Urbandale, IA · The staff
Three doctors, one hiring standard.
Every doctor on this staff is a Doctor of Physical Therapy. Every visit is one-on-one with them, start to finish, no rotating cast of aides. Behind them is the team that keeps the schedule, the paperwork, and the front desk running just as deliberately.
The standard we hire to.
We don’t hire for volume. Every doctor on this staff came in already licensed as a Doctor of Physical Therapy, but the license is the entry fee, not the interview. We watch each candidate run an actual evaluation before an offer goes out: can they explain, in plain language, what’s actually wrong and why, to someone who has never heard the word “biomechanics” in their life. If they can’t do that across the table from us, they can’t do it for a patient at 8am on a Tuesday, and the offer doesn’t go out.
Specialty matters here for the same reason. Match the wrong specialty to the wrong problem and treatment tends to look generic: a shoulder protocol handed to a knee, general strengthening handed to a joint that actually needed to move first, before it needed to get strong. That’s why your evaluation, not the front desk or the calendar, decides which doctor treats you.
The three doctors holding the plan.
Dr. Bryan M. Ladd
Orthopedics · PT, DPT, MS, OCS
Bryan treats the evaluation like the real appointment, not the paperwork standing in front of it. He’s board-certified in orthopedics, an Orthopedic Clinical Specialist by exam, and still happiest untangling the complicated shoulder case or the reasoning puzzle everyone else punted on. Five years as a Navy physical therapist, including running the department at US Naval Hospital Okinawa, taught him what a rushed model costs a patient, which is most of the reason Kaizen runs the way it does.
Dr. Dylan Holst
Sports & Orthopedic Rehab · PT, DPT
Dylan joined Kaizen full-time in June 2024 after interning here that spring, and an Iowa State PT education left him focused on shoulder, low back, knee, and ankle pathologies. He asks more questions than most patients expect from a new doctor, mostly because the answers change the plan, and the cause-first habit carries through every phase that follows.
Dr. Lea Dodson
Vestibular & Post-Surgical Rehab · PT, DPT
Lea, an Iowa State and Des Moines University graduate, focuses on post-operative recovery, balance impairments, hip and knee issues, and vestibular rehab, the cases where the timeline matters as much as the technique. She’s also developing a focus in women’s pelvic health, one more example of matching the right specialty to the problem instead of handing everyone the same protocol.
Who else is holding the plan together.
Three more people your visit runs through before and after it’s one-on-one with a doctor.
Deana P. Ladd
Co-Owner & Operations Manager · RN, BSN
Deana runs benefits verification, records, accounting, and HR, the operations side that keeps every doctor’s schedule actually one-on-one. Her background spans Navy submarine medicine, Air Force family practice in Okinawa, and interventional radiology at Mercy Hospital before she joined Kaizen full-time as co-owner.
Katelyn Knapp
Front Desk · B.A. Psychology
Katelyn handles scheduling and billing questions, the practical side of a visit that still shapes whether it feels easy or not. She holds a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Iowa.
What the doctors have in common.
If you read staff bios before booking anywhere, that’s not fussiness. That’s good judgment. Hands-on care means an actual person’s hands, and knowing whose they are before you show up is a reasonable thing to want, and exactly why this page exists.
Past their specialties, the three of them run the same way. Every evaluation starts cause-first, not symptom-first. Every plan moves through the same four phases, Pain, Prime, Perform, Prevent, whichever doctor is holding it. Every visit is hands-on and one-on-one, the whole hour, no handoff to somebody else partway through. And every one of them will tell you, out loud, at the evaluation, roughly how many visits this should take and what “finished” is going to look like.
Pick a doctor. Or let the evaluation pick for you.
Put it in writing.
Five short questions. A real person calls you back, usually within two business hours, with times that fit your week.
The people who end up filling this out are rarely in the worst pain of their life. They’re just done working around it, done picking the errand that doesn’t require the stairs. If that’s the stage you’re at, this is the part where you stop researching and start.
Consider it filed.
A real person will call you back, usually within two business hours, with appointment times that fit your week. Keep your phone nearby.
Can’t wait? Call (515) 207-2450 ⟶Easy to find. Easy to park.
In the neighborhood, with parking by the door. Come see the place before you commit, if you like.
The clinic · Kaizen Health and Wellness
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