For physical therapists John and Joyce Miller, what they do is just a piece of the puzzle in keeping the community healthy.
“We just enhance what everybody else does and they enhance what we do,” John Miller said.
Recently, their efforts were recognized by the South Hill Rotary Club by being given the 2008 Business Community Vocational Award for Puyallup Valley Physical Therapy.
At a reception they were presented the award by Dr. Donald Mott, a long-time doctor at Good Samaritan Hospital who retired at the end of last year.
It was Mott and others who encouraged the couple to open a private practice, Joyce Miller said.
The two had both been working as physical therapists at Good Samaritan in the late 1970s, when they were urged to open a private practice in the area. Almost 30 years later, Puyallup Valley Physical Therapy is still going strong as an independent physical therapy practice.
“That doesn’t happen very often,” said Sandy Charboneau, who has worked at the practice for almost two decades.
The recipe for success are the Millers, Charboneau said, and how they run their practice.
It’s all about treating the whole patient and finding what they need to lead a life they want.
“I guess we’ve always kept the philosophy we are a clinic first and a business second,” John Miller said.
What brought the two to Puyallup were positions at Good Samaritan. They had met in college at the University of Washington and like the doctors that would later push John Miller to pursue a private practice, it was Joyce Miller who told him she thought he would enjoy physical therapy as a profession. She had been working toward a degree in it, while he had been pursuing zoology.
Sure enough, she was right.
When they opened their practice, it rapidly grew.
Before they knew it they were adding staff and it didn’t take too much longer before it was time to find a new facility.
“We busted at the seams,” John Miller said. “It really did.”
They found a site, where they are still located today, and began to plan. Everything was taken into account. They wanted a place that felt inviting to their patients and comfortable for their employees.
“It’s a friendly homely atmosphere,” Joyce said.
The atmosphere is built around health and treating people a certain way, she said.
“You treat people the way they want to be treated,” John Miller said.
Much that atmosphere comes from the staff that are there, he said. Many of them have been with the couple for a number of years.
“Everybody here is making this practice grow,” John Miller said.
From the front desk to the physical therapists each person plays a roll in treating the patient, he said.
“We want to remove the barriers to better health,” John Miller said. “We want them to live as full a life as possible.”
John Miller equates himself as a tune-up specialists for the body. He’s even had to have his own body tuned-up before.
He was in a serious automobile accident in 1990 and found himself on the receiving end of physical therapy.
It’s been a blessing, John Miller said, because he’s able to relate to the patient even more and give them the extra boost of if he can get better so can they.
“We want them to expect what they put into it,” he said.
Joyce Miller said, she is very impressed with how the patients themselves become each others motivators. People will come in and converse in the waiting room, comparing their injuries and telling each other how they got there.
She said, their senior patients become some of the biggest motivators because people see them accomplishing their therapy and improving their health.
“You inspire people to do what they may have to do someday,” Joyce Miller said.
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