how to start a cash based occupational therapy clinic
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[00:00:00] If you're an occupational therapist and you want to start your own business or you already have a business, but you want to say, I want to bring in more cash based therapy services for my patients versus just always taking insurance. This podcast is for you. My name is Hoang. I'm an occupational therapist and certified hand therapist.
[00:00:19] I'm just going to share my story with you and how I. Started to bring in the cash based side into my occupational therapy clinic. So I run a hand therapy clinic. So I treat all types of hand and upper extremities. And when I first started my business over 10 years ago, I thought that the only way to run a therapy clinic was by taking insurance.
[00:00:41] And it was because that was all I heard. And if that's all you've heard. I'm doing this podcast in this video in 2023. So hopefully you're hearing a lot more about the cash side of a therapy clinic. And you're wondering like, how do I make this work? I'm going to just share with you what I [00:01:00] did in my clinic.
[00:01:01] So I always took quote unquote cash for people who didn't have insurance or that kind of stuff. But I became, really more focused. About two years into business when I realized that holy crap, insurance reimbursements was not going to cut it and wasn't going to bring me the level of revenue and profit that was going to make it possible for me to hire and grow a team.
[00:01:29] So I started exploring what a cash based therapy clinic looked like and what I needed to do. So I'm going to share with you three things that I did. One was intention. Two was generate leads. And then three was committing to the type of communication that needed to occur in order to have a more cash based therapy clinic.
[00:01:52] So let's go into the first one, which is intention. And your intention is to provide a whole level [00:02:00] different of services for the clientele that you want to be able to bring in. And I'm not talking about Oh, only the affluent or only sometimes people will tell me, Oh, don't you work with athletes?
[00:02:12] I actually don't. Athletes, pro athletes have their own people, and I'm not looking to run after a team. They'll come to me as they need. I'm not running after anybody, but the intention behind the cash basis, just, I knew that insurance wasn't the only way to go about it. And I made a commitment and intention to say, Hey we are going to.
[00:02:35] Level up essentially the way that our services are delivered the and I think to a certain extent, I was already delivering at it. I just didn't know how to communicate that and I didn't know how to properly charge for it. So the if you want to become a cash based occupational therapy clinic delivering like high level services, I think the first and foremost [00:03:00] thing is like your intention has to be there and you can't be wishy washy.
[00:03:03] I share that because I was wishy washy at the beginning and I think that they're if you're thinking about it you might be in that, like, how do I actually really do it? And is it as easy as it sounds? It is as easy as it sounds, but the work behind it... is it's a little bit difficult because you've never done it before, right?
[00:03:22] We've just been taught in school to have the insurance conversation and oh if the patients don't want to pay or the doctors will only send to this type of clinic. And so I think that type of rhetoric can cause you to pause or can cause you to have a lot of fear around becoming cash based.
[00:03:38] And You just need to make that decision and then stick with that decision. Meaning that's your intention, right? Because there is, when you bring in that cash. At a premium price. It allows you to grow as a clinic. It allows you to provide that level of service that you want to provide. We want to give our patients our time and attention.
[00:03:59] [00:04:00] We want to give them the utmost level of service, not just service, but results and outcomes, right? Results and outcomes come when we continue to educate ourselves and we carve the time to train and educate our patients. Team members, our staff, and you need money for that. You need profits for that. So it just, number one has to be intentional.
[00:04:22] You have to just make the decision and stick with it. And I think sometimes if you can't make it like don't, then don't do it. Because it does require. Work and it does require that commitment. So that's number two. It's a, this, the type of level of work that you have to do is a completely different.
[00:04:41] Every time I put my hands up, I get balloons from from this. When you start a cash based clinic, you have to give in order to get so that requires what's called lead generation. Lead generation just means like I'm going to share with you [00:05:00] information that is hopefully valuable to you so that you can know what kind of help is available for you.
[00:05:06] So when I started doing it for my hand therapy clinic, I wroteAbout A various guides. And I said, I say these things to my patients all the time. I tell them things that they should be doing. And then I also tell them what they shouldn't be doing. And then I explain why I do what I do or why I don't do what I do.
[00:05:26] And so I started writing guides for them and I started putting it out. For example, if you have hand pain, if you have trigger finger, if you have carpal tunnel. I started creating essentially lead generation where they would opt in to grab that information. And then it allowed me to have a conversation with them to be like, Hey, what's going on.
[00:05:50] And there, when you make the intention to become more of a cash based therapy clinic, just understand that lead generation comes with that, right? So it changes [00:06:00] how you market and lead generation is one of the top ways to market directly to the public instead of always going and knocking it down on doctor's doors, right?
[00:06:11] So that's what I did. I just started sharing what I know. I started making videos about what I know. I started writing down things that I knew and started to share that information. The other, the third thing I would say that, how to start a cash based occupational therapy clinic is really think about and commit to having a different level of conversation with the people who are calling.
