Leveraging Your EMR To Improve Stats, Retain People, And Improve Marketing With Sharif Zeid

[00:00:00] Welcome. You've entered the Physical Therapy Owners Club podcast, where your hosts, Nathan Shields and other successful PT owners and leaders share their experience and insights on how to build successful PT businesses. They'll share the stories of their paths to success and show you how you can also obtain

[00:00:40] greater freedom and more profits from your business. That's what the PT Owners Club is all about – greater freedom and more profits. There's plenty of room for you as well, so come on in and join the club. Hello and welcome to the Physical Therapy Owners Club podcast.

[00:00:57] I'm your host, Nathan Shields. And today I've got a returning guest, Sharif Zeid of Empower EMR, formerly known as MW Therapy. Right, Sharif? You got it. We've had you on previously as a guest discussing some of the benefits of EMRs in physical therapy clinic owners' lives.

[00:01:16] But today I want to talk – and I'm excited to bring you on because you've got a couple of decades of experience with working with physical therapy owners and specifically how to make the most of your EMRs, the framing of the discussion today.

[00:01:31] Physical therapy owners, they do great at treating patients and maybe even marketing and getting numbers up. But from your experience, they're not leveraging EMRs the way they could to benefit their practices. And so I'm glad that we could talk about these things.

[00:01:48] We're going to talk about a few things in particular in which how people can use their EMRs maximally, optimize them. Right? Or if they weren't thinking of their EMRs as a tool before, maybe this discussion can help them do that.

[00:02:02] So first of all, thanks for coming on and sharing this with us. Yeah, no. It's awesome to be here again. And I take it as a good sign I was invited back. So I'm happy to be here and I can add some value to everybody's day here with

[00:02:13] just a little bit of tit bits and nuggets and sort of things we've learned or I've learned as the years have gone by, talking to practices basically every day, almost every week of every year and just being able to bring some of that to the

[00:02:26] benefit of your listeners. So excited. Great. Well, let's get into it. One of the first things that you brought up as we were discussing the topic for today was around reporting. And I've always been somewhat disappointed with the reports that I've seen in the past.

[00:02:42] Now, I've been out of the game for five or six years after selling my practices. So I don't know what progress has been made. But that was always kind of a shady section in some of the EMRs.

[00:02:54] I either didn't trust the numbers I was getting or I wasn't able to get the exact data that I wanted and it was kind of hard and not techy, that kind of stuff.

[00:03:02] So tell me a little bit about how people can make the most of their EMRs on the reporting side of things. Yeah, absolutely. Well, unfortunately, what you described is a common refrain. And so it's kind of, it's always a bummer, right?

[00:03:13] As somebody on the other side of the table saying, OK, you know, how do we, what are the problems we're seeing out there? What are people having challenges with as owners? And I would say this kind of two sides to this coin.

[00:03:23] Number one is is really just taking a deep breath and really deciding what metrics you want to focus on. Before we talk about the EMR and how to get the data, I do find that in talking with a lot of owners, they're actually struggling with that question.

[00:03:35] I think there are so many things you can read on the internet and beyond. You should follow this. And this is the new hot KPI of the week or OKR, if you like the new phrase for it. And then all of a sudden you're chasing something new.

[00:03:47] And in my experience, working with practices, I've seen that happen. And what what the challenge with that is is, A, when you're bouncing back and forth between metrics, it leads to a lot of frustration as an owner.

[00:03:57] It can be frustrating because you're chasing things and that feels unstable. And then for your team, it's really detrimental because they have no idea what the goal is anymore. If we were chasing this KPI for a while

[00:04:08] and then all of a sudden next week we change and then the week after that, it's like all of a sudden I watched something and it said we should follow visits per hour. That's the most important thing in the world.

[00:04:18] And then two weeks later, it's units per visit. And there's all these metrics that are out there and they're all great, by the way. It's just really picking which ones are going to be important to you.

[00:04:28] And the way you should pick is really just by asking the question why first. I mean, is stable stability what you're looking for? Then there are some metrics that would be relevant. If is high growth what you're looking for, then that would be a different case.

[00:04:40] If it's everything is kind of good, but we are reimbursements are low. That might drive you to look at a different metric and try and identify, say disparities between how individual therapists are coding.

[00:04:51] So you sort of start with the business case of what you're trying to do, whatever it might be. Usually it's not the decline. And so it's usually growth or stability depending on where you are in your practice life cycle and all those things.

