Therapy Matters

Celia Zamora has been a West Point cadet, an English teacher, a Spanish teacher, a linguist, and an association executive. Today she leads the American Council of Academic Physical Therapy (ACAPT), the organization that supports DPT programs across the country. Sarina Richard asks whether DPT programs are preparing clinicians for the reality of practice. Celia starts with the learner: Gen Alpha thinks and processes differently, and incoming students arrive with fewer study skills, soft skills,

Physical therapy is at a crossroads. Clinicians are leaving the profession faster than schools can replace them, reimbursement has not kept pace with a seven-year training pathway, and the job title of “doctor” sometimes lands on a workday that looks very different from what students expected. David DeGumbia has spent nearly three decades inside outpatient PT — from athletic training with the Miami Dolphins to leading multi-site operations at HealthSouth and Select Medical, and now as Chief O

Nick Patel leads APTQI, the alliance of competing community-based rehab practices that used to regroup only when a crisis hit — a Medicare cut, a bad regulation — then quietly fall apart once the fire was out. He helped turn that pattern into something permanent: a standing coalition of 9,000 practice locations that pools research, clinical expertise, and lobbying power year-round. His path into advocacy started with a torn ACL and an offhand comment from his own physical therapist that changed

An experienced biller stuck on hold with an insurance company all afternoon is a cost many clinics quietly learn to accept. Nick Hedges, CEO of Raintree, calls revenue cycle management the most expensive, most human-hours-lost problem in the entire industry, and his clients spend 7% or more of everything they collect just to get paid. That number is why Raintree acquired Spike Technologies, the agentic AI company Povilas Gudzius co-founded after earning his PhD in machine learning. Hear why th

Forty-one years in, the chairman of one of America’s largest publicly traded rehab operators still runs his playbook on a single principle: people. Chris Reading leads U.S. Physical Therapy from Houston, oversees more than 800 clinics across 40-plus states, and started his clinical life treating ACLs and complicated shoulders in Virginia. What separates USPH from the rest of the consolidation conversation is structure. Where private equity buys with the intent to sell in three to five years, Re

Al Moreau grew up in the world of physical therapy. His father founded Moreau Physical Therapy in 1977, and today Al leads that same network across more than 26 locations in Louisiana and Texas. Building on a family legacy isn't just about honoring the past. For Al, it means pushing the practice forward while staying rooted in the values that made it matter in the first place. Al's approach to scaling starts long before a new clinic opens. Rather than hiring for headcount, he identifies clinic