Transcript
Jason: Well, I'm excited to launch a sort of a, a mini podcast series with you, Larry, on the, on what I think we both would agree is a very important topic in the rehab industry right now, and that is compensation. How do we actually effectively compensate? Rehab professionals. Uh, by way of introduction, uh, probably good to start, start off with some introductions for those that are gonna be listening to us and, and watching us.
So, I'm Jason Wambold. I'm a physical therapist. I've been a physical therapist for 26 years, and I am the founder of Prompt Compensation. This is a platform that we've been utilizing for the last oh, 12 years to help. The industry come up with a better way and a more transparent way to effectively introduce variable compensation models that are designed to really, uh, positively impact the profession and cause.
Therapists to actually want to remain therapists. So that's my background. Lemme give you an opportunity to introduce yourself.
Larry: Sure. Well, thanks for inviting me, Jason. It's always, uh, it's wonderful to be here at the Prompt PT headquarters. What a place, what good vibe and good culture and you just exudes a lot of energy here.
And, uh, uh, I was here one other time, just really enjoyed it. Happy to talk to you about how we pay our therapist. It's a, uh, byproduct of the industry of reimbursement, of the business of pt if you want to go there. And it's really, really critical and I think we're at a time of immense challenge to margins of the business to be able to be viable, especially in outpatient private practice.
Um, that is unaffiliated with a hospital or an institutional setting. By way of background, I'm a PT as well. I always think of the Ben Franklin tombstones as Ben Franklin painter. And, and, uh, I, I, I hope to always be known as I'm a physical therapist. I started my career as a military pt. US Army Baylor Program.
I've been a pt, uh, 40 plus years. Once you're at the 40 year mark, by the way, you don't go 41, 42, 43. You just 40 plus say 40 plus. Yeah. And um, and I've been in all aspects of pt. I worked in inpatient, outpatient, um, I started a physical therapy business in the late eighties, mid to late eighties. And, uh, had a lot of outpatient clinics and, um, we transitioned that business very effectively.
And so I, uh, stayed in the educational sense. The outpatient PT clinic, I'm probably most recently known as the founder of Confluent Health, where I'm still the largest individual shareholder there. And Confluent Health has 850 plus clinics that are either wholly owned or joint ventures with private practice PTs.
We have a hospital, you know, contract therapy company. We have a network called PTPN, an onsite industrial company called um. Fit for work and then we do a tremendous. Um, you know, amount of work in the outpatient PT environment. And so, um, I migrated from founder CEO, uh, of that company to more of a founder role.
And, and now in my spare time, I'm also, uh, working in the dental world. I work with a private equity group that, uh, owns a very large, uh. Dental partnership organization or dental service organization, DSO, called Dental Care Alliance. And so allows me to stay in the PT world, but also get a perspective in learning some new additional things of, uh, of the dental world.
So it's quite a bit of fun and uh, I've really enjoyed it, but there's nothing I like more than talking about all things physical therapy.
Jason: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I appreciate and have appreciated our conversations up until this point because I think there are, this is a conversation that needs to be had. Uh, across the industry and, uh, I, I'm, I'm excited that you're willing to partner with us in this podcast series to help us really look at and dive into what we should be talking about.
And what, what, what I'm excited to do here with you is to really dive into some of these topics that might be uncomfortable.
Larry: Mm-hmm.
Jason: And I think those are the types of things that we need to actually dive into. So starting with that, uh, I thought we could kind of wind the clock back. And talk about how did we get to where we are today?
That would probably be a good place to start. You know, if I think back in my own career, if I go back 20, 25 years ago, um, interestingly, a couple things were, were different and the, and they stand out. The first of which was, I don't recall, and I'm curious to hear your perspective on this. I don't recall running into very many therapists that I knew personally who were specifically looking for.