[00:05:02] And then you can back into the metrics. And then once you kind of have an idea for the metrics, that's where you open the door into the EMR and you start to look at the reports that it can offer or the reports

[00:05:12] that could potentially be built in it. And then you can kind of fit these things, these pieces together. And you shouldn't sort of have religious adherence to any one side. If there's a metric you want to follow and the EMR has one that's very similar,

[00:05:24] that probably serves the same business purpose. And you don't have to go sort of nuts that it's not exactly the one that you had in mind. And then the last piece of this with the EMR specifically is understanding that all reports have a methodology.

[00:05:39] So many have some sort of basis for how they calculate things. And people always say, I've said this before and what do you mean by that? And I said, well, let's just ask you a simple question. So Nathan from five years ago when you're in practice,

[00:05:50] how many visits did you have last month? That's an easy question I had. Well, it's not easy, right? What did you take out the cancels and no shows? Do you take out the free consults that you offer to patients that because you went to some event?

[00:06:02] And then, well, we don't want to count visits that are in this color code because those don't really produce profit for us. So you quickly see how fast the simple question, how many visits did you have last month can mushroom?

[00:06:14] And so on the EMR side of the world, obviously when we build standard reports, we make some of those assumptions, right? We decide some of those methodologies and then we do our best to communicate them to folks so that they can trust them.

[00:06:27] They can know what the idea behind the report is, the concept behind the report and some of the assumptions perhaps are methodologies that went into it. And I can tell you that all reports have that, whether it's average reimbursement or visits per hour,

[00:06:40] which hours and which visits and units per hour, which units and which visits again. So I think the long story short is with respect to the business side of things, it's all about understanding the metrics you want to track and why you're tracking them.

[00:06:55] And in fact, if you can articulate why, your team will buy into them even better. If you just tell them we're tracking this now and it's important we get it from four to eight, they'll be like, okay.

[00:07:04] But if you tell them why, they may have higher buy-in, right? And then on the EMR side, it's really about exploring and investing. So exploring means try all the reports. People get to be creatures of habits in software and they run the same two reports

[00:07:18] and there's like a million other reports that could run and then invest in it, learn it, understand what the methodology is, ask questions if that's what you need to do and then build that trust. And then you can really feel confident in the ultimate,

[00:07:32] which is making decisions, taking actions based on the reports that you have. Do you feel that the users aren't leveraging customer service or the ability to go and getting some of that training and learning? It's really like anything else.

[00:07:48] I think there's a wide range of sort of attitudes and approaches and so forth. I mean, some folks ask a lot of questions. Some don't ask any at all and some are in between. So it's really, yeah, what I do find though

[00:08:00] is there's definitely also variability in just systems don't... There's a difference between having a system and implementation of a system. Having a system like you got it and now you have it, implementation is really how you employ it

[00:08:13] and it does the business tasks that you want it to do. And I do find that implementation can vary widely. Some are just sort of just hitting it and they're using it and others are deeply thinking about what does it mean for my workflow?

[00:08:25] What does it mean for my team? What does it mean for my patients? How do all the timing pieces fit together? And if they're taking business processes and basically making them technical or infusing those into the EMR and vice versa. Yeah, I'm just one of those people

[00:08:41] and I'm working on this throughout my life where if it's not readily available and seen on the screen with a couple of punches of keys, then it's not available period. Whereas it would behoove me and I try to do this more often now

[00:08:57] is to actually make the call and say, hey, this is the report that I want. How do I access it? And then you can tell me yes or no, we do it or yeah, it's easy. Just go over here and I'm like,

[00:09:05] oh, I didn't know that was there. Perfect. Or there's plenty of people and I've heard it from both sides as well that even if you had training videos for your program, what is it? A small percentage actually complete the training videos.

[00:09:18] You can want it to be readily available. Yeah, absolutely. Again, this is where you see variability in not just in practices but individuals within the practice. We'll watch every video from start to finish. Some will watch a few. I think that's where for us,

[00:09:32] fun and challenges making things intuitive enough where you can just go in and use it. Most people have never watched a video on how to use Gmail but seems like most people know how to use Gmail at least to some degree.

