Physiotherapy business aims for a healthy rise in turnover

Jul 31 2008 by Karen Dent, The Journal

A BUSINESS devoted to soothing aches and pains is on course to boost its turnover by a healthy £1m this year after winning a contract to provide its physiotherapy services in Yorkshire.

Connect Physical Health Centres (CPHC) will start its PhysioLine operation in the East Riding of Yorkshire in September after successfully tendering for the NHS contract.

The Cramlington-based company, which has an annual turnover of around £3m, aims to boost this by a third through the newly-won business and to increase its workforce of physiotherapists and administrative staff from 70 to 90.

Managing director Andrew Walton said: “If people have a bad back, they go to their GP but the waiting list is eight weeks. We’ll be introducing a service where patients can speak to a physiotherapist within 48 hours and speak direct to a call centre in the North East. The trained physiotherapist will advise them over the phone and then refer them to the second layer – the physiotherapist in the doctor’s practice – if necessary.”

The scheme is part of the NHS’s practice-based commissioning, where GPs decide which services they want to provide for patients and put them out to tender. CPHC is currently bidding for more of this type of work.

“The fastest growing area is our contracts with the NHS. A number of companies have been put together by doctors and funded by the City. We’ve been approached by a number to partner with them to help deliver services in different parts of the UK,” said Mr Walton.

“In the next six months, we hope to have another one of these contracts, and in 12 months, another two.”

Additional jobs will be generated at the North East-based PhysioLine call centre, both for physiotherapists and administrative staff. The company aims to secure four or five such contracts in the next two years.

It is also putting together Intermediate Muscular Skeletal Assessment and Treatment (IMAT) teams of GPs with special skills in this area and physiotherapists with clinical skills to help patients with more complex muscular-skeletal problems which do not require surgery

The work is a progression from the 25 doctors’ surgeries CPHC provides physiotherapy services for stretching from Blyth down to Sunderland and South Shields. On a private healthcare level, CPHC has three North East high street centres and one in Manchester dealing with muscular-skeletal problems, treating individuals and staff for employers such as Northumbria Police.

It also has occupational therapy contracts with businesses in the region including Asda, Nike, Northern Rock and United Biscuits.

Training is the other key area of development for the business and it provides courses to improve the skills of physiotherapy graduates and to give GPs more experience dealing with muscular-skeletal problems.