• The point of this lecture is not to suggest that a rehabilitation service is going to out-perform your O.R. • To get started, you will need trained staff and a minimum equipment list. • This does NOT require retrofitting your building.
We know that clients today will search for practices that offer rehabilitation in addition to surgery. In addition, they will seek reviews of practices, looking specifically for comments about rehabilitation. How do you get these reviews? Through improved outcomes. Clients love being involved in their pets' recoveries. Managed well, they become passionate advocates for your practice. Agility clients will become vocal advocates, referring their friends to your practice.
It's not all about post-operative care. There is increasing demand for integrative care along with surgical intervention. These can include acupuncture, nutritional counseling, chronic pain management, geriatric care, and weight loss and management.
What does it take to add rehabilitation to your practice? Trained staff, a minimum equipment list, and minimum dedicated space. Trained staff can include veterinarians, veterinary nurses, and physical therapists.
Why hire a physical therapist? PT's bring tremendous skills to the veterinary field. Their evaluative skills focus upon soft tissue impairments, including special tests that allow them to determine specific tendinopathies, joint capsule shortening, ligamentous laxity, and muscular dysfunction. Their treatment techniques include manual therapies such as joint mobilizations, addressing abnormal arthrokinematics and stretches for loss of flexibility, physical modalities, such as neuromuscular electrical stimulation, therapeutic ultrasound, and laser, and therapeutic exercises.
Rehabilitation-certified veterinary nurses are the key to turning your rehabilitation service into a profit center. Successful practices have found that employing 2 to 2.5 full time equivalent (FTE) nurses per FTE rehabilitation-certified veterinarian or physical therapist creates the most efficient team. Rehabilitation-certified nurses can carry out most of the time-consuming work involved in rehabilitation
