MD/PT Partners - National, L.L.C.
The Science of Various Legal Relationships Related to Physicians and Ancillary Services
STOP - Read This First Please

Before you begin, please understand that what you are about to read is NOT theory, but a sound business model that we have very successfully practiced for nearly six years.  We have completed well over 250 transactions in over 37 states which have been supported by many legal opinions.  The formation and management of these transactions is what we do best.  What we share with you in the next five minutes is all we are willing to offer unless you are serious about proceeding with us as a subscribing member or licensee.  Thank you and I sincerely hope we get to work together.  Doug Sparks – Co-Founder

The Final Stark has no impact on how we do our business and no proposal for healthcare reform affects our model whatsoever.
MAJOR HEADLINES
Physicians - Our carefully studied legal transactions allow us to contract to provide your therapy services and pay nothing until you collect from insurance. That's right - bill and collect in your own computer system and pay us a fair market value percentage after you collect. You don't get paid - we don't. And you don't even have to use your own clinic. Read on...
Legal & Ethical? YES - CMS says it is the physician's inherent right to perform therapy services. MD/PT Partners was formed out of necessity to assist PTs in gaining these contracts rather than lose the business when the physician brings PT in-house. As you will learn on this very page, our programs have nothing to do with Stark or Anti-kickback and the components are, and have been, done in healthcare every day - for years. Physicians - have your own in-house clinic? Get rid of that huge payroll and associated headaches of payroll taxes, health benefits, vacation/sick time and scheduling. At the very least, have us evaluate if your program is producing what it could or should. Hint - it's not, or at least we haven't seen one being run close to optimally yet. Read on and let's discover your potential. We believe, and can prove, that in ALL cases that a private practice PT is your answer.

Become a Licensee - Our PT licensing program not only helps you, but those in your community.  When you license with us, your area is protected from anyone else using our process.  That means that other PTs in your area who would like to establish these contracts will need to go through you.  These activities can produce a very significant passive income for you. As you read below please realize that there are a number of details and conditions for the transaction to work smoothly. That is what we provide based on your individual situation. ALL transactions ARE different. NOTE - Only PTs can become licensees.

A WORD ABOUT STARK - The 1st Question I'm Always Asked
Stark & Kickbacks - The Very Basics – NOT Applicable to Our Model
Though our attorneys go into very great detail, here is the simplified version

A. A referral to a 3rd party (like a PT company) is a requirement for a Stark violation or kickback. In our case the physician is the provider who bills and collects under his/her provider number. The MD contracts us to treat their patient rather than employ us. After they are paid we receive our contracted market rate. In healthcare we all wait to be paid by insurance so this the norm.
B. Stark primarily pertains to Medicare and/or other government paid or subsidized programs. We do not see Medicare patients in our off site contracts because we cannot meet the physician supervision and other requirements. Hence - no Stark issues or rules.
C. A kickback requires a referral to be made to a 3rd party entity that bills/collects and gives part of the money back to the physician. Our PTs will NEVER bill NOR give any money to a physician. The physician is the provider who bills and collects for his/her services as with every other patient, then pays his contract staff after he collects. There can never be a kickback if the physician bills and collects for services under their own provider number as they can't kickback to themselves.
D. A self referral requires the physician or group to send a patient to a 3rd party entity where they have a financial interest or ownership. Again, they have no interest in our business and they bill and collect under their own provider number, and then pay for the contracted services. PTs - it's business as usual in your clinic as you maintain your autonomous practice. Your contract with a physician is no different than your contract with an insurance payer. 

STARK & KICKBACK STAUTUES HAVE NO APPLICATION IN OUR PROCESS!!

SO, the bottom line is that the MD can, and is entitled to make a profit - as long as they follow a very specific set of rules and guidelines, which we provide. Over 140 attorneys have favorably reviewed our program. Please don’t jump to legal conclusions without the details because there are many and they change based on transaction structure. The transactions are very simple, and the individual components have been done in other areas of healthcare daily for years. This is only a summary. There are many background details that are urgent to your success. We have worked with many attorneys in this process and gained valuable legal opinions.

HOT BUTTON QUESTION #2 - Offsite Treatment & No Need for MD Supervision

EXCERPTS FROM AN ARTICLE BY A VERY PROMINENT ATTORNEY
THE TRUTH ABOUT STARK LAWS

“QUESTION – A physician sets up a new office to house all of its diagnostic testing, including physical therapy. There are no other physician offices at this new location.  All the physicians in the group send patients to it, and the services are provided by non-physicians. Does this violate Stark?
ANSWER - No. This arrangement qualifies for the in-office ancillary services exception. The ancillary services office is considered a centralized location under the Stark statute, and no physician supervision of the services is required.” * Medicare requires supervision as of 6/24/2005. Other payers do not and will not. We do not see Medicare patients in off site contracts.

