Ensuring Quality Care During A Transition
Entering into a partnership successfully requires a significant investment of time and attention by the owner, who already has a very demanding schedule. Join Paul and Tanny as they discuss strategies that you can employ to make sure that you aren't losing patients during this critical transition.
Full transcript
Generated from the episode audio and lightly edited for readability.
Hello, my name is Tanny Crawford. I am the director of business development for Martin Healthcare Advisors. I want to welcome you back to another episode of Paul Martin's Crucial Conversations. This episode is titled Ensuring Quality Patient Care During a Transition. Today we have and welcome back Mr. Paul Martin himself to walk us through the topic. Paul, thanks for joining us today. Thank you, Tanny. It's great to be here. So, patient care is top of the list as a priority for us as physical therapists and as for owners if they're wanting to sell, right?
So, how do you maintain and make sure that highquality patient care is maintained during a transition for a merger? I mean, first and foremost, you have to make sure you have the right fit with the acquirer, but that's for another subject. But there are some things that post transaction that you can do to make sure that because the last thing an acquirer wants is for you to lose patience. And our findings are that you lose patience when your outcomes suffer and when patient satisfaction suffers. So either start or continue to measure outcomes as well as patient satisfaction and do that very carefully especially you know very soon after a transaction.
I think also it's really important to develop a culture that thrives on positive change and you need to be a leader of that and when there are things that come from the bigger company that you're not always pointing straight to the new company as the cause of this problem and come back to yourself and what role can you play as the leader of your company to solve this problem. Certainly, you can go and have your conversations with the acquirer, but when it's with your staff, you want to be really careful not to blame the new company for all of the problems.
And then finally, you know, if you've chosen the right company, we find that these patient issues after a transaction really work their way out very quickly. Yeah. It also seems that the larger companies are going to have ways to track patient outcomes and in fact the patient outcomes probably get better. Sometimes that's a worry for sellers when they want to, you know, when they want to sell a practice, they worry about that patient care. So that's fantastic. So speaking of, what are some of the best practices to ensure patient care standards are upheld during mergers and acquisitions?
Yeah, I think you know making sure that patient care standards are being upheld is important as you're going through a process and then once you enter into the new company and you are now merged what I found in the transaction that I did many years ago and what many of our former clients who have sold to larger companies be prepared to work harder than you've ever worked in the beginning. You want to show the acquirer how great your company is and why they paid millions and millions of dollars for your company.
So, be prepared to work hard in the beginning. It it definitely gets better as you get as you go along. And I think you really need to get on board with any changes that has been discussed in most cases before the transaction and make sure that there is training and support from the acquirer for any new systems and processes that have been put in place. You need to be you need to fight for your staff going to that acquirer making sure that training system has been put in place.
And then finally, ultra clear communication channels for patients and staff. Remember, this is not only a change for your staff, but it's also a change for patients who now have heard that you're part of XYZ physical therapy. And so, your patients are going to feel that as well. So, you want to make sure there's clear commun communication channels to you. And that's why I say be prepared to work hard in the first couple months. Yeah, [snorts] I hear adaptability and high communication to make that process because it is difficult in the beginning.
A lot of work is required. Can you share any challenges that you may have faced in preparing a company for an acquisition and how you overcame them? I can and you know the biggest challenge that we see with companies in many cases we see that there is a value of one-hour treatment sessions or you know there may be a value of 75 minute treatment sessions as opposed to what's the value that we bring for patient satisfaction as well as patient outcomes. And so we in many cases will suggest if there are 1h hour treatment sessions to move to a little bit more of an over overlapped 45 to 50 minute treatment sessions.
And this can cause a lot of anxiety for an owner who has been stressing to their staff the value of that one-hour treatment session. So what we did in one case that we did believe was going to be very difficult. This was a company that had a lot of pelvic floor work as well as other very difficult you know lumbar spine issues with their patients that they believed that one hour was going to be the key to success. So what we did is we created training modules and we created a more efficient process as well as some more support with extenders to maintain the very same treatment pro protocols as well as maintaining the same outcomes.
And so we brought a lot of clarity to focusing as opposed to the goals of the therapist which is I want to have that full hour with my patient is what are the goals of the patient. What goals do the patient have? And what we find in many cases patients don't want to be in the clinic that long. They're fine with being a little more efficient. They're fine with having a PT assistant or a tech teach them an exercise. And we found that this came with a very positive outcome.
So just as before adaptability, communication and then a focus on the patient and that is also that happens from the acquirer as well as your clinic because that's what you know we started our practice is to have a have a patient focused treatment and that continues to be a priority. So thank you for the information Paul. This has been great. I want to thank you for joining us today. Ah, it was great being here, Tanny, and I appreciate everybody else being here as well. And to everyone watching, if you'd like more information or have a conversation with us, click the link below and we'll talk.
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