[15/20] Top 20 takeaways from AAPPM meeting

Hello, welcome to Podiatry practice Mastery. This is section 15 out of 20. I'm I have more notes here and I'm kind of getting tired of do me every day here, but this was a good one. When I when I was at this recent, a BPM meeting, someone brought up an idea of hiring a pedorthist in your practice. And let me explain kind of the the backstory in our practice. The struggle, the struggle we've had, I don't know, you might be doing shoes.

So, we used to do shoes and we found that the, the juice wasn't worth the squeeze, for our patients, we have a very high Sports Medicine practice and we do just one day of Diabetic Care per week. So I do one day and the other two, doctors, two of the doctors do just a half day. So that's what are we do? All of our diabetics and We so we don't do a lot of that. We kind of one way of doing we wanted to do less as we limit our access.

So we each have different days - Friday, the other doctors ones on Tuesday and ones on Thursday, and then otherwise, you can't be seen lately. Of course, we'll see wounds and things like that, but we're not going to do nail care. And so, I know some practices don't do any nail care or they have someone else doing the Nail Care.

The, the challenge for us is when we were doing the, the shoes is that the page that there were a lot of returns, and we didn't really, I think that real big problem was as I'm thinking back as we didn't have one person that was responsible for it. I think that's the key. So this is the idea of having like a pedorthist or a North assist in your practice. The the practices that do this

really well. They have a they have to someone on staff, let's say you pay them $25 an hour to do a do too. To be a pedorthist or an orthotist they they can do for you was so if you need someone with that comes with diabetes they can just pretty much sighs. Everyone for the diabetic shoes. Have the pick out the shoes, things like that and dispense them. But beyond that, what I'm kind of excited about is that they could also dispense and caste people and make adjustments for braces.

So all these afos that we're trying to do in our practices and whereas, yes, we can certainly have one of our own staff do it but By having a pedorthist on staff or hiring someone, it just can raise the level even of thinking about the different types of braces and shoe modifications and things that can be done, especially for a busy practice, they could have different days of different offices and they can help with other things in the office. So I like that idea.

The pedorthist course isn't too complex. I think we had it over at Shoal so I like this idea that they could do the shoes, they could do the orthotic dispensing, they could do the orthotic scanning. They could do all the braces and then I think it would feasibly increase the amount of braces that we're doing in our office. And then that would pay kind of their, let's say they're there, their hourly rate things like

that. So that was, that was one of the other takeaways here of a hiring other types of ancillary people. I know, I was kind of interested. There's a some I think you guys know the inventor of correctos Ray. He interviewed him a while back and I'll put a link to the interview here. Underneath here, or on the side of the video that this audio. But rate he has an interesting practice free talks about all of us. Correctos right.

He's selling correctos for everyone but then he has instead of Physicians assistants or medical assistance, he has naturopathic Physicians. And I think it's the kind of the natural nature of his correctos and things like that, but I thought that was a neat idea so he has his practice with.

I think there's three of them and that that work for him or work with him or something like That so and then there was another idea of hiring instead of a pedorthist, one of the other doctors, they actually had a primary care within within the practice. So this way with a primary care in the practice, you could they could do like they can see the patient's for the signing off for the diabetic, the Vie diabetic verification that you need for the shoes, that's one

reason. But another reason is by having a physician on staff weather, Whether they're or virtual this is, my didn't know about. So if they're there, that's great. They're actually working out of your office, but some doctors are like, almost like doctors for rent, MD's for rent. So for five hundred dollars a month or whatever. They sign off on. They cosine different notes. What would the notes before?

Well the notes could be for a physician's assistant that could work for you because in our state we can't hire them but an MD could do that. They could also I think here in Massachusetts now nurse practitioners can practice independently. So they don't need If a primary care but also we were talking a little bit about like pharmacies having a, an office Pharmacy in some of these other types of things that you could do in your office and you might need a

medical doctor. So there are medical doctors that you can hire that they will just kind of sign off. I most like sign off on your note saying that you did certain things or the other staff managing the staff. So anyway, that's an idea of a couple of other people that you

could hire within your practice. If you didn't just want to hire more podiatrist, one of the struggles, we have, And I've talked to other people about this about hiring, a physician's assistant and nurse practitioners, I think, if you would have a maybe a, let's say, a nursing home practice where you're doing a lot of nursing homes, and I'll certain patients that you want to do this with, but my perception, the perception of my partner is that if we tend to see more as

podiatrist, so when we're doing, let's say the nails are other types of things. You might see in other problem, you're going to treat a posterior tibial, tendon dysfunction, you're going to get an x-ray, you're going to do a vascular study, you're going to do all these other things that you might see more. Then then what the physician's assistant or nurse practitioner, depending on your training for that for that type of a person? Just, because of your training.

That's why we currently don't have them. I'd love to know what you guys think or if it works really great. In your practice hiring, these other ancillary staff, who have you have? If you have any other types of Staff, I've always dreamed about having someone That could help patients with weight loss because I always that's kind of an area that I feel like I can help and I could help patients more or like a, like a health coach or something else like that.

Kind of having a concierge practice where you have a health coach there, that would help your patients, reach their goals for weight loss, and diabetes control and things like that. Anyway, I hope you guys found this beneficial, if you want to learn more, I would ask you to go to Podiatry, practice Master e.com and in there, you can get my foot treat my patient presentations, which is like this too.

Tool patients presentations tool, which I use every single day I was using it a ton yesterday, like three or four patients with Achilles tendonitis and just simplifies kind of how we treat and kind of going down the list of treatment options. Hope that helps you. And once again, please send me e-mail. Donít Podiatry, practice Master e.com, let me know your thoughts, give me some feedback. What other topics you'd like to talk about or if you want to be interviewed, I'd love to

interview. Those interviews are fun. Got an identity, fun one yesterday. With a gentleman. He had some great. Great tips. You'll be seeing soon. Okay, have a good one.