I received a solicitation to work for a company I will call the Uber of physical therapy. They provide outpatient PT visits at your home or work. They gloss over everything on their website because reimbursement is easy (it is not easy).
In their world. it is simple. They charge $125 or more for a visit. Pay the therapist $80. If the therapist does 25 visits a week they make $2000 a week. Great money for most therapists. And it is all on their schedule. (No it isn’t. Patients want appointments when it works for them, not when it works for you in this proposition).
$45 a visit covers a lot of Silicon Valley overhead. No clinic to pay for. Documentation and billing run through a unified nationwide system. Scheduling is between the patient and the therapist. The company doesn’t have to deal with any of those issues. Do a million or two visits and gross $300 million, net $100 million or more. Now do ten times that. You are a billion dollar company overnight. Get 20 times net earnings valuation and your stock after the IPO gives you a market cap of 20 billion or more. The VC firm and founders are new billionaires in three years or less.
Well Uber of PT, welcome to St. Louis: the armpit of reimbursement. Your commercial contracts pay $50 to $63 dollars a visit here. Are you taking a $17 to $30 dollar loss a visit but making it up on volume? Oh, you are paying your therapist less. Now your proposition is not so sweet. $40 a visit and 25 visits a week is $1000 a week. Good luck finding therapists in Saint Louis. Your sweet offer just lost its sweetener.