to interacting with other people and there's definitely a lot of benefits to that, even though you may feel pretty burnt out, maybe at the end of the day, um, you know, there's, there's definitely pros and cons, but when you look at human to human stuff, like forward facing things.

Uh, let's say you're, you know, you're cooking food at a restaurant or you're at a nice restaurant. You're going to have a waiter, right? Like that's the way it's going to work. They're going to be educated on the menu. They're going to answer your questions. They're going to be personable. Like that's the way that restaurants work.

Uh, and the reason that those waiters make pretty good money is because they're good at their job and they're good at interacting with other people. Now you could look at McDonald's as an example. And you could say, Whoa, now they have basically kiosks that you can go up to. There's not a whole lot of, there's really nobody taking your order unless you need to go talk to somebody.

But the vast majority of ordering has is happening in these kiosks. Um, and that's replacing a person, but, or is it not replacing somebody cooking the food? essentially that might end up happening. Um, and then we're going to have is fewer people that are managing systems and managing, um, technology basically.

Right. And I think that's something that's going to happen in basically every industry, uh, to, to some degree, except for like things with your hands, trades, like physical therapy. I don't see any, any point anytime soon, that's going to be, uh, significantly disrupted, especially if it involves like manual therapy or somebody that's doing like actual like hands on coaching work, you know, uh, moving based work, things like that.

But what you may have is you look at administrative tasks, things that, um, you know, could be done without being forward facing. A lot of that is going to be, uh, simplified, automated. And as a business owner. This is where I think it's important and why I want to address this is I think you should be, um, optimistic about the utilization of these tools of different AI tools, because it in a lot of senses should be able to improve efficiency, both in your time.

So being able to do things faster and also be able to do things at a higher profit percentage. Now, this is one thing that we've seen, you know, coming out of, um. The last few years, as we have had more inflation generally in, in almost every category, uh, is that things cost more, people haven't really made more.

They're starting to have wage increases, but the business owner kind of gets squeezed in the middle, right? They get squeezed by, uh, they need to pay their people more, but they can't necessarily charge more and their margins go down. Now we're starting to see that, that these businesses are able to, to Start to increase their price points over the really the last year in particular.

Um, but if you can offset something that you would have to pay a person to do with something That is a fraction of the cost of that person that increases your bottom line Like it just increases the business's profitability Period. Right. And, um, this is happening already at major technology companies.

And you know, I, I heard a, a stat that like the average employee at Facebook generates, like if you took all their revenue divided by the number of employees they have that it, it's like $20 million per employee or something like that annually, which is insane. And no, there's no physical therapy clinic that's anywhere near that.

Um, but Facebook is also one of the most giant, most profitable, uh, businesses on the planet. So, I mean, you can think of this on your business, right? Like things, tasks, uh, especially administrative based things that are not necessarily directly forward facing. I think what you're going to see is. You're going to have the ability to decrease your overhead, but maintain the same amount of output through these types of tools.

So my advice is don't be, um, don't, don't dismiss them as, Oh, they creep me out. Um, that's probably what people do with the internet, right? They're like, Oh, I can just read this in an encyclopedia. I can read this in a newspaper. Why do I need to, you know, why, why do I need to use the internet? Yeah, it doesn't make any sense to them.

Well, if you got it, you're like, Holy crap, I have so much more access to information and speed in which I can gather information like that's a huge advantage. Uh, and the people that use that, they put themselves in a really, really good spot. So I think something similar is what's going on, just being able to kind of step back and have conversations with people that build this stuff.

So don't be scared of it. You know, I think it's something that's going to happen to kind of move its way into different businesses in general, uh, and look for ways that you can improve efficiency and profitability in your own business, because I think that's where it's going to be a win for you as a business owner.

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