Part-time roles or therapists who were specifically looking for a work structure that enabled them to work under 40 hours, a specific number of hours. They were looking to work 31 hours, 32 hours. Today. That seems to be, in my opinion, and from my perspective, more than norm, rather than the exception. So my question to you is, have you observed that as well?
And if so, what would be your. Sort of theory on why you might be seeing that?
Larry: Yeah. It's interesting. You know, outpatient physical therapy is a very young industry. If you really look at when it got endorsed was probably in the mid sixties with the advent of Medicare Part B, enabling PT to bill and get paid for services, primarily modalities.
Jason: Yeah.
Larry: And so from that, you started to see a growth. In outpatient PT in hospitals and then private practice started to come and be a thing.
Jason: Mm-hmm.
Larry: And private practice in those early days, um, was a very, very niche, uh, you know, the part of all of pt, it still is. I mean, up until a few years ago, I used to say that half the population doesn't know that outpatient PT exists and the other half the population can't remember where they went to physical therapy at.
And so the, the business has changed. The migration has changed, the reimbursement has changed enormously, but the supply and demand has changed more profoundly. And so we've had these various inflection points, and I think you have to look at the COVID period as one of those inflection points. Yeah. Up until 2001, physical therapy programs started to grow.
Pretty considerably until we got to where we were graduating about 5,000 PTs a year. That's not that many. However, there would be 10,000 physical therapists in the US system. There'd be 10,000 foreign trained therapists come in, half would pass the exam, and so we had a supply of 10,000. That's a significant supply after 2001.
Major inflection point. It got reduced to half that because all of a sudden foreign trained therapists were no longer welcome in the US When that happened, the, the shortages just took off. And so all of a sudden PTs could work where they wanted, when they wanted, and for whom they wanted. Mm-hmm. And they could switch jobs as often as they want and never be unemployed.
And I think you have to look at that as sort of the genesis of what you're saying, which is now we have a generation of PTs that wanna work less. And they want work-life balance, and they've seen the effects of COVID and they've seen the effects of hyperinflation that we had just a few years ago. And there's, they're fearful.
They've also seen the impact of student, uh, loans and, and, and all the things that go with it. Um, so that, that has had, you know, a profound effect on it. I think the other thing that's changed is reimbursement as a practical matter, hasn't changed in the last 10 years.
Jason: Yeah.
Larry: In fact, in a nominal basis, Medicare actually pays us less than they did 10 to 15 years ago.
And so you have this sort of. Inability to increase prices. You can increase your prices, but you're gonna get paid this certain amount. Then you had hyperinflation and purchasing power plus therapist wages went way up and the shortage also was significant. And so the employers reacted by saying, I'm just gonna give employees anything they want.
You wanna work 31 and a half hours, so be it. You wanna work there. You and, and, and I think that type of culture and atmosphere, um, was caused our current status quo. And it really has, um, you know. S you know, exponentially impacted the profession because now it's a very, very difficult business to make any kind of reasonable margin because you have high turnover, you have burnout, you have, uh, an industry that, to my knowledge, I don't know any other profession where our production has actually been reduced, our productivity has been reduced because the impact of the regulatory side of it, all of those things are pressure points to an industry.
We're now. We're effectively allowing our new entrants, the PTs, now we're up to graduating 12,000 PTs a year.
Jason: Mm-hmm.
Larry: And unfortunately, you know, call it a, a percentage don't pass the exam. A large percentage don't ever even go into clinical practice. And so you have an addressable market of like 78,000 PTs combined section meeting coming out.
All the descendants and their talent acquisition groups that are. Million dollar built out groups are gonna be going after those PTs. And guess what? They're not gonna interview 'em. They're gonna be offering them jobs. They're not gonna have to go through a process and, and really get somebody who they want.
They're gonna get somebody who's got a pulse. Yeah. And that has a profound impact. So I blame everybody. I blame the schools. I blame the employers. Um, I blame the individual therapist having unrealistic expectations and I blame the, uh, education system higher ed predominantly because you have high student, high cost, um, and, and therefore high student debt.
