Practice Growth Podcast

Marla Ranieri sits down with Dr. Chuck Thigpen, chief clinical and strategy officer at ATI Physical Therapy, to talk about what it takes to build a university partnership that works for everyone involved. Chuck has spent nearly three decades in physical therapy, from clinician to leading ATI's clinical strategy and its research arm, the Institute for Musculoskeletal Advancement. He shares how ATI structures mentorship for new graduates, including a 50-day onboarding program and a one-year musculoskeletal certification cohort, and why understanding what a university actually needs is the real key to a lasting partnership. They also cover the pressures reshaping the profession: rising education costs, workforce shortages, and reimbursement that hasn't kept pace with demand. Chuck offers a framework smaller practices can use to build their own university partnerships, even without a large system's resources.

Sean Lordan went from being a clinician to launching his own practice and scaling quickly to 5 locations. And unlike many practice owners, Sean’s next stage of growth isn’t being limited by hiring. In his world, finding and developing great clinicians is a strength, not a bottleneck. We’re going to dig into how he finds and develops top 1% talent, what makes his clinic a magnet for high-performing therapists, and how his unique coaching model and tech stack give him an edge in the talent war.

Today's guest, Jason Collin, has been a clinician, a clinic owner, and a leadership coach, and he now runs PT Revolution, a PT clinic and performance training facility in the Lake Tahoe area. He also earned a doctorate in organizational leadership, where his research became a framework he calls the High Performance Team Effect: clarity, connection, and communication.

What do payers actually care about, and how can physical therapists use that knowledge to their advantage? Host Marla Ranieri sits down with Dana Pommel Strauss, PT, DPT, Senior Director of Public Policy and Government Affairs at a Fortune 10 company, for a candid look at how reimbursement decisions are made and what the shift to value-based care means for the PT profession.

What does it take to build a rehab department where top clinicians not only want to work but choose to stay for decades? In this episode, we sit down with JeMe Cioppa-Mosca, Senior Vice President of Rehabilitation at HSS, the top ranked orthopedic hospital in the country. Over a 33 year career, she has built one of the most respected rehabilitation departments in the nation, known for attracting exceptional therapists and retaining them long term. At the center of that success is the career ladder they developed under her leadership.