New physical therapy clinic opens in Lansing

When she opened her first physical therapy clinic in Skaneateles in 2011, Shelly Kraetz started with a few clients and a mission to improve their lives. As the practice grew, so did Kraetz’s ambitions. She wanted to grow and to reach people who were underserved by traditional physical therapy clinics.

Then, a company based in Sarasota, Florida, stood out to her. FYZICAL Therapy and Balance Centers aims to help prevent falls in people over 65 years old by improving their balance through therapy.

The business was looking for independent franchise owners, and in 2016, Kraetz took the opportunity to become one of those franchise owners. Last week, she cut the ribbon on her third FYZICAL location, located at 3015 N. Triphammer Rd. in Lansing.

“I thought, ‘What am I going to do? How am I going to stand out?’” she said. “When I linked up with FYZICAL and started reading more of what they were about and talking to people, I really liked what they were doing. I really liked the idea of comprehensive fall prevention and balance.”

Kraetz has locations in Skaneateles, Camillus and now Lansing. She said she wanted to focus on fall prevention because it is an underserved part of physical therapy.

According to its website (fyzical.com), FYZICAL has more than 470 locations in 45 states. Kraetz said she is able to be an independent owner while still using the technology and paradigm that FYZICAL has developed.

“There’s a lot involved in our balance systems — vision, ear, proprioception,” she said, referring to a neurological system that goes all the way down to the feet. “As people get older, they can become impaired, and if one system isn’t functioning well, there’s a whole cascade of events that can happen. We have to retrain those sensory systems so that they’re working better and they can adjust quicker.”

Kraetz said that, in the U.S., a person over 65 falls every 10 seconds. A person who is over 65 falling is different from someone who is 30 falling. Kraetz said there’s an increased chance of bone fracture and other serious injuries as people get older.

Kraetz wants to prevent those falls from happening because not only can they lead to older people having to move to nursing homes or other types of assisted living, but falls combined with hits to the head could be fatal.

“People are living longer, and falls are such a significant problem with the older population,” she said. “They can ruin your life, but it’s also really crushing our health care system. It is predicted that costs associated with falls are set to skyrocket, and our health care system can’t tolerate that.”

Older residents won’t be the only clients served by the new clinic, as Kraetz said the clinic also has concussion services and balance services for athletes.

“There’s a lot of factors involved with concussions, so you have to do a really good evaluation because you have to know what you’re dealing with,” she said. “We have very comprehensive, objective evaluations that we put everyone through so we know which systems are impaired.”

Balance is also essential to athletes trying to take the next step. Kraetz’s husband and co-owner, Rick Kraetz, noted a past client who was a motocross racer who came to one of the Kraetzes’ clinics. He just wanted to improve his balance so he could shave a second or two off his racing time.

“We’ve had some high-performance athletes realizing that your core and balance is important to taking that next step,” Rick said.

The Kraetzes still live in Skaneateles, but when they were looking to expand, Lansing stood out for multiple reasons.

Shelly said she was impressed by the demographic profile of the town. At more than 12,000 residents, it was larger than she thought initially. She was also impressed with median household income in the area and how health conscious the community is.

They looked at a location in downtown Ithaca but decided that Lansing was the best choice.

“I love the community. It’s great — it all just fits,” Shelly said. “Everyone has been so welcoming. I’m really impressed.”

Two physical therapists have worked for the Kraetzes in Skaneateles for multiple years while living in Freeville. When the idea of a Lansing location came up, it made sense for those two employees to work in the Lansing office.

“We knew we wanted to expand,” Rick said. “When we started to look, it just made sense to have employees we really valued [closer to home]. You can almost say we did it for our employees because we really value them.”

It isn’t only the close relationship with their employees that the Kraetzes say make the clinic special. It’s also the commitment of every employee to providing important care to the clients.

Rick said that many physical therapy clinics have a physical therapist as well as assistants who mostly administer the care. He said this clinic doesn’t have assistants, and every client will work directly with a physical therapist.

“We don’t have assistants; you get a physical therapist,” he said. “It’s highly specialized, [so] you’re going to get corrective action through the [treatment] plan.”

It’s that specialized care that Shelly said makes the clinic different and successful.

“If you go to a place and they say, ‘We’ll work on your balance, why don’t you stand on one leg,’ and that’s fine, that’s a piece of balance, but there’s many more layers, and we get into those layers,” she said. “Your vision, your inner ear, all the nerves that are constantly talking to your body about where your center of gravity is in space — your brain can’t do anything without those sensory systems. … We do that way better than anyone in the area that offers physical therapy.”

While Shelly said that some physical therapy clinics can see 16 to 18 different patients a day, at FYZICAL a physical therapist might only see 10 to 12 patients a day. It’s the one-on-one care that she said makes the difference between her clinic and others in the area.

“We’re different, and that’s why [the name] is spelled differently,” she said. “When you walk in the door here and get treated the way you do, it’s one on one.”

Rick said that most of the other two clinics’ success has come from the patients going back to their doctors and telling them about their results from going to physical therapy through the clinic. Patients felt more balance and more confidence walking on their own.

He said he’s confident the same thing will happen in Lansing.

“Most of Shelly’s success is by word of mouth,” he said. “It’s people going back to their doctors and saying, ‘It’s different there.’”

Lansing at Large appears every Wednesday in Tompkins Weekly. Send story ideas to editorial@VizellaMedia.com.