To maximize your income, you need effective marketing methods and proper allocation of the the expenses in your practice. In this article, Nitin Chhoda shares different ways to identify and calculate the expenses in your practice.

physical therapy marketing strategiesAssembling a team of reliable advisors and consultants is an excellent beginning to effective physical therapy marketing and management, but what therapists won’t learn in any medical school is practical information on money management and how to allocate expenses.

Operating a physical therapy business requires anticipating future trends, successful marketing endeavors, determining the cost of providing services, and planning ahead for foreseeable and unexpected expenses.

Effective Physical Therapy Marketing Is Important

Physical therapy marketing is the key to increasing the number of patients needed to meet income goals and finance the practice.

The most successful clinic owners utilize automated systems that can be customized to take advantage of traditional and mobile marketing opportunities that includes Clinical Contact, Therapy Newsletter, along with electronic medical record (EMR) systems.

Assets, acquisitions and depreciation are all terms with which therapists will quickly become acquainted. To remain profitable, therapists must determine the value of their time and services, even their physical therapy marketing strategies and what their clinic requires in terms of monthly funding to stay in business and implement capital projects.

Record All Your Expenses

All expenses must be accounted for, from labor and electric to equipment and office supplies. Direct costs related to a specific service, such as in physical therapy marketing, product or equipment procurement are obvious.

Clinic owners that want to add new equipment can shop around for the best products that fit within their budget and will work to pay for themselves in the shortest amount of time.

Determine Rates of Depreciation

Practice owners will also need to determine rates of depreciation and how assets will affect the value of the clinic.

Indirect costs are more difficult to quantify, can fluctuate monthly, and include items such as office supplies, cafeteria/break room costs or even cleaning supplies if the task isn’t contracted to an outside agency.

Start Allocating Your Expenses

Physical therapy marketing strategies that consume phone services, electric usage, and heating and cooling costs are all expenses that can vary widely and for which funds must be allocated.

No matter what method is utilized whether physical therapy marketing is included or not, the objective is to spread the expense across the patient base as equally as possible, to do so consistently and to have a physical therapy marketing plan in place that addresses the overall financial health of the clinic over time.

Some therapists choose to allocate costs based on individual departments or the employees within those divisions. Expenses can be allocated on the square footage of the practice or the number of labor hours expended.

physical therapy marketing ideasAnother way of allocating expenses can be implemented by establishing percentages for each department based on its contribution to the practice’s overall gross profit.

When a department is the only one that benefits, that department shoulders the entire expense.

If the expense, like physical therapy marketing expense, is shared by two or more departments, each bears a portion of the cost.