If I were opening a brand new clinic today and looking for the best location, the first thing I would do is find the biggest, most popular corporate based physical therapy clinic and look for a vacancy next door or across the street.
Picking A Location
There are lots of factors that go into a great location. Parketing, accesibility, visibility, etc. But one of the biggest determining factors that predict success is how easily patients can find you.
If you pick an amazing location that has all of the above listed criteria, but nobody knows where you are, you will drain your entire marketing budget on building awareness.
Instead, you can leverage the marketing dollars, history, and ad spend of your biggest competitor.
Every patient walking into that clinic will see your clinic first. Then when they are told there is a three week wait to book an initial evaluation, guess who gets the new patient?
That’s right! You do.
Because you can book a same day appointment. You can take walkins. You can do the things a large corpate owned clinic can not.
Parking
Another majorly important factor in picking the best location is parking. Assuming you live in an area in which most or all of your patients are driving to your clinic, ample parking is a priority.
I would never open a clinic in a location that required patients to compete for parking, or park more than 25-feet away from my front door.
Ramps are important for walkers and post surgical referrals.
Easy access into and out of the parking like is a must have. Ideally there is a traffic light controlling the flow of traffic.
Consider where your clients are coming from. It can be a deal breaker if clients are likely required to cross several lanes of traffic when leaving your clinic to return home in the opposite direction they arrived.
Visibility
If people can’t see you they can’t find you. Think about how many times you drive by a certain store on your way to work. You probably didn’t even know that store was there after a while.
Now image if that store was hidden in the back of an office building.
Choose a location with high traffic frontage.
Choose a location with both car and foot traffic.
I have always chosen locations with neighboring businesses that complimented by business, brough foot traffic to the area, and didn’t have high parking requirements that would take up my parking spaces.
Anthony Maritato, PT
Private Practice Owner / Physical Therapist
After starting a private practice physical therapy clinic in 2022 with his wife Kathy Maritato, PT, Tony and Kathy grew their practice to five locations across two states.
Now, Tony and Kathy enjoy spending time treating patients in the morning, coaching therapists in the evening, and being home to play with their dog Tucker and 4 boys.