Jason: Yeah, there are certainly plenty of challenges, and I know we're in a future episode. We're going to get into some solutions, but there are a lot of challenges to unpack. One of the other ones that I think of. Is, uh, this idea that many therapists have when they graduate from school and they do go into clinical care, that they're going to be paid either by the hour or perhaps a salary.
That's really the only mindset they have. And specifically one of the things that I've noticed recently is I've run into more practices that are paying their therapist by the hour. Than any other model.
Larry: Interesting.
Jason: I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that because again, just from personal anecdotal experience, that was not my experience.
Uh, say 20 years ago, the vast majority of therapists that I knew, unless perhaps if they worked in a hospital setting, but outside of that, therapists were salaried professionals. Now, there are some challenges with that approach and we'll talk about that, but they were salaried by and large. Today what I run into is more often than not.
Therapists were being paid by the hour. So I want to ask you two questions about that. A have, has that been your experience as well? Have you run into that? And also you have experience in other healthcare industries. As of right now, you actually have experienced direct experience in the dental industry.
So I'm curious if you can compare and contrast what you're seeing in the physical therapy space with regard to hourly compensation models and other healthcare industries such as dentist.
Larry: Yeah, there's a tremendous amount of, you know, consequences of shortages and those consequences are employers have reacted.
Predominantly by a, a spattering of offers, including, I'll pay off your scholarship, I'll pay your student debt. I'll give you a sign on bonus. I've seen cars being offered. I'm not surprised that you're seeing hourly amounts. I personally, like California's the only state that I know where you have to pay PTs by the hour because to there, the state and California.
PT is a diminished, it's not even a profession, it's an hourly worker. Find me a profession that is a billable minute, like the law profession where you have more pressure, more depression, more, you know, uh, all kinds of psycho psycho effects, including burnout. Um. I don't like the idea of PTs coming out and expecting a certain compensation or an hourly amount because employers react to that and it just compounds the problem.
Most professionals, you know, and I go back to physical therapy, has predominantly become a business that is supported by clinicians dental. Medical is a clinical service that is supported by business. It's a big difference. And so if you're a dental professional or a primary care physician and you're in a management service organization, the laws basically say the corporate practice of medicine, say a company cannot be.
Yeah. Interfere with the clinical decision making. In fact, they can't own the docs. They have to have their own professional corporation. Yeah. And that has to be a, a, a professional, a doctor or a dentist. Yeah. We have those roles in physical therapy, but outside of New York, they're not obliged at all.
Jason: Mm-hmm.
Larry: And I'm a big believer we have to go back to that so that we can have a clinical. You know, uh, leadership supported by business, revenue cycle management, technology, all the things that you need to support the business, where now the business is being supported by PTs. Yeah. All of that is diminished physical therapy.
We're not a doctoring profession we aspire to be.
Jason: Mm-hmm.
Larry: But how many doctoring professionals come out and they're paid by the hour? How many come out and they're not paid on somewhat of a production model where they get a piece of what they produce, and all of these effects have become culture. And they become normalized.
So it's very normal to expect these kind of things, and unfortunately, it has consequences. Those consequences are, we're not a doctoring profession. We're really not an independent clinical decision making profession. We can reverse that and we have the power to reverse it, but I believe a lot of that has been created by the shortages and employers really believing that the widget maker PTs are there to support their business rather than the, the, the contour of that.
Jason: Yeah. If we look at small privately owned practices, um, versus, uh, larger multi-state entities, do you think it's more, if we look at those practices, which by and large are paying their therapist by the hour, do you think it's more that that small private practice owner is saying, I would prefer to pay my therapist's a salary.
But they're coming in asking for an hourly rate, and as a result, I'm going to pay them an hourly rate. Or do you think it's the bias that the actual owner has where the owner's thinking, I need to pay these therapists by the hour for whatever reason? One of those reasons might be to control cost. If there isn't a a, a patient there, I get to send my therapist home.
