Researching user (GPs) behaviour to provide insights and ideation to a physiotherapy clinic director to boost visibility of their services and patients referrals

About the company

Helping GPs make timely patient referrals to physiotherapy

QV Physiotherapy Clinic in Melbourne CBD aims to provide quality physiotherapy and exercise classes to their inner Melbourne city customers. More than a decade old, the clinic had been booming prior to COVID-19 pandemic, and was well established within the local GPs network, who advocated for physiotherapy management and referred patients regularly.

The challenge

The COVID-19 pandemic have affected multiple city businesses and QV Physiotherapy saw in 2020-2023 a significant drop in physiotherapy services offered, reduced patient referrals and a drastic change in staff. With a new team of physiotherapists, the clinic Director explained that his goals were to boost visibility and patient referrals from GPs to the clinic. With this new situation - How might we offer valuable physiotherapy services to GPs to increase QV Physiotherapy visibility?

Project Objective

• Research and explore opportunities to assist GPs to refer patients to the clinic
• Explore new services that potential patients would benefit from physiotherapy services

Researching a seemingly collapsing profession

According to the medical journal database PubMed Central, an estimated 1.3 million (13.2%) fewer manual therapy services, with a total cost of AUD 84 million, were provided within the Australian private healthcare setting during the first half of 2020. Reduction in service utilisation was considerably larger in physiotherapy (20.6%) than other manual therapy services with a 16.2% reductions observed in Victoria. The pandemic has had indeed a profound impact on manual therapy service utilisation in Australia.

Research Goals

• Understand who are the GPs and their motivations to refer to physiotherapy
• Identify the type of patients GP need to refer to physiotherapy