“Magnify Your Medical Practice Business Income by Making Your Medical Patients Think of You as a Friend Who Cares About Them Dearly, Rather Than as an Overly Busy Physician” (Part 2 of 2)

"These are effective marketing activities
any medical office can do to magnify
income and satisfaction, inexpensively."

(Continued from Part 1---that explained many ways to attract new patients)

6. Updating your patients about your maintaining your cutting edge knowledge
and skills...

You do want your patients to know you keep up with the knowledge and skills of your
profession… yes?

One thing that often comes to a patient’s mind about their own physician or about the physician
you referred them to the other day, “Are you in your busy practice taking the time to continuously maintain your medical skills and knowledge on the leading edge of your medical practice
and specialty?”

About 99% of patients won’t ask you but wonder if they are getting the benefit of top-notch medical care. About 99% of physicians never tell their patients much about their efforts to keep up to date in medicine. So how else can any patient find that out?

Just because the office staff told patients that you were away at meetings, does not in any supernatural manner enable patients to take that as meaning you, the physician, was actually gaining more current knowledge or brushing up on new surgical procedures that makes surgery safer or easier to perform.

Patients that you tell this to not only tells them that it's important and you respect patients enough to share the information with them but also positions you at a much higher level in their estimation (they refer even more patients to you). Maybe, they even brag about their doctor more to friends and their hair stylest.

Patients dearly love to hear about what you are doing in life, especially in your medical career today. They want to know or be assured that as a physician you do stay current with professional standards and requirements.

That verification communication is a dominant driver of a patient’s loyalty and satisfaction in knowing they have made the right choice of a doctor. It increases trust and confidence in your capabilities many times over.

You see, most physicians erroneously believe that doing these things is called “bragging”,
conceit, arrogance, or waste of their time. When in fact they are short-changing themselves
in an ongoing fashion.

Patients today are much more perceptive and smart enough to see right through your mental curtain. They know whether you are B.S.-ing them or are seriously letting them know your desire to be the best doctor you can be.

Smart physicians recognize the benefits of revealing their recent upgrading of their skills, medical education conferences they attend and what new stuff they learned.

Once patients know these attributes they tell them to others. Patients get a certain comfort when they can brag about their doctor being top of the line. Do you think it would result in referrals of new patients? You can bet on it.

In essence, this factor is a completely free form of marketing your medical practice.

7. Patient referral programs

     "Do you really like having other physicians refer patients to you? Or are you so busy that you
     don’t need new patients?"

If so, then you may have forgotten that your medical practice is always shrinking as patients
leave your practice often for usual personal reasons.

Your income consequently is also shrinking unless you continuously have a medical practice business plan to have some new patients coming in at the same time. Remember what I said above about “growing” your practice?

Throughout your private medical practice career, you must always have many more new patients coming into your practice than leaving, to be successful to the end.

So, what’s your plan to keep the doctor referrals coming in… even over years to come? Surveys reveal that about 60% of your new patients are referred to you by other doctors. Did you know that? Do you realize how critical that is to your own practice financial survival?

To manage a profitable medical practice business you must create a “doctor referral program”. The only cost to you is the time you spend putting it together. It’s usually not interference with daily practice hours. I have written an article on this website about how to do it.

Article #33 Titled, "How to Create A Referral Marketing Program That Floods Your
Practice With Patients"

The short summary about how to do it might be called “snuggling-up” to potential referring physicians. Think about how you feel when you refer your own patients out to other doctors and rarely get a “thank you” for it.

A frequent gifting system that says thank you for you, and one that is combined with holiday greeting cards or other direct person-to-person communications or gifts are appropriate. Even sending a barrel of oranges to the office staff of those doctors at appropriate holiday times creates a similar business attraction.

You’ll discover that many medical office referrals originate with the office staff members, not the doctor. “Shall we refer this patient to Dr. _______?” You should treat them also in a
business way.

Having no referral promotion/stimulation plan results in medical practice suicide. Ask the physicians who are now selling their medical practices to hospitals about that issue.

8. Professional demeanor

     "You do change your underwear at least once a week… I assume!"

Businesspeople around the world insist on the need for attire and manners that reflect the standards universally accepted when business interactions are being formulated. It is not any different from doctors dealing with patients… which is a business transaction. You provide a service and you get paid for doing it.

There are times when physicians are involved in medical situations that keep them up all night and may appear in the office is scrub suits, maybe even splatters of blood, but they are the exceptions.

Patients expect when you are treating them that your attire is clean and you don’t have foul breath and foul body odor. If you can’t take care of yourself, how can you take care of patients properly, is the perception.

Your cleanliness has a direct influence on a patient’s healthcare. If a patient is distracted by your unusual behavior, attire, rudeness, interruptive voice, or phone calls that take you out of the exam room, patients feel neglected. They also feel that their medical care is less than it should be.

