The Clinician Transition

Therapy Nerds, Startup World, Surprisingly Great Combo

• The Clinician Transition • Season 1 • Episode 1

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A therapy dog proposal hits a wall. An intake form tweak lights a spark. A Texas ice storm can’t stop a clinician from finding a new path. Our first TCT return is a candid look at how three therapists (PT, PT, and SLP) translated clinical instincts into roles across product, client success, sales, and education at a health tech startup, without abandoning the heart of care.

We unpack the real forces behind a pivot: when a “dream” outpatient job still leaves you curious, when a hospital rewards throughput over innovation, and when a buyout shifts a clinic from people to profit. You’ll hear how EMR optimization became a gateway to product thinking, how patient education skills turn “boring” software training into something teams love, and how community is the bridge from clinic to tech. Expect practical tactics: how to vet roles that look shiny but misfit, how to write outreach messages that open doors, and how to use small experiments to discover what you’re great at beyond the bedside.

This is not a burnout confessional and not a sales pitch. It’s a roadmap for clinicians who want broader impact: reduce cognitive load for providers, streamline workflows, and let patient care breathe. We share the mantra that brought us back: progress over perfection. If you can get 95% of the result with 50% of the effort, you buy time for what matters - learning, shipping, and serving. Curious about clinician transition, healthcare technology, EMR optimization, product strategy, and career design? You’re in the right place.

If the stories resonate, follow along, share with a colleague who’s curious about life beyond the clinic, and leave a review so more clinicians can find their path. Your next step might be a single message…what’s stopping you?

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Emma Brady:

Hello, everyone. Thank you for listening. We are back. This is the first episode of the TCT podcast. We're leaving off for you might know us as Beyond These Clinic Walls, where we used to be working with Jules. She was amazing and got that going. And we really, really appreciate her support in having us come back from our little hiatus and really appreciate all the messages that we still got in between our last episode and now, and that you still were listening to us, and that was motivating for us to get this up and going again. And when I say us, I should introduce myself. I'm Emma Brady. I'm a PT by trade and I'm an associate director of sales at Prompt Health. And speaking of Prompt Health, because that is the place the three of us work, probably going to mention prompt pretty regularly. This is not meant to be a sales thing for prompt or the prompt show. It really just is where we work. So it's of course going to come up. They are incredibly supportive of us and this project, but the TCT is completely separate. And it's a volunteer-driven thing that we do on our own time with our own resources. And I'm joined by my amazing colleagues, Emily Kelly and Casey, who I want to introduce themselves next.

Emily Kelly:

Yay, hi. Echoing Emma. I always get um messages of people like listen, like still listening to our previous pilot where we kind of introduced ourselves and our stories. And that's that's like the one I get the most messages on. And so I'm just really thankful that is still out there and impacting everyone. Also, echoing Emma. And big thanks to Jules for just like getting this all together. But, anyways, my name is Emily Kelly, um, also a PT by trade, um, practiced for 11 years in private practice, came over to prompt as a CSM, um, and now working in product.

Casey f:

Awesome. And I'm Casey, and I just admire both of you guys so much and appreciate you allowing me to join today. Um, I am a part of the clinician transition movement, and I met Emma and Emily upon joining Prompt Health as well. We're all prompt people here today in 2021. So I am a speech language pathologist amongst PTs tonight, but I transitioned to be a client success manager working closely with Emily on boarding at Prompt Health. And then now I lead the educational content department at prompt. So I help manage all the educational content for our training, university, and help people learn the amazing and the amazing products that we have and use them every day to kind of make their lives a little easier. So yeah, I'm happy to be here and visit with you guys.

Emma Brady:

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us. One of the reasons we wanted Casey is A, she is a speech therapist. We wanted to have some variety there. And now we are covering different departments. So we have sales, customer success, product. And we thought it would just be a great variety for you all. And also Casey is absolutely just incredible and will keep things nice and fun. She makes the most boring content on the world, EMR training, exciting for people. So if you're not a prompt customer, that's totally fine. But just so you know, she's kind of a celebrity. And we went to a conference recently, and oh, I know your voice. And they want people calling so that they can hear that she's a real person. So, anyways, just a treat to have you, and thanks for joining and helping with this uh passion project of Emily and mine. So we thought the it would be nice for this episode to again just reintroduce ourselves, tell you a little bit about our story, and then from there, we're hoping to kind of pick up where we left off, where we'll we'll continue interviews with other people, and then we'll also do um like some FAQs, things we get in our LinkedIn inboxes as well. And really, our goal is to spread our knowledge, spread this movement, make it uh the non-traditional movement be a positive thing and collectively just many hands make make more or less work, excuse me, together, and hopefully help you all be successful in whatever you're trying to do.

