Can a Cash Practice Work?

May 7
13:11

2008

Jeff F. Lee

Jeff F. Lee

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There are over 47 million uninsured in the US and many of them are in need of physical therapy but do not have insurance. What is the solution? The solution is a physical therapy cash practice.

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The simple answer is yes. The first prerequisite for a cash practice is to determine if there is a need for the service.There are over 47 million uninsured in the US and many of them are in need of physical therapy but do not have insurance. There is also a public of hugely underinsured people and the rate of the uninsured and underinsured is growing every year.  Articles in the New York Times and USA Today are painting a very grim picture and organizations such as Families USA have the statistical information to back up these reports.  But what does this mean to you.  Historically,Can a Cash Practice Work? Articles the uninsured or underinsured cannot afford physical therapy in a cash-based format.  Why?  Well because the high delivery and overhead costs of your traditional practice does not afford the owner any profit offering cash patients a truly economical service.The current healthcare system is suppressive and I’d imagine I have your agreement on that. You have only two options when you are under suppression and those are to handle or disconnect. We don’t want you to give up your fight to provide physical therapy service and resort to other “solutions” to make yourself profitable by diversifying into providing, for example, vitamins and supplements to your patients or opening a Wellness Clinic with the intention to capture your discharged patients and have them pay cash for this service, etc.We want physical therapists to promote and deliver physical therapy and not become some kind of substitute profession of vitamin salesman or health club operator. We are talking about you keeping your traditional physical therapy practice and opening a separate physical therapy practice that delivers cash only physical therapy services to patients.

It can be done.  You can make a profit and still deliver a high quality of care to your patients.  This is not a situation where you have to make a choice between paying the bills or providing a patient with the best possible care.  For once you can have your cake and eat it too.  There is a simple and easy solution on how to set this up and we want to show you how.