Welcome to the “Lessons Learned” edition of PT Business Corner where we provide the most important points we learned in discussion with our guests. This week’s guest is Sanjeev Bhatia!
Sanjeev originally began as a physiotherapist and spent 10 years running and growing one of the largest network of rehab clinics in Canada. Recently he has served as Vice President of Operations for Myodetox, one of the quickest growing rehab companies in the world. Sanjeev has integrated business and technology, working with hundreds of clinic owners and therapists. Currently, he works as a rehab technology adviser for Embodia, is the co-founder of CallHero, and the co-founder of Clinic Accelerator. He facilitates sessions with clinic owners to optimize patient experience and operations. We were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to chat with Sanjeev and discuss entrepreneurial success and excellence!
With many years of valuable experience working with business and technology, Sanjeev had plenty of information about his journey and shared some valuable lessons with us. You can listen to the full entertaining podcast HERE while we provide you with a summary of the top 5 lessons.
Lesson 1: Learn the Importance of Economic Forces
Sanjeev emphasizes that whether you own one clinic or thirty clinics, it’s important to pay attention to the economic forces impacting your business. One of these forces is rooted in the education system. Sanjeev states that the field of physiotherapy is inherently entrepreneurial, but the vast majority of education in physiotherapy is geared towards clinical learning. While you may be an excellent clinician, do you have the business acumen to develop an effective framework? Sanjeev mentions that you don’t need an MBA, but you have to acquire the tools to be successful in business. This can include surrounding yourself with mentors and taking additional courses in order to further your business prowess and establish a solid framework.
Lesson 2: The Importance of Metrics
Sanjeev strongly believes that monitoring metrics is vital to the success of any business, especially metrics that represent patient experience. When looking at marketing, Sanjeev states that one highly important metric is the amount of phone calls that your business receives. If a potential patient browses your website or blog and feels compelled to call you, congratulations, your marketing is working. Now let’s assume that your clinic receives 1000 phone calls a month, Sanjeev has found that about 10-12% of all calls to your clinic will be new patients. If your front desk answers about 80% of the phone calls, that’s 200 phone calls that went to voicemail. By crunching some numbers, that’s about 20 potential new patients that called your clinic and you didn’t pick up, causing you to lose customers. Therefore, it’s crucial to keep track of metrics like phone calls to ensure that you stay within the 90 to 95% answer rate and promote the success of your business.
Lesson 3: Developing Rapport with Patients
When a new patient comes in for their first assessment, this is the time for your therapists to shine and transition the patient into committing to your plan of care. Sanjeev says that while graduating physiotherapists have the clinical skills to perform an assessment, do they have the necessary training on how to develop rapport with patients in 50 minutes? Sanjeev mentions that patients nowadays are also consumers as they have more choice. If patients don’t receive a great experience during their initial assessment, they’re probably going to take their services elsewhere, or end up discharging themselves from your services quicker than you would have liked. If you maintain an excellent patient experience throughout their treatment, patients are more likely to give you referrals, leave google reviews and come to your events, furthering your profitability.
Lesson 4: Develop a Great Network to Surround Yourself
Sanjeev states that it’s important to take advantage of the resources that surround you. If the opportunity for a lunch or coffee arises with well-established individuals, always try your best to take part. Additionally, putting out great content that you’re passionate about and promoting your brand will help to grow your business and interest individuals at the top of the industry. Sanjeev stresses that it’s crucial to develop a solid clinic organizational structure. If people don’t know their roles or the tools available at their disposal, then you’re setting yourself and your clinic up for failure. As a business owner, it’s important to take a look at the network that exists within your clinic(s) and make sure that individuals are aware of their responsibilities and executing them at a high level of proficiency.
Lesson 5: The Value of Workplace Culture
Sanjeev prefers to do a quick litmus test to determine the cultural cohesion at a clinic. He asks if anyone in the room is able to tell him the mission statement at any clinic they’ve worked at. Are you able to? Ultimately, the mission statement and its values should come to you easily, considering that you worked there. But having a mission statement or vision is nothing without the tactics to make it come to life. With an objective mission statement such as delivering 10 000 treatments in a year, you’re able to provide staff with progress emails on a weekly or monthly basis, letting them know how close you are to achieving your goals. Sanjeev stresses that your culture and mission/vision values have to manifest themselves operationally, otherwise your mission statement will sit in a document without anyone ever acting on it. But if you’re able to operationalize your culture, you’re able to take advantage of the economic forces at play and dictate them, ensuring your clinic’s success.
These were a glimpse of some of the great lessons that we took away from Sanjeev! Listen to the full podcast HERE.
