Starting & Managing Your Own Physical Therapy Practice

This basic handbook on how to start up a private physical therapy practice is a hands-on guide for any physical therapist who is contemplating or preparing to go out on his/her own. Starting & Managing Your Own Physical Therapy Practice is a one-of-a-kind guide that offers insight into the how's, what's, and where's of private business and gives the practitioner enough information and insight to veer him/her in the proper direction. This book is a guide map, a tool developed to open your eyes to what is necessary to open and run your own, successful practice.
This book is a guide map, a tool developed to open your eyes to what is necessary to open and run your own, successful practice.
Samuel Esterson is a licensed physical therapist with over twenty years experience working in many practice venues. From corporate to consulting, academia to private entrepreneurship, and mentor to hospital staff therapist, he has always aimed to get the most of his position, learning new and important things along the way. He is a driven man, always aiming for higher goals in practice and life in general. The author's most recent pursuit, that of earning his clinical doctorate in physical therapy, took him to the University of Maryland, School of Medicine, Department of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences where he was a proud member of their first graduating class. Dr. Esterson earned a bachelor's in physical therapy in 1979 and upon graduation took a position at the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine in New York City. Dr. Esterson credits Rusk with teaching him the basics of clinical care and management as well as offering him the possibility of attending New York University where, under the tutelage of Dr. Marilyn Moffat and Dr. Arthur Nelson, two of our profession's leading academics, he earned a master's degree in Pathokinesiology, the study of abnormal human motion. Over the years, Dr. Esterson worked in outpatient facilities and finally settled down into working with an established private practice group in the Washington, DC suburbs. Dr. Esterson gleaned as much business education as he could from his mentors there, finally opening his own private practice in Baltimore, Maryland in 1985. As business became rocky in the mid 1990s, the author decided to sell his practice to a publicly held corporate entity, remaining on site as clinical manager for two more years. In 1997, he opted to take a year's sabbatical to return to school and study Business Administration. He was accepted into and attended Bar Ilan University in Israel, earning an MBA in 1998. Upon return to Baltimore, Dr. Esterson was recruited to establish and manage a corporate-owned facility that he successfully grew until his most recent change of venue. The lure of private enterprise once again trapped Dr. Esterson so in 2002, he re-opened his own practice that is growing exponentially with the use of the valuable information found in the ensuing pages. Dr. Esterson is married to his wife of 21 years, a registered nurse in the Baltimore County Public Schools. Together they have three sons aged 17, 15 and 11.