My journey to clinic leadership at Alliance started when my spouse was relocated from one coast to another for their job in the military. At the time, I was a clinic director for an independent, single-owner physical therapy company and I was looking for leadership opportunities in the part of North Carolina we were moving to. 

I applied to multiple opportunities in the area and I was committed to not just asking questions about the job or the responsibilities, but the culture as well. My conversations with Peak went really well and aligned with the way I like to run my clinic, so that’s where I decided to go.

I didn’t start right away in the position I was hired for because the building I would be running didn’t exist yet! Instead, I started working at another location to see how another clinic director ran her clinic, and started getting used to the EMR system and the company as a whole. I got to be very involved with the building process for the new clinic, including picking out of the options for floor plans and adding aspects to it that I wanted, which was pretty cool! I got to see what color skims they were thinking and adjust that as well. And I picked the equipment that I felt was important to me to have in the clinic considering the patient demographics I believed I would be seeing. 

The company provided an initial startup budget, and from there it became my responsibility to grow the clinic after it opened. In the years since opening this clinic from scratch, I have grown more and added staffing and equipment that all fits together well to create the atmosphere we strive to have for our patients. I have been lucky so far not to have to do a ton of crazy marketing because we have been busy enough. But soon we are adding a new specialty to the clinic that I want to market for, so we can pull in more of those types of patients. 

Now there are definitely some things that weren’t perfect during this whole process. For instance, you have to be really specific on the supply list because I got way too many sheets and gowns! Other things I learned were actually knowing what’s really needed to start the clinic and learning about the metrics and budget and how they work together to build the big picture for the “Why’s” in the company—how things are run and why certain things are tracked the way they are. 

Along with these day-to-day lessons I have learned along the way, I have also enjoyed attending the CORE trainings as part of Alliance. It’s fun to get to know other people, hear about how they lead their teams, and network and learn from one another. 

Looking back, building a De Novo clinic has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career. Watching it grow from an empty building into a thriving practice has been incredibly fulfilling. If I had the opportunity to do it all over again, I wouldn’t hesitate.