April 17, 2017

Meet Brian Yee of Motion Stability Physical Therapy in Buckhead and West Midtown

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Brian Yee.

Brian, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I obtained my Physical Therapy degree from Northwestern University (Chicago, IL) in 1999 and returned back to home to Southern California where I worked in Los Angeles for 3 years for a national corporate physical therapy company. I had opportunities to go quickly into management, but realized I needed more advanced training. In 2004 I went abroad to the University of Queensland (Brisbane, Australia) to do an advanced Master’s training program in spine and chronic pain therapy. Most people assume the advanced teaching and research comes from the US or Europe, but in the physical therapy world at that time, all the elite level of research and training came from Australia. So, I went out there myself to be trained and it changed my entire perspective how I view the human body especially when a person is dealing with an ongoing pain or injury. Where in the United States health care practitioners have a tendency to rely on a test or examination finding to draw their conclusions or diagnosis, in Australia they taught us to think through an entire reasoning process to fully understand why a patient would be experiencing pain, what factors are causing it such as the different tissue structures, the way we move, or even psychological influences that can cause or prolong someone’s pain. We were then taught to develop a treatment plan that would address these issues to comprehensively treat the patient rather than just rely on a medication, injection or a couple of exercises hoping it would fix the patient.

After moving to Atlanta in 2005, I started my private practice in 2008 called Motion Stability Physical Therapy. It was born from the frustration of more corporatized physical therapy that was focused on the revenues and productivity of the clinic, treating patients like numbers as opposed to people who are seeking help. Also with health care insurance reimbursement lowering each year, it was difficult to give a patient the proper time to deliver the care they deserved, having to see more patients in less time just to make a profit.

I started the practice as an out-of-network insurance practice or self-pay service rather than rely on poorly reimbursed insurance contracts. This was done not to make more money per se, but to allow myself to have more quality time to treat the patient dedicating one hour each per patient. I was fortunate to start my practice in a golf performance facility at the time called Terminus Club and was introduced to a number of not only affluent clientele, but clientele that had ongoing injuries that not only hindered them from playing golf, but were suffering from unresolved pains that could not get better elsewhere.

I was booked on my first day of starting my practice, and it continued to grow bringing on 2 more specialized and like-minded therapists in the following couple years.

As the quality time clinic as an out-of-network practice was well established and Motion Stability gained a strong reputation in the community for being the place to go to get your pains figured out and receive high level care to help patients get to their performance or athletic goals, we also realized that there was also only a sector of patients that would be willing to pay a higher rate for our services, even though they were getting more quality time. We also realized certain types of patients did not need the hour dedicated time to receive high level care such as post-surgical patients, more simple youth sports injuries and recent acute injuries like ankle sprains.

In 2013, I started another legal entity that would accept standard in-network insurance contracts to allow patients to be given the choice to either pay a higher rate to see a sub-specialist for certain unresolved or concierge-like services in the existing out-of-network practice, or they had the freedom to choose to use their insurance another physical therapist in our team that could work and bill their insurance.

This fit our values to not only provide high quality care and time for a patient, but also provide the care to the entire community irregardless of their financial considerations.

We have since branded and structured Motion Stability as ‘one group with two different practice options’. One practice option is what we now call the Faculty Practice of Motion Stability that accepts out-of-network insurance or self-pay. We have four highly distinguished therapists working in the Faculty Practice. We are all involved with either academic teaching, research, conference presentations, or clinical teaching seminar companies. We also have gone through advanced training programs such as residency, fellowship or other programs of advanced learning.

Our other practice option that accepts in-network insurance is called the Spine & Sports Clinic of Motion Stability. In this practice option, we have four other therapists that accept insurances and treat the spectrum of orthopedic pains and injury rehabilitation. The therapists that work in this practice specialize in conditions or treatments that typically would fit in an insurance practice such as post-surgery, youth sports injuries or other conditions. In the Spine & Sports Clinic we also have Physical Therapists that have entered into advanced training programs in Residency or Manual Therapy Fellowship training with our affiliation with Mercer University Physical Therapy. We are able to recruit the tops in the class younger therapists as they are seeking the mentorship and environment that our Faculty Therapists have been through and can share their experiences and training.

This ultimately creates consistency in the clinical care whether it be in the Faculty or Spine & Sports Clinic. I feel confident that we are able to deliver a service that meets all needs of patients whether it be by condition or by financial need.

Currently, we have eight total physical therapists, four in the Faculty Practice and four in the Spine & Sports clinic. We have two locations, one in Buckhead and the other in West Midtown at Atlanta Ballet. We have been able to work with PGA Tour players like Matt Kuchar, we are the physical therapy sponsors to Atlanta Ballet, as well as work with the WNBA Atlanta Dream as well as collaborated on events with Atlanta Track Club, Girls on the Run and other community partners. Our staff also teach in a variety of ways either at Mercer University Physical Therapy or teaching seminar companies such as Myopain Seminars, training other therapists on trigger point dry needling, or nerve related injuries through Neurodynamic Solutions.

The level of care that we provide is bar none, with specialities in certain fields in pain and performance, as well as providing two different insurance options truly sets us apart from any other physical therapy clinic, not only in Atlanta, but in the country.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Business in health care is never a smooth road, not only are we challenged by just the general headaches of starting a business, but there is also added stress having to work with the parameters and regulations of health insurance companies as well as federal and state level issues in compliance and privacy.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Spending time with my family.

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