Common Mistakes to Avoid When Opening a Physical Therapy Clinic

If you are in the process of opening your very own physical therapy clinic, you know that there are quite a few steps going into it. It all begins with finding yourself a space for your practice, a good location, and advertising to the public. It isn’t uncommon for many issues to come up, and those who are new to it and building their first practice will undoubtedly run into problems that they’ll find difficult to fix. Here are some common mistakes to watch out for:

Failing to Plan

You will need to consider and plan all aspects of your clinic. Making a thorough business plan is important for your success. It doesn’t need to be long and drawn out; just make sure that you have business goals and a basic idea for your finances. It’s good to plan for the year ahead and to update these plans and efforts yearly. Take a good, hard look at where your business is now and compare that to where you want it to be in the future. Then, it’s just a matter of figuring out how to scale.

Putting Money Into Equipment

It may be tempting to buy the most expensive and best-quality equipment in the industry since you will need clinical equipment, but be sure to shop around, look at prices, and set yourself a budget. You will surely need treatment tables, ultrasound or electrical stimulation units, computers, and such. However, don’t go on a complete spending spree – only buy what you truly need during the first year of your practice. Invest in items that will cost you less, but will get the job done right. Buying more than you need may put you in debt before you can even see any success. You want your customers to come to you for your expertise and quality of service.

Forgetting About Business Side

Even if you’re the best physical therapist in town, it takes more than that to run a business. To see success, you will need to learn how to manage your staff, market your services, keep track of your supplies, handle documentation, and just run your practice. You will need to learn how to be a businessperson, meaning that you need to know how to run a business. That includes the financial side of a business as well as the setting up everything for staff and patients alike.

Not Keeping Track of Finances

Managing finances for your business can be a little tricky, but it is crucial and needs to be done properly. Setting up automatic payments to pay bills can come back and bite you as sometimes you aren’t aware of what is going in and out of your bank. You will need to make sure that everything that goes in and out of your bank is being managed and all bills are paid and recorded at the end of the month. You want to make sure that there are no surprises when money goes missing. It’s important that you can trace back and find out where it went, or if there is extra money, you will know where it came from. Anything and everything regarding your finances has to be recorded in a clear and concise manner.

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