Emily Kelly:

Yes, I also want to call out that we all have very full lives and we are gonna prioritize progress over perfections.

Emma Brady:

We have a saying at prompt if you can get 95% of the results with 50% effort, pursue that path. So that was one of the ways that we were able to come back and be here for you. Um, so anyways, I'll I I guess I'll start. So I was working as a physical therapist at the hospital, really, really major healthcare system, and I absolutely loved it. I was not in the it's okay if this is you. I wasn't in the profile of someone who was super burned out and uh resentful of some things in the profession. I was really passionate about it, and I led all sorts of projects because I would do continuing education and stuff, and there's only so many courses you can go to on the same thing. So I wanted to challenge myself in other ways, and I did all sorts of projects at the hospital that saved them millions of dollars a year. And the more projects I did, I kind of felt from my leadership that they would prefer me to focus on seeing patients and seeing what the next level of care is because that's gonna be that was it's expensive to have people in the hospital. So I can go around and have people quote pass PT. They can go somewhere else, and that was more valuable to them. So I felt the the final straw, you guys, was I really wanted a therapy dog. And I went in with I went in with all this research of the reasons, scientifically backed research, including information on how to uh get it past the infection control. And they just didn't want to hear it. I thought this is this is not gonna be a fit long term.

Casey Francis:

I wish I could have seen that. You probably just nailed that presentation too. Yeah.

Emma Brady:

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Well, if anyone's looking for it, I have it if you want to try that project where you are. Um, but anyways, so I thought the startup world might be a better fit for me. And in my search, I ended up at a startup for people who are obese trying to lose weight. I thought that's really neat. So much of what I'm seeing in the ICU could be prevented with a program like this. I'm gonna do that. And I was gonna lead a national health telehealth program during COVID. And yeah, yeah, so it was gonna be very cool. Thank you. But then when I got there, it was in reality, it was starting up an outpatient clinic during COVID, which frankly I had no business doing. Not ideal.

Casey Francis:

No, not ideal.

Emma Brady:

Yeah. So that that that would we can have another episode about this, but that's sort of a mini warning lesson to make sure you really know what you're getting into, and something different doesn't mean it's gonna be the the solution. So, anyways, I I was really giving it the good old college try on starting this outpatient clinic, and something I did a lot at the uh my other job was EMR optimization. So I was trying to get us down from eight systems to one. And in my search for a solution, I ran into prompt and I dropped everything I was doing to join their team. And that was five years ago, and I was uh one of the first women on the team, the first PT on the team, one of the first people who wasn't a founding member. So I was very nervous, but it ended up being the best professional decision I ever could have made, and I'm so glad I made it. Um, and then that's one of the I knew Emily from networking. We had a non-traditional community. Mine was in the Bay Area, hers was in Colorado, and we decided to join forces, and she was one of the first people I wanted to bring to prompt when I started.

Casey Francis:

Oh that is so cool. I don't think I knew that's how you found prompt, Emma. You were looking for literally an all-in-one solution. That is hilarious. That is very serendipitous. So cool. Yeah.

Emily Kelly:

Yeah. So Emma and I met, and before that, um, I had been practicing for a wonderful company who's now on prompt, which is very fitting because two wonderful companies should work together. Um, and they were just the best PT company you could ever imagine. Um, didn't have people breathing down my back for productivity. I got to practice in beautiful rec centers. Um, the people I worked with were like family, they were just amazing. And after I had my first son, I was on maternity leave, I just found myself wondering like, this is the best possible PT scenario. What, but there's still something missing. And if this the like the best possible outpatient scenario in Colorado, around Denver, which back then, this was back in like I got that job in I think 2011, which Denver 2011 was not easy to find a PT job back then. I used to compare it to becoming an actress in LA.

Casey Francis:

I had to like you were just surrounded by PTs and Yeah, everyone to work here.

