Incorporating Business Practices Into Physical Therapy Education Program Practices

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to look at the business practices of physical therapy academic administrators in this millennium. The roles must encompass ever-expanding market analyses, assessment of competition, marketing, financial management, fund raising, and determining ways to satisfy their consumers-their students. The business practices will include developing the description of the physical therapy education program, market analyses, marketing, competition, operations, management/faculty/staff, financial management, contracts, servicing the customers/consumers, and resources. A yearly SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis and use of the SWOT matrixes will help the program to analyze fulfillment of its plan. Key Words: Commerce; Education, professional; Physical therapy. No doubt exists that the changes in the health care environment and in the ways in which health care is delivered have had their impact on physical therapy education. Reimbursement changes, supply and demand, right-sizing/downsizing, influence of corporate America, standards based less on tried and true and trial and error and more on evidence, technological developments, and increasing control by insurance companies to cite a few all have challenged physical therapy providers and educators as never before. With the costs of providing health services to our citizenry escalating once again to alarming rates, containing costs and yet providing the services that the American public has come to expect will provide increasing challenges to all of us. Our education programs, now graduating a practitioner with skills for autonomous practice, will have to instill the importance of providing the high quality of service that we expect of graduates with a thorough understanding of the need for containing costs. How to assure this quality of physical therapy service delivery in light of increasing emphasis on cost containment will present all of us with challenges in this millennium. And as much as some involved in health policy still speak about a national health insurance approach, the experiences in the United Kingdom and in Canada point out the fallacies in assuming this approach provides the cost-saving solutions to health care in the United States. Added to that is our incredibly diversified population that will continuously present challenges to using any one system to meet the needs of all. While the influence of big business in the provision of health services has not always led to the provision of the highest-quality services at an appropriate cost, many business principles are increasingly essential to a viable, productive physical therapy education program. And I would hope that we would select the best of those business practices that support the honesty and integrity of our activities, while shunning some of the worst practices that we have already seen in major health-related corporations. The roles of physical therapy academic administrators today and tomorrow must go well beyond those of curriculum and faculty development, providing input to the school or university's budget process, teaching, and scholarly activity. In this changing environment, the roles must encompass ever-expanding market analyses, assessment of competition, marketing, financial management, integration of all of the technological resources available, fund-raising, and determining ways to satisfy their consumers-their students. While we have watched swings in enrollments in physical therapy education programs since the beginnings of the profession in the United States, institutions of higher education are increasingly reluctant to continue to support programs that do not meet the student enrollments set by the institution. This will be increasingly so, because all of our programs will be at the doctoral graduate level. The potential for utilizing the global market as a base for potential students may be appealing; however, the changes in immigration rules and regulations will continue to make foreign student access to American education difficult at least through the beginning of the millennium. …