"We're a sports medicine practice first," asserts Dr. Scott Wise. He opened
Wise Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine in Western Pennsylvania in 1995. In recent years, he decided to "recapture the [Medicare] market," an expansion in his practice that lead him to install an
Endless Pool® for aquatic therapy … and other revenue-generating programs.
Two False Starts
"In 1999, we had a full pool-complex bid out," Dr. Wise recalls. "We decided cost was prohibitive," as might be expected for any independent practice contemplating new construction.
In 2014, Dr. Wise briefly considered a HydroWorx pool for his existing location, but "it was pre-built and didn't give us any customization options." With the lack of an adjustable swim current, the HydroWorx pool "certainly didn't meet our needs to swim or do balance work."
He then turned to Endless Pools. In addition to featuring a
fully adjustable swim current, the Endless Pool resolved his problems thanks to its modular construction: it allows for installation in existing rooms, saving on the cost of a new "complex," and for customization for a range of uses and locations.
Dr. Wise opted for a 15'-square
Dual Propulsion Endless Pool featuring side-by-side currents for swimming and resistance. The addition of two
Underwater Treadmills created new avenues for rehab and cross-training.
Opening New Doors
To accept Medicare, treatment "has to be one-on-one," Dr. Wise reports. The compact Endless Pool, with dedicated swim/treadmill stations, allows for the individual treatment of Medicare-eligible seniors with, for example, "osteoarthritis, cardiac rehab, [and] a lot of people with bad heart conditions that also have bad knees."
The Endless Pool gave Wise PT additional treatment options for their core audience, "our sports clients – high school, college, weekend warriors." Dr. Wise's experience has shown him that aquatic therapy can "get kids back faster."
Learning to swim is less intimidating in the relatively shallow, warm-water Endless Pool. At Wise Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine, the pool permitted them to "recapture the [Medicare] market" with one-on-one aquatic therapy. The pool also expanded their capabilities for their core audience of student and adult athletes, delivering new revenue streams for the two-location practice.
Quantifying Outcomes
"Outcomes are better, quicker" with the Endless Pool, Dr. Wise reports. With more than a decade of in-house case studies on older patients, he finds, "with Achilles reconstruction surgery, effectively we get about 22% quicker return than without the pool.
"We're getting people mobile more quickly. We can get them out of the boot and into the water." Without the pool, treatment of these seniors takes about 16 weeks, on average. With the addition of therapy in the Endless Pool, Dr. Wise and his team have shortened that time to around 12 weeks.
"And they're happier," he concludes of the Achilles/pool patients. Thanks to gentle aquatic therapy, "they don't have hip or back pain," which he reports are common "secondary conditions that arise" with Achilles damage.
