JAG-ONE Physical Therapy: Different name, same faces

JAG-ONE Physical Therapy’s clinical director, Sean Kane, wants residents to know that while the name on his business’s sign outside may have changed, the quality care and faces inside have not.

“(People) don’t realize that Anne and I are still here,” Kane said. “We are still on the job!”

Kane and wife Anne’s practice was formerly known as the West Milford Physical Therapy Center until earlier this year.

“Just since March of 2019, (when) JAG-ONE purchased our little mom-and-pop shop,” Kane said of the recent changes.

JAG-ONE is an outpatient physical and occupational therapy company with facilities throughout New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.

While his company had to make some slight adjustments in areas like keeping records and scheduling since the shift in March, Kane said he’s happy overall with the change.

”It’s a physical therapist-owned company,” he said of JAG-ONE. “It’s not a big corporate entity.”

It’s not just that, though, that makes Kane happy with the deal.

“We’re 36 years in the business, 32 of them in town here,” he said. “I’m kind of getting ready to retire, and I don’t want to retire and just close the door and walk away. It’s something we built up here and we’d like it to keep going.”

Sean and Anne Kane met in physical therapy school in 1981, and they married in 1985.

The couple moved to West Milford a couple of years later and were commuting to their respective jobs when some townspeople at the local health spa suggested opening a physical therapy facility of their own in the area.

”There was definitely a void (in the area),” Kane said. ”A lot of our initial patients were going to physical therapy elsewhere, and they passed our sign and came in and asked if they could come to us.”

The Kanes started with a small office space in Ringwood before bringing the business to West Milford in 1988.

In 1998, they moved to a larger space on Macopin Road, where they were for 15 years.

It was during that time that the Kanes opened up a satellite office at their current location on Cahill Cross Road before moving the entire operation there in January 2014.

“It’s a great town,” Kane said. ”We’ve been in town a long time. We’ve treated pretty much, probably close to half the residents.”

It’s precisely that long history of quality care that, Kane said, led the company to joining the JAG-ONE Physical Therapy banner earlier this year.

“They bought us on our reputation,” Kane said. “They literally purchased our business and never walked into this office to look at it until the day after, when I introduced them to my staff.”

The ability to gain patients’ trust has earned the facility that reputation, Kane said.

”It can be a very painful process, so you do have to develop a rapport with each individual that comes in,” he said. “There’s a lot of that one-on-one time that the PT gets to spend with the patient. The patient doesn’t spend a lot of one-on-one with the doctor.”

Kane said his office’s open floor plan helps to alleviate some of the common concerns about physical therapy by allowing new patients to see others in the process and to speak with them about it.

”We encourage that kind of interplay with the patients, so that they know what’s going to be happening going forward,” he said.

Kane said his facility specializes in orthopedic conditions and treats post-operative issues in any part of the body, but the bulk of his patients are nonsurgical candidates.

“They come to physical therapy first, before surgery,” he said. “A good surgeon doesn’t just cut you right away. He tries to do conservative management ideas first.”

JAG-ONE Physical Therapy will host a Roadmap for an Anti-Aging Lifestyle event on Oct. 17, when Kane’s staff will be joined by ShopRite’s nutritionist Meghan Scutti and the staff of Harvest Moon to discuss the importance of nutrition, vitamins and supplements, and daily exercise.

To learn more about the upcoming event or JAG-ONE Physical Therapy, visit www.jagonept.com.