Orthopaedic Sports, Inc. (known to the communities we serve as OSI Physical Therapy) was started by Paul Niemuth, DPT, OCS, SCS, ATC, in 1980. Paul opened a very small office in Stillwater and worked closely with the physicians at St. Croix Orthopaedics, Stillwater Medical Group, and other local family physicians. Much of Paul’s emphasis was growing his physical therapy reputation with sports rehabilitation for area high school athletes. Paul added several therapists to his staff over the next six years, most notably Mike Ripley, PT, ATC, who is now a principle owner of the practice; Ginny Peulen, PT, CHT, who is OSI’s Hand Therapy Coordinator; Jan Olson, PT, OT, CHT, a hand therapist in our Forest Lake office; Kathleen Picard, PT, OSI’s Public Relations Manager; and Jim Hoyme, PT, co-owner with Mike and OSI’s Director of Operations.
The practice continued to grow in the 80’s, and we expanded offices to a new clinic in Stillwater, Maplewood, and Woodbury (which we later moved to Lake Elmo). Our relationships with referral sources grew, and we began getting patients referred to us by MinnHealth Family Practice, East Metro Family Practice, Summit Orthopaedics, Metro Hand Surgeons, and other practices in the metro area.
In the 90’s we added offices in Forest Lake, White Bear Lake (in White Bear Racquet & Swim Club), and a more defined occupational health program called The Work Center in Stillwater. In 2002 we opened an office in West St. Paul, and in April 2004, we began serving the residents of N. St. Paul with our 7th office. The Work Center has grown significantly as well. We now provide occupational health services in both our Stillwater and Forest Lake offices, and our Work Center PTs and OTs provide a broad range of services in the clinics and at employer work sites.
In addition to Mike and Jim, OSI has 4 additional minority shareholders – Kathleen Picard, PT; Shari Walters, PT, OCS; Julie Meyer, PT; and Steve Peterson, PT. We employ over 50 PTs and OTs who focus their practices on orthopedic rehabilitation or occupational health services, and they are supported by 7 PTAs. We also have preventative and wellness programs.
OSI is part of a “network” of 5 other private practices in the Twin Cities and Mankato – Wenger Physical Therapy, Creekside Physical Therapy, PTOSI, Minnesota Sport & Spine Rehab, and Saunders Therapy Centers – called Therapy Partners, Inc. (TPI). TPI provides contracting, marketing, and business office functions for the practices, and its member practices have worked to create consistent clinical processes throughout the network.
OSI has grown dramatically over the years, but especially since 1996 when we implemented our clinical guideline-based care management system, which truly distinguishes our practice from others. This system has allowed OSI to provide consistent, predictable therapy services at very reasonable cost to payers and with high level outcomes for our patients. Our therapists provide their individual skills and treatment approaches in an environment of consistent care management. Since 1996 we have grown from 22 PTs, OTs, and PTAs to about 60 today.
Our therapists saw over 11,000 new patients in 2002, over 13,000 new patients in 2003, and over 15,000 new patients in 2004. Our physical therapists see patients with a broad range of orthopedic conditions or injuries involving the spine and extremities. We also encourage our therapists to attain expertise in specific areas such as hand therapy, aquatic therapy, women’s health, TMJ disorders, biofeedback, sports injuries, occupational health, manual therapy, and vestibular rehab. We put strong emphasis on outstanding customer service and strong referral source, patient, and payer relationships.
OSI has a basic set of values that drive decisions by administration and management. These same values should also influence your decisions in dealing with patients, their family members, referral sources, payers, colleagues, managers, and any situation that faces you.
These decisions are not always easy because what one perceives as “right” may be perceived by another as “wrong”. But whether you are making a decision regarding taking a walk-in patient or administration is making a decision regarding whether to start a new program, we have to ask ourselves,
“Will this decision benefit OSI as a whole?”
OSI exists to solve problems. For example: • Patients want to feel and move better. • Doctors want their patients to be happy with the services to which they refer. • Health plans want more information about what to expect from therapy. • Employers want their injured workers to return to work as soon as possible.