[00:09:43] So that's the fun of being in the software space and kind of working with it. But yeah, I mean, I think what you're sharing is common. We want it to be readily available and that's something we work on hard here

[00:09:54] is to continue to just make the common things and keep up with trends so that the reports that are desired will be there in as easy a fashion as possible. In regards to the KPI numbers as well or the KPI metrics, I can see two issues there.

[00:10:12] The small business entrepreneur mind switching between KPIs every month and their team being like, okay, which KPI we focused on this month? And so they do a little bit of work for 15 to 30 days and then it all fizzles out. And so it's important to understand

[00:10:28] what some of those cardinal metrics are. And that's where I'll put the plug in, having some kind of coach, some kind of mentor to say, these are some of the standard cardinal metrics that you need to run by and you should, and this is why they're important.

[00:10:43] So let's focus on these here first. Those others might be nice if we need to get to that point or if we need to dive a little bit deeper. But there are some high level ones that you should be aware of

[00:10:54] in order to make sure you're most profitable, most functional, get the best results, et cetera. And that's where a coach can definitely help. And if it's not a coach, I mean, just post on a physical therapy Facebook group, like what are the cardinal metrics you guys are using

[00:11:08] and take the top three to five, I mean, everyone's going to come up with different metrics, but talk, take the top three to five answers and focus on those if you really don't know where to start. Yeah, I'm 100% with you on that.

[00:11:18] I think having a sounding board is really helpful. I've seen a lot of clients have success with working with a coach, working with a mastermind group, posting on Facebook, just something to add a level of accountability. And so, you know, it'd probably be embarrassing

[00:11:33] if you had to go to your coach and say, I'm changing my metrics again after 42 hours of cracking. So it just adds that sort of piece to it. And I love your idea about cardinal metrics. I think one successful thing I've seen out there is,

[00:11:44] let's say you have five things, or metrics you're going to focus on, three or four of them are the cardinal ones. They never change, or they very infrequently change. And then there's one or two where like, hey, for the next six months, our big thing is to have

[00:11:59] twice as many evaluations as we had in the previous term. And so we change a couple metrics to focus on that goal. You hopefully achieve it. You give your staff a party if you can. And then it's kind of like finite, but the three or four didn't change.

[00:12:12] It's just that one or two for a short-term goal or for a short-term bump. So I think that's awesome for sure. Yeah. And the idea being that those three to four don't change, but the other ones that you might focus on are going to ultimately improve

[00:12:25] those top three to four metrics, right? I call them sub-KPI's, sub-metrics because they feed into the higher metrics and make them better nonetheless. But yeah, great. So what's one other thing that we can do to maximize our utilization of our EMRs? If you're talking about on report specifically,

[00:12:44] or you want to move to something else on it. Yeah, let's move on. I think we need that dog. Okay. I mean, the next one I would say is, you know, talking about sort of this nexus between staffing burnout, hiring, retention, this whole realm of, you know,

[00:12:59] that's been quite the topic, I would say for the last, really since COVID. I mean, I'm sure it was an issue before then, but it seemed to really take off as a challenge for practices in the intervening time. And it's everything right? It's therapists burning out or feeling,

[00:13:15] you know, overwhelmed by sort of the universe of tasks they have to do. It's not just treating the patient. It's the documentation. It's the coding. It's all those things. It's the certainly lots of pressure on the front desk can't hire, can't find or can't whatever,

[00:13:29] you know, can't retain. So that so I think where the connection is between this and really EMR and technology in general is technology has also changed a tremendous amount. I mean, AI for example, is all the rage now. And for therapists, for example,

[00:13:42] we're seeing adoption now of really new technologies like a scribe type tool. And that's probably a podcast by itself to talk about, you know, right as speaking instead of writing notes and not speaking like. Yeah, we just had, we had Jake on Jake Mahalsky

[00:13:58] of Comparant PT just a few episodes ago. Yeah, but speak to text. I mean documentation, huge aesthetic that any provider has and there are AI benefits that can help. No doubt. And so it ties back to that's for them. It's really about burnout, right?

[00:14:11] If you can reduce the total time on task, if you can reduce the sort of after hours type of stuff that we hear about unfortunately often. So I think that's one on the front desk. I think we're seeing a lot of automation taking away tasks from that desk.

[00:14:24] And so whether it's, you know, letting patient self book or letting patient self register, and that also opens a whole 24 seven aspect to a practice that never really existed before. But also just some of the more mundane tests falling up with patients, sometimes manually sending marketing emails.

