Personal Trainer Advertising

[Guest guest]

Greg, 11-27-2008 (Happy Thanksgiving! and thanks for the good

comments!)

When I was born the cost of a doctor's office visit was $5 and

hospital costs for my own delivery were less than $150. There was no

such thing as health insurance or third party payers. I

verified these numbers with my dad who is a retired doctor, and

with the actual receipt from the hospital where I was delivered.

Third party payers have caused costs to climb because of the need

for more support staff. As those third party payers cut costs by

raising

copays and trimming our fees we have to be the go-getters on " delivering

the goods " (results) better than any other profession. I'm pretty sure

that we can do this though we sure will have to network/ collaborate

with other

disciplines to be most effective and profitable especially for longer

duration services.

By the way I spent a day with one of the trainers for Mike Tyson. Their

facility

isn't really very plush and their fee is $150/hour. That trainer

happens to

do Active Release Therapy (ART), whirlpool treatments, and a few other

modalities

but not when I was there. It helps to be a former

olympian to get THAT personal trainer job however.

Lance P. Van Arsdell, PT

Mesa, AZ

--- Re: personal trainer advertising (yet another

example)

Date: Wed, November 26, 2008 12:46 pm

To: PTManager

There are so many issues that this story highlights: direct access,

cost, marketing, scope of practice, ethics...

I totally agree that this is outside of your typical personal

trainer scope of practice. However, there are individuals who

either have many years of experience to provide effective treatment

programs, or are enterprising risk takers who are ignorant of the

medical, neurological, physiological aspects of a case like this but

attempt it anyway and then get great press.

I see this as another opportunity for PT to lose ground to these

other professions. Let's face it, a month with this trainer likely

costs less than a week of PT. That may not be a factor for an

insured patient, but what happens when the benefits run out?

(Especially in today's economy) There are those of us who work in

organizations were we have no control over pricing and cannot be

competitve.

I agree that we need to more effectively market our expertise

to further differentiate ourselves from the copmpetition, be

proactive rather than reactive, and establish professional

networking relationships with these other professions to help guide

practice patterns as much as we are able to in our local markets.

Thanks for stimulating discussion about threats to the profession,

otherwise we grow complacent.

Greg Hamilton, PT

Decatur, IL