[00:06:35] I think that, as occupational therapists, we're just trained to maybe just say, Oh, as an OT, we do this, as an OT compared to a PT, we do this. Yes, patients are going to still have those questions. But I would answer those questions, but in a way redirected back to why they came to me.
[00:06:55] Why does someone come, why does someone come to, my clinic, they're usually [00:07:00] coming to my clinic because they had a surgery. To their hand, their wrist, their elbow, their shoulder, maybe they have numbness. Maybe they have pain and I am committed to having a type of conversation with them.
[00:07:15] That isn't just about What's your insurance? What's your number? Who's a doctor that sent you? I'm gonna ask some questions about what's going on and I'm gonna ask them questions about what they're looking for In this day and age, in 2023, as I'm recording this, people are more and more informed, and I think that we have to level up the type of information that we provide as occupational therapists, and that is not always say, hey, go back to your doctor.
[00:07:44] I don't know. Ask your doctor. I think patients are coming to us with questions, and they want answers, and I think if you Are really knowledgeable about your area of expertise and you should have a perspective to share [00:08:00] and by having that perspective to share, it really does change the conversation that you could have with somebody.
[00:08:05] It changes the level of your marketing. The kind of message that you put out there, but it also changes the level of conversation as people call in and ask you questions. I give my perspective, I share my perspective all the time. I'm going to give you an example. People come to me for carpal tunnel all the time, right?
[00:08:25] They have numbness, they have tingling, they have hand pain. Believe it or not, majority of the time they don't have carpal tunnel. They just think that they have carpal tunnel. Sometimes they go to a general doctor and the doctors write them off as Oh, they have general carpal tunnel, right? Because I have hand pain or maybe their arm was numb for a hot minute.
[00:08:43] But they don't have the classic signs. And then, one of the things that I educate them on is what to look for. Do they have it, and what have they done in the past, that kind of stuff. So we can garner what are you looking to do? Because if you're looking just to have surgery, I can't help you like I don't do the surgery.
[00:08:59] [00:09:00] Let me pin you back to the hand surgeon who does a surgery, right? But you're looking forward to avoid surgery. You're looking for, it's mild right now. It's moderate now, but I don't want it to get worse. I don't want injections. I don't want to wear this brace all the time. I'm getting like general answers from everyone else.
[00:09:18] I'm coming to you, Hwang, because I want specifics. I provide that, right? It's in the level of my communication and my conversations with them. Now, I don't dispense just whatever medical advice, like you have to commit to like wanting to work with me. And that's just getting them to the evaluation.
[00:09:37] So you can be even more specific, but people want to know, can you help them? And that is what you do. When you have a cash based occupational therapy clinic is completely different from an insurance because insurance side, most of the time people aren't necessarily making the decision. They're like, Oh, I've been told to come to therapy.
[00:09:57] Oh, my insurance will pay. So I'll just come [00:10:00] because my insurance is paying. So it's a different level of commitment on their part, but it's also can be a different level of commitment on your part. So that's how I started my cash based occupational therapy clinic. Those are the three things that, you know, when I, okay.
[00:10:13] think back to how I started, I had to make a decision intention behind it and say, okay, I'm willing to do this kind of work to to be a cash based premium. Price product, right? Like I want to be on the high end. I want to provide high level of service. I don't want to work just on volume. I'd rather work on quality over quantity, right?
[00:10:34] So that was a very intentional decision that I needed to make. And then I started learning about marketing and one of the marketing things that went directly to consumers to potential patients and clients of mine. Was the generation, making that commitment to do lead generation. And then number three, having that commitment to having a whole level of conversation.
[00:10:58] And it's not just [00:11:00] my conversations with people. It's, I had to make a commitment to train my team. So by the time I started doing cash, I had. I had a full time admin and I was on my way to hiring a full time occupational therapist, right? So it was growing my team. So I had to make that commitment to not just train myself, but I have to train them as well.
[00:11:20] I hope this video just. gives you a little bit of insight into what's required to start a cash based occupational therapy clinic. And I want to give you the tools and information and just the experience to let you know, if you are an occupational therapist and you're you've opened a clinic or You're toying with opening a clinic, you can make decisions.
[00:11:38] And even if you've already opened it, like me, I ended up switching into cash versus that's how I just started, but just sharing a little bit of my story, my perspective so that you can, it can help you make a decision about what you're ready to do and what you're ready to commit to. All right.
[00:11:54] If you like videos like this. Please hit the like button and subscribe and leave [00:12:00] me a comment below. What other follow up questions you have? Cause I really want to make some more videos like this to help you. If you're an occupational therapist and you're starting with your business or if you're a year, two years into your business let me know what your questions are.
[00:12:14] I'm happy to make another video. All right. Thanks. I will catch you next time. Bye.
