The ‘Fixer’ for Pediatric Speech Therapy

Written by Patty Rasmussen Tuesday, December 06 2011

Snapshot: Kristin Hall, CEO, Kidspeech
Kristin Hall describes herself as a “fixer.” It’s one reason she chose her profession. “The reason I went into speech therapy was because my brother is a severe stutterer,” she says. “I wanted to help him; I wanted to figure this out. So that’s how my career came about.”

Fortunately her brother is made of the same sturdy stuff that she is. He owns his own company and has enjoyed success. “Even now, if he’s meeting someone in an important meeting he can still get nervous to the point that he stutters severely,” she says. “But his stutter hasn’t held him back.”

Hall’s brother didn’t go through speech therapy with her, but thousands of other children have benefited from her fixer tendencies. She and a business partner, Lisa Gentry, founded Kidspeech Inc., a pediatric speech-language pathology clinic with three locations in northeast metro Atlanta. Both women are speech-language pathologists, and both hold the certificate of clinical competence, a must have for private practice. Hall is the CEO. She earned her undergraduate and master’s degrees in the Communication Sciences and Disorders program at the University of Georgia

Womenetics: Do you have a specialty in your practice?
Kristin Hall: We specifically see pediatric patients. If I see neonates it’s usually for swallowing or feeding issues. We see children later on, once they hit a year old, if they don’t have words or if they have a hearing impairment or some reason they don’t have vocalization. The other kids we’ll see early are kids with low tone, which refers to low muscle tone; this occurs for children with cerebral palsy or Down syndrome. We like to see those children early because we know they will have muscle tone issues. If we intervene early then we don’t see the large (muscle tone) deficits when they’re 2 years old. We can be working with those children on developing muscles for feeding and language.

	Kristin Hall

Womenetics: How did Kidspeech Inc. come to be?
Hall: I had worked in the school system, but after I had my babies – they were 12 months apart – I just wanted to work part time. The best way to do that was to start a private practice. I started private practice in 1993 when Lisa, who later became my partner, was still in grad school. I saw children on the basis of friend referrals – a couple of kids here and there. I began doing speech and language screenings at preschools and got a few more referrals. It grew to the point that I couldn’t handle all the kids. I called Lisa, who was now working in private practice, to see if she could help. I suggested we join together and hire someone to help us with our practice.

At that point we were meeting with our clients in their homes or at their day care, wherever they were, which was fine since we were focused on young children and we wanted the parents there to watch what we do so they could do it at home. In 1995, we hired a therapist, Kelly, and by the next year we had so many kids, we had to open a facility.

Womenetics: Once you opened that first clinic did you think, “This is it, we have a place, but it’s not going to grow any further,” or were you thinking, “We’re going to need more of these clinics?”
Hall: At that point we were so happy to have so much space. We thought it was fabulous. But we kept getting more and more referrals. Lisa and I grew up in this area, and we had a lot of contacts here. It was evident very quickly that we were going to grow. We moved to our next facility three years later, with bigger office space. We had around 19 speech pathologists working for us at that point. In 2003 we opened our second site. We had four speech pathologists working in that office, but the majority still worked at our Lawrenceville office. Some only did day care and home center visits. Three years ago, in 2009, we opened up the office in Buford, Georgia. At one point we probably had 26 therapists, but that number has settled back to 21.

Womenetics: I imagine you’re pretty particular about the therapists who work with you. How do you vet new employees?
Hall: We look at their shoes. I’m kidding. But really, we do look at their shoes. If they come in for the interview and they have really high heel nice shoes on, they’re not going to get on the floor and play with the babies. We joke about it. If a therapist has a gray suit and high heels on, she does not get the job. In our line of work, during feeding therapy, you’re going to get pudding on you. You really, truly have to love kids to do this.

When Lisa and I interview potential employees we ask them to tell us about their pediatric experience. That’s really necessary because at one point, about three or four years ago when Medicare put a cap on the therapies, a lot of therapists came out of geriatric practice and could only find jobs in pediatrics. We had to be careful about that because if they don’t know pediatrics we don’t want to put them out there with our name on them.

When our therapists start they come to our clinic and we watch them for the first four months so we can get in there with them. We’re really hands on in teaching the therapists that come in about feeding and swallowing because schools don’t really teach a whole lot of it. And medically based programs like ours often see more difficult cases than those they would see in the school systems. We specifically look for and interview therapists in the light of what they know about kids.