[00:14:40] We see that as often being on that plate that could be taken off by technology. And so if you're able to reduce that, then you're left in sort of one of a couple, hopefully good places. One is if you're struggling to fill that position,

[00:14:51] you may have a lot less pressure to do so because now a lot of these tasks are able to happen on their own or happen, you know, at the patient's hands. And so that that reduces the pressure on you to hire. If you already have somebody,

[00:15:02] you may be able to take some many of their hours and dedicate them to more lucrative tasks, you know, instead of paying them to read a list and make a million phone calls. And there's a way for that communication to be automated

[00:15:13] then they may be able to work more on outreach to referers or something like that or pivot them a little bit towards marketing. So taking time, keeping the time, paying for it, but getting better value for it than sort of the mundane stuff.

[00:15:25] And then the last piece is just with that automation, it also leads to a lot of really good patient experiences. I mean, a lot of, I always funny, we hear all the time, like, we're getting Google reviews from patients. We need Google reviews.

[00:15:35] Well, patients are obviously going to assess you on a variety of different things, right? How is my clinician? How is my care? Probably how is my outcome to some degree? But they're also going to use just their experience in sort of doing business.

[00:15:46] And whether you like it or not, they're going to compare you to Amazon or something, which is let's call that like the gold standard of ease, right? It's just so fast and the stuff shows up like two hours later

[00:15:56] and you don't know how the guy got there so fast. So it's kind of along those lines. And so when you start to open up this like, Hey, do your own stuff. And they're like, this is fantastic. I want to sit on the couch and book out,

[00:16:07] you know, three PT visits at midnight, right? Then they can do it. And so it's good for everybody. And so I think those are a couple of ways that, you know, if you're not using your EMR in any of those ways, if you're not automating things,

[00:16:19] if you're not at least considering a patient portal type thing, you're missing out. I mean, I think there's a lot of benefit to be had there and possibly many tools you should be using and could be using if you take the time to implement them.

[00:16:32] Well, I think that goes back to some people. I hate to use this phrase, but I'm sure it happens quite a bit in our space, but just having their head in the sand. And they're not aware of the updates and the possibilities that the EMRs could do,

[00:16:46] especially if they've been with one for five, 10, 15 years. We're creatures of habit. We don't want to mess up our patient flow by, you know, trying to do more, but doing more initially in order to ease on the back end, right? Is the goal.

[00:17:01] And so just reaching out and finding out what the capabilities are and how we can make this a little bit easier on everybody. Yeah, and EMR is not what it was 10 years ago. I think that's the other thing to realize is that it really was...

[00:17:12] I mean, everybody calls it now EMR, but back then EMR referred primarily to documentation, but now there's marketing and reporting, like we just talked about in patient portals. And there's just... It's a universe. And so, you know, there's just many things

[00:17:25] you may not even know and that are worth refreshing. The days of just using EMR to, okay, I write my notes and book my appointments is long gone. And that's only going to get more intensive over the coming years as we continue to fold in

[00:17:39] more features and add more stuff and touch more parts of the business as EMRs like Empower have become sort of the central nervous system technologically for practice. It's like their operating system. So exactly. So it's actually really exciting and there's a lot there.

[00:17:54] And then the last thing I'll just put a plug in for is if you're listening to this and saying, you know, I should do that. Don't go crazy and try and implement 19 things at once. Just pick something to like do in the next quarter.

[00:18:05] Like, hey, by the end of next quarter, we want to have patients booking online. That's our goal. Because I find people flip the switch and they're kind of been stable for 10 years and then all of a sudden they're like, we should do all this stuff

[00:18:15] and then try and do it all at once. And then it's just, you know, it's too much. I could definitely see that. Well, one thing that I always thought was interesting is we talk occasionally about on-boarding successfully, onboarding providers specifically successfully because we believe that a well-on-boarded provider

[00:18:36] brings someone who has much more satisfaction, confidence, productivity and honestly retention. If that part of the onboarding process goes well and the question is frequently like, what do I do besides let them shadow some patients once in a while? And I think it's very odd that more consideration

[00:18:56] isn't taken for setting aside time for them to do the actual video trainings of the EMRs and give them time to actually get really comfortable with this tool that they're going to use. Because nothing, from my experience, nothing provides greater frustration than documentation headaches.

