APTA Private Practice Annual Conference 2026 (PPS 2026): Complete Guide for PT Practice Owners

The APTA Private Practice Annual Conference — known to most attendees simply as PPS, or PPS 2026 for this year's edition — is the annual national gathering for physical therapists who own, lead, or work inside a private practice. It's organized by APTA Private Practice, the Private Practice Section of the American Physical Therapy Association. This guide covers the verified dates, venue and travel details for PPS 2026, plus what practice owners typically evaluate in EMR, billing, RCM and AI technology — whether or not Practice Pro is part of that evaluation.

PPS 2026 at a Glance

PPS 2026 runs November 11–14, 2026, at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, Colorado, organized by APTA Private Practice. Registration and program details are managed through the official event platform, not through Practice Pro or any other third-party site.

What Is the APTA Private Practice Annual Conference?

The APTA Private Practice Annual Conference is the yearly national event hosted by APTA Private Practice for physical therapists who own, operate, or work in a privately owned PT practice. Unlike APTA's Combined Sections Meeting (CSM), which is broader and clinically focused, PPS is built specifically around the business side of running a practice — management, marketing, finance, and operations.

APTA Private Practice describes itself as a national membership association representing several thousand physical therapists who own, operate, or work in private-practice settings, with a mission centered on the business success of physical-therapist-owned practices. The section runs the annual conference alongside regional education, webinars, and its member publication throughout the year.

While PPS is organized around physical therapy private practice specifically, many attending practices are multi-disciplinary — running PT alongside occupational therapy (OT) and speech-language pathology (SLP) under one roof — which is why practice-management and technology conversations at the event tend to extend naturally into OT and SLP workflows as well.

PPS 2026 Dates and Location

PPS 2026 takes place November 11–14, 2026, at The Broadmoor, 1 Lake Avenue, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80906. These dates and this venue are published directly on APTA Private Practice's official event page.

Note for anyone who has seen different dates referenced elsewhere: the conference is not in October, and the host city is Colorado Springs — not Denver. Denver comes up frequently in PPS 2026 travel searches because Denver International Airport is the region's major hub, but it is not the conference location. See the travel section below for how the two cities relate.

Where Is PPS 2026 Being Held?

PPS 2026 is held at The Broadmoor, a large resort and conference property in Colorado Springs, Colorado, at the base of the Rocky Mountains near Cheyenne Mountain. The Broadmoor has hosted large conferences before and has previously served as a PPS Annual Conference venue in past years.

The Broadmoor operates as a full-service resort with substantial meeting and event space, which is typical of the venue class APTA Private Practice uses for its flagship annual conference. For amenity details, dining, and on-site services, the resort's own website is the authoritative source — this guide focuses on what's directly relevant to attending PPS: getting there, staying nearby, and what to expect once you arrive.

How to Get to PPS 2026

The Broadmoor is served by two airports: Colorado Springs Airport (COS), roughly 9–11 miles away (about a 15-minute drive), and Denver International Airport (DEN), roughly 75–90 minutes away (around 89 miles). COS is the closer, smaller regional airport; DEN is the larger hub with more direct-flight options from around the country.

Which airport makes sense depends on your route: if there's a reasonable direct flight into Colorado Springs from your city, the shorter drive usually outweighs Denver's larger flight selection. If not, flying into Denver and driving or arranging transportation south to Colorado Springs is the more common pattern for attendees traveling from outside the region.

PPS 2026 Travel and Transportation Guide

Attendees getting to The Broadmoor from either airport typically choose between a rental car, a pre-arranged private car or shuttle, or rideshare. Rental car counters are available at both Colorado Springs Airport and Denver International Airport. This guide does not book travel — confirm current options, availability and pricing directly with the airport, the resort, or your preferred travel provider.

• Driving from COS: a short, direct drive of roughly 15 minutes — the most straightforward option if your flight routes through Colorado Springs.
• Driving from DEN: primarily via I-25 South, roughly 75–90 minutes depending on traffic and route — plan extra buffer time around conference check-in windows.
• Rental cars: available at both airports; compare one-way rates if you're flying into one city and departing from the other.
• Private car / shuttle: The Broadmoor offers arranged transportation options for guests — contact the resort directly for current arrangements and rates rather than relying on third-party estimates.
• Rideshare: typically available at both airports; expect a longer, higher-cost trip from DEN given the distance.

Where to Stay for PPS 2026

As of this guide's last update, a specific 2026 conference hotel room block or discounted rate had not been publicly confirmed. Attendees should check the official event page and event platform directly for current accommodation information, including whether a conference rate at The Broadmoor is available.

For a conference held at a single large resort property, room blocks at the host venue typically sell out well before the event — booking early, once official information is published, is generally worth prioritizing. If you're considering lodging outside The Broadmoor, factor in Colorado Springs' broader hotel market and the added drive time back to the venue for sessions and evening events.