We also ask them how they would talk to a parent about characteristics that they see. Part of our job is being confident enough to say, “I see characteristics here that might point to autism” or something like that. Sometimes we’re the first professional to tell them that. Perhaps their doctor has said, “He’s a boy, he’ll grow out of it,” but when they come here they usually know there’s something not right with their child’s language. We encourage our therapists to have the confidence to say those types of things to the parents. In all our experience we’ve only had one therapist who wasn’t right for the job.

Womenetics: All your therapists are currently women. Is speech pathology a predominantly female field? If so, why?
Hall: Absolutely, it’s probably 9 to 1, female to male. We did have one male speech pathologist working for us, but he moved. I think speech therapy is viewed like the teaching profession. Men don’t think it’s a manly kind of role or job – getting on the floor and playing with kids, though some men would be phenomenal at it. When I was in college most of the guys in our program, and there were several, either ended up in research or teaching at the university. One guy I went to graduate school with, Tim Mackesey, became a speech therapist. He was a consultant on the movie The King’s Speech because he is a stutterer, and he’s the guru around Atlanta for stuttering. He’s the only one of the men in my graduate class who went into clinical work.

Womenetics: What was your business background, if any?
Hall: I think it was just in my gut. I have to give my parents credit because my brother and I both ended up owning our own businesses. He’s an entrepreneur, buying and selling land. He’s very successful. He’s had his own business since he was 16 years old. I grew up making crafts and jewelry and selling them at school, and I think it was just in me to do that.

My brother helped me a lot when I started my business because he’d already had his own business for a while before me. I’ve had phenomenal people to work with from my CPA to my office manager who has been with us for 13 years. All our support staff in our billing office and those who get the prior authorizations, they’re all terrific. I believe God just placed all these people around me to help me. My business works because I have good people around me.

Womenetics: What was your biggest challenge in growing your business?
Hall: For me, it’s understanding all the unemployment laws and understanding how the taxes work. It’s still the most difficult thing for me. Every now and then we overpay, and I’ll get something from the IRS. I just send it straight to the CPA. I try to stick to the PR work, visiting with the doctors. That stuff I shine in. Lisa is extremely meticulous, and she does the tax, insurance, and unemployment stuff. That’s her niche and she’s great at it. I’m not. That’s how we balance each other out.

Womenetics: Where did your initial funding come from?
Hall: We were self-funded; we never took a loan out. Lisa and I did enough screenings to put the down payment on the building. We rented the building because we weren’t sure what was down the road for us. It quickly grew. Within three or four years we were at $500,000 gross. We never, ever borrowed one penny.

Womenetics: How do you market your business?
Hall: Word of mouth is huge for us, and we make a point of visiting the referring doctors twice a year. We do voluntary community education programs for physicians. We’ll do parent seminars to talk about specific issues, maybe autism or sensory integration. Other times we come up with our own programs. We have about 40 preschools in Gwinnett County where we screen children; we get a lot of referrals from that.

It costs nothing for the preschool; if parents want a screening they send a check back. We do some advertising in a parents’ magazine and other local publications. We always sponsor the Autism Walk, and there are three special-needs sports fields in the county so we always have a sign there. Our marketing is community-based, focused on where our sites are located.

Womenetics: It’s obvious you’ve got a good business model. Any plans to franchise? Why or why not?
Hall: We don’t have plans to franchise. We had a great year about four or five years ago, and someone from another company offered to buy us out. Lisa and I thought, “That would be so great,” but then we thought, “What will we do after that?” I wouldn’t franchise it. I still love what I do after 20 years, the owning part and the therapy part. In owning the business, I get to teach these girls and cultivate therapists who are competent and ready to go.

Womenetics: Who is your competition?
Hall: The biggest competition we have is Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta because doctors usually refer to them. There are a couple other practices, none as big as ours, but there are several in the same area. They have five therapists at the most. We also have a sister company, All About Kids Therapy Services, in our office with us. They offer occupational and physical therapy (OT/PT). The reason is because many of our children have multiple handicaps, and this way parents can bring their children here and get all three therapies in one place.

Womenetics: What do you like to do when you’re not working?
Hall: I love sports. My son and I have Gwinnett Braves tickets and attend almost every game. We go to Florida for a week of spring training. My daughter and I go to the University of Georgia football games on the weekends. We’re just a big sports family. Any time I’m not at the office and the kids aren’t at school, we’re somewhere there’s a ball.

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Patty Rasmussen is an Atlanta-based freelance writer. She spent 12 years covering the Atlanta Braves for ChopTalk Magazine and has written for Major League Baseball publications, Georgia Trend magazine, WebMD, and Blue Ridge Country.