I get to save some money regardless of what the reason is. Chicken versus the egg question there, what do you think?
Larry: Yeah, I'm not a hundred percent sure because I don't have a lot of experience in paying therapists hourly unless they're part-time.
Jason: Mm-hmm.
Larry: Um, I will tell you that if the idea behind paying therapists hourly is to control costs, it's not a good mechanism to control costs.
The only mechanism that control costs is in the control cost is variable compensation.
Jason: Mm-hmm.
Larry: So if you talk to most practice owners, whether they're paying them salary or whether they're paying them hourly. I believe they look at compensation as. A fixed cost. The reality is, and you could look at any accounting book, it is the most variable cost you have in a business is your labor.
Mm-hmm. 'cause you can spike it up or down depending on demand in theory. And so the way to control for that is through a variable mechanism of compensation. I know we're gonna get, get into that at a later. Point in terms of, you know, potential solutions. So if practice owners are doing that, it's not a good sound business decision.
If that's the expectation. Maybe it's driven by the schools, you know, maybe it's driven by, if you know the academic side, which says if you go out to an employer and they're not offering you a good hourly amount, or they're telling you, you have to see many patients run. And so maybe, maybe there's been an imprinting or, you know, indoctrination, um.
Regardless. The culture has to change. The culture has to be more of, if we're going to be a doctoring profession, we're gonna be clinicians, and we make our compensation through clinical work. What have we historically done in pt? The way we've elevated compensation is to drive you out of the clinical realm.
Yes, we bring you in to become a clinician. We train you to become a board certified therapist. You're on a, you're on a compensation model, which is typically a salary. Oh, how can I pay you more? I'm gonna make you a clinic director. Oh. When you're a clinic director, you can't see patients a hundred percent of the time.
The expectation is 80%. Oh, you're a good clinical director. Let's make you a regional director. Now you're down to 20, 30% of the clinical time, but you're making more money.
Jason: Yeah,
Larry: and those things do not add up. A true doctoring profession does not have their own doctors as. Clinic managers, regional managers, and the like, find me an orthopedic surgeon who's a clinic director, who's a regional manager of other orthopedic clinics.
You can, it doesn't exist, and so what you have to do is you have to shift the paradigm back to the clinicians or the money makers. We have to pay 'em more. It's not that complicated. A true doctoring profession doesn't need to be coddled. They don't need regional managers. Now, if you have a clinician that's working in a region, that's a clinical facilitator that goes in and works with the CL clinicians on more interventions, higher order, next up skills, critical thinking skills, manual therapy skills.
That's not what they're doing. They're doing business. They're helping choose the carpet of the next de novo. They're helping them order equipment. They're helping them replace the front desk person. You don't need a PT to do that.
Jason: Yeah.
Larry: What you need is your PTs to make more money by seeing more patients when they can make money seeing patients.
They'll never wanna be a regional manager. Yeah. They'll never wanna be a clinic director. That's again, does the business support the clinicians or is the clinicians there to support the business?
Jason: Yeah. Yeah. We will not have any trouble running out of things to talk about with regard to challenges, but there's another one that I definitely wanna make sure we hit, and that is this concept of burnout.
Larry: Yeah.
Jason: Work life balance burnout. You know, one of the things that's very interesting, I did a, I had the opportunity to speak to a, uh, a group of third year PT students recently, and I asked them, what is the primary concern that you have? What's on your mind? What's your primary concern as you get ready to graduate and get your first job?
I thought that what they would say is, how do I repay my loans? That's what I was anticipating, that they would say this debt to income. Uh, ratio imbalance that we have. That's not what they said. What they said is almost across the board, I'm worried about burnout. That was their primary concern. They're not even licensed therapists yet, and they're worried about burnout.
They're worried about maintaining their work life balance. Um, I'll give you my take on that and I wanna hear your take on it. See if it's, it's different from my perspective. Uh, a sense of burnout is not. A virus that you catch. You know, I experienced burnout. It showed up one day and there was nothing I could do about it.
