Business premises

Each practitioner will want different things. If you only need one treatment room, it might be worth while setting up your business from home. Or you can choose to either buy or rent a suitable property instead.

Decide whether you could work from home

If you have room in your house, then working from home might prove to be very beneficial. It means you will not have to invest a large sum of money to buy a property and you will not have to pay out a monthly rent either. For those starting out with their own private practice, it can often be the best option.

But there may be certain circumstances when working from home would not be suitable. For example, if you have a lot of visitors it may be disruptive to others in your neighbourhood. You may not be able to practice from your home either if you rent your home.

Decide whether you provide a mobile service

Many newcomers to private practice start their practice by providing a mobile physiotherapy service. This avoids the need for a clinic and keeps costs down to a minimum.

The benefits of providing a mobile service are:

• It's cheap to set up, you don't need to purchase much equipment.
• Many patients will enjoy the convenience of having their treatment at home.
• Your charges will be at least the cost of a clinic session and probably more to cover your travel expenses.

Would you be better off renting a room

You could look to rent a treatment room in a location such as a gym, therapy centre or even a working office.

This can help to keep your costs down as there are many businesses looking to rent out their spare space. Some rooms can be rented on an hourly or daily basis. That way you don’t have to pay a monthly payment if you are not using it every day of the week.

If you just rent a room you will not have to pay other business charges such as utility charges. That way, you can build up your practice before you have to rent out an entire premises.

If you want to really keep costs down, then you could suggest that instead of paying rent for a room, that you could give the landlord a percentage of your treatment charges. That means that you would only be paying for the room during the times you were actually using it.

Decide if you should open a therapy clinic

Most physiotherapists would like to be able to open up their own clinic in a property which is entirely for the use of the practice. This would enable further expansion of the business if necessary. However when starting up a physiotherapy practice, having a clinic can be quite expensive especially if you do not have a huge clientele. Running costs are high and without the guarantee of patients, it would be difficult to keep up.

It is important that you have a strong business plan if you are considering opening up your own practice.