Building and Growing Our Presence in 2021: Putting PT at the Forefront for Patient Care

Nate Bard, Chief Growth Officer

As healthcare businesses chart their recovery from COVID-related losses, growth is our only path back. At ATI, we’re more committed to investing in growth than ever before.

In addition to COVID-19’s impacts on our industry, here are a few additional headwinds facing physical therapy:

• Consumers’ insatiable desire for on-demand services

• Medicare reimbursement changes

• Ongoing reimbursement for telePT

• Attempts to replace PT with wearables and videos

• Continued physician and health system consolidation

While we inherently know the value of PT and the positive disruption we can have on musculoskeletal care, the question is not whether we’re changing enough to keep up. The challenge is to get ahead and lead the disruption.

It’s with that lens that we think about growth in 2021.

New Clinics

ATI growth in recent years has come primarily through opening about 75 new clinics per year. By adding to our staffing and resources in this area, we hope to eclipse that rate this year through a combination of new construction and acquisition.

Organic Growth

It’s one thing to open or acquire a new clinic, but it’s quite another to deliver new patients to those locations while also keeping the current clinics busy.

The referral-based model that our industry has known since inception is in decline. To survive, we must innovate to meet customer expectations. To thrive, we have to intercept the patient before they even get into the “system.”

At ATI, we also own the domain ptfirst.com — there you’ll find how ATI’s quality care and scale have helped us change employers’ minds about the role of PT in the physical health journey.

We continue to adopt best practices from consumer-packaged goods, retail and other industries to modernize how we interact directly with consumers — the majority of ATI patients now engage with our online presence before coming to us.

Top-Rated Physical Therapy Care

The quality care patients receive is evident in our 4.9-star Google rating. Without that, we don’t have the ATI brand. Rather, because we consistently deliver that quality care, we can confidently extend our brand beyond the historical referral model.

Mergers & Acquisitions

After a few years of limited acquisition activity, we ramped back up on this front last year and are rebuilding this team and process.

We’re excited to extend our reach into new markets with the help of great industry leaders who are looking to join us. We are building and growing to put physical therapy in its rightful place at the front of the line for patient care.

Together, we won’t just change the perception of PT — we’ll fundamentally reinvent the way patients, payers, employers and partners manage physical healthcare.

Nate Bard leads ATI’s growth function, serving as its Chief Growth Officer. In this role, he is responsible for mergers, acquisitions and real estate.