[00:19:14] Yeah, I can write a soap note left and right if it's a piece of paper and I have a pen. But to navigate the EMR, especially if they're new to the clinic and new to this EMR,

[00:19:23] then I think it would be who them to give the providers the time, take on the cost that it takes for them to actually get really comfortable with that EMR and watch all the videos, get comfortable with it, know what reports they need to look for

[00:19:37] if they need to look for some, but really get comfortable with how leverage it and make it the most of it. And I think that would be really useful and help with retention down the road. Yeah, I totally agree and I think it's paying,

[00:19:48] to me it's paying now or pay later. I mean you're going to pay. So in other words, if you front end the costs, quote unquote, by allowing the time, then you get that back in the future because they're going to be more productive.

[00:19:59] And I think if you're onboarding somebody new, the goal is to get them to be productive as soon as possible, right? So that they're contributing financially to the practice. And if it's three months later and they're still struggling with the tool

[00:20:10] and it's because you just didn't just give them this like few hours that were needed at the front end to just get it out of the way. So it's pay now or pay later and I'm a big buy once cry once person.

[00:20:19] And so you just, you know, that's just part of the cost. Everybody knows there's a cost to onboard new employees. And so you absorb that cost and I would rather personally take it upfront. And I think long term it will actually,

[00:20:33] will lead to a better outcome for that provider and for the practice itself. So no, no. Yeah, if you have some kind of program like that, then why not leverage it in part of your recruiting message? It doesn't have to be the highlight of your message

[00:20:45] but say listen, we use blankety-blank EMR, we use Empower EMR. It provides us these opportunities and it minimizes the headache of your documentation. It minimizes the headache of your patient flow because this is what we do.

[00:20:58] Here's an example, it shaves this much time off of note taking, right? And so if you can leverage that to also recruit if you are properly and optimally using your EMR. Yeah, I agree. I mean, listen, your job offer probably says,

[00:21:11] you know, here's what the commute looks like and you know, here's our facility. It's really nice and all that kind of stuff. But I mean, what's something they're going to touch every single day and the EMR is the answer to that question.

[00:21:21] So absolutely, if you can say, you know, we've invested in the tooling you need to sort of be successful and be efficient with your, you know, we're going to set you up for success is essentially what the message is. And that's the same thing again is saying,

[00:21:33] you know, we've invested in our facility, our equipment is good, we have the following things to help you and you'll be supported. It's just another tool in that toolbox. So yeah, and if I had access to an AI scribe, man, that might be my lead.

[00:21:48] That might be my lead on the ad is like, we've got the tools to minimize your documentation headache. Why don't you come check us out? And they'll be like, what? I hate documentation. And if you can shave off that time

[00:21:59] and I don't have to spend it at the keyboard, man, that would, that would be a huge benefit to me, especially to those people who are taking or having to do notes at home at the end of the workday. That would definitely call to them.

[00:22:11] And it's something differentiating too. I mean, I've had other conversations, you know, you can just keep adding dollars to the salary until you really can't. And that's because that's a business thing. And so, and you might be surprised. I mean, a potential person,

[00:22:26] prospective employee may be moved by that sort of mention of, you know, what's the environment like to work with? Am I going to be well supported through the tools that are being used? More so than adding $500 a year to the annual salary,

[00:22:38] which at some point you're going to cap out anyways, because it is what it is in the market. And also, because that's just a race to nowhere. Everybody can keep adding $500 to what end. Eventually it's unsustainable. So finding new and different ways

[00:22:52] through your EMR and other ways to sort of sweeten the pot, if you will, or make it that much more attractive a position. It's great. The last area that we want to talk about in terms of making the most of EMRs is surrounding marketing.

[00:23:04] And I love that you're bringing it up because it's timely. I was on a call with a client a couple of days ago. And numbers had dipped a little bit, maybe seasonal, whatever. But he's forced him to actually go out and meet doctors for the first time,

[00:23:19] which was an enviable position because I was always talking to doctors because I was always looking for the next new patients. But this guy had a situation where he had a wait list and now he doesn't have a wait list anymore.