It's also not tied to volume. I think we, we very often, certainly those of us that are hiring and recruiting and trying to retain therapists. Mm-hmm. Think of this concept of burnout. Let's make sure I don't ask my, my, my therapist to see too many patients, because then they might be burnt out. From my perspective, burnout is a function of a lack of control.
It's a feeling that you're a cog in the wheel and you have no control. You have no say over what your day looks like. Someone else is giving you, uh, certain metrics that you need to hit, and you have no say in the matter regardless of whether that's five visits a day or 30 visits a day. If you feel that you have no control, you could be seeing a low volume of patients and burnout.
Or you could be seeing a higher volume of patients and feel certainly perhaps tired at the end of the day, but very fulfilled because you chose to see that volume of patients. So in my mind, burnout is tied to choice, not volume. What's your take on that?
Larry: Yeah, and first of all, I would agree with you, but this is a multifactorial thing and autonomy, purpose.
And, and, and the like is one aspect on it, and control is a big component of it, but it's more than that dimensionally. And so I look very classically at burnout and I think unfortunately burnout has been conflated with fatigue and with depersonalization. The real definition of burnout is I no longer get a sense of accomplishment in the work that I'm doing.
Jason: Hmm.
Larry: Um, I no longer have any joy of doing this. Burnout is almost like a diagnosis. Okay. It does not have an ICD code with it, don't get me wrong, but it has a complex of symptoms that are pretty, pretty consistent. The more I do, I'm not getting any joy out of it. I see no progress with it. And, um, we have to look, there's, there's all kinds of burnout inventory.
Um, checklist. The, the Maslow's, the, the, the, the biggest one. But there are other shorter ones where you can actually diagnose burnout. Okay. What I think people do is they conflate it with fatigue and depersonalization. We are in the relationship business. We work with human beings, and so as your day goes on, you have a natural tendency to what is called calcification.
A lot of this research comes through call center research, where you're not even, you're dealing with a human being, but through a phone. And so you, you become numb to the fact that there's a human being on the other side of the desk from you, and that's called calcification. And so you have to decalcify, you have to take pause breaks, you have to take refreshments, you have to take, you know, whatever your thing is.
Maybe it's listening to music. And you have to get away from a real human being in order to come back and recognize that they're three dimensions. That's. Life. That's normalization. Now. Burnout is very real and has those other complex symptoms. But here's what we are finding now, is that they come into a clinic, and I don't blame the employers for this.
I blame the system for it. And how we train therapists, they come in and a certain number of them are already burned out.
Jason: Yeah.
Larry: That didn't happen 20 years ago. Yeah. Physician literature cites the same thing. By the time they finish medical school, they're burned out.
Jason: Yeah.
Larry: And so all of a sudden, I'm the new employer.
I finally. Paid all this money, sign on bonuses. I had a big booth at CSM. I've spent all this money to get a new pt, by the way. I'd rather have PTs get that part of that big booth money and now all of a sudden I got a PT and they're, and they're burned out. You should absolutely, in your interview process determine if somebody is a burnout, if there's, I'm not saying you shouldn't hire them, I'm just saying you need to intervene more and, and that's why the turnover effect is very, very high.
So burnout is extremely real and we have to deal with it, you know, as an employer. The reality though is there are better ways to deal with it on a way, and exactly what you said, autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Give them some sense of control per get them to be master clinicians. The goal when you come into our organization is become a master clinician as best exhibited by.
Becoming board certified, but not only you're gonna take an advanced set of skills, you're gonna upskill and you're become a master and purpose. We're gonna constantly remind you that what you do is important, meaningful work. It is makes an impact in a dent in a human being who come in and they can't run, they can't walk, and now here's what you've done.