How can we accomplish solutions in the most effective way? We as therapists must constantly strive to find the best way to achieve “quality” patient outcomes at the most reasonable cost. In addition to providing excellent patient care that results in high level functional, satisfaction, and cost outcomes, we must always search for and implement other information, services, and products that help ALL of our customer sets – patients and their families, referral sources, employers and health plans, and our staff. We have to constantly strive to create VALUE for our customers.
Value = Effectiveness ÷ Cost
OSI must strive day in and day out to create solutions for everyone with whom we deal so that at the end of the day all who have a stake in our services say,
“OSI provides valuable therapy services that truly exceed my expectations!”
Every company must have an attainable vision that pushes it to reach to the full extent of its grasp. Like all successful organizations, OSI must have an ultimate dream of where we want to be.
OSI’s vision is to create a stronger, more successful therapy company by performing the various activities that result in all of our customer sets saying,
“All things considered, OSI is the best resource for helping people improve their physical performance.”
We must accomplish the above three goals to achieve our vision. We must help our patients achieve or progress adequately toward their expected functional outcomes in a way that engages their effective participation; we must do so via a process that is cost-effective for all parties who participate in payment for our services – patient (and family), health plan, employer; and we must provide an environment that creates a meaningful and satisfying experience for you and all of our staff members.
OSI’s workplace culture, like any organization’s, is hard to put into words. Culture is an aura… a feeling… and quite subjective. In spite of the difficulty of applying a specific definition, we feel that it really boils down to the fact that we are “employee focused and customer driven”.
But what does that mean?
Well…administration and management must maintain a strong commitment to facilitating an environment of employee involvement, allowing input, listening to concerns, assessing how those concerns fit into OSI’s overall clinic and business operations, and responding to our employees’ needs. Employees must WANT to help their colleagues and cooperate with management and administration. We all must respect each other’s concerns and viewpoints. Work should be fun and fulfilling because all of us feel like we play a vital part on the OSI Team.
When each staff member has a feeling of “belonging to a cohesive team” she or he will be more likely to gladly serve our customers. Customer-focused service depends on everyone deriving great satisfaction from giving a strong individual and team effort to meeting customer needs.
OSI’s philosophy of care is deeply driven by what our patients and other customers desire from us and is fully supported by our functional, patient satisfaction, and utilization outcomes.
In essence, our philosophy of care means that we will not necessarily treat every patient until he or she is “100%”, but we will treat them until they have progressed adequately toward his or her expected outcomes and can safely self manage the condition. This is totally driven by patient expectations and what seems reasonable and right for the health care system as a whole. For example, an injured worker may need to be “100%” in that she must be able to lift 50# before she can return to work. We should treat that person until she has achieved such a functional goal. On the other hand, someone else may want to be able to ultimately lift 50# but may not have as critical of a time-based urgency to do so. The therapist may discharge that person when he can lift 30# if they both feel that the patient is likely to attain the 50# goal in a reasonable period of time by performing a defined self-management program.
We know that with our highly skilled and dedicated therapy providers and efficient and caring support staff, we can help our patients achieve their desired goals if they actively participate in the process. A vast majority of the people you serve want to not only improve, but they also truly want to learn how to take care of their problem independently.
As therapists we all must make critical decisions with every patient we see – What tests & measures should I perform? How many visits does this patient need? Is this patient progressing as expected? Should I change my plan of care? Is this patient ready for discharge? These critical decisions involve care management, and our staff has spent the last 10 years developing clinical guidelines to help all of us make consistent care management decisions. This provides our practice with the disciplined environment that is truly valuable in our health care market and helps us create strong relationships with third party payers and patients.
Yet as much as consistency is critical, creativity is equally vital to quality care and employee satisfaction as a therapist in our practice. We refer to our overall process of delivering therapy as our care management pyramid. We will discuss this in more detail in your interview.