[00:23:29] And now he's forced to talk to doctors and think about his marketing strategies. And he said, what's the easiest way to get patients? And I said, you need to have relationships with doctors. I think that's appropriate whether you have a wait list or not

[00:23:40] that you have some kind of face-to-face meeting, at least say, hey, I'm treating your patients. But the cheapest and easiest way to get new patients is getting current referrals from your current patients, leveraging them. But also, you've got a list of hundreds, maybe thousands of people

[00:23:55] that you automatically have access to from your patient database. And if you're not leveraging that, again, that's the cheapest and easiest way to get new patients now by reactivating them, asking them for family and friend referrals, you name it. I don't think people are turning to their EMRs

[00:24:13] to look at that as a marketing tool enough. I completely agree. I think there's a lot of parallels to the reporting thing is that marketing seems super unapproachable, I think, because it's so big. It's like, should we do Facebook ads? Should we reach out to refer?

[00:24:26] Should we have a conference? Should we run an event? And it becomes so overwhelming that... And then even other questions, like, should we go buy a list from somewhere? I don't even know what lists we're going to buy and what are we going to do with the list?

[00:24:37] I don't know, but should we buy a list? I saw that that was a thing you do for marketing. So let's go down that route. And so because it's unapproachable, it quickly spirals and then I think it... Yeah, people go away from their EMR

[00:24:48] as sort of a good place, a really, really good place to start. And in some cases, finish. I mean, you might have enough to live on in your EMR alone for many years, especially if you're a long-established practice. I mean, if you just think about it

[00:25:01] very simply like this, if you could get five patients to reactivate, five patients to refer back to you, a new friend or colleague, and get five referrers who haven't sent to anybody in the last six months to send you one person. That right there could be 15 evaluations.

[00:25:18] And so when we're talking about scale, we're not Walmart. We don't need to sell a thousand more in the next hour to show growth. We need to be able to get 10 patients, 15 patients at an average course of care of say eight to 10 visits. That's 150 visits.

[00:25:33] And then once you show you can do it once, then you just go get the next 15. And again, your list may be expansive. We recently had a client on board who'd been with the prior system for years. They had like 4,000 people on their referrers list.

[00:25:47] Now how many of those really referred to them in the last 12 months? Probably not as many as they would like. But if they just went from the bottom of the list and made a few phone calls, they probably could drum up some action

[00:25:58] and just say, hey, did you remember we're here or have you been referring elsewhere? We've made all these improvements. We have this new location. We have new equipment or we're employing the latest. I mean, there's just so many good stories to tell.

[00:26:09] And therapists, PTs love to talk about the clinical aspect and they should and they can talk about the quality outcomes they're delivering and so forth. So yeah, for marketing, I'm a big proponent of like an EMR first type approach. Like start there. What do you have?

[00:26:24] What do you have to work with? What do you have for patients? What do you have for zip code data that tells you where your patients are coming from? What do you have for referrers lists? And then like with our system, right?

[00:26:34] What can you leverage in the system itself to then communicate with those people directly? We have tools for that. But even if your EMR is a little bit more rudimentary and you're just going to be able to export the list, at least you can go to something

[00:26:45] and use it as an email blast or something like that. Stop worrying about what big companies do for marketing, right? They do things that because they have money and they have data at a scale that none of us can really touch. And I'm talking about the big companies

[00:27:00] like Coca-Cola or whatever. So just focus on what you can do, which is just making sure you're communicating your message within an appropriate area to the right people. And then remember that unfortunately, as much as we love it, marketing is not one and done.

[00:27:14] You have to do it all the time. So it has to become mechanized and like consistent. And so you reach out to this referrer and they don't respond to you. All right, we'll see you again in six months.

[00:27:23] You know, we'll get, we'll get ping you again back then and just, you know, maybe you're on vacation or whatever the case might be. So I think EMRs are treasure trove. I think especially, you know, now that for most practices, they're 10 plus years in an EMR, right?

[00:27:36] Maybe 15 on the high end. Lots of data, lots of patience. What are the chances, you know, those people need to be, need new care, high, I would say for many. What are the chances referrers are looking for places to send patients high? So it's, yeah, it's tremendously valuable

[00:27:52] and you already own it. That's the best part. Right. I was going to say, if a marketing company had access to your thousands of patients on the database, they would pay you a lot of money to leverage that list for marketing purposes.

[00:28:06] So you already have it free of charge. Leverage it as much as possible. And the best way to do so is to do so, like you said, consistently, mechanically, systematically, is just use it over and over. And I don't think it takes a lot of effort

[00:28:22] if you need to talk to somebody in marketing about what that content looks like then. Okay. Yeah. Get a marketing person, talk to a coach. But I mean, even I'm not a marketing person and I would leverage my physician referral list for with a monthly newsletter.