SUPERVISION TEST - The Same Attorney Continues
“Although the Stark statute uses the phrases “personal supervision” and “directly supervised,” the regulators have interpreted both of these to mean supervised to the extent otherwise required by law in a private practice setting. For example, a physical therapist in private practice does not require an on premises physician for the services to be covered, “direct supervision,” according to Stark, does not actually require that a physician be in the office suite unless the staff member is not licensed.* A group could bill for physical therapy services when the services are provided by a physical therapist employee or an independent contractor at the remote location without being present.  However, if the services are not billed incident-to the physician, he or she cannot receive credit as the treating physician for those revenues.”

• In-office ancillary services must be provided in a building in space that the physician owns or leases. For example, if a group/physician has multiple offices and wants to send a patient for X-rays to be performed at a second office, group/ physicians at the second office must be able to perform a basic patient office visit.  Also, since multiple “centralized locations” are allowed, a practice can have an office for a clinical lab, a building for imaging and a separate physical therapy clinic.”

HOT BUTTON QUESTION #3 - Why is This Not Fee Splitting?

Simply put, these relationships require “Fair Market Value” calculations to determine reimbursement percentages, in addition the above components, in order to be clean and ethical.  There is nothing to split - the physician "secures the patient", bills and collects for his services, then pays their contract labor a fair market value. In healthcare these values are reflected in “benchmarks”, which are in turn reflected in percentages.  Hence a percentage is an acceptable way of determining valuations, even in the Final Stark.  What these benchmarks are continues to vary a little and come from companies we subscribe to who study such numbers.  Want to know what these benchmarks are?  That’s part of what we do.

INTRODUCTION TO THE BASIC CONCEPTS

Our company was founded with an idea in the Fall of 2003 and became official in February of 2004 after we gained a strong legal opinions regarding our program.  What we thought was a "niche" turned out to be "canyon of opportunity" according to attorneys, as the mechanism of our process are done daily in other areas of healthcare.  Our transactions are quite simple in concept and have nothing to do with Stark or Anti-kickback as over 140 attorneys have agreed, including counsel for a company with 370+ clinics. Our conversations with attorneys are usually about five minutes.

WHY?  Private practices are dying at an alarming rate because physicians are bringing therapy in house.  Those same physicians are failing because an employee mentality is not nearly as productive as a private practice owner.  They also aren't experienced in the intricacies of running a therapy practice with today’s always changing dynamic.  By contracting private practice therapists to perform their licensed care, both sides win.  The physician bills and collects in his/her computer system under their provider number, and then pays the therapist a contracted rate after he is paid from insurance.  

PT's ASSUMPTION – If you are a private practice therapy owner you have a staff in place that can see more patients than you are seeing.  The difference between how many patients you CAN see (capacity), and how many patients you ARE seeing, is what we call the “Capacity Gap”.  We use contracts with physicians to fill this gap – AFTER your fixed expenses are already paid, therefore ANY money you make is profit. You can't view "dollars per visit", but rather you need to see that EVERY dollar goes in your pocket because they are after expense dollars. Your regular referral business pays your bills and your contract income provides guaranteed profit and a mode to expand with no up front expense. This allows you to do very well while leaving the MD with a profit margin of double (or more) the national benchmark of what he/her could make if they paid all of the expenses and endured all of the hassles that you do on a daily basis. Our near term goal is to take $50 million in business out of physician's offices and place in back in private practice PT offices. Can that really be done? ABSOULTELY!! For our own benefit in Houston, we have done over $4 million in contract business on top of our normal referral business.

EXAMPLE – A clinic owner can see 30 patients per day with his current staff, yet is seeing only 18 patients per day.  Those 18 patients barely pay the bills so each month the therapist is “on the bubble” of either losing or making a little money.  Our very first contract was for a slightly less than fair market value of collections (high volume), but it closed the gap between 18 and 30 and IMMEDIATELY netted us $10,000 a month in profit with no additional expense.  We were off the bubble for good and the physician was thrilled to make what felt like passive income.  The addition of more contracts has put us in the position of having 42 patients per day at that clinic - up from the 18 we started with.  In this example, we went from near extinction to highly profitable. That was nearly six years ago.

