Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 8, Number 8, 1 August 1991 — Clinic business takes off with help from loan fund [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Clinic business takes off with help from loan fund

by Gail Chun When Ed Kim, owner of O'ahu Physical Therapy, presented his proposal and revenue projections for a bank loan, many thought his revenue predictions were too optimistic. Boy were they wrong. After less than a year, the O'ahu Physical Therapy elinie is doubling those projections. It is making twice as mueh as expected and Kim said he is not surprised. "I knew we (Kim and his wife) were going to make money," Kim said. He said banks were not willing to grant him a loan because the physical therapy field is fairly new in Hawai'i. At the time Kim applied for a loan, "most physical therapists weren't opening practices," he explained. Kim was able to start his business with a loan from the Revolving Loan Fund program administered by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. It was hard for banks to judge the success of a physical therapy elinie because there was no

researcn or stansncs eompuea specnicauy ror physical therapists. An occupation that banks compared his to, Kim said, was chiropractors. Kim was turned down by two major banks before turning to the Native Hawaiian Revolving Loan Fund program administered by OHA. A potential loan recipient must have been denied loans by two other institutions before being eligible for the Revolving Loan Fund. Kim said the loan fund program is especially designed for high risk new businesses. These businesses, he said, only have "a 50-50 ehanee to make it. "I found out about the program from a friend. Before that I had no idea OHA had programs like this." But the program appealed to him. "Where

would you find a bank that advances capital for new businesses? Nowhere. No bank. And, we had no equity," Kim said. The interest rate of the program was also more than reasonable for Kim. The OHA Native Hawaiian Revolving Loan Fund charges6 percent, a fraction of what major banks charge. lt took one year for Kim to put his proposal together and eventually receive his loan. While Kim is the manager and accountant for the business, his wife, Edythe Ēspiritu-Kim, is the physical therapist. Espiritu-Kim worked at various facilities, such as St. Francis Hospital, Kailua Physical Therapy, and the Rehabilitation Hospital of the Pacific for approximately eight years before the eouple decided to open up their own business. The idea to open a elinie appealed to her. "Here, you set your own schedule, there's more flexibility than at other places, and now, 1 ean develop my own programs," she said. The amount of time Espiritu-Kim spent with individual patients while working at the other

facilities was also a factor in her decision. "Some places spend only 15 minutes with a patient," she said. "Here, 1 spend from half an hour to an hour and 15 minutes per visit." This type of treatment is a big part of O'ahu Physical Therapy's tremendous success. While Kim had predicted the elinie would have two patients in its first month, it had four. "It (the number of patients) just kept doubling consistently," he said. The elinie started with five treatments a week, and has grown to between 80 and 100. The patients, said Espiritu-Kim, have mainly orthopedic injuries, or neek and back injuries and muscle strains. But what Kim likes best about their business is financial security, and the independence. "1 didn't want her (Espiritu-Kim) to work 70 hours a week, six days a week," he said. Now, Kim said, with their clinic's high rate of growth, "we ean free up our time to get into other things."

Pictured below are Esmerelda Pagala and Gina Yamamoto, both seated, and Edwayne Kim and Edythe Espiritu-Kim, the staff behind Oahu Physical Therapy in Wahiawa. Kim and Espiritu-Kim are the owners of the elinie.

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