Hey, real quick, if you're serious about starting or growing your cash -based practice, I want to formally invite you to go to Facebook and join our PT Entrepreneurs Facebook group. This is a group of over 6,000 providers all over the country, and it's a pretty amazing place to start to get involved in the conversation. Hope to see you there soon. Hey, are you a physical therapist looking to leverage your skill set in a way that helps you create time and financial freedom for yourself and your family? If so, you're in the right spot. My name's Danny Matei and over the last 15 years, I've done pretty much everything you can in the profession. I've been a staff PT. I've been an active duty military officer, physical therapist. I've started my own cash practice. I've sold that cash practice. And today, my company, physical therapy business, helped over 1000 clinicians start growing scale, their own cash practices. So if this sounds like something you want to do, listen up because I'm here to help you. What's going on? Doc Danny here with the PT Entrepreneur Podcast. And today I'm doing something a little bit different. I'm going to call this one Current Trends and my thoughts on how PT does with these or relates to these. This is not a good title. It won't be titled that, but it's something to that effect. And one of the reasons that I wanted to bring this up was a conversation that I actually had with another business owner that was talking about all the changes that are occurring in really the technology space and how that is something you know how that's affecting his business and I'll talk about that in a second as a relevant example of You know what he's seeing but this is something that for me I try to pay a lot of attention to the things that I feel like are gonna affect the business owners that we work with and Look at maybe a bit more like 30,000 foot view um, of what's going on. Because I'm not as much in the day to day in the weeds of running a practice as I used to be. Uh, but what I get a chance to do now is take a step back and kind of see what that, that business sort of trend will look like, uh, and what things will affect physical therapy and cash -based physical therapy and perform, in particular a performance -based, uh, sort of niche for that people that are helping people get out of pain and back to activities that they really enjoy, and all the niches of that would encompass, really just sort of moving -based, performance -based physical therapy or clinical work. And how are some of these, what we consider, like, I hate to even say it this way, but like macro trends, or like big trends of technology, economy, you know, interest that people have, how's that sort of trending? And where do we fit? And how do we do, you know, the saying, I believe, is Wayne Gretzky said, you know, skate where the puck is going, and how do we stay nimble and move towards trends that are, they're not fats, right? Like they're gonna be here to stay and they're going to have an effect on us as clinicians in our businesses. So I have a couple things I want to address with this, right? And the first one is a trend that I've seen really pick up over the last, I would say, 12 to 24 months. And that is lifestyle medicine, more like hormone optimization replacement, peptide therapy, all these things that kind of lump together. And not necessarily like functional medicine, I don't really view this as functional medicine as much. It's really more like regenerative or anti -aging optimization kind of medicine that I see a lot of people moving towards. This would include things like TRT replacement, ozimpic, peptide therapy, lots of things that are being used now that are starting to develop decent amount of evidence around as well, but are a little bit fringe at the same time. I talked to a regenerative medicine business owner, this was maybe like two or three months ago and I was just shocked at how fast his business was growing, way faster than I would have ever thought. A lot of this has to do with, a big chunk of what they're doing is things like Ozimpic and Pepti -therapy for weight loss, but a large chunk of what they were getting was people that were looking for hormone regulation and proactive hormone and peptide therapy for just being active, staying active. And I don't see this trend necessarily going away. I think more and more people are moving towards this, especially people that are that have a bit more disposable income and really view their health as an investment, which Go Figure is probably the same niche to some degree as a lot of the clients that work with cash -based physical therapy practices. They're not exactly the same, but there's definitely some overlap. I think there's a similar client base. For me, what I view with this okay, people are trying to invest more in their health. Sure, maybe this is, they're trying to hit the easy button. You can make a strong statement that if you just take Ozimpic and you lose weight because of that, but you don't develop any sort of habitual changes in what you're doing and your lifestyle, that as soon as you stop using it, then you're basically just gonna get back to whatever unhealthy lifestyle and weight corresponding with that that you had before, right? But if you could work, do that, and work with somebody that could help behaviorally, improve that, and teach them how to eat healthier, and what a great win -win that would be, right? So thinking of this as like, if you're the nutrition side like partnering with somebody like that or Affiliating with somebody like that that's gonna have a similar client base I think it's a smart move if you see clinics that are doing a bit more of sort of like peptide therapy hormone Optimization for people that are looking to stay active and healthy for long periods of time, you know There may be sort of like an active aging population more middle -aged What a great, you know group work with as well. Like, cool. Internally, do some things that are going to help, you know, improve cell turnover, recovery, or whatever, like, functional ability for the body to perform internally. And then, you know, move great, do the right exercises, you know, get mobility where you need it, get strength where you need it, and follow a really solid program based on what you're trying to do with your physical goals. So this is a great place