Value-Based Health Care Thrives in Newport, Earns Groundbreaker Award

Newport Life Magazine, Sep 4, 2018

By Bob Gulla

Dan Hatch, owner of Newport Physical Therapy, among Newport Life Magazine’s 2018 Top 10 Groundbreakers

Newport Life Magazine’s 2018 Top 10 Groundbreakers

Dan Hatch | Professional

Dan Hatch was fed up. After opening his physical therapy business, and flush with hope of healing folks, he soon became engulfed by paperwork. Mountains of it, all associated with insurance reimbursements. “I’m guessing that most PTs don’t come out of school saying, ‘I hope I get to do lots and lots of paperwork!’”

But that’s what Hatch found himself doing, and worse, leaving the hands-on stuff to aides and assistants. He vowed to come up with a solution that would eliminate his frustration and enable him to get in touch with his patients. “My commitment to PT was simple: I wanted to heal people.”

So he took a huge risk. He tossed the paperwork by avoiding insurance and became the first cash-based, value-based physical therapist in Rhode Island. “I went all in,” he says, with a grin. “I cashed in my savings and decided this is what I would commit to. I guess I’m an all-in sort of guy. We were either going to help people by changing the game, or we were going bankrupt.” He was serious.

Fortunately, Hatch’s risk was rewarded. Today, Newport Physical Therapy is a successful business, where the cost of each service is commensurate with its value. No more mandatory, generic evaluations. “We give each patient the hands-on therapy they need, which is really where the value of working with a physical therapist comes in,” he says. “Our job is to get each one back to the thing they were hoping to get back to.”

Hatch’s new approach has been visionary; other physical therapists are considering making the same full-scale shift away from insurance. Many are finding that their patients’ overall spending can often be much lower without insurance. “The new high deductible health plans often include health savings accounts,” he adds, which can be used to pay for the services he provides.

Without getting too deep into insurance jargon, the bottom line is Hatch and his staff can now provide more care and get better results. And because the crew spends less time pushing paper, they are also able to embrace an innovative approach to health and wellness. “I couldn’t be happier about the way it turned out,” he says. “More and more people are seeing the value of it and I can spend more time with my hands healing them, improving their lives and getting them back to doing what they love.”