You've gotta constantly remind 'em of them. So autonomy, master purpose, right? Unfortunately though, what employers do, and I swear I'm gonna blame employers, what do they do? They have bi tools. They'll say the BI doesn't lie. You're not billing enough units. They send our Micropulse surveys every other day.
Or micro and information and dashboards. Tell 'em how unproductive they are. Tell 'em that they're averaging 11.2 patients and they need to average 11.4. By the way, I don't know where you're gonna get that 0.2 of a patient, but if you find them, let me know. And those constant reminders are little reinforcements.
Think 'em of macro calcifications that contributes to burnout. Because you've taken away autonomy. Yeah. You've taken away mastery. You've taken away purpose. Yeah. There's ways I think you can deal with it, but that is absolutely part of a macro challenge that's happening. I think if there's any good news, I think over the past year or so, I think we saw this huge increase in burnout, and I generally sense some stability right now, which is a good thing.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So employers are learning.
Jason: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And along those lines, one of the things that, that we see in feedback from, uh, staff therapists and when we interview therapists who have left clinical care, which is something else that we definitely need to talk about, because that is, there are more options than ever for therapists to not be in clinical care, separate from being promoted to a clinic directorship role or something, something of that nature.
But one of the things that we typically see is therapists say, I left. Clinical care because I didn't see a path to my own growth. I didn't see a career trajectory for me. So how would you respond to that? When we do hear therapists who say, I get that I could move into a clinical director role, I'm not interested.
In that. So in your mind, is that where a master clinician comes into play in order to give that therapist a clear and distinct path towards some sort of career growth that would keep them in clinical care?
Larry: Yeah, so it's, it's, it's a very good question. Generally, and I chief guilty officer of all this, generally we've brought PTs into a bifurcated path.
One is a clinical path, well, well, they both start out on a clinical path. Yeah. The clinical path is you become a master clinician and in our culture that meant residency. And we would not even hire PTs unless they were committed to within the first six months entering a residency. Mm-hmm. Becoming board certified.
And that's kind of a year to two year process. Right. And unfortunately, what we did in the, in the, um, specialty world is we said we could facilitate that by going faster by, if you do a residencies, it used to be 18 months, now they're a year, you become board certified. We should have lengthened it. Right, because they would've kept the therapist in a more of a clinical role, and then if they stay in the clinical realm, they don't have a business or leadership, you know, acumen or aptitude or you know, anything around that.
Then we say you could become, you could teach in our fellowship program, you could teach on weekends. You could become a clinical facilitator. You become a clinical instructor. All, or you can go in academia. Okay, that's a really good pathway and that pathway should absolutely continue. But then we said we, we have a second pathway.
And your second pathway is the path to sort of ownership, right? Mm-hmm. It's a path to becoming a good master clinician. Then we're gonna make you a good leader and a good manager and you're gonna manage a clinic, and then you're gonna be a regional manager and you might even own Harvard. Guess what we do in that pathway?
We take 'em out of being a clinician. Yeah. Again, chief guilty officer here, I'm doing the same thing. I would absolutely. Reverse those by making the clinical path, the pathway to ownership and the priority around compensation. I would say I would still make this other path available, but the further you go it, you're gonna actually get paid less, not more.
Jason: Mm-hmm.
Larry: And how is, what is the unintended consequences of this and our profession right now, call it 300,000 PTs license. I know those numbers are hard to come by 'cause you have the therapists that are licensed in multiple state on an FTE basis, and I've run these numbers. On a full-time equivalent basis, only about 20 to 25% of our PTs are full-time clinicians.
Olivia: Mm-hmm.
Larry: What is it in primary care? What is it in dentistry? What is it in orthopedic surgery, doctoring profession versus a profession who we're doing all we can to take you out of a doctoring profession. Yeah. Um, I spoke recently at the sessions, ask people, by show of hands, did ask 'em to actually raise their hands.
How many people in that room are full-time clinicians? Very few. Virtually none. If I was speaking at a dental or a primary care Graham sessions and I said, how many of you are seeing patients? I, well, that's how I make my money. That's, that's my job.
