Patient Care, Practice Growth, Pro-Level Support: The ActivePro Rehab Partners Story
When Andrew Lotsis formed ActivePro Rehab Partners in 2020, it was with a single goal in mind: to support nine physical therapy clinics and their staff as they continued to serve patients all across New Jersey.
The managed service provider (MSO) currently represents 42 locations and more than 150 physical therapists by providing tools, resources and assets clinics need to harness their rapid growth while still staying true to their company culture.”
“We look for clinics that are passionate about clinical quality and excellence and clinicians who are educated and knowledgeable about best practices,” said Lotsis. “And from there, we support them as they implement the tools and resources they need to capitalize on their growth and expand out to help more people.”
While MSOs in other industries focus on business growth and development, Lotsis said ActivePro focuses on employees and patients first and foremost, which sets them apart within the physical therapy and healthcare industries, but within business as a whole.
“For us, it’s about great people running great businesses, not about good businesses becoming machines,” he added.
A Solution to New Challenges
Every new business faces challenges, and there are plenty of resources to support business owners just getting their feet underneath them. But as businesses – particularly clinics in the physical therapy space and other adjacent spaces – get off the ground, those resources tend to become irrelevant, as most of them are designed for new businesses.
Through ActivePro’s expansive network of clinicians and other physical therapy professionals, they have identified the challenges many clinics face and have developed quality solutions to help clinics prepare for the changing landscape of healthcare and focus on what’s coming next.
“We provide the best of both worlds: operations assistance through finance and accounting, revenue cycle and human resource management and more, and a business growth model that facilitates business acceleration through capital, partnerships, marketing and data analysis,” said Lotsis.
For Carl Gargiulo, regional director of New Jersey-based Strulowitz & Gargiulo Physical Therapy, ActivePro helped his clinicians respond to the drastic changes his practices were facing without sacrificing the quality of patient care.
“When we reached out to them, we were struggling with the changing landscape,” he said. “We have never looked back. Our business is booming and we’re able to focus on what we love – patient care.”
The Four Pillars
That emphasis on patient care is what sets ActivePro Rehab Partners apart from the crowd, said Lotsis. But being one of the largest therapy platforms in the Northeast doesn’t hurt either.
“We’re constantly expanding and we’re also developing a partnership and acquisition pipeline for neighboring states: Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia,” he said. “We’re really looking forward to having the chance to help more clinicians serve patients during the times they need it most, and we know ActivePro has the tools needed to make that happen.”
One of those tools is ActivePro’s Four Pillars of Best Clinical Practice – values on which each clinician who joins ActivePro is educated. While it’s important that each clinic maintains the ethos upon which patients have come to rely, Lotsis said it’s important that every ActivePro partner starts off on the same foot.
“These are pillars we look to implement, or we look to see if they’ve been implemented, in every clinic,” he added.
Each pillar focuses on a different element of patient care, Lotsis said. Patient Connection is about encouraging and inspiring patients to achieve both short- and long-term recovery goals by emphasizing that they are part of the clinic’s team. Patient Education should be an integral part of each session, whether that’s by explaining tissue healing time frames or the intent behind interventions or showing a patient how they can manage symptoms at home.
“Functional Approach and Clinical Advancement are both about the clinician, where the first two pillars are about the patient,” Lotsis said. “Functional Approach is about keeping implementation of goal-focused treatment sessions top of mind, and Clinical Advancement is about placing emphasis on ongoing education and expertise – which ActivePro supports in all our efforts.”
It’s ActivePro’s ongoing support of clinicians, coupled with their strong ties to every kind of resource clinics need to be successful, that make them a standout in the world of physical therapy and patient care.
“It goes back to that focus on patient care,” said Lotsis. “You can’t care for a patient if you don’t have good people as your staff. And you can’t bring in more patients if you’re not focusing on growth.”
