5 – Jerry Durham on customer service.

Jerry Durham helps Physical Therapy Practice owners engage patients for great results. Following graduation from Physical Therapy school, Jerry practiced in a variety of settings, inpatient and outpatient, from small independent clinics to large hospitals and from the very beginning, Jerry questioned why there wasn’t an emphasis placed on treating patients as individuals, with unique concerns and objectives and why more effort wasn’t being made to develop true relationships with patients.

Jerry’s experiences in these settings fueled his drive to prove that you can increase arrivals, decrease no shows and cancellations and achieve great results all through the relationship between your clinic and your patients.

Jerry grew up in the beautiful Napa Valley, working in the vineyards his hardworking parents planted and otherwise assisting in a variety of small businesses his parents launched over the years. Jerry’s entrepreneurial spirit was both born and bred as he watched and learned from his parents successes and failures.

While Jerry admired his parents efforts, his passion lay elsewhere and he did not follow their footsteps. Jerry was active in sports during his youth and it was his high school football team trainer, a Physical Therapist, who set Jerry on the path to becoming a Physical Therapist himself.

After graduation from Physical Therapy school, Jerry was an employee of a variety of clinical settings, small and large, independent and corporate.

During this career stage, Jerry was constantly frustrated that the focus in all of these settings was on codes, and numbers and not on successful patient relationships. This lack of relationship mindset drove Jerry to start his own practice, to prove to himself that there was another way to practice, one that would place the emphasis squarely on great results for the patient.

After several years of believing there was a better way, Jerry set out to prove it by opening his first Physical Therapy practice in San Francisco. Within a year of opening, Jerry and his current business partner, Sturdy McKee merged their successful and like minded practices into San Francisco Sport & Spine Physical Therapy expanding to multiple locations in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Jerry opened his first clinic and in less than a year, Jerry was operating a successful practice, with a full schedule building one patient relationship at a time.

Early on, Jerry learned that he wasn’t the only Physical Therapist willing to buck an established system by treating patients in a way that everyone said would lead to failure, one patient to one Physical Therapist.

Today, San Francisco Sport & Spine Physical Therapy follows that same tenants as from the very beginning, including one to one patient to Physical Therapist treatment and has never wavered from the mission that they exist to create happy patients www.sfsspt.com. (SFPT LINK)

How did Jerry prove what he set out to prove? That’s the question he’s asked most frequently and the reason he is now sharing his experience, learning and techniques to help all practice owners who truly want to achieve great results for their patients and build relationships for life.

Today, Jerry is the Chief Relationship Officer for his physical therapy practices, hosts the podcast Healthcare DispuPTion, is a nationally recognized expert and sought after conference speaker as well as a clinical instructor who travels across the United States teaching the next generation of practice owners.

Jerry is on the nominating committee of the Private Practice Section of the American Physical Therapy Association and is on the forefront of the movement around patient engagement leading to great outcomes and how to own and operate a thriving business whether you accept insurance or are strictly cash based, simply by cultivating great patient relationships.

Jerry is a lifelong learner, an avid reader, is ruled by his 2 poodles, has a serious fear of heights, loves all things baseball and is forever grateful that his wife encouraged him to start his own practice. Jerry is passionately working to bring true and lasting change to the healthcare industry for the betterment of all.

Links about Jerry:

Interview with Jerry Durham, PT

@Jerry_DurhamPT