Emily Kelly:

We were not in the position that we are in today. But anyway, so it was just like the best possible scenario. And I still found myself wondering like what's my next move? What else is out there? And that was the the big stimulus to me that I probably needed to see what else was out there. Um, so I had a good conversation with the owners and I ended up transferring to a hospital um to see if like a different patient population would also be good for me. And I did love it. I transferred to Denver Health outpatient, and it gave me an opportunity to serve um the underserved population. They are a health, I forget what it's called, but it's like a safety net. They're a safety net hospital. So they literally serve everybody, and I love that mission. Um, and they also gave me, I was very open and upfront when they hired me that I wanted to pursue multidisciplinary opportunities outside of physical therapy. So they knew that's what they were getting when they got me, and they really delivered on it. They let me do process improvement projects, they let me do like, they let me be like the epic person. Um, and in all that exposure, I really learned that when I helped providers be more at ease and be able just to do what they wanted to do instead of being worried about coding and documentation and and all these things, that's what brought me the most joy. And I would come home from work. I remember coming home from work once, and I was like, Brian, my husband, I was like, Brian, you'll never believe it. I got the intake form to change. And with this change, we're able to extract goals earlier. And just like that project, it just let me. He was like, You're the weirdest person. Nobody likes this kind of work. And that was also an insight into like, not everybody does like this. And I felt like a weirdo because I felt like I should love PT because I seem like the kind of person that should love PT. And there wasn't that many people saying, hey, maybe I I want to do something else. Um, so I also um pursued opportunities to get people together who also maybe wanted to pursue something outside of traditional patient care. And that's when I formed um the, I forget what we call it, it was like the front-range non-traditional something. And we would get together virtually during COVID, and we would have like a special guest speaker on, and it was also like a sneaky way for me to network with people because they would people are would love to come onto a podcast, um, more so than like take my random phone call. And that's how I met Emma. And actually, I remember this. I was looking at the prompt website and I saw that prompt had a client in Colorado, because it was in one of their case studies on the website, and I had just gone to practicing four days instead of five days, and I said, Hey, Emma, I'm in Colorado. I saw, I see you have this client in Colorado. I'm only practicing four days now. I have this one day open. Is there any way I can help you? I'm just looking for opportunities to like volunteer. And I was actually looking into sales, and Emma was like, Well, we don't really have any openings on the sales team, but I think you would be really good at support and client success. And we're actually looking for someone. And so I applied, and that's how I got into prompt um on the success team initially. Um, and I think I was the the first CSM under our VP, uh second PT, I think, and then again one of the a few more than Emma, but there still wasn't many people at Prompt at that time. That was four and some change almost five years ago, I guess. And that's my long story. And then I'm so excited for Casey to tell her story because it involves both me and Emma, and Emma was way nicer than I was.

Casey Francis:

