A Calling Born in Childhood, a Career Built by Hand: Trish Groesbeck’s FeldCare Story

Disclaimer: Featured clinicians are independent contractors and are not employees of FeldCare Connects.

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For more than 50 years, Trish Groesbeck, PT, has answered a question she first asked as a little girl in Minnesota: Who gives a person back their life? Along the way she opened her own clinic from nothing, made her own opportunities in a profession that barely existed, and found in FeldCare Connects the one model that fit the way she works.

A Little Girl's Calling

Trish learned early what it means to watch someone you love fight to get well. Her older sister had polio. There were surgeries and long stretches of recovery, and a little girl in Minnesota watched all of this – up close.

Physical therapy was so new back then that, as Trish puts it, it was "in its absolute infancy. And nobody really knew about it." But she noticed one thing that no one around her could miss. Of everything her sister went through, the biggest help was physical therapy.

"It was my take as a little girl that the physical therapist was the one who got her to make it all work."

A child does not forget the person who gives a piece of her sister's life back. That memory stayed with Trish through high school and into college. After her freshman year, she knew she had to choose a major, and she refused to become one of the many people who graduate with no idea what to do next. So she went back to her roots.

"I've always been very, very glad that I did," she says. "I love being a physical therapist. I always have."

Relentless from the Start: Making Her Own Opportunities

Trish graduated as a PT in 1972, when physical therapy was still so little known that finding a job could be, in her words, "a real struggle, believe it or not." She did not wait for a position to open. She got "rather entrepreneurial" and started traveling around Oregon, filling in for private-practice therapists who wanted time off and had no one to cover for them.

Every day meant walking into an unfamiliar clinic, adapting on the spot and treating the patients in front of her. She learned to be flexible because the work demanded it.

When she moved back to her small town in southern Minnesota, there was nothing for her to do there. Her answer was characteristically direct: "I guess I'm going to have to make something."

With that mindset she opened an outpatient physical therapy clinic. Most people thought she was crazy. The clinic had no orthopedic surgeon and no neurologist, only a small group of general practitioners, and she started completely alone. She figured out the billing. She even did the laundry. She found the space. Then she treated the patients, and she kept the clinic going for almost 20 years.

Eventually, managed care changed the math. About a third of what she billed each day could not be collected and had to be written off. When she finally sold the practice, she says, it felt like a huge weight lifted.

Trish's next move came after the family relocated to the Los Angeles area. She knew she didn't want a hospital job or another outpatient clinic, so she called a friend who had worked in home health for years and asked her to explain it to her. Trish knew nothing about home health, but she was not worried.

"That's never stopped me yet," she says. "I just jump in and figure it out."

“It never ceases to amaze me how little things can help someone by a lot.”

TRISH GROESBECK · PHYSICAL THERAPIST

The Match: An Entrepreneur Meets a Model Built for Entrepreneurs

A nurse friend pointed Trish toward Randi Peled, founder of FeldCare Connects, as someone who is reliable and trustworthy. Trish called. Randi's answer was simple: come on in.

Trish had partnered with a lot of people throughout her career and during that time, she was out of the industry for health reasons but decided to jump back into starting her practice again. Randi stood out amongst other people she’s met because, “She has this ability to give you her attention even when she’s busy, her undivided attention,” Trish says.

Despite being out of the game for a few years, and with electronic documentation already being introduced into the system, Trish remained undaunted. She reminded herself that the basics are just the basics and signed up as an independent contractor with FeldCare Connects.

The FeldCare model turned out to be a good fit for her because it treats clinicians the way Trish has always treated herself. As an independent contractor, she says, “Essentially, you’re an entrepreneur.”

“You get to have your own schedule. You get to decide how many patients you’re going to treat. You get to decide when you’re going to treat them.”

If she wanted time off, she took it with notice. If she didn't want to take a patient, she didn't. She never cared about traditional employee benefits, so the trade-off never bothered her. And because FeldCare handled the home health agency paperwork, she spent her time on the part she loved: treating the patient.

Supporting Independent Practice

FeldCare also solved a problem every home health clinician knows. Documentation is the most time-consuming part of the job, and Trish points to one platform for records and scheduling as one of Randi's smartest decisions.

"Life isn't worth living if you have four different softwares," she says.

She also says Randi really values all clinicians in the network, and "it shows." She stresses that this is unusual.

Whenever she could, she followed through with the same patients over time, because the plan of care belongs to the physical therapist.

Today: Still Building, Still Treating

When Trish and her family moved to Florida in 2020, she was sad to leave FeldCare. Despite relocating to this new environment, she still continues her relationship with FeldCare as an as-needed home health clinician. For every new agency she signs with in Florida, she holds every new setup to the standard she learned when working with FeldCare back in LA.

Before she commits to any agency, she confirms that it uses the same streamlined software she came to rely on.

What has not changed is what she loves about the work: "Helping one person at a time." Home health takes physical therapy back to what she calls "the bare bones basics of function." Many of her patients can barely get out of a chair, and a few well-taught exercises can change their lives.

"It never ceases to amaze me how little things can help someone by a lot."

Trish's story shows why FeldCare's model works. The company doesn't sign clinicians to fit into a system. It connects independent contractors who are already entrepreneurs—people who set their own schedules, choose their caseloads and take responsibility for outcomes—with a home health agency that needs them. FeldCare backs clinicians with one platform, responsive support and a founder who values them. Professionals like Trish make their own opportunities, and FeldCare removes the friction and gets out of the way, so the clinician's time goes to the patient.

For physical therapists who have always built their own way, FeldCare Connects is the right place to do it.