My wife and I once had a consultation with a middle-aged attorney who repeatedly kept scratching his armpits all the while we talked. Apparently, he was consciously unaware of his actions at the time. But, it was so disruptive that we left completely dissatisfied with the consultation and remembered little of it.

Patient’s quickly understand your mood and hurriedness by what you say, how you say it, and how
you act in the exam room.

The greatest test of your demeanor is during a confrontation with an unhappy patient. It usually means that you will lose that medical patient regardless of the outcome. A slow mature quiet response to the patient’s comments, if carefully managed, will appease the patient enough to remain a patient of yours.

My three rules to crush a patient’s verbal attack on me, or others, are…

1. Quietly ask the patient (person) to tell me exactly what happened, explain it clearly
   to me in detail,
    
2. I respond by saying to them that “I have the capability of resolving this issue you
   have right now if you help me understand what I need to do”. Is that what you’d like?
    
3. What is it specifically that you would like me to do for you to satisfy you about
   this problem?
   
4. Tell the person exactly what you will do for them to make things right---
   closely following as much as possible what they specifically want done.
   

The result is like magic happening right on the spot. When I ask the first question the patient understands that I am serious about fixing the problem. In order to explain in detail what their problem or issue is all about, they mentally must calm down (disconnects them emotionally from the event).

Once they have completed all their description (without my interrupting) about the issue, my reinforcement response (#2) confirms for them what they had assumed about me at the start… that I’m willing and able to resolve the issue immediately (whether I can or intend to do it).

Question #3 forces the patient to tell me the answer to the dilemma without me having to guess about what it will take to resolve the issue.

Sometimes it can’t be resolved and you may lose your temper along the way. I had a new patient, the wife of a military member who was now out of the military, who attacked me verbally the instant I opened the exam room door.

Her main point was that while under the military medical care, the military doctors convinced her that all of the civilian physicians would try to do as much as they can to earn more money from her medical care… do unnecessary tests, procedures, and treatments.

After using up all my ammunition defending civilian physicians, and myself, I resorted to an artillery approach and bombardment. I knew that she could never be my patient under any condition.

So I sent my most devastating missile at her (in a very quiet voice). I want you to know that I am fresh out of the military myself and served for 6 years as a military physician. I know you were given the wrong information about outside physicians.

What wounded me the most was that she never seemed to hear what I just said to her… she was so angry that whatever I said was like a sniper’s trigger aimed at her.

I told her that there would be no charge for the visit, turned around, and quietly walked out the door. You see, I thought that I had the where-with-all as a very capable medical doctor to manage any sort of conflict I might run up against without physical violence. Well, I didn’t. But, that didn’t exclude my mental violence that remained silently in storage.

In a suit, tie, white coat and with a pleasant smile as you intentionally and gently shake the hand of every new patient while introducing yourself to new patients and old patients who forgot what you looked like, you are prepared to meet the expectations of any patient, anytime.

"Your demeanor should be matched to your reputation. Patients come to you for care because of the way you treat them, not because you are the most credentialed MD in America."

9. Surveying your patients

"You would like to know how patients feel about you and your practice…wouldn’t you?"

How else would you discover what keeps them coming to you all those years, what they like about you, and what they don’t like about you? Maybe you don’t want to know because you might not want to hear the truth? God forbid, you might have to change your ways to help meet what your patients expect from you.

You may believe you are doing everything right, but what if you are irritating to your patients and don’t recognize it? I’ve known a lot of physicians who persistently do things that send a negative feeling about them to their patients. I especially notice those things when I accompanied my wife to her medical appointments.

There are a certain set of rules to follow when you "paper survey" your patients, done in order to get your patient’s true feelings and honest responses.

1. Surveys should never cover more than 5 questions.
    
2. Multiple-choice responses have a greater completion rate.
    
3. Surveys should not require patient signatures.
    
4. Best time to hand a survey questionnaire to a patient is after the
   office visit and before they leave the office.
    
5. Allow patients to leave and complete the survey at home when
   they ask. If you don’t let them, they will not complete the survey at all.
    
6. Explain at the top of the page why you need to do this. It
   should always be to improve some patient benefit, not yours.
   

Patients are probably the only people who can give an honest view or judgment about how well your practice is doing, short of spending a bunch of money to hire a person to evaluate your practice business functions, maybe even you.

Patients see things that need attention that neither you nor your staff sees because you are usually too busy to pay attention.

A great deal of things occurs in your office that you, the doctor, will never see or never find out about, especially if it’s related to staff foul-ups. The staffers can keep it from you, but not usually from patients that are standing right there witnessing it all.

