Care with Compassion and Human Touch

Team Players: ProFlex President and owner Michael J. Chiaramonte at far right with Chief Operating Officer Frank DiGiovannantonio (left) and Therapist and Waldorf Clinic Manager, Neil Brown. PHOTO RAOUL DENNIS // PRINCE GEORGE’S SUITE MAGAZINE & MEDIA

ProFlex Physical Therapy Taps Excellence and Empathy As Part Of Award Winning Health Services

By Raoul Dennis and Ian Harmon

If you’ve ever been in pain you know the fight against physical pain can be a constant and strenuous battle.

ProFlex Physical Therapy’s mission has been to help those in pain find relief through Physical and Occupational Therapy, as well as other specialties including Athletic Training and Aquatic Therapy. For over 25 years, ProFlex has worked to help patients attain relief from their ailments through tried and true methods, along with newly developed, advanced, and innovative approaches.  

ProFlex, a network of nine care centers, was originally an outgrowth of Southern Maryland Hospital Center and Health Care System, founded by Dr. Francis Chiaramonte in 1977.  The centers were developed by Dr. Chiaramonte’s son, Michael, who, after selling the hospital to MedStar in 2012, focused on ProFlex’ growth and expansion.

“We created a system with 30 doctors’ offices in a care network including home nursing care, medical equipment delivery, outpatient imaging, and other services in a 20 mile radius around the hospital [in Clinton],” Michael J. Chiaramonte said of the original health system that aided the community throughout the 1990s to 2013.  “It wasn’t the center of our organization,” he explains. “Physical therapy was an augmentation to the big hospital. At that time, we had three offices (specializing in physical therapy). Chief Operating Officer Frank DiGiovannantonio was running it himself. We met monthly, but back in those days, I focused on running the $280 million hospital.”

But things change—especially in the world of health care. Just as the health system mega mergers swept the nation, the need for small, agile, care-based centers grew.

ProFlex President and owner Michael J. Chiaramonte at left with the ProFlex team including ProFlex Therapist and Waldorf Clinic Manager Neil Brown (holding the Charles County Best Therapist 2018 award) and Chief Operating Officer Frank DiGiovannantonio (at far right).

“Outpatient walk-in clinics are super-hot these days,” Chiaramonte says. “It would have been foolish for hospitals not to have taken part in it – to use their capital to invest in outpatient services. It has filled an important niche. A lot of young people in their 20s and 30s don’t have a regular doctor-- not in the traditional way. They use walk in clinics.  You don’t need an emergency room for a sprained ankle.”

Why ProFlex?

Against the backdrop of a shift to community based health, Chiaramonte turned to DiGiovannantonio and decided to focus on physical therapy.

“He was doing a great job. Frank performed so well operating [our clinics] that it seemed effortless,” Chiaramonte says. “Growing them further was definitely the way to go.”

ProFlex now has nine clinics in Maryland and Virginia – including in Prince George’s, Charles, Montgomery and St. Mary's counties. The cities are Clinton, Gaithersburg, Leonardtown, Lexington Park and Waldorf. There are now four locations in Virginia: Alexandria, Aquia, Garrisonville, and Fredericksburg.

The Clinton, Waldorf and Leonardtown offices in Prince George’s County offer physical therapy, occupational and upper extremities therapy, custom hand and arm splints, aquatic therapy(only offered in Clinton), as well as dry needling.

“Our guiding mission each day is to put our patients first, restoring health and enabling patients to return to a life free from pain and physical limitation,” writes Chiaramonte of the company’s mission on the website. It’s a highly ambitious goal, but one that ProFlex strives for with an array of services to help their clients.

From athletic training to prosthesis management, to custom splints and braces and even dry needling, anything that can be done to progress the process of healing is within reach. The centers address issues such as chronic pain, stroke, fractures, joint surgery recovery and more while work force professionals visit for on-the-job or vocational injuries. Student athletes are also a fast growing client base for ProFlex.

“Some schools don’t have it in their budget to handle sports training,” Chiaramonte says. “On things like concussion awareness and treatment we are right there. ProFlex provides athletic trainers to the high schools in Charles, St. Mary’s and Prince George’s Counties. It’s not a profit center – it’s more of a community service. But it helps us to be a part of the community. It helps us to be connected.”

The Secret Sauce Is Service

On any given day at a ProFlex clinic, staff members are arriving early or staying late to adjust to the sometimes-changing schedules of their patients. They bond with their patients, always communicating with them and “listening”, and then really noticing the patient’s physical response to treatment.

But for the team at the company, the human touch is the whole point.

 “We spend a lot of time educating our patients. Some are dealing with lifelong pain. We help them to treat and manage their condition,” DiGiovannantonio says.  He’s been in the business for 28 years and still sees patients in addition to all the miles he clocks on his odometer managing the clinics. “It’s about what you can do for that patient’s life”. If they are willing to hear it, you have a chance to educate them. About 40% of our patients are return patients or referrals from friends of the family. It’s not just fixing the broken wrist, it’s everything.”

ProFlex Therapist and Waldorf Clinic Manager Neil Brown has a master’s in physical therapy, “I oversee 13 athletic trainers as well as the clinics but mainly I’m in the clinic each day treating our patients.  The fun part of the job is treating patients,” he said just days after he earned the 2018 award for Best Physical Therapist in Charles County.

“In the course of a day I may treat 17 people,” he says. “We see a wide variety of injuries. It all depends on the type of injury. These are 10 hour days starting at 6 a.m.  and I will wrap up treating around 4 p.m.”

But it’s never work when you love what you do.

“It goes by amazingly quick,” Brown says. “Most of the time, I’m surprised by how fast the day has gone by. By the time a patient is done here, I know everything about them. Their family--it’s like a reunion when I see them again when they bring their family members here. Typically, hospital patients are there 2-4 days and they are gone but here you get to know them. You get to know everything about them and that’s great.”

That’s what Chiaramonte calls the secret sauce.

“We differentiate ourselves from the Wall Street-driven physical therapy shops,” he says just before laying out his competitors’ formula. “There is private equity raised up on Wall Street – roll outs that are strictly business plays. Investors come together, they raise $200 million – find someone like our Frank and say to him: ‘bang out 50 of these shops.’  Doing it that way, they’re not connecting with the community. They’re not even connecting with the referral source. But they have to make their money back in five years. They are slamming it out without a lot of market research and development. We don‘t think that kind of approach is necessarily good for the industry.”

The vision at ProFlex works differently.

“We are about quality, not quantity. Develop one clinic at a time and hire skilled, capable physical and occupational therapists. In the end, that’s your product. It’s the therapist’s touch, hands on healing and treating, compassion, care, warmth, eye contact. That’s the magic. That’s the secret sauce. We win in our communities. We do better than the others in our market because of this formula. It’s not about production and numbers. It’s about ‘let’s heal you’.”