Hello, welcome to Podiatry practice Mastery.
This is section 15 out of 20. I'm I have more notes here and
I'm kind of getting tired of do me every day here, but this was
a good one. When I when I was at this
recent, a BPM meeting, someone brought up an idea of hiring a
pedorthist in your practice. And let me explain kind of the
the backstory in our practice. The struggle, the struggle we've
had, I don't know, you might be doing shoes.
So, we used to do shoes and we found that the, the juice wasn't
worth the squeeze, for our patients, we have a very high
Sports Medicine practice and we do just one day of Diabetic Care
per week. So I do one day and the other
two, doctors, two of the doctors do just a half day.
So that's what are we do? All of our diabetics and We so
we don't do a lot of that. We kind of one way of doing we
wanted to do less as we limit our access.
So we each have different days - Friday, the other doctors ones
on Tuesday and ones on Thursday, and then otherwise, you can't be
seen lately. Of course, we'll see wounds and
things like that, but we're not going to do nail care.
And so, I know some practices don't do any nail care or they
have someone else doing the Nail Care.
The, the challenge for us is when we were doing the, the
shoes is that the page that there were a lot of returns, and
we didn't really, I think that real big problem was as I'm
thinking back as we didn't have one person that was responsible
for it. I think that's the key.
So this is the idea of having like a pedorthist or a North
assist in your practice. The the practices that do this
really well. They have a they have to someone
on staff, let's say you pay them $25 an hour to do a do too.
To be a pedorthist or an orthotist they they can do for
you was so if you need someone with that comes with diabetes
they can just pretty much sighs. Everyone for the diabetic shoes.
Have the pick out the shoes, things like that and dispense
them. But beyond that, what I'm kind
of excited about is that they could also dispense and caste
people and make adjustments for braces.
So all these afos that we're trying to do in our practices
and whereas, yes, we can certainly have one of our own
staff do it but By having a pedorthist on staff or hiring
someone, it just can raise the level even of thinking about the
different types of braces and shoe modifications and things
that can be done, especially for a busy practice, they could have
different days of different offices and they can help with
other things in the office. So I like that idea.
The pedorthist course isn't too complex.
I think we had it over at Shoal so I like this idea that they
could do the shoes, they could do the orthotic dispensing, they
could do the orthotic scanning. They could do all the braces and
then I think it would feasibly increase the amount of braces
that we're doing in our office. And then that would pay kind of
their, let's say they're there, their hourly rate things like
that. So that was, that was one of the
other takeaways here of a hiring other types of ancillary people.
I know, I was kind of interested.
There's a some I think you guys know the inventor of correctos
Ray. He interviewed him a while back
and I'll put a link to the interview here.
Underneath here, or on the side of the video that this audio.
But rate he has an interesting practice free talks about all of
us. Correctos right.
He's selling correctos for everyone but then he has instead
of Physicians assistants or medical assistance, he has
naturopathic Physicians. And I think it's the kind of the
natural nature of his correctos and things like that, but I
thought that was a neat idea so he has his practice with.
I think there's three of them and that that work for him or
work with him or something like That so and then there was
another idea of hiring instead of a pedorthist, one of the
other doctors, they actually had a primary care within within the
practice. So this way with a primary care
in the practice, you could they could do like they can see the
patient's for the signing off for the diabetic, the Vie
diabetic verification that you need for the shoes, that's one
reason. But another reason is by having
a physician on staff weather, Whether they're or virtual this
is, my didn't know about. So if they're there, that's
great. They're actually working out of
your office, but some doctors are like, almost like doctors
for rent, MD's for rent. So for five hundred dollars a
month or whatever. They sign off on.
They cosine different notes. What would the notes before?
Well the notes could be for a physician's assistant that could
work for you because in our state we can't hire them but an
MD could do that. They could also I think here in
Massachusetts now nurse practitioners can practice
independently. So they don't need If a primary
care but also we were talking a little bit about like pharmacies
having a, an office Pharmacy in some of these other types of
things that you could do in your office and you might need a
medical doctor. So there are medical doctors
that you can hire that they will just kind of sign off.
I most like sign off on your note saying that you did certain
things or the other staff managing the staff.
So anyway, that's an idea of a couple of other people that you
could hire within your practice. If you didn't just want to hire
more podiatrist, one of the struggles, we have, And I've
talked to other people about this about hiring, a physician's
assistant and nurse practitioners, I think, if you
would have a maybe a, let's say, a nursing home practice where
you're doing a lot of nursing homes, and I'll certain patients
that you want to do this with, but my perception, the
perception of my partner is that if we tend to see more as
podiatrist, so when we're doing, let's say the nails are other
types of things. You might see in other problem,
you're going to treat a posterior tibial, tendon
dysfunction, you're going to get an x-ray, you're going to do a
vascular study, you're going to do all these other things that
you might see more. Then then what the physician's
assistant or nurse practitioner, depending on your training for
that for that type of a person? Just, because of your training.
That's why we currently don't have them.
I'd love to know what you guys think or if it works really
great. In your practice hiring, these
other ancillary staff, who have you have?
If you have any other types of Staff, I've always dreamed about
having someone That could help patients with weight loss
because I always that's kind of an area that I feel like I can
help and I could help patients more or like a, like a health
coach or something else like that.
Kind of having a concierge practice where you have a health
coach there, that would help your patients, reach their goals
for weight loss, and diabetes control and things like that.
Anyway, I hope you guys found this beneficial, if you want to
learn more, I would ask you to go to Podiatry, practice Master
e.com and in there, you can get my foot treat my patient
presentations, which is like this too.
Tool patients presentations tool, which I use every single
day I was using it a ton yesterday, like three or four
patients with Achilles tendonitis and just simplifies
kind of how we treat and kind of going down the list of treatment
options. Hope that helps you.
And once again, please send me e-mail.
Donít Podiatry, practice Master e.com, let me know your
thoughts, give me some feedback. What other topics you'd like to
talk about or if you want to be interviewed, I'd love to
interview. Those interviews are fun.
Got an identity, fun one yesterday.
With a gentleman. He had some great.
Great tips. You'll be seeing soon.
Okay, have a good one.