Speech Therapy Clinic Wants to Become Model
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA huge gap in care is inspiring an entrepreneur in Lafayette to open a speech clinic focused on children. Trent Terry and his business partner, Mindy Hibbert, launched Therapy Solutions four years ago with just two therapists and the small company has now grown to more than a dozen therapists on staff and nearly 40 independent contractors throughout the state. The company will soon open its first standalone clinic after relying on school space and home visits for therapy sessions.
In an interview with Business of Health Reporter Kylie Veleta, Terry said he launched the company after struggling to find speech therapy for his young daughter.
Terry says the company decided to implement a model where it could provide assistance to children from birth to high school graduation, potentially with the same therapist.
“As part of that, we grew into doing First Steps, which is early intervention therapy through the state of Indiana,” said Terry. “We noticed that we weren’t still quite meeting our goal of birth to high school graduation for providing services and we started talking to some of our parents and they said, ‘Where do we go when our child reaches 3 and they can’t have early intervention services anymore?’ We decided that we could fill that need if we purchased a building and opened a private clinic.”
Terry says he hopes the first clinic in Lafayette could lead to more clinics throughout the state.
“We’re very excited about the potential of growth over the next few years. We’re committed to the state of Indiana and the parents and children of Indiana, so that’s going to be our focus,” said Terry. “We don’t even have the doors open on the first clinic yet and we’ve already had requests from other cities and parents to open clinics in their areas. So I think the need is clearly there. We just need to make sure we’re smart about how we grow the business.”
Therapy Solutions also established a Parents Council during the pandemic, which Terry says provided a direct access line for parents to the decision makers of the company.
“We learned a lot from the that. The parents loved it; they offered a lot of suggestions,” he said. “It also ended up being kind of a cohort group of parents in similar situations that would email each other with questions and things like that, too. So, it’s kind of a unique concept that took off.
The company plans to open the doors of the Lafayette clinic in late spring or early summer.