Who Attends PPS 2026?

PPS draws physical therapy private-practice owners, clinic directors, and practice managers, along with billing/RCM staff and, in multi-disciplinary practices, OT and SLP colleagues. APTA Private Practice describes its membership as representing several thousand physical therapists who own, operate, or work in private practice — PPS is the section's primary annual gathering for that audience.

Because the conference is built around the business of running a practice rather than clinical technique alone, it also draws healthcare-technology vendors and exhibitors — EMR and practice-management companies, billing and RCM services, and adjacent categories that private practices rely on. Specific 2026 attendance figures and the exhibitor roster had not been published as of this guide's last update.

What Should PT Practice Owners Look for at PPS 2026?

Beyond continuing education, PT practice owners commonly use PPS to evaluate the practice-management technology their clinic runs on — EMR and documentation, scheduling, billing and RCM, patient engagement, reporting, compliance, and increasingly AI-driven automation. Treating the exhibit hall as a working session, not just a walkthrough, tends to be the more useful approach.

• EMR and clinical documentation — how much of your charting workflow is automated versus manual, and whether templates fit PT (and OT/SLP, if applicable) specifically.
• Scheduling — waitlist handling, multi-location support, and telehealth in the same calendar.
• Billing and RCM — claim-error checking before submission, denial management, and whether RCM support is in-house, outsourced, or optional.
• Patient engagement — portals, intake, reminders, and home exercise programs.
• Reporting — whether KPIs like clean-claim rate, days in A/R, and no-show rate are visible without building a custom report.
• AI and workflow automation — where AI actually removes administrative work versus where it's a marketing label.
• Compliance and security — HIPAA compliance and independent security certifications (e.g., SOC 2).
• Multi-disciplinary support — if you run PT alongside OT or SLP, whether one platform genuinely serves all three or was built for PT and adapted later.

PPS 2026 Technology and Vendor Landscape

Private-practice conferences like PPS typically draw exhibitors across several categories relevant to running a clinic: EMR and practice-management platforms, billing and revenue-cycle services, patient-engagement and referral tools, staffing and recruiting, continuing-education providers, and compliance or consulting services. This guide does not claim a specific 2026 exhibitor list — see the Exhibitors section below for how to find the current one once APTA Private Practice publishes it.

When evaluating any EMR or practice-management vendor in this category — at PPS or otherwise — the categories in the checklist above (documentation, scheduling, billing/RCM, patient engagement, reporting, AI, compliance, multi-disciplinary support) are a reasonable framework to score vendors against consistently, rather than judging each booth on its pitch alone.

Practice Pro is one platform in this category, built specifically for PT, OT and SLP practice management — covered in more detail further down this page.

Questions to Ask a PT Practice Software Vendor

Whether at PPS or during any vendor evaluation, a consistent question set makes it possible to compare platforms fairly instead of comparing pitches. These are worth asking every vendor you talk to, in the same order, so answers are actually comparable afterward.

1. Does the EMR support PT, OT and SLP workflows natively, or was it built for one discipline and adapted?
2. How does documentation actually work — templates, voice/AI assistance, and how much a therapist edits before signing?
3. Does scheduling handle multi-location, multi-provider, and telehealth in one calendar?
4. How does billing and RCM work — is claim-error checking built in before submission?
5. How are denials tracked and worked, and is that visible to practice management?
6. What reporting is available out of the box versus requiring custom setup?
7. What AI capabilities exist today, specifically — not roadmap promises?
8. How is patient engagement handled (portal, intake, reminders, home exercise programs)?
9. What compliance and security standards does the platform meet (HIPAA, SOC 2, etc.)?
10. What does implementation and data migration actually involve, and how long does it typically take?
11. What training is included, and for how long after go-live?
12. How does the vendor measure and report results for practices like yours?

A companion piece walking through each of these questions in more depth is planned for the Practice Pro blog — this section will link to it once published.

AI in Physical Therapy Practice Management

In physical therapy practice management, AI today is used mainly to reduce administrative work — drafting documentation from a visit, reading and routing incoming referrals, flagging billing issues before a claim goes out, and surfacing reporting that would otherwise require manual pulls. It is a documentation and workflow assistant, not a substitute for clinical judgment — a therapist still reviews and signs every note, and treatment decisions remain the clinician's.

• Documentation: AI scribe tools can draft SOAP notes from a visit for a therapist to review and sign, rather than replacing the therapist's clinical assessment.
• Referral intake: AI can read incoming referrals (including faxes) and pre-populate patient and case records instead of manual data entry.
• Scheduling: automated waitlist-fill and reminder workflows reduce no-shows without a staff member manually working the phone.
• Billing/RCM: rule-based and AI-assisted checks can flag likely claim issues before submission, rather than after a denial arrives.
• Reporting: automated KPI dashboards remove the need to manually compile clean-claim rate, A/R days, or collections figures.