You were so nice. You were so nice. Y'all were both beautifully nice. And um, that was such a good story, though. And I hadn't heard all of the I'm loving this. I haven't heard all of the, I don't know how I've missed all of these little details from both of you over the years, but um y'all are just both so fantastic at sharing your knowledge and supporting others to learn from your journeys, and that is just so powerful. And it's especially because back when we all transitioned, this was not a thing that people did that often. Like I remember feeling very stuck and feeling like there was no one I could talk to who had had really gone down this path before. Um, so thanks to you guys, I just I just really commend Jel's work here in your passion project. I just find it so fun um to listen to and be a part of. But yeah, I in our little um storyline, Emma joined prompt and then Emily, and then I came along a couple months after Emily. So I had in my past life of being a speech therapist, I was working in indirect patient care for about 10 years, and I did every setting you guys that there ever was. Except I never landed with kids. I did kids like in grad school, and everybody thought, like, you are so great with kids, you should definitely do kids, but for some reason I just loved um the neurology, like the brain language in the brain for adults. So I was like very zoned in on that. And um, I started in long-term care, then I did home health. So I did each of these for probably two years or more. Uh, then I did home health, and then I went to inpatient, whereas I found like my really happy place was with um inpatient, and that was for post-acute traumatic brain injuries. So all brain injuries, all uh very quick after you know, the hospital coming to us, really intensive rehab, super impactful work, patient to patient. I loved my my uh therapist-to-patient relationships, and I loved the work, but I was working at a private company at the time who it was a like you said for years, Emily, it was like the most beautiful scenario you could have imagined to work in as a therapist. Like, do you need any resources? What's productivity? How are you doing? And then come to find out, they it was that way because they were just running out of money and they weren't doing the business side of like we didn't know the how the business side of things was going. We were just like in our little beautiful patient land. Come to find out, they couldn't make it, so they got bought out by a giant corporation. Our whole, you know, lives changed, it became a totally different environment to work in. And it just was a brutal, like kind of awakening to well, if I can't do it this way, I really it was too sad for me to go to a different way, like going back to doing with like no resources, insane productivity, different priorities, you know, it felt a lot more profit over over people. But at the same time, like I hadn't really ventured out to even think about leaving, you know, I would just talk to people like, what do you what do you do with a speech language pathology degree? Like, except speech language pathology, it just seemed so closed. But it's not, y'all. It's not. You just have to open your mind and think about different paths to get you to where you want to be. And so when I had my first kiddo, I thought, this is a lot. I'm dealing with a lot right now, and I think it might be a good time to look and see what else is out there, anything that could just get me a foot in the door anywhere. So I ended up doing utilization review. So this was ideal during COVID because it was remote work from home. Um, my I had just had um, you know, I had at that time kiddos who were in preschool. So their preschool, it was just like much more flexible, and I was able to swing it, but I knew that wasn't my long-term goal. So I started looking around. I joined a conference called the Rehab Tech Summit. And at this time I was just joining to like see what other options were out there with tech, see what other people were doing. And lo and behold, I joined one of the sessions, which was Emma Brighty, joined by two other colleagues. I think Rad was on there, who is another fellow who works with us, and then um someone else. But y'all were the topic was what's it like working at a startup? And I was just riveted, like the whole time. I was like, I never would imagine myself working at a startup, like this is wild. It's like the wild west, but it sounds so fun and they're so smart, and they get to use all these skills. And um anyway, I was just so it just lit me up to know that it was out there, and I was so drawn to Emma. And I was like, I'm just gonna email her. Oh, and then I looked her up, of course, on LinkedIn and I saw. This whole group, Clinician Transition. And I'm like, what is this amazing resource? I don't even think I'd used LinkedIn at that point. So I joined that and then I emailed her and just said how much I appreciated that talk and for her for sharing and just creating this path for folks and you know to keep me in mind that I was on this journey as well. And a couple, like I think that was in February and maybe in July, I applied and started at prompt at that time at CSM in 2021. And Emma Emily was the only CSM, like she said, at that time. And so she was so sweet, you guys. She was on vacation for like two weeks. So I joined and I'm like, where is everybody? Like my person is on vacation. And I would so I was just like doing the training and following our poor VP around who had 32 million things to do all the time every day. And I would just be like hopping on his meetings to see what to do. Anywho, Emily Emily called me from like the Midwest on a farm with her family, being like, I'm on vacation, but I just wanted to welcome you to prompt. And I'm looking forward to meeting you and working with you. And I was like, what is this? I felt like I'd come from being like a puppy at a puppy mill to like walking on fresh green grass out at the first time at this job, like just being like, what is this new life? Everyone is so positive and supportive, and it's amazing. And we get to use all these different parts of our brain. And it was just totally new, totally talk about a transition. It was just, I used some of my exact same skills, making that's how I ended up in EDU, making boring content fun. Because guess what you do every day as a speech language pathologist? You make people who don't want to do therapy have to do it. And so you have to get them engaged and make it fun. And so I was like, oh, I just am gonna do these same things, except instead of memory strategies or swallowing strategies, or let's work on our speech and language, let's talk about technology and how do we use it. And you know, the irony is not lost on me that I am not the most technology, logically advanced person in the world, but it is such a great system. I learned it, and now my passion is sharing that with others, and it's been so much fun. Um and getting to work with Emma and Emily has been even more fun, like so inspiring and seeing the impact you guys have. And like you said, Emily, it's also so fun to empower the other therapists out there. And I feel like that's what we get to do every day is like they're the boots on the ground in direct care, and we get to support, make their jobs easier, make their work life easier that we've lived, you know, and um now on the other side of it, I'm still I still get to be involved. So I'm still I'm still in that therapy world, and that makes me really happy and still, I still feel that connection too, um, because ultimately it trickles down to the care the patients get, which is full circle for me. So yeah, that is my wound about roundabout winding journey.

Emily Kelly:

I keep wanting to use emojis and then I remember nobody can see them but us. But I just wanted to pull out two things. One is also the detail of tell everyone what was going on for you during the rehab tech summit in Texas.

Casey Francis:

It was the apocalyptic times, what do we call oh, snow apocalypse when it snowed here? And like, I don't know if anybody else in the nation remembers this, but boy, Heidi here in Texas. The grid went down, we had no power or electricity, and I had already paid for tickets for this rehab tech summit, and I was like, I have got to join this. This is my first step. Like, I was so committed to, you know, because it's kind of scary when you go on this journey of like, you've decided you're gonna take a leap and learn what else is out there. And I just really felt like I needed to be there. And so we had rolling blackouts, and I would go like we'd have the internet work for like 30 minutes, and then it would be, I was just like shivering under blankets. I have to like go out to my car and charge my phone and come back. And somehow I stood the the one of the few sessions I caught was Emma's, and it just it was so crazy. Like, come hell or high water or free freezing. I was gonna make it, and I did.

Emma Brady:

That's the part of your story I didn't know. Wow.

Casey Francis:

Yeah, when you I didn't I didn't write that in the email to you, Emma.

