I’m still marinating with much of what I learned over the weekend in Fort Worth, TX at WebPT’s Ascend conference. A couple of the things that I have the most clarity on at this point are that Fort Worth does steak right… WebPT also does a conference right.

Ascend is a rehab business conference, so I went in not expecting to come out the other side with a vastly different view of my patients, but when you are surrounded by some of the greatest minds in the industry talking about customer services, excellence, and quality…things change.

The top 3 things I learned at Ascend 2016:

1. Start with your story:

The keynote by Chris Smith from Campfire Effect was on point. His main point was that we as PT’s (or anyone serving another person) must know and be able to articulate your story. Nothing he said was truly earth shattering information but it was the way he put it all together that made the difference. Similar to Simon Sinek’s Start with Why, Chris advocated for getting to the bottom of who yo are, why you are, what you are, and how you do what you do. All things that we know, but don’t articulate well.

2. Measure your crap

Not literally. There were several talks that expounded on the importance of measuring things. Specific business metrics, marketing metrics (direct response, lead generation, social media…) and outcomes. Measuring, tracking and making sense of these metrics is what the best practices and the best therapists in the country are doing. A special note on tracking outcomes, I tweeted the below tweet during Heidi Jannenga’s talk.

Evidence based practice + practice based evidence = better outcomes for our patients pic.twitter.com/VEse3yrVs3

— Zack Duhamel (@zduhammy) September 10, 2016

We as a profession need to continue striving for excellence in evidence-based practice AND start striving for excellence in practice-based evidence. What I mean by that is, let’s start tracking out outcomes and actively using that data to fine tune our practice. We could all be better clinical scientists.

3. Relationships are everything

The most important part of the conference for me was not what I heard in any of the breakouts but all the talks I had outside of them. I met a plethora of incredible people that I now have as experts on certain topics that I can refer to whenever I need…wonderful. I had an absolute blast in Fort Worth and I look forward to continuing the relationships that I started in Texas.

 

Ascend was overall a very well done conference. The WebPT folks and the people at the Omni Hotel really nailed it. Look forward to next year, see you there!