E691 | Is The PT Profession Starting To Change?

In this episode of the podcast, Doc Danny reflects on the feedback he received from his friends who attended the 2024 Combined Sections Meeting (CSM), the largest physical therapy conference in the US. Previously, Doc Danny had been disappointed with the conference for not representing his interests in performance and movement-based approaches to physical therapy. However, his friends reported positive changes they observed at this year's conference.

According to the feedback, there was a noticeable increase in attendees who were interested in discussing performance, movement, and treating patients beyond pain management. Many conversations revolved around entrepreneurship and starting cash-based PT services or other ventures utilizing their skills. This topic seemed to have a more prominent presence compared to previous years.

Doc Danny believes that a younger subset of the field sees opportunities in being more creative and helping people live high-performance, pain-free lives through approaches like environmental and lifestyle medicine. While advanced training may not be necessary for all physical therapists, they can play a crucial role in coordinating various aspects of a patient's health and wellness over time.

Throughout his 14-year career, Danny has witnessed a shift towards movement-based, performance-focused care. He recalls his exposure to functional movement screening over a decade ago, which was a groundbreaking concept at the time. The profession is now trending towards understanding how to continue treating patients beyond a certain point of recovery.

Physical therapists are in a unique position between healthcare and fitness, allowing them to help individuals in the "gray area" between the two. Those who position themselves accordingly will experience a growing popularity in their practice and an increased ability to scale their impact. Doc Danny was encouraged by his friends' positive experiences at CSM, suggesting that the conference may be starting to represent the changing priorities in the profession. He even contemplates attending the conference next year to observe these trends firsthand.

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: And we look at like the aggregate sort of snapshot of all these businesses, you're talking about, well over 300 businesses all over the U S and Canada that, we have conversations with, that we're that we're looking at best practices with, we're looking at their patient populations, we're looking at their business models, and we're starting to see a lot more people that want to really go about this in a more proactive way.

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 is Danny Mattei, 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 to date, 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.

Hey, what's going on? Doc Danny here with the PT entrepreneur podcast. And today we're talking about CSM combined sections, meeting, learning. Something I did not go to this year and historically do not go to, even though it is the biggest conference in the PT profession but I had a chance to catch up with a few of my friends that did go to CSM this year.

And every single one of them had really good things to say. Now, the reason I bring this up is because normally this is not the case, especially for cash based providers and. Performance based clinicians or movement based clinicians. In my experience, the time that I've had at CSM is it's very traditional, it's very sort of old guard physical therapy, which is fine.

That's the. Majority of the profession, right? You have all these different niches within it that are represented. And it's just a place that is very much traditional, PT environment. And if you're more of a traditional PT, you probably love it and you probably get all your CEUs get to hang out with people that you went to school with or friends of yours that you used to work with or whatever it might be.

And you go home. And for me, every time that I went to CSM, I always felt a bit out of place. It felt like I was in the, at the wrong conference. Cause a lot of the things that I was interested in or what I was. Trying to learn they weren't really represented there, but I think after the conversations that I had, and I'd love to know if any of you listen to this, went to CSM and maybe you felt similar I feel like there's an interesting change that is starting to occur even at a a really big conference like CSM.

And. The feedback that I got from a couple of my friends that I followed up with was number one, there's a lot more people that want to talk about performance and movement and what they can do with patients once they're out of a pain state. There's a lot of people talking about entrepreneurship and different, not just practices, but different forms of entrepreneur, entrepreneurial ventures that they can get involved in even, younger newer grad students that are looking at ways in which they can provide value to the profession outside of just seeing patients or maybe starting a practice.

Also a lot of people talking about, practices, a lot of people talking about how they can add cash based services to their in network clinics or how they can scale their cash based practices. This is not something that for me, I really would say. I'd have to really go looking for this at a CSM in the past when when I've gone and to be fair, like I've gone three times, I went once when I was a student I went once when it was in Washington, DC and I went once when it was in Denver Colorado.

And again, it, my experience was just normal CSM experience, right? A lot of lectures and a lot of traditional kind of physical therapy talk, but. I think what we're starting to see, and this is something that obviously we've seen for a long time within PT biz is that there's a, especially younger, I wouldn't say Super young, but definitely a younger subset of the profession that sees maybe a different way in which we can utilize our skillset, maybe a way they can have a bit more creativity in what they're doing and maybe have more interest in wanting to step up and be the people that really help people live high performance, pain free lives for as long as they possibly can.

And what a great fit for what we do. This whole push towards environmental medicine or lifestyle medicine or functional medicine. And I'm not saying that you necessarily need to learn how to evaluate stool sample tests and blood tests and, biomarker interconnected, uh, all that stuff, how it all functions together.

There's a place for providers that focus solely on that, but I've talked for a really long time about this idea of quarterbacking someone's health and wellness, being able to be the person that can pull it all together. They can help them realize like what they need to do to hold them accountable and help build a plan and coordinate.

You know the right people around someone to help keep them as healthy as they can be for as long as They can be you know that way and there's a lot more people that are looking for that type of a relationship I mean I saw it grow over a decade of running our practice I see it now with the types of patients that all of the businesses that we work with are seeing And we look at like the aggregate sort of snapshot of all these businesses, you're talking about, well over 300 businesses all over the U.

S. and Canada that, we have conversations with, that we're that we're looking at best practices with, we're looking at their patient populations, we're looking at their business models, and we're starting to see a lot more people that want to really go about this in a more proactive way.

I think it's great. I think it's still a relatively small subset of the general population, but there's definitely a lot of people that are moving that direction. And as somebody that is in the profession and somebody that is, has been in the profession now, for going on 14 years, like it's cool to watch this change occur because I remember when I was in school, we got our first functional movement screen.

Mini course that one of the clinicians that, that worked at the the hospital we were at is actually Johnny Owens. The guy that does all the blood flow restriction training. I remember him teaching a. Functional movement screen course. And I was just like completely blown away. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I was so interested in it.

And, I followed him around for weeks at the hospital where he was working with limb salvage patients, as he was working through these progressions and regressions of the functional movement screen, and this was, and so much has evolved since then, right? So much has changed.

Even what he's doing has changed. We're all the blood flow restriction training and that's, such a cool addition to what we can do as providers. But when we look at the direction that things are moving, it's really, it's great to see that things are trending more towards. More of a movement based performance based understanding, even within many different niches.

I think this idea of understanding what to do with people after a certain point is starting to become, is really interesting and important for our profession to understand. And I think we fit in a really cool spot as far as, this, It's a great area between healthcare and fitness and being able to live there and thrive there.

I think that area is going to continue to grow. That niche is going to continue to grow. And if you can put yourself in that position I think you're going to see your practice become really popular. I'm going to, you're going to see at scale, you're going to see all the opportunity that you want to be able to, scale that and help as many people as you possibly can.

And this is really interesting to have these conversations after CSM and just to hear a bit about, the direction that the profession is moving. From people that also typically don't go to to CSM or haven't been in a while and it all being positive feedback is pretty interesting.

So who knows, maybe next year, CSM, I'll drop back in, check it out for myself. I'd love to hear what you think. Love to hear, how CSM was for you. If you went, if you notice something similar, easiest thing to do, shoot me a message on on Instagram. Let me know what you think. And if you're seeing the same thing, it'd be cool to hear about it as well.

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