where these performance -based clinicians can fit in as well. They can augment that, or in a lot of ways, maybe the peptide hormone therapy is augmenting, working with a provider. So even looking at partnerships with these types of clinics or I don't know what the unit economics of these things are. I don't know much about the business model aside from the fact that I know it's picking up really quickly with the owner that I talk to. But, you know, it's going to be something that you see more and more. I was surprised at how many I've seen sort of pop up around Atlanta. And I don't think this is one of those things that's going to be a fad. I mean, I think if you start looking at some of the research around just basic like TRT replacement or even some peptides, you knowides, these are probably not going anywhere. Some of them do have some substantial evidence to show efficacy, not as much in humans, but definitely animal studies from what I've read, certain ones much more so than others. Some are just frankly probably not worth even looking at. this is where talking to somebody that's reputable makes a lot of sense. And I think it's a fit that people are looking for to be very proactive with their health and just honestly just stay as active as they can, especially if it doesn't create any negative health effects, which the jury's still out on that. But this is something that I see popping up more and more, something to keep your eye on and see if there's anybody in the area that would be a good referral relationship to start to develop that relationship with. The second thing, and this is a big one that I see creating change in the profession and a lot of industries over the next, I don't even know how long, even in the next year, can it improve dramatically, is artificial intelligence. It sounds like some shit out of a sci -fi novel, but we really look at what AI is being used for from a functional standpoint, like actual real use cases. Not, oh, we could do this one day or whatever. There's a few places where it's happening a lot, and it's progressing quickly. So if you look at AI in terms of big language models like a chat GPT as an example, these are growing in usage popularity and also effectiveness. Like each iteration it gets better and if you want to see some something crazy, uh, look up, uh, chat GPT, um, like conversation with, with camera use, basically, uh, this is something they rolled out recently where the camera on your phone, like the AI can actually like use that as like its eyes and see you see the world around you, uh, kind of you out a little bit. They're like, hey, great, who do you got on today? It must be cold or whatever. And it's weird. It'll interact with you more so than just verbally. So that's kind of a crazy thing to make progress on with something that hasn't even been around that long. And maybe that doesn't have a ton to do with what you're doing right now as a clinician. But what I see with this is I think this could actually be a really good thing for clinicians. And the reason I say that is I think AI is going to be something that's going to help augment the work that we're doing and make you more efficient. I'll give you a good example for what I mean by that. I have a friend that is a personal injury attorney. He owns his own practice and he had two paralegals that were working at his company. He basically, one left to take another job. And as he was going to look to hire another one, the paralegal that was working with him, he started to help train her up on utilization of AI platforms specific to the legal industry. And she became so efficient with some of the documentation work, the contractual work, just the paperwork side, research side of things, that he didn't even need to hire another paralegal and was actually able to give this person a raise, but still net positive for him because he only really needed to hire one because that one person could be as efficient as two with the aid of an AI platform that they were using. So what does that mean for you, right? I mean, does that mean that one PT is gonna become as efficient as two? I don't think so, but I do think you're gonna be able to become more efficient as things like EMR platforms you know, and home exercise platforms start to better integrate or maybe develop AI platforms that can help you augment what you're doing. For instance, let's say, and I don't know if this exists yet, it probably is in the works, but let's just say you can have, you know sort of AI platform built into an EMR that is just listening to your visit. I don't even know if this is HIPAA compliant or not, but anyway, let's just say this can happen. Listen to your visit with somebody and at the end of your visit, it has a typed up thorough note of exactly what you went over, exactly what you're going to do next time if that person's better, saying worse, and then it automatically sends the updated home exercise program to that person that is specific to the progressions you say that you want to make and the corresponding videos of the new things that they need to do automatically, as it's actively listening and and creating the home exercise plan updates for whatever it is that you want to do. How much time would that save you in a day? Probably a significant amount. Even if you didn't want to see more volume, how much more time does that allow you to spend with your patient? Actually with the patient, the things that can't be done by software or AI platforms, like building that rapport, making sure that they understand how to do things, doing hands -on work, coaching them through the actual progressions and regressions of things that they need to do, just talking to them about frustrations of things that they're worried about as far as physically being able to do or not do, it allows you to spend more meaningful time face -to -face with those people, hands -on with those people, with something that is going to be very hard to replace with any sort of AI platform. But the efficiency of what you do with tasks that we all have to do that take time could be offset and a really good way to make us more efficient at what we do and also have to do less of the mundane stuff we don't really like. Like, what if you never had to write a note ever again, but you had the documentation you needed automatically and the next time somebody came in, you