Jason: They would almost look at you funny with that question.
Like, well, what do you mean why would I not be treating patients?
Larry: Exactly. What would I be doing? Would, would I be a regional director?
Jason: Right.
Larry: Yeah, exactly. And so all of that unintended consequences been horrible on the clinical culture. Around master clinician and how we make our compensation and our living is by seeing patients and getting them better.
We have put all these negative feedback loops to take people out of being in clinic. Nurses have had, you know, very similar challenge, although they're not technically a provider like PTs are, and so that's the cultural shift. If we're going to get compensation, other things right, like we're gonna talk about later, we gotta get the culture and the normalization.
The normalization is you're gonna be a clinician your entire. Life.
Jason: Yes.
Larry: How many? I'm 63 years old. How many 63-year-old clinicians do you see? Not a whole lot.
Jason: Yeah.
Larry: Right.
Jason: Yeah.
Larry: Again, I'm, I'm one of the non-clinician. I started out as a board certified PT in both orthopedics and clinical electrode. Mm-hmm.
Less than 3% of PTs are double board certified. Mm-hmm. Okay. What had happened to me, well, I found opportunity in the business side of it. And I had good acumen towards it. And I went on and I got an MBA and I went on later and I got a master's in applied positive psychology to learn about burnout and positive psychology that can be transported into our profession to help our clinicians.
But I'm an example of somebody who came out of the clinical realm. You're an example of somebody who came clinical realm, not right or wrong.
Jason: Mm-hmm.
Larry: Um, but we were almost incentivized to because that's the only way we could have made more money.
Jason: Yes.
Larry: And we have to reverse that.
Jason: Yes. Yes. And I think that's a great segue into what we'll be talking about in the future because you're in, in, in our next session, because you're absolutely right.
We have to come up with a way to make it, and, and if I had had this, my trajectory would've been different. We have to come up with a way to make it attractive, certainly financially, but otherwise, to stay in clinical care
Larry: a hundred
Jason: percent. And right now what we do is we make it attractive to leave clinical care.
Hundred percent. And then we wonder why we don't have enough providers. So I think this is a great time for us to transition over to our next section where we, we will actually be talking about what to do about these challenges. There are plenty of challenges, but I think we would both agree that there's lots of untapped opportunity where we can do exactly what we just said, make it attractive for therapists to want to stay in to
Larry: stay.
Jason: Therapist clinical care. Yep. Yep, a
Larry: hundred
Jason: percent. So look forward to talking with you about that topic.
Olivia: Perfect.
Jason: Okay. How long was that?
Olivia: 30 minutes.
Larry: Oh, that was perfect.
Jason: Oh
Larry: yeah, yeah, yeah.
Olivia: But I think for like the first episode, intro, all the things you guys discussed, 30 minutes is perfect.
Jason: Good starter.
Olivia: Good starter. Alright.
Jason: Yeah, it was good. Yeah. Yeah, that
Larry: was good.
Olivia: Okay.
Jason: You're a natural Larry.
Olivia: You guys really both are.
I have to say that. Yeah. I was listening and I was like, this is incredible. Like it's really good. Does anybody need bathroom break?
Larry: I'm good. Did you think.
Olivia: Water refresh. Anything? Coffee?
Larry: No,
Jason: I'm actually good with the coffee.
Olivia: Thanks. Perfect. Okay.
Larry: After the next one I'll have a cup of coffee.
Olivia: Of course, of course.
I was like, I wanna open the floor for any breaks now. Yeah. And then we can jump into episode two.
Jason: Episode two. Sounds good to
Olivia: me. Episode two. Perfect.
Larry: Yeah. All uh, and on episodes two, since we're, since the primary challenge we're gonna talk about is compensation, but it'll raise other challenges. Yeah.
Let's start that whole thing out with what is compensation? Yes. Because.