Background
In 2001, brothers Dave (CFO) and Mike Manzo (practicing PT) founded Atlantic Physical Therapy Center in Toms River, NJ. The family-owned practice now has 21 locations throughout the country. With a focus on “perfecting the patient experience,” Atlantic Physical Therapy Center is on a mission to provide “unparalleled care to individuals seeking to recover from injury, restore function, and maximize their performance.”
Challenges
With five successful locations, the Manzo brothers arrived at a crossroads: They knew they wanted to expand further, but their existing server-based EMR was preventing them from scaling their business operations in a manageable way. So, they began their search for a new software system that would help them improve efficiency and ensure consistency across their growing organization. According to Mike, “We wanted an EMR that would enable us to run our practices and workflows without making major changes to our [other] systems.” The brothers also wanted an EMR they could routinely access on a remote basis–something their server-based system wasn’t well-equipped to handle: “There was a process to log in to the server when you were off-site, but it was clumsy,” Mike said. “Whenever the server went down–or the center that housed the server lost power–all of our centers were flying blind.”
Additionally, they wanted a platform that would provide improved capabilities around outcomes reporting, referral and authorization tracking, and patient engagement. The latter was of particular importance to Dave, who felt their existing engagement process could use some automation–at the very least. As it stood, the team “asked patients to fill out paper surveys, and then hoped that our staff would have the time to upload those results into SurveyMonkey.”
With all of this in mind, Dave and Mike collaborated with their business partner, Mike Mundry, to explore all the options available on the market.
Solution
After surveying the EMR market in-depth, Atlantic Physical Therapy Center chose WebPT–specifically, the practice implemented WebPT Documentation, Scheduling, Outcomes, and Reach (WebPT’s patient relationship management platform). “Simply put, WebPT stood out as the best software platform available,” Mike said, adding that it “was the clear winner due to its intuitive nature, unique flowsheet setup, and customizability.”
To minimize workflow disruption at its five locations, Atlantic Physical Therapy Center worked closely with WebPT to carefully plan and execute the implementation process. The leadership team selected one clinic location to kick off the transition, and after receiving training from their lead onboarding specialist–and figuring out how to optimize operations using the new system–everyone at that location began doing all new cases in WebPT (“while still running existing cases in [their] old EMR”). According to Mike, when more than half of all that clinic’s active cases were in WebPT, they rolled out the full conversion.
Mike particularly appreciated the WebPT team’s support and expertise during the first implementation as well as subsequent ones: “The implementation team has seen this process play out so many times that they can minimize the pain points,” he said, adding that WebPT’s online training program “has also proven to be very helpful when we are bringing a new practice on board with our company.” And Atlantic Physical Therapy Center’s investment in the implementation process at the get-go was well worth it: “Now, when we add a location, it is simply plug-and-play with WebPT,” Mike said. “There are many things to consider when opening a new clinic. Being on the WebPT platform has taken away a major hurdle to growth.” Today, Atlantic Physical Therapy has 21 clinic locations.
I would summarize my experience with WebPT in one word: success. Every initiative that WebPT has presented to us that we have engaged within our practice has been a success.
Dave Manzo
CFO