could review that and make sure that you're up to date on everything, but you don't actually have to be the one typing out what's going on. and please leave a rating and review. This is actually very helpful for us to get this podcast and for more clinicians and really help them develop time and financial freedom. So if you would do that, I would greatly appreciate it. Now back to the podcast. In these documentation platforms. And I remember back when I was in the army, we would do these big sports med days. It's when the surgeons would all show up because where I was at was called a troop medical clinic. So it's not the hospital. It's pseudo attached to it, but it's not a part of it. It's like at another base and it's where all the infantry soldiers were. So it was much more convenient for them to come in. But if you had surgery, you'd go to the hospital and all the surgeons were at the hospital. The surgeons would come in once a month. All the ortho surgeons, all the physical therapists would be there and all the people that were post -operative would show up and they would just be like in a line, go down the line, seeing updates on how people are doing. We'd give them updates on the rehab side. We would get on the same page with next steps. And then they would go walk off to the side and they would dictate into a, you know, some sort of handheld device that then they would drop off at the hospital. And then somebody would manually type those things up. They would type up the notes so that, cause they would see, you know, maybe 30, 40 people each, uh, you know, in a day going through all those folks into like a half, I guess it would be like half a day in an afternoon. If you can imagine that doc typing up all his notes would be insane. It would be very hard for them to do that. From an efficiency standpoint, they had documentation or a dictation service that they used. Well, what if that just was like a button you wore around and that automatically happened right and it just went into a platform that Was integrated with that like we're not that far from from that and not after like this if you see what some of the progressions look Like in this in the software. It's pretty impressive as well as I think like diagnostically as far as movement patterns go and understanding Biomechanics and being able to break those things down in a more effective manner, I think stuff like that is going to improve quickly. It's already starting to happen. We're already seeing that with lots of different technologies that are just beginning and just beginning to get better and better. I think it's going to be an augment to what we do in a positive And maybe it does replace, um, you know, some, some of our peers that, that don't want to adopt it. Uh, or like in my friend scenario, somebody leaves and maybe somebody's efficient enough to replace what they're doing. Um, I think it'd be hard to do that on the patient care side, but definitely the documentation side, I just feel like I could save a ton of time and make the job of being a clinician more enjoyable if that was the case. Because you can just focus on the stuff that you really like to do. We have to do documentation and update HEPs and stuff because it's part of the job. It helps us do our job. But if you could have somebody do that automatically, man, you could focus on the stuff you really like which is educating and helping people get over injuries and doing hands -on work and coaching them and all that. And that allows more time for us to be sort of in our zone of genius that we like to do anyway. So I think it's generally a positive thing. The other thing too is I saw a study where they were looking at what professions over the next 10 years are going to be more in demand. And a lot of them were healthcare. It was like nurse practitioners, physical therapists, PTAs, just people that are helping other human beings face -to -face. I think if you're a computer designer, we call it like logos or brand design stuff for companies, coding basic things. I think those are the things that are going to get really, they're going to get offset like really quickly with AI. If your spouse is in one of these professions, like don't freak out. I don't know the timeline on these things, but I do see that they are making a lot of headway in replacing a lot of stuff. Like you can even, if you want to code like small things, you can do that just by telling these, some of these AI systems, what you want and it'll build it for you. And then you can connect it into the software that you have with minimal to no technical skills, no coding skills, not knowing how to do that at all. Like it's getting there and it's kind of crazy, but what you can't replace very easily is one human being talking to another human being, putting their hands on that other person, helping them get over injuries that are stopping them from doing things that they like to do. And there's a huge trust factor there between one person and another person that I think is going to become even more important as we have interactions with different AI platforms that probably get to a point where it's hard for you to tell if it's an AI platform or not. You know, like phone answering services and stuff like that or it's very much trending that direction. So the good news is I think you're in a great spot. You working with other people like that, it's going to be very hard to replace. Long term, I think it's going to become even more in demand. Fewer people are really moving towards those professions because they want more of a technological sort of job. They want more location independence. It is hard to do that as a clinician, but at the same time, it's a great way to bulletproof your career by doing so because you're going to continue to be higher and higher in demand as fewer people move into those types of roles and more demand is there by one person wanting to work with person. So I think it's a net positive for our profession. If it can help with the things you don't like to do that are more administrative and you can have those done for you, that sounds awesome. And more people are going to want to work with you. That sounds awesome too. I think you're in a great spot. So very bullish on PT over the next decade at a minimum. Who knows after that? Uh, no one really does. No one really knows what happened next year either.