Almost half of Illinois PTs in group practice now work for a platform. What's left for roll-ups?
I've been going through public Medicare records to see who owns physical therapy group practices in Illinois. A few things surprised me.
5,044 PTs bill Medicare through group practices in the state, and 47% of them bill through a therapy platform. So the market is already about half consolidated.
The two biggest platforms have stopped growing much. Athletico has 1,167 PTs, up 7 in a year. ATI has 558, up 6.
The growth is in the next tier down. Luna added 38 PTs in 12 months, Select Medical 30 and Ivy Rehab 16.
The pool of independents is small. I found 105 practices with 3 or more PTs and no platform tie, with 970 PTs between them. The largest has 44 PTs; after that it drops to 15.
My read: in Illinois a new platform can't build scale by buying a few big independent groups, because there are almost none left. It would have to do lots of small add-ons or go to a less consolidated state.
Two caveats. This is Medicare billing only, so cash-pay clinics and some commercial-only ones are missing. And "no platform tie" means I checked filings and websites and found nothing, so a few of these may have deals I couldn't see.
For people working on PT or other outpatient roll-ups: is your bottleneck finding targets, or getting owners to sell?