[00:28:39] And I mean, yeah, it's old school, but if my numbers were down in a given month, I could probably go back and see that I didn't send out the new, the monthly newsletter that month. Right. And we're talking like 150 newsletters. I did the design through Fiverr

[00:28:54] and I repurposed the content. Once I made about six or eight pieces of content, I just repurposed, redesigned, and never had to make more content. But it's even simpler than that. And I don't know, like I said, being naive or a little bit ignorant

[00:29:09] to the EMR space at this point, but there are capabilities to text through the EMR, email through the EMR, and maybe you send out group texts, group emails that don't require a ton of content at all. Hey, Mother's Day just passed us by a week or so ago

[00:29:26] here as we're recording. Do send out a blast for free consults for the mothers, pass them up, patients who are mothers, set it up for a certain day for a few hours and see if you can reactivate a few of them.

[00:29:38] And that's a simple text and send it out. Bam, you're good to go. But it's working on that and just putting a little bit of the brain space on it to make it a consistent, calendared activity. Yeah, unbelievably.

[00:29:50] And to my surprise, one of our popular sort of re-engagement, reactivation marketing tools is a fax blaster where you can fax hundreds of referrers at once. And I was like, we're faxes. Who would do that? It's remarkably effective. And because they're deleting emails, but they get the facts.

[00:30:08] And I also want to concur with you very much that a lot of people get hung up on the volume and quality of the content. Obviously, we want to put out junk. That's not what we want to do. But at the same time, because it's regular,

[00:30:20] it's supposed to be regular, this isn't writing a dissertation. So you don't want to spend six months crafting a single fax blast. You want to just say, here's the deal and half the page is just reminding them of where you are and what your hours are

[00:30:33] and what major insurances you accept. And the top half is like, we just got a new piece of equipment or we just had a new hire or like you said, it's Mother's Day. How about a free consult? And then the next week, Mother's Day from then

[00:30:45] and you put in like first day of summer. First day of summer free consults. And you're just like rolling with it. And then the week after that, it's the first strci forth, Independence Day consults. It doesn't have to be because no one's going to spend as much time

[00:31:00] reading it as you are obviously creating it. So you want to temper your sort of, I know a lot of PTs are perfectionists and particularly on the clinical side. And so they don't want to put on anything that's not perfect. And that's a good tendency.

[00:31:11] But we want to keep it in check for this kind of stuff. So you take that EMR, you get the list and the last thing I would say is you can't overdo the cadence too. You can go too frequently

[00:31:22] and then you're just like trying to write too much and people then will unsubscribe or they'll start to tune you out. So I mean, you want to set, be reasonable with what you know, you don't want to fax blast every week, maybe once a quarter or something.

[00:31:33] And monthly newsletters seem to be common and things like that. And so you just, you keep it reasonable and kind of tying all these things together as if you can automate some of that front desk stuff, maybe they can contribute towards this type of effort. Right?

[00:31:48] Is there hanging out now or they have an extra hour that you created through some automation and then you're doing it, so you're doing your marketing and then you're coming back to the beginning of reporting and hopefully seeing the results and seeing those patients come in

[00:32:01] or seeing those reactivations. So it's a symbiotic, like everything works together kind of thing. Yeah, I think there's a lot of opportunity there from a broader perspective, utilizing the EMRs to go back to our initial point. I think they are underutilized for some of these aspects

[00:32:17] and if people aren't aware of the capabilities, then it's important that they take the time and the energy to do so and to see simply what's out there. Maybe they don't know where to start, they don't know what their EMR is capable. Then it's worth it

[00:32:31] to actually take the time and study up on them. Yeah, I mean, listen, you're in anything you're investing in, you should make sure you're getting the most out of it. And EMR has evolved so much, I think to your point earlier, like people need to just catch up

[00:32:44] with what's out there. People need to realize that this is something that has to be curated and cared for and implemented. And so that's like a team thing. You got to get everybody on board with it and make sure you're leveraging the tool to the max.

