I used to have patients. A rather straight forward concept whereby somebody with a health problem came to me for my knowledge and skills. Being a physiotherapist I would then try to find a solution together with that person and try to resolve it. I delivered a service.
Nowadays I have clients. Sure enough my clients still have a health problem. But now they purchase a product, a well defined product. This time contingent product contains a physical examination, two individual training sessions, a report of my findings and course of action to your physician and/or specialist, multiple group training sessions, two evaluations, and report again on my last evaluation.
Looking at this I see some disadvantages:
- A person will notice the commercial aspect of this kind of therapy and might feel negative about it
- We only offer active therapy
- I have to promote myself and my company in an active way (I’m not used to that)
Advantages are:
- Clear structure
- Time contingent training (instead of focusing on subjective stuff like pain we concentrate on a behavioural approach, which leads to a durable solution)
- we only offer active therapy (yes, I also put this in as a disadvantage)
- Everybody gets informed because of our customer center information system (the Dutch recently started with an electronic patient file, which revolves around the patient)
- Patients are dependent and easily belittled by the medical profession, while clients tend to have a bigger say and partake actively in resolving their health issues
- I have to promote myself and my company in an active way (again a double, because this makes me think about my place in Dutch health care and how I should communicate to others)
I guess I already found out, which I prefer…Feel free to second guess me.
