"Begin to treat every patient like a close friend,
rather than another paying medical patient whose
medical problem is not important enough to
waste your time on."
It sounds like something that’s almost too easy… doesn’t it? Then you wonder why you didn’t think about doing that yourself. Well, don’t worry about that, because you were never programmed mentally to recognize the everyday secrets that most other business-educated people have learned and you never found out about.
I’m going to tell you about how to do that today so stick with me here. As you know every improvement made in any business takes time and effort to show good results. It’s a great time now to use your creative mind that you already use to diagnose and treat medical problems that hide from you, to also focus on the profitable aspects of your medical practice business.
You already have an entrepreneurial mind; otherwise, you could not make it in the medical profession. You solve medical problems in one way or another that at the start had no solutions, and you do it almost every day.
You look at the red hot red painful inflamed throat of the patient and instantly you know it's a "Strep throat." You know the diagnosis immediately and don't have to waste $150 on a lab test to prove it. And you don't have to refer the patient to her family physician to treat it. I remember an OBG physician who would never treat any medical problem that their family doctor could treat.
Can you imagine how a patient feels when they ask their specialist to treat a secondary easily treatable medical issue while they are there for a more important medical problem and the physician tells them that he or she doesn't treat such things and refers them to their family doctor?
It means waiting, making another appointment with another doctor on another day, paying the baby sitter another time, driving to and from the other office again, and not receiving the exact same medical care in the specialists office at the same time that takes 5 minutes or so to complete that would have saved the patient a half day to do elsewhere. Would it aggravate you? It would me.
You treat it and it cures the problem for the patient and saves the patient or health insurance
company money. And you are correct in the diagnosis over 98% of the time--nobody's perfect.
Doctors face and solve those kinds of problems all the time. The amazing results of doing these things are appropriate for any physician, any age, any location, in any kind of medical practice.
I can’t help but believe that these suggestions for most physicians can make a miracle happen in their medical practice that hasn’t happened in the last 20 years of their medical practice business.
Take these marketing suggestions and run with them for a while, see if I’m right.
Several methods are available to influence patients to help you improve your income. As ridiculous as it sounds, you have to ask them.
Consider these office approaches to encourage patients to help you (earn more money).
1. Messaging to your patients…
2. Educating your patients…
3. Gifting your patients…
4. Customer service magnified…
5. Applauding your patients…
6. Updating your patients…
7. Patient referral programs…
8. Professional demeanor…
9. Surveying your patients...
10. Newsletters…
1. Office communication with patients outside the office...
You frequently have contacts with patients for various kinds of health issues and questions… right?
Most physicians and their office staff have several means of connecting with their patients including phone calls, emails, texting, fax, direct mail, and short wave radio (think Alaska).
The purpose here is to keep in touch with patients frequently. It means you remember them and recognize them as friends as well. Emotionally for patients, you are telling them that you care about them.
You show that by sending them birthday, holiday, and special occasion cards. Patients often forget when they saw you last, what it was for, and what benefit they had from the visit.
The effort creates loyalty to you and your practice. It prevents them from changing doctors and makes it much more difficult to change if they decide to do it. You retain more patients than other doctors because you do such things.
"The loyalty and retention measures keep the income from
patients healthcare in your office rather than in another doctor’s office."
You often give medical information to patients… right?
The motivation for physicians today, having to survive under increasing fee restrictions, is to see more patients each day to increase income. Without patients, you don’t survive in the medical profession. Worse, you don’t earn any money. Even worse, you become a liability to your family.
You just don’t know any other way to earn income in your practice other than seeing more patients. You were never taught (bad medical school mistake) any other methods, strategies, or techniques about how to earn money in your practice.
The primer for recruiting new patients is the fact that when you see many more patients each day you don’t or can’t take time to educate your patients about their medical problems, which patients are starving for… and disappointed about.
Consequently, most physicians don’t do anything much to ever expand their education of their patients. So when a doctor does make that effort, he or she stands out from the crowd in the patient’s mind, as well as in the other physicians community.
When your patient tells a neighbor or friend or work associate that you explain medical things thoroughly as no other doctor does, they recommend you as a doctor. And it doesn’t cost you a penny for that referral. Word spreads fast because this “overly” extraordinary doctor becomes known in the community rapidly.
A cardinal rule in the world of marketing--When you do things that other doctors are not doing, you get more of the patients. It’s a fact.
2. Educational handouts
You can’t take the time to tell your patients everything you would have liked to tell them about their health problem… right?
