Rock Valley opens new QC pediatric clinic
In time for its 40th anniversary, Rock Valley Physical Therapy has a new Rock Valley Kids clinic in Davenport.
RVPT on Tuesday afternoon celebrated a ribbon-cutting for the new pediatric facility at 1008 W. 35th St., Davenport. It renovated a 6,000-square-foot building over four months, which previously had been a RVPT outpatient clinic about seven years ago and last occupied by a construction company, CEO Mike Horsfield said.
Pediatrics came to the business first through Integrated Therapy of Muscatine, that joined Rock Valley 11 years ago. That’s at 2109 Cedarwood Dr., Suite 100.
“They had a pediatric clinic as part of their practice,” Horsfield said, noting RVPT initially didn’t have a focus in pediatrics. “They knew how to do it well. They came to us and this group kept coming to us, saying, ‘Hey, we believe there’s a need in the Quad Cities. We think we should do this.’ We kept telling them no – that’s how we’re not very smart.”
The Muscatine practice persisted and Horsfield loves that because that’s what they do for their child clients, and the kids keep persisting to overcome challenges.
“This group keeps helping them overcome their challenges,” he said. “They presented a really good, compelling case that there’s a need in this community and so we finally said, ‘Let’s do it,’ and it’s been great.”
“It was our co-workers coming to us saying, here’s a need and here’s how we’re gonna do it,” Horsfield said. Muscatine was seeing many QC families and had a wait list for kids to be seen.
The most common services for kids are developmental delays – for example, in crawling, walking, eating, and speech.
“We’ll see those children who aren’t hitting the milestone that other kids are,” Horsfield said. “Parents get concerned, talk to their pediatricians and often get referred via that channel.”
In other RVPT clinics (there are 64 in three states), they do serve kids with sports injuries, he noted.
“When this is successful, we’ll reassess the other communities and see if there is a similar need in those communities,” Horsfield said of possibly opening other Rock Valley Kids locations. “For us, where we go depends on one, does that community have a need? And two, do we have someone who wants to join Rock Valley and do an awesome job at that?”
The new Davenport clinic has a staff of 10, across speech, occupational and physical therapy, and as demand increases, they will add to the team.
The large play room has a very colorful mural on one wall, and a mock farmers’ market for kids’ activities.
Growth in services
Maggie Bohnert was an occupational therapist at the Muscatine pediatric clinic, which she continues in Davenport, as well as being the clinic manager. Some of the new speech therapists split their time between the two locations.
“The waiting lists are big, especially for occupational therapy right now,” Bohnert said Tuesday. “There’s probably like 75 kids…Being able to open a second location is really taking a little pressure off them in Muscatine, but also giving people an option so they don’t have to wait as long.”
Feeding therapy means teaching little kids how to feed themselves. Overall, RVPT serves mostly kids ages 3 to 7, but they see all ages, Bohnert said.
“I think once people know about us more, I definitely think there will be a demand for hiring more therapists,” she said. “The great thing about this place is, we have room to grow.”
“It makes sense why this clinic exists; it’s a tribute to the spirit of the people working inside it,” Horsfield said just before the ribbon-cutting. “We’re so proud this is our second opportunity in our region to serve kids in this way.”
“Adding this Rock Valley Kids clinic is another opportunity for us to serve our community and provide excellent patient care in a fun and supportive atmosphere,” said Wendy Bloomhof, Quad Cities regional manager for Rock Valley.
Marking 40 years
Rock Valley was born after two physical therapy clinics joined forces in Moline in 1984. That clinic no longer exists.
The oldest RVPT clinic still operating is at the Rock Valley administrative building on 43rd Avenue in Moline. They have 64 locations now in Iowa, Illinois and Nebraska, with 520 employees (half are therapists).
A 55-year-old native of Epworth, Iowa (outside Dubuque), Horsfield got into the field after a sports injury in high school, and a friend whose dad was a physical therapist, so he got interested in it as a career.
“Coming out of college, I was debating, do I want to be a coach, a teacher or a physical therapist?” he said Tuesday. In college at Wartburg, Horsfield played baseball and earned his master’s degree in physical therapy and business administration from the University of Iowa.
He started as a PT with Rock Valley in December 1993 and has been CEO for 12 years. They have grown both in demand for services and mergers with other clinics. When Horsfield started, Rock Valley had just one outpatient clinic and a contract to serve Illini Hospital in Silvis, just about eight therapists total.
“One of my favorite sayings is, the reward of great work is more work,” Horsfield said. “The growth of Rock Valley has been due to the contributions of individuals and everybody who’s been part of Rock Valley.”
They first grew outside the QC area in Des Moines, through high school friends. Dave Freesman came to Rock Valley and asked to start a clinic 20 years ago, and now Des Moines is one of their biggest markets, Horsfield said.
Other friends (including a classmate of his from PT school) started independent practices in the Omaha area. “It gets tougher for small practices to make it a go today, so they both reached out to us at similar times and they both came on a year and a half ago,” Horsfield said.
‘A great profession’
“Taking care of people is a great profession,” he said Tuesday. “It is the fact that people come in and ask us for help every day and we get to do that for a living. We get to help people. When you see people come in, there’s something they can’t do or want to do better, you’re able to see change and implement something. Our tag line is ‘Making Better Lives’ so you’re able to watch them walk out and achieve their goals. That’s the best part.”
Rock Valley has niche specialties in areas people wouldn’t normally associate with physical therapy, including speech therapy, dizziness, pelvic pain, treating developmental delays, autism, ADHD, among others.
Growth is about individuals and co-workers who have a passion for a specialty and they pursue that, Horsfield said. That includes pediatric services, serving kids from birth through about age 21.
In pediatrics, RVPT offers free developmental screens by all three disciplines without requiring a physician referral. For children, there is a large variety of challenges experienced including, but not limited to, delays in movement, behavioral challenges, delays in speech and language skills, and picky eating, according to the group website.
For children with complex medical needs, they coordinate adaptive equipment, bracing, and other mobility device provisions with our local assistive technology practitioners and orthotists.
Hours for the new Rock Valley Kids in Davenport are Monday – Thursday: 7:30 a.m.-6:30 p.m., and Friday: 7:30 a.m.-1 p.m. The phone number is 563-362-0060.
For more information about RVPT services, visit its website HERE.
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