This is NOT a POPTS!!!  In the traditional Physician Owned Physical Therapy (POPTs), the physician employs therapists and takes business away from the private practitioner.  In our model, we ONLY use private practice therapists to service these contracts and the physician OWNS NOTHING because he contracts you.  Another difference is location.  With the exception of Medicare patients, who must have a physician present, in our program the physician may choose to contract the work to be done at your existing PT clinic.  Truly a Win/Win for everyone.  Don’t own a clinic?  What could be better than to contract your services in a physician’s office with no rent, staff or equipment costs?  You don't pay these in his/her office because they are the provider and you are contracted licensed care only - the largest single expense by far. Often these situations make an excellent satellite clinic for an existing PT clinic.

MD NOTE - DO NOT DELAY - How many patients did you send to PT last week and at what time and expense did that cost your office? NOTHING!! There is no difference here. So why would you go to the expense of starting an albatross of a program when you can profit with no upfront expense with our model utilizing and existing PT clinic/s? You send a patient to PT and let your contractor do what they do best. So many physicians think this is some big deal they have to set up for and waste months in preparation only to find out that it required nothing different than they already do. One group delayed for six months before starting for a number of reasons that would not have interfered with PT. Finally after six months I told them that they had lost roughly $220,000 unnecessarily because of their delays and we got back on track. Same thing with another group - I had lunch with the MD, practice manager, attorney and PT and within 20 minutes the deal was done. Two years later they had yet to start because of other nonsensical reasons that had nothing to do with PT. NOTHING could be easier for the physician and their staff than this program. For the PT it's another contract like any other payer - Blue Cross, Humana, Aetna, Dr. 1, Dr, 2, etc.

REALITY – When the physician starts providing therapy, 100% of that business leaves the market.  He/she will need to do nearly $300,000 in business to get back to break even, or he can invest nothing upfront and use the private practice PT. You either get 100% or 0% of his business, and it is our intention to always get 100%.  As simple as this seems it means more than you think.  In our first contract we had a physician who had a history of sending us seven patients per month.  Once we had the contract we got about 10 per week. His explanation was that he had seven patients a month for us but that his practice sends out 10 per week. Since we ARE his practice we have gotten 10 per week for nearly six years. Clearly there is a big difference between seven new patients per month compared to 10 per week. NOTE - the physician may not required to send you any patients, but they would not start their own program if they did not have patients that would benefit.

ACT NOW!!  How do you take advantage of this dynamic plan?  When you sign up with MD/PT Partners National, your (PT's) geographic area is protected.  Results?  Check out this summary postcard we use in our presentation.  Some deals do go wrong when participants break from the proven model. Here's an example of "Deals Gone Bad" where physicians tell us what went wrong with their last attempts to do this on their own. First things first - to get started you will need to sign our nondisclosure agreement - no exceptions.  This intellectual property is highly valuable and we will not be able to discuss any details of our program without a signed copy on file. 

*EASY AS 1,2, 3
1) Review all of the information on this website and determine if this program is for you.
3) Get your questions answered, become a licensee and be making revenue in 2-3 weeks.

*PLEASE do not contact us unless you are ready to move forward as we are busy working to help those who have. A ten minute review of this site will answer many questions you have and make our time on the telephone specific to your situation. Please do not contact me until you have done so. This is the only national company that assures that you to work with the founders from the first day forward. You will not be handed off to someone else. This takes time and coordination on our part so please be prepared by reviewing the website. Thanks so much!

Please fax your signed nondisclosure to 281-657-7602 & then email me a few times you can talk on the phone. If you do not email me I will not contact you as all calls are scheduled.

Please do not call Doug's cell as he rarely uses it and will not return calls without the nondisclosure on file. Instead please schedule a time to talk via email as it prevents the phone tag of you always being with a patient and him always being on another line. Thank you for understanding.

Get your nondisclosure form here.

<meta name="revisit-after" content="15 days">
<meta name="classification" content="Medical">
<meta name="description" content="MD+PT Partners will establish legal & ethical contracting and partnership relationships for individual physicians & groups. Physicians who are members of groups may participate via their UPIN">
<meta name="keywords" content="Medicare, physicians, medical professionals, patient care, outpatient healthcare, OSHA, Doctor, Nurse, Nursing, Surgeon, Procedure, Recovery Room, Operating Room, Medical, Supplies, Healthcare, Outpatient, Management, Business, Ambulatory surgery, Podiatry, Ophthalmology, Investments, Investing, ancillary services, physical therapy contracting, F