Emma Brady:

You did not. You that but teaser, that's an episode I really want to do is not calling anyone out personally, so don't worry, but I do really want to do a uh episode where we're reading messages we get would you respond? And I Casey's would definitely be one that's gonna get read.

Emily Kelly:

Tease was copied and pasted into Slack, and Emma was like, Can you believe this amazing message? This this person, Casey, messaged me, and she just she's you know CS, you gotta write a lot of emails.

Emma Brady:

Yes. Nobody can write an email.

Casey Francis:

We gotta hire her. Yeah, it was perfect, it was a perfect link up.

Emma Brady:

Yeah, I don't know if chat GPT was around or not, but I I don't think I certainly know that that was not a chat GPT written. And that that's one of the things I admire a lot about Casey is her way with words that you know is genuinely coming from the heart, uh, particularly in writing. Oh, thank you for apparently. Um one other thing of backtracking on the rehab tech summit. There's another person where none of us would know each other if it wasn't for Lauren Sheehan, who ran that event and is the original founder of the Bay Area uh clinician transition group, and she handed it off to me. So shout out to Lauren. The Rehab Tech Summit doesn't happen any happen anymore. However, she still provides services and to support to this community through her venture called Collective Coaching. Um, she coached me, so if anyone is interested, please be sure to look her up and her program. She is truly, truly amazing and a pioneer in this space. So thank you, Lauren, if you're listening. No kidding. I wouldn't be here today without you, Lauren. So thank you. Awesome. So I think to sum it up, something we all have in common is that we were feeling like something could potentially be different for us, and we wanted to look into resources. And even without knowing exactly what to do, we all got here by leaning on each other or taking a quote risk. Some people reach out, oh, I'm so risk, or they're scared. You have such a valuable skill set. There will always be patients. It's not a risk. I know there are other, there are some real life factors, I get that, but it's not a risk to reach out like what Emily did. Can't is there something I can help out with? Or at the clinic, is there, you know, we had an episode with Brad Deffenball, who all this is crazy how many people now work for us. He knows, right? You know, listen Kelly's episode, yeah, he brought in a hammer and was building a ladder in the clinic or something like that. You you there are things you can do to set yourself apart, even if you don't have the quote perfect resume. So the point I'm trying to make is we are here to support you, hope you listen along with us and find our our resources and what we have to say valuable. And we're always open to feedback. We want this, even if it's a podcast format, we do want it to feel collaborative and have it be things that you're interested in hearing. So we're definitely open to connecting with us on LinkedIn and sending us requests. If we don't get back to you right away, don't worry about it. We'll we're still seeing your messages and we want to hear what you have to say.

Emily Kelly:

And I think in the future we can even dive more into each of our personal stories at prompt. Emma and I are not in the same position that we were in when we were recording with Jules, and we were just reflecting that each of us transitioned from being a rehab therapist to a health tech startup, and then after that made another transition. Yeah.

Emma Brady:

How many job titles have you had, each of you at prompt?

Emily Kelly:

Oh, that's a good one. So I started as CSM. And then I think I went CSM is funny because the word manager is in the title. So when you're manager, uh, it's like hard to know what so at some point I can't remember if I was a senior CSM or a senior manager, one of those two. And then I went from that to director of CS. Um, and then product manager, associate product manager, technically now. Yeah.

Casey Francis:

Yeah. I've had about four too, just random. But that's the the great thing about kind of when you're already you've done the biggest transition from rehab to like non non-clinical, right? Then that kind of unlocks your mind and your your vibe of like, oh, well, I can do that. And it makes any future transitions seem a lot easier. Um, and also you get better at aligning with what you like. So you're just like a honing, you can become more of like a honing device, and at least that's what I in my experience. And then you can feel more confident in in narrowing that down and in, I don't want to say like selling yourself, but presenting uh your strengths to align with what positions spark your interest. And I think that's a skill that you really can practice in in real life and you really can get better and better at. And um, it's not it's different than just hopping around to different settings, it like in the rehab world, but it's kind of similar, like you're taking a leap and you're trying it out, and it's the same, the same idea.

Emma Brady:

So we'll yeah, we'll definitely dig into more of what we've been up to individually. We'll have guests, we'll have all sorts of things, we'll take your ideas. Thanks again for listening. Appreciate you all so much. And if uh if you haven't joined the TCT already, please join it. And you can do that on LinkedIn and we'll put the the Jules used to handle this, but we'll figure out how to get out to you on the thanks again, Jules, for um your support and having us continue this project.

Casey Francis:

Yay! Thanks, y'all.