[00:32:56] And then the third thing would just be like, just start there. Let's say you're coming from the other side and you're saying, well, I just discovered this business need. We want to do more marketing. Just as somebody sits in a team meeting

[00:33:08] and says we should do more marketing. Okay, great. EMR first, start there. Or, hey, I think we should improve our website. All right, go to your EMR first and see what maybe a plug-and-play portal could do for your website. We want to reach out

[00:33:21] to all of our patients from the last six months. Okay, go to your EMR first. So it just start there and then obviously you may need other tools. It's possible, right? But generally, I think you're going to find, at least for clients, for example, of ours,

[00:33:35] like they're finding because we're trying to deliver on that, we're trying to bring them, they sort of the all in one and like do your stuff here and that sort of thing. So most things are born from a business need. It's usually saving money,

[00:33:45] saving time or making more money or having more time. And then again, how do you kind of get to that sort of thing? And that's where I think thinking of EMR first is a good place to think about it. Yeah, definitely. Well, I need to ask

[00:33:59] what's on the mind of everyone who's listening is. What inspired the move from MW therapy? Empower EMR? It's a really good question. So it's funny, if I'm being totally honest, first thing is, I would say, if you're contemplating a rebrand, do it. You know, I think,

[00:34:15] yeah, I think it's sort of hard when you're doing it and points you may say, I wish we weren't doing this, but we had had the sort of this concept of maybe we should we should align our product name a little bit more

[00:34:25] A with what we are doing specifically, obviously being an EMR and then just with our sort of general theme and trying to empower PTs, right? PTs are trying to empower their patients and get them better so they can do the stuff they want to do

[00:34:37] and live a better fuller life and we felt that. So that would, those two reasons aligning a little bit more with what we do and getting sort of our theme and messaging across, I think we're the two big ones. A lot of people thought

[00:34:49] M&W were like initials or that we were a practice and so you live and you learn and so we're really happy to be on the other side of it but somebody told me while we were doing it if you're thinking about do it, just do it.

[00:35:01] So now I pass that on because in retrospect, I agree. I think if you feel like your practice name for some reason isn't capturing your mantra your feeling, it's okay. It's a lot of fun changing all your email addresses and all that jazz but it does get done

[00:35:15] and head and life goes on so I would recommend it. Yeah. I got you. Well, I mean, it's a good marketing tool as well. I was like, hey, we've got this new name. We need to blast this. We need to let you know. All of a sudden

[00:35:27] you have a lot more marketing content out there. 100%. I got you. Well, being as M&W therapy in the past but now EMR, remind everyone how long you guys been around, how long you've been in the space. Yeah. So we're closing in on 20 years in this space.

[00:35:44] I've obviously been here since the start. Our first notes were written into at the time M&W therapy now in power about 2006. So a little bit of experience. Tens of millions of notes and claims and dollars and all those things flowing through the system. And really though,

[00:35:59] with all that we credit our clients really for helping us figure out where the product should and continue to be growing and what's important to them. And that's what's driven us through all these years is really client feedback. So we remain very innovative.

[00:36:14] We continue to roll out new stuff and I think the next 10 years for PT EMR, maybe this is another podcast but will be very interesting. The last 10 years were dominated by the tail end of people getting EMRs in the first place. I would say 2014-13

[00:36:30] was sort of a cup, very common time. And now we're in the age of AI and we've got more payer battles and they're using AI too. So we're going to have battle of the AIs and it's going to be and then we've got all these other things

[00:36:42] and trying to again get people. It's funny how the goal doesn't change. It's just get people back to treating patients because that's what they wanted to do and frankly do it profitably. I mean, that sort of hasn't changed but how we approach it

[00:36:56] and how we get there definitely has and will continue to change. And if people wanted to reach out to you, how do they find you? Yeah. I would love if you'd visit empowerEMR.com is certainly one place you can get a demo of our product

[00:37:07] if you're so inclined. But personally, I'd love to connect with anybody on LinkedIn who's listening so you can just search for me. I know I have a super easy name to spell, Sharif Zed and you can just look for me and send me a connect request.

[00:37:19] I'm happy to be a resource for people and just talk anytime and if an EMR switch is something you're contemplating myself and our team here would love to connect with you and see if it's a good fit and figure it out for you.

[00:37:32] Well, thanks for joining me again, man. Yeah, it was awesome. So next time we'll talk about AI and Terminator and Skynet and all that kind of stuff. We'll get it going. So thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Right, exactly. All right. Good to see you, man. Bye-bye.

[00:37:49] Thanks for joining us today in the Physical Therapy Owners Club, the resource for stability and freedom in your PT practice. Reach out and join the network today. Subscribe to our podcast, get links to social media and access all of our episodes with show notes at ptoclub.com.