More than 2.4 billion people around the globe live with a health condition that would benefit from rehabilitation, and more than 1 billion are living with a mental health condition. But how do they find the right therapist among the roughly 2.8 million OTs and PTs out there, not to mention SLPs and mental health professionals?

The answer is pretty obvious: marketing.

But in our busy clinical lives, we tend to overlook the importance of this business activity. And we certainly don't spend enough time thinking about how it could drive better outcomes. We know that therapeutic alliance is one of the main drivers of therapy outcomes. Yet we rarely think of marketing as the first step in helping a patient find the therapist who is right for them.

Luckily, there's some fascinating research out there to help us think about this overlooked therapy activity.

And I'm excited to welcome to the podcast Erica Stevens, MOTR/L, CLT, CHC, CYT, owner of Thrive OT. Erica built her practice from square one, selling a niche of therapy that really made her get clear about who it's for and what the benefits are.

Financial Disclosure: OT Potential is a Jane App affiliate and receives a commission when listeners purchase Jane App with our Jane App promo code: Potential. Jane App comes up in this course because our speaker uses it to run her practice. Jane App had no role in the content of this course. This relationship is also disclosed in the episode.

See full course details here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/course/marketing-your-therapy-practice

See all OT CEU courses here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education

Check our our live webinar schedule here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/live-webinars

Support the show by using the OTPOTENTIAL Medbridge Code:
https://otpotential.com/blog/promo-code-for-medbridge

Try 2 free OT Potential courses here:
https://otpotential.com/free-ot-ceus

Support the show

For as long as I've been an OT, I've been hearing about occupational therapy's advocacy to be recognized as behavioral health providers.

This is frankly a little confusing, since OT has deep roots in mental health care — and many of us became OTs because of the unique way the profession holistically considers mental health and physical health, and how the two intersect in everyday function.

Things honestly become even more confusing when you start to dig into what exactly it means to be recognized as a behavioral health provider. What doors does that open to us? What is the current patchwork of states — and what is our desired future?

There is no better person to help us speak to these questions than Halley Read. Halley is the lead author on "Occupational Therapy: A Potential Solution to the Behavioral Health Workforce Shortage," published in Psychiatric Services in 2024.

Which gets at exactly the right question: why are we limiting the mental health workforce, when mental health workers are so desperately needed?

This course is intended for OTs, to help us understand this situation — but also for our fellow members of the healthcare team, to understand what OT can contribute and what policy changes would let us work in our full scope.

See full course details here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/course/ot-as-mental-health-providers

See all OT CEU courses here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education

Check our our live webinar schedule here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/live-webinars

Support the show by using the OTPOTENTIAL Medbridge Code:
https://otpotential.com/blog/promo-code-for-medbridge

Try 2 free OT Potential courses here:
https://otpotential.com/free-ot-ceus

Support the show

On one hand, it truly feels like we are on track for health technology to transform healthcare as we know it.

On the other hand, we have to weigh the reality that many health tech solutions end up abandoned.

This is especially true of consumer-facing health tech. Some of the latest research shows that around 70% of users abandon health tech apps within 100 days.

Rehabilitation technology fares better — largely because of the clinician in the loop, who prescribes, fits, and supports the technology toward a defined therapeutic goal. But abandonment is still real: even with a clinician involved, one study showed roughly 10–30% of assistive rehab technology is abandoned,. Rates run higher for some device categories, like pediatric AAC devices that show 33% abandonment.

Fortunately, new research is emerging all the time on the factors that drive technology adoption — and, increasingly, structured frameworks to guide our decisions.

In today's course, we are excited to welcome Chris Gaskins, PhD, whose dissertation, "Mental Workload during Prosthetic Training" examined how cognitive demand shapes the way clients learn and adopt health tech. We'll hear how he is thinking about this whole landscape — and, most importantly, how he makes decisions with his clients at his outpatient neuro practice.

See full course details here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/course/rehab-tech-abandonment

See all OT CEU courses here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education

Check our our live webinar schedule here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/live-webinars

Support the show by using the OTPOTENTIAL Medbridge Code:
https://otpotential.com/blog/promo-code-for-medbridge

Try 2 free OT Potential courses here:
https://otpotential.com/free-ot-ceus

Support the show