For a closer look at Practice Pro's own AI documentation and referral tools specifically, see Practice Pro's AI page.

Practice Management Trends for Private PT Practices

Independent of any specific 2026 PPS programming, private-practice owners broadly continue to evaluate a consistent set of operational priorities year over year: reducing administrative time per visit, tightening revenue-cycle performance, improving patient engagement and retention, getting usable data out of day-to-day operations, and — increasingly — where AI can responsibly reduce staff workload.

Areas practice owners may want to evaluate against their current systems include:

• Documentation time per visit, and how much of it is still manual
• Revenue-cycle metrics: clean-claim rate, days in A/R, denial rate
• Patient engagement and no-show trends
• Reporting visibility for owners and clinic directors, not just billing staff
• Workflow automation opportunities in referral intake and scheduling
• Multi-disciplinary support, for practices running PT alongside OT or SLP
• Compliance posture as documentation and billing rules evolve

These reflect general industry priorities, not confirmed PPS 2026 session topics. APTA Private Practice's official program is the source for actual session content once published — see the Schedule section below.

Practice Pro and Modern Therapy Practice Management

Practice Pro is practice-management and EMR software built specifically for PT, OT and SLP private practices, connecting documentation, scheduling, billing/RCM, and patient engagement in one platform rather than several disconnected tools.

Mapped against the evaluation categories above:

• Documentation: PT/OT/SLP-specific templates, plus an AI Voice-to-SOAP tool that drafts notes from the visit for the therapist to review and sign.
• Scheduling: therapist and room availability, automated waitlist fill, and telehealth alongside in-person visits in one calendar.
• Billing and RCM: built-in payer-rule checks, claims and denial management, automatic payment posting, and the option to run billing in-house or through Practice Pro's RCM team.
• Referral intake: an AI Fax-to-Intake tool that reads incoming referrals and creates draft patient and case records automatically.
• Patient engagement: a patient portal, digital intake, home exercise programs, remote therapeutic monitoring, and telehealth.
• Reporting: live KPI dashboards covering metrics like clean-claim rate, days in A/R, and collections.
• Compliance: HIPAA-compliant and SOC 2 Type II.

It's one platform across PT, OT, SLP and pediatric therapy specifically — useful for multi-disciplinary practices that would otherwise run separate systems per discipline. Practice Pro's own reported customer averages (37% less time charting, 30% fewer no-shows, 25% reduced RCM costs, among others) are published with the caveat that results depend on a practice's starting point — worth verifying against your own numbers in a demo rather than taking as a guarantee.

PPS 2026 Conference Preparation Checklist

A short prep pass before, during, and after PPS 2026 makes the trip more useful than showing up and browsing the exhibit hall cold — particularly if evaluating new practice-management technology is one of your goals.

Before the conference

• Confirm your registration directly through the official event platform
• Recheck the venue and dates against the official event page closer to travel time
• Review the official program once published
• Shortlist a few technology vendors or categories you want to research (see the questions list above)
• Write down your specific questions in advance, rather than improvising at the booth
• Identify your top one or two technology priorities (e.g., billing automation, AI documentation)
• Plan transportation from your chosen airport
• Book accommodation once official conference-rate information is available
• Set a couple of concrete networking goals — specific roles or peer practices you want to connect with

During the conference

• Use the same question set across every vendor you talk to, for a fair comparison
• Take structured notes rather than relying on collected brochures
• Ask specifically how a workflow would change for your practice, not just what the product does in general
• Ask direct implementation questions: timeline, data migration, and training
• Ask about security and compliance certifications directly, not just "HIPAA-compliant" as a label
• Collect pricing and next-step information while it's fresh

After the conference

• Compare vendors side by side using your own notes, not marketing materials
• Document what you learned while it's still fresh
• Evaluate your current systems against what you saw
• Estimate realistic ROI for any switch, based on your own numbers
• Schedule follow-up demos with your shortlist
• Set implementation priorities and a rough timeline if you're planning a change

PPS 2026 Schedule, Sessions and Speakers

In past years, PPS programming has generally centered on practice management, marketing, and business/financial decision-making for private-practice ownership, alongside some clinically-relevant content — a different emphasis than the broader clinical programming at APTA's Combined Sections Meeting (CSM). That's a useful general expectation for planning purposes, but it is not a substitute for the actual published 2026 program once it's available.

PPS 2026 Exhibitors and Vendors

In general, exhibit halls at private-practice-focused PT conferences tend to include EMR and practice-management software companies, billing and RCM service providers, patient-engagement and referral platforms, staffing and recruiting firms, continuing-education providers, and compliance or consulting services. Use the vendor-evaluation categories and question list earlier in this guide regardless of which specific companies you end up talking to.

Frequently Asked Questions About PPS 2026