I worked with a physician that had an office staff member swindle $40,000. Another that a staff member swindled about $15,000. Patients see the clues, but just keep quiet thinking that the doctor already knows and is doing something about it. Because signatures are not required on the survey forms and can be returned anonymously, some patients are willing to open up the gates to office problems or serious matters.

Surveys are such an easy task to do and offer an extraordinary amount of information that will be valuable to you in many ways. It’s probably too easy and is why 99% of doctors never do it…they like to do everything the hard way.

Physicians never receive a formal business education and yet expect their medical practice business management to be highly profitable, so, doing surveys of your patients is even more critical.

When I finally discovered my front desk employee without ever asking me using my copier to print up a hundreds of her church bulletins for Sunday services for the prior several years, I figured that it was my unexpected and involuntary tithes and offerings to do the Lord’s work.

Later on, I discovered a few other offenses she had been doing secretly. When I attended meetings out of the area, I assigned one staffer to be in the office each day for phone answering, mail opening, and walk-ins. For this lady it was another day off to go shopping. She was
fired soon after.

Become a “wise watchman” in your medical practice and save a lot of money.

10. Newsletters...

  "You might want to have a proven way of marketing
your medical practice business that is a powerful tool
and is comparatively inexpensive."

Physicians in private practice have a captive audience to preach to daily. We are so intimidating in our white coats that patients won’t chance even running out of the exam room no matter what you propose to them medically. And, they usually can’t get out of the office without arranging
payment for services.

This is why a newsletter works so well and saves you time enough each day to see another two plus patients. If a patient reads about it at home they need much less coaching in the office. You can provide patients with handouts on medical topics, but few probably get read.

A newsletter gets to them by email or in printed form at a time at home when they have taken the time to check their emails or open up the daily mail. Convenience increases the reading rate.

The most effective format is printed on paper and arrives in the mailbox because it’s personal, they can touch it, and it is trusted for valid healthcare information. You can do it all in your office or pay companies that print and send newsletters for you.

Newsletters are best sent once or twice a month. When you create them yourself, you control the graphics, the content, and the medical articles and advice. As you know, doctors often have a completely different concept about what a commercial newsletter contains. It reflects on your personality and integrity.

Patients view it as you sent them a gift and because you did this twice a month they know you care for them, unlike nearly all other physicians.

The content can be a mixture of humor, tips, changes coming, top 10 mistakes, inspiration, puzzles, answered questions, all related to healthcare. Or the content can simply be an article about a single medical issue that patients should know about or that your patients often ask you about.

The marketing aspect of all this is better than one expects. The newsletter gets passed around at home among family, neighbors, and visitors. Large medical centers charge for these newsletters and so can you. Digital education is evolving rapidly and the sooner you become involved in this with your patients the better.

If half of the people in the world have iPhones, just think of how you as a physician can make a difference in healthcare everywhere by putting your medical info online. Already the iPhone is capable of taking the place of every desktop, laptop, tablet, and other communication device.

When you share your knowledge with your patients you will have more patients refer more
patients to you. You will increase your income. You will catapult yourself out of the lower-middle-class existence you may be in today and into the realm of satisfaction because now you have a means to meet your financial obligations to your family and medical practice and yourself. 

Even more avenues are available to increase your income with medical practice marketing efforts done in your office.

Remember that every change you make in your medical practice management is slow in returning the rewards. It often takes 6 months to see a significant change, but you still have to keep pumping air into the system to make it function effectively.

Private medical practice business planning is not gone yet but soon will be according to all predictions. There is no reason not to take advantage of every marketing tactic and promotion
that you can handle meanwhile.

If you take the time to read through all of my business and medical practice business marketing articles on this website (FREE), you will gather a couple of hundred other new ideas for increasing your medical practice business income, like the time to read the the books I’ve written to help you get ahead in a time when your future in practice seems dismal.

You will have a far better understanding of how doctors got to this place, the causes, and how to get yourself out of the financial quicksand that our government and your medical school have
put you in.

----Professional Probe----

"The hard way to get the job done"

Doing things the hard way for many physicians is a result of their being unaware of what things can realistically be done within their budget. This photo illustrates a creative low budget means for getting the job done.

Often the greatest benefits come from some of the simplest activities in your medical office that previously were completely overlooked as a means of marketing. When your medical practice marketing knowledge is insufficient to recognize how and when some office procedures and processes can be expanded into remarkable recruitment of new patients, you must become familiar with medical practice marketing strategies that work. If you read my articles, you will learn
them quickly.

You owe it to your patients and yourself to learn these medical practice business tactics and strategies. With good medical practice incomes you can afford to acquire new medical skills and knowledge that attracts new patients. Are there any physicians who refuse to try out advice concerning medical practice marketing... absolutely, and innumerable?

Articles © 2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #68, 3-16-22