Iris Kimberg MS PT, OTR is the CEO of NYTHERAPYGUIDE and  no stranger to the business world.  She started her first company, HTA of New York, Inc. in Manhattan 27 years ago, at a time when contract agencies the way we know them today did not exist.  When she sold the contract company in 1996, it had three branch offices, 700 affiliated therapists and was generating $14 million in revenue.  She had originally worked in a prestigious facility that did not have a home health division.  "We'd work with patients for months, and then didn't have a mechanism for following them after they were discharged," Iris recalled in a 2003 interview with the Advance Magazine.  "Some of the therapists would go treat patients at their homes on their own.  So I essentially started my own private practice based on the model that patients didn't always need the nursing component in home care; they might just need the therapy component.  In the private sector you can do that.  I was meeting a need out there that hadn't really been met."  
 
After 9/11  Iris formed a fund, The Downtown Therapists Assistance Project, to aid the fourteen physical and occupational therapy practices located within the vicinity of the World Trade Center. Iris now enjoys sharing her expertise with others in the field through workshops, seminars and private consultations.  She is a Professor at Columbia University and created a business course for the DPT program and also lectures at Touro College and Long Island University.  She has been  the featured business columnist for the OT ADVANCE for the past 5 years and has written over 50 columns on business related issues for therm.  She  was a panelist at the March 6, 2005 symposium The Crisis in Reimbursement held at the NYU Department of Occupational Therapy, and most recently, a keynote speaker at the Fall 2009 NYSOTA Conference in Saratoga Springs NY.  

NYTHERAPYGUIDE was conceived during the time when Iris was under a non-compete clause and not able to work in the industry.  "After the initial thrill of not working wore off, I realized how much I missed interacting with all the therapists I had grown to know through my company.  So they began to call me at home and eventually the talk would turn to therapy."  Two years later, I clearly saw that there was a need for a consulting company where therapists either in private practice or thinking about private practice could turn to for advice in starting or running a business in this rapidly changing and competitive health care market."

To date Iris has consulted with over 600 PT OT and ST practices throughout the United States in various stages of starting, growing, and selling their practice. Nothing makes her happier than to see other therapists become sucessful in their own right.