Talking to Samantha Schmidt, co-owner and managing partner of Alpine Physical Therapy, one begins to get a sense that the word community can operate on multiple levels, and at multiple scales of inclusion. And that’s another key word—inclusion—that has been a guiding principle for Alpine since they opened their doors in 2004.
For instance, Samantha likes to think of Alpine as a unique kind of healthcare facility where patients will feel the organic comfort and acceptance that those words evoke.
“We want people to feel community as soon as they walk in,” she says, “to feel that belonging, that there’s not judgment, that we’re here to help, from the time someone calls on the phone to getting them back out on the field.”
“Alpine Physical Therapy has been operating here for 20 years,” Samantha continues. “We see the importance of belonging, of having a sense of a bigger mission; not just running a business or even caring for people, but really caring for our community.”
This atmosphere of generosity begins with the staff. Alpine strives to foster that same sense of belonging for their physical therapists that they facilitate for their patients.
“As a company, we want to say ‘yes’ to our employees and make it work for them,” Samantha says. “We try to have pathways so that they feel like we want them there, that we want them to grow.”
Some of these pathways include, beyond professional development via paid education, “little things” like complimentary passes to Discovery Ski Area or Peak Fitness, “so our employees can live our mission to change life through movement,” Samantha says. “And if they can get out and move themselves, they know that we’re investing in them.”
“We see a lot of healthcare now being corporate. By that I mean it’s volume-based care,” she continues, “how many patients you can see, hustle, hustle, hustle. We have refused to go that route. We want our providers to have the time they need with their patients, the time they need to research, to attend continuing education classes, and making sure people can be 100% present at work. Someone has an infant who’s sick with the flu and they’re at work, I’ve said to them ‘what are you doing here? Your kiddo is more important right now.’ I don’t want someone providing care who’s thinking about their baby being sick; that’s not investing in an employee, or an employee that’s going to represent our company and give to our community the best they can.”
This is, at its heart, a description of community-minded care, mutually beneficial for provider and patient alike. It’s a simple yet profound model that opens up the possibility for a deeper kind of care than what many of us may have experienced in the past.
“There’s not enough ‘health’ in ‘healthcare’; it’s sick care. Physical therapists are the absolute perfect health professional to really give people that healthcare, where we are giving them more health in their medicine,” Samantha says. “Each physical therapist has their own way of dealing with the patient. It’s art meets science, because everybody is wired differently and you have to acknowledge that.”
A neat parallel to this thread of “art meets science” is Samantha’s presentation she calls “401k For Your Body,” which she has presented at financial institutions and conferences far and wide, and which she has tailored to that specific numbers- and data-focused audience. It’s a concept, however, that can have resonance for anybody interested in their physical well-being (which, could be argued, is just about everyone).
“The idea is: ‘how much do you invest every month into your retirement?’ And we know that there are key performance indicators that tell us how well our stocks are doing, and you can go look and see when you might be able to retire, and that’s pretty straightforward, it’s all numbers,” Samantha says. “But we don’t really have something like that for health, and specifically mobility and function.”
“Then, we talk in the physical therapy world of key performance indicators that people can take away after they hear this presentation and say ‘here are some gold standards that I can follow that are pretty easy,’” she continues, “and these can tell the average person ‘where are you?’ and ‘are you investing where you should in your body?’ We talk about numbers and finance and business, and we give them that shift: ‘how much are you investing every month into your body?’ and ‘could you do more?’”
In addition to spreading the good word of health through bodily investment, Samantha has taken the cause of physical well-being all the way to the Montana state capitol. As vice president and legislative chair of the Montana chapter of the American Physical Therapy Association, she is at the forefront of efforts to expand access to physical therapy across the state.
“Monthly, I lead six-to-eight physical therapists from across the state to talk about legislative issues that are impacting healthcare and specifically physical therapy, and then what we can do about it,” Samantha says. “Then we get that information out to our other members across the state. And that has led me to Helena; now our association has two bills that we’re sponsoring: to get increased reimbursement for our services from Medicaid, and direct access for those that have been injured at work.”
“Access is a huge issue, societally,” she says. “If we can encourage that to happen, I think that’s a big win.”
This legislative work, Samantha says, has been “totally different than treating patients in here, but it is also still getting to know people, getting to know what their purpose is, and what their end goal is. And getting to talk to all these different physical therapists across the state feels good, that investment in keeping our state as healthy as possible through movement.”
All this talk of investment and community has to begin somewhere, and with Alpine Physical Therapy it begins at the top, with the owners and their ongoing commitment to health and well-being in all forms.
“We’ve always believed that values are really important; they’re the compass that you come back to when you’re making decisions,” Samantha says. “For us there’s not a ‘business’ decision and a ‘personal values’ decision. You come to the table with your values. It’s made us a really strong team of leadership, and it’s kept the compass in the right direction over the years, so we can make sure we’re investing in those values.”
Alpine Physical Therapy
150 E Spruce Street and 5000 Blue Mountain Road in the Peak Health and Wellness Center, and at 2965 Stockyard Road in the North Reserve Business Center
“There’s not enough ‘health’ in ‘healthcare’; it’s sick care. Physical therapists are the absolute perfect health professional to really give people that healthcare, where we are giving them more health in their medicine."
"You come to the table with your values. It’s made us a really strong team of leadership, and it’s kept the compass in the right direction over the years, so we can make sure we’re investing in those values.”