Founder Letter: How WebPT is Investing in our Members and their Practices

Hi! You may have been expecting Heidi Jannenga, but this month she’s been kind enough to lend me this space to share some exciting insights and important WebPT updates.   

So, I’ll start with a big THANK YOU to Heidi for the opportunity to pilot the Founder Letter this month. Heidi has been an invaluable resource for me throughout my time at WebPT. It won’t surprise any of those who know her when I say that Heidi remains the voice of both PTs and Members on our management team and is fiercely devoted to our partnership with Members as the central focus of what we do. 

We’ve made some major improvements this year and continue our work to expand products that help our Members thrive. That said, I’d like to be transparent and address that we’ve identified room for improvement in some of our communication outreach to Members. I received feedback from some Members who mentioned their love for the personal connection they’ve come to expect from WebPT for years now, and I want to make sure we continue to live up to that expectation.

To our Members, I’ll raise my hand and say that if you feel we fell short of your expectations recently then I am truly sorry and grateful for your patience. Here at WebPT, we truly wake up every day to serve our Members. That’s why I’ve made it a priority to not only give Members an avenue to provide feedback but also for us to review that feedback daily and act on what we’re hearing. The key to building (or rebuilding) connections is honest, frequent communication. And we’re 100 percent committed to that.

On the theme of transparency, I’d love to share the initiatives we’ve been working on, some of which you’ve already seen implemented into your workflows. These updates, upgrades, and new additions are part of our goal to help providers get ready for the evolution of rehab therapy. 

We’re committed to genuine partnerships with our Members. 

Before we get into some tech talk, I’m going to stick to our guiding principle and center our relationships with Members first. More than any product launch or feature update, our biggest initiative is to cement our status as a partner to our Members. Part of that is the open dialogue we strive for with every practice, yes, but it’s also about being committed to your success and playing our part in helping you achieve it.     

As we’ve implemented changes to our products, teams, and workflows, we’ve examined everything with a shift-left mindset as our goal. What does shift left mean? In woodworking, you’d probably refer to it as “measure twice, cut once”; in software development, it’s the idea of moving tasks earlier within a workflow to improve efficiency. We want to deliver software and service solutions that reduce work in your clinics by ensuring that the right work is done at the right time in the practice journey.  This mindset shift has led us to emphasize reducing “rework” by identifying the root cause of errors and to look ahead in the workflow to prevent errors in the first place. 

Adopting the shift left mindset has transformed the way we’ve built and run our RCM teams and led us to change our approach to success management by driving a more proactive engagement model with members.  I think we’d all agree that being more efficient at the beginning of a process leads to fewer headaches on the back end.    

We’re expanding the digital patient journey experience for you.

The patient experience is all about ease in 2024—and much of that is taking place from a screen.  Modern patients are looking for convenience from providers, and if you’re not able to provide it, they’re willing to look elsewhere. 

That’s why WebPT has been at the forefront of practice-to-patient engagement, offering patient appointment reminders, home exercise programs, digital patient intake, patient satisfaction, and patient outcomes reporting.  And we’re not resting on our laurels; this year, we’ve continued to expand our patient-facing solutions by building online scheduling and online payments solutions to help you add revenue to your practice with less friction. A better patient experience is also about meeting the needs of the diverse populations that come through providers’ doors—which is why I’m excited to say that we’ve been working on a Spanish language intake form, with additional languages in the works too!    

We want to ease the burden of clinical care while improving your cash flow. 

Like all of you, I’m hoping the trends of reimbursement cuts and staffing shortages can be turned around with continued advocacy. In the meantime, clinics need to be lean and efficient—especially when it comes to collecting for the services they’re providing. Luckily, WebPT can help ease some of the burden for providers and billers, allowing them more time to focus. 

To that end, we’re adding to our arsenal of rehab-specific, purpose-built workflows that deliver reimbursed visits from payors.  Over this month and next month, we’re adding new features to enhance efficiency even more, including alerts for authorizations and plans of care, fax improvements to link patient charts to your fax log, and expanded CPT code support. We’ve also just launched a feature to notify you when you’ve received a referral so you can get the patient on your schedule ASAP. And for your billing team, we’ve rolled out the ability to generate online patient statements, contract management enhancement for flat-rate billing, and provider claim holds, with location claim holds coming soon. We’ve also got enhanced reporting on the way to help you track productivity and stay on top of your front-office and clinical workflows.  

We continue to invest in security to keep your data safe. 

The Change Healthcare incident was a wake-up call to the entire healthcare industry to make sure their houses were in order—or more accurately, that all their doors and windows were locked. At WebPT, we’ve always prided ourselves on going above and beyond when it comes to security. We know that your patients are counting on you to keep their sensitive medical information secure, and you are in turn placing that trust in us—that’s something we have never taken lightly.   

Even with industry-leading security, you can’t be complacent. Hackers are constantly evolving to get ahead of existing measures. For that reason, we’ve made major under-the-hood investments in our security, including real-time monitoring paired with automation tools that help quarantine potential risks.  

Our value-added partnerships enhance the tools you use. 

The path to better achieving these goals isn’t just about partnering with our Members to understand what they need in their practices. We must build partnerships with other companies to leverage their tools, too. Then, make sure those tools are seamlessly integrated into our platform for optimal user experience.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention those partners and their dedicated, hard-working teams who have helped us grow our PXM platform to meet our Member’s needs. Thanks to Kno2, we’ve been able to offer clinics a way to get rid of paper faxes with Message Manager. Additionally, PredictionHealth has given us an AI-powered solution to reduce the time clinicians spend on writing compliant notes. A big shout out to BetterHealthcare, too—thank you for powering our online scheduling capabilities and helping clinics keep their schedules full while reducing front desk workloads. Also, partnering with WorldPay has allowed providers to easily manage payments directly from our platform.      

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And that’s just a fraction of what we’re working on in 2024 and beyond. While we have a lot of great stuff lined up, I’m counting on our Members to let us know how they feel—good or bad—to help guide the direction of the company in years to come. I’d urge any of our Members to give their feedback on new features and improvements that we can implement via our idea portal. Our goals and ambitions only make sense if they fit into what working clinicians need to make their lives easier. 

I’d like to close by saying how humbling it’s been to lead WebPT for almost three years now, and how honored I am for the opportunity every day.  I’m well aware that I’m standing on the shoulders of the incredible leaders who came before me, and that our position as industry leaders is due to the innovation and opportunities that they’ve built. I hope you’ll join us as we work to grow that innovation into something even greater.