Adria Biasi was kept busy during her first week as clinical director at Vancouver’s Therapydia.
The new physical therapy and wellness clinic opened at 1125 S.E. 163rd Place, Suite 102, last week and Biasi had eight appointments — an unexpected amount, she said.
“It’s been nice to have patients and the normalcy of being a physical therapist while figuring out the rest, like where our mailbox is and how to work the heating and the cooling,” said Biasi, who graduated in 2014 from the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences in California and is a La Center High School graduate.
Therapydia started in California and has worked its way up the coast. There are five Therapydia clinics in Portland, and now Vancouver has a location.
“We’ve been growing, especially in this region, and Vancouver was the next step outside of Oregon,” said Shelby Wade, a regional marketing director for Portland and Vancouver. “We hire these clinic directors that really take it over and make it their own. (Biasi) is responsible for hiring the team here and making this place as successful as it can be.”
The thing that makes Therapydia unique is its one-on-one approach to physical therapy. Clients get to work with Biasi individually for their entire session, instead of just a portion of a session.
“We don’t have assistants or aides who are here to walk the patients through their exercises,” Biasi said. “I get to be with them through the manual therapy, through the exercises, watching every move that they are making and correcting through that.”
The Vancouver Therapydia clinic is one long room with a small waiting room in the front that’s partially blocked off from the therapy area. There’s a machine that measures body fat and a pulley machine that looks like a regular cable workout machine, but also measures power output and counts reps, “which is nice because physical therapists are not good at counting reps,” Biasi joked.
“Therapydia looks for the smaller clinics so it’s more intimate instead of a giant gym space,” Biasi said. “They like the feel of this clinic. You walk in and you can see everything.”
Biasi explained that she’s allowed to keep a flexible schedule at the clinic, which benefits her and clients. She can come to work later if she needs to meet with a client after they get off work.
In addition to physical therapy, Therapydia also offers annual physical therapy assessments, similar to how someone would visit their dentist. The idea is that it’s important to check on your musculoskeletal health in the same way you would with your teeth. Most private insurances are accepted at Therapydia but state insurances aren’t, Biasi said.
Wade added that in addition to rehab, Therapydia also focuses on injury prevention. The aim is to help people enjoy their favorite activities.
“Our goal is not to tell you, ‘You can’t do CrossFit anymore,’ ” Wade said, as an example. “It’s, ‘How can we fix you so you can do the things you want to do?’ “