If you’re too busy, at least prepare medical handouts for your patients to read, take home, and expose others to what you wrote. This same result happens more frequently when you have a newsletter to send out to your patients, which I’ll discuss later.
Although patients often use their computers to look up medical information, it may be hard to understand and they often don’t trust what is written there.
When the same info comes from their own physician, the opposite is true. And that runs up your credibility another 20 notches in the mind of your patient. Less than 1% of physicians do anything like this. They wonder why so many of their patients move elsewhere.
It takes time to do this and can be done outside of office hours at home with your bare feet up on the coffee table and sipping on your favorite brew. The cost to do this is negligible compared to the cost of losing another patient.
With your intelligent brain and knowledge, you can write a 1-2 page handout on a medical topic that you often face with patients, in 15 minutes--as if you were typing what you always tell patients or that you wanted to tell them and just had to cut the visit short.
It’s been touted that every loyal patient produces around $400 to $800 income for your practice every 2 years, excluding surgical procedures.
Medical practice of 2000 private patients would produce about $800,000 every 3 years…and this is at the low end of incomes. So if you earn about $200,000/year as an employed doctor, you may be facing a nine-to-five job with a fixed or declining salary over time and have no possibility of earning more in your medical practice business. Use this strategy to compliment your private medical practice business income.
There is strong evidence and predictability that there will be fewer physician jobs (being employed) because of shifting the healthcare load to midlevel providers under the Affordable Care Act.
Consequently, salaried doctors will discover their salaries decreasing very soon. No wonder the stats from the AMA and SK&A Company reveals that 14% of doctors move each year. You and
I know many reasons why?
Why wouldn’t physicians quit medical practice? They could have made lots more money in another business career.
3. Gifting your patients
Don’t you sometimes surprise patients by some free-to-take items on the counter at the front desk? Patients remember that well.
Doesn’t everyone like to receive gifts? That thought may seem trivial to you but it’s an effective factor for improving your relationships with patients. The common mistake being made with gifts is to give them something that is either contrary to good medical care (candy) or is essentially a useless object (tiny plastic toys).
Gifts such as nail clippers, combs, pens, key chains, staple removers, and nail files are just a few that are available online and won’t break your bank. Even if patients ignore them, the gesture of your giving remains in their minds.
When they go to other doctors they likely won’t see any such thing being done, yet it is an influential gesture--you care about patients! It's not what you say, it's what you do.
Some wealthier physicians take the time and money to celebrate with their patients once a year. All patients are invited to an all-day festival in the local parking lot, pony rides for the kids, free food, lots of music, magic tricks, adult games, etc.
If you want to be known in the community, this is an excellent way to get new patients. I know a few of these physicians that do this. They all track their wins and losses from the project and always come out ahead financially.
If you practice in a group, it's far less cost to do this in smaller way and accomplish the
same objective.
Don’t forget that this gifting is even more important when applied to your own medical staff. When they receive a gift from you that’s unexpected, you can bet on them telling patients and everyone about it.
This is a real demonstration of your attitude towards people. If you do such things for your employees, then patients will certainly know that you are a doctor that treats your patients
the same way.
Remember that patients don’t come to see you because of your medical knowledge and skills, they come to you primarily because of how you and your office staff treat them personally.
If they are insulted or spoken harshly to, just once, they will seek another physician
that same afternoon.
If you contact the patient and apologize immediately, you might keep the patient longer. The problem is that as the physician (you), won’t hear about the bad treatment by a staff member of a patient at all or much later. Other employees will not spill the beans to you about it. Office staff are more loyal to their office "click," than to you.
4. Customer service
You always try to make patients as comfortable as possible when they are in your office… important!
The rude awakening for most physicians is that they need to do a lot more customer service for patients. For instance, how does your office staff treat patients when you aren’t present? Actually, conflicts of patients with the office staff are responsible for the loss of most patients… not you.
Take time to overhear how your staff members talk to patients on the phones. A thorough re-education of how to talk on the phone to patients may be needed.
Most doctors are totally ignorant about what customer service is about in any business. It goes much further than talking nicely to people. Sometimes a spontaneous decision to help a patient without being asked is necessary. If you have patients in wheelchairs, you know about that.
Many patients are in pain, are disabled, have mobility problems, and your responding to their distress is essential… at the right moment and in an appropriate manner.
The most effective customer service is a house call. Rarely do doctors do that today, but you have a responsibility to see that a patient gets into your office safely and also helped back to their car
if need be.
Telephone courtesy is paramount, even if the patient is angry, intolerant, manipulative, and demanding. Your staff needs to be instructed on how to manage these kinds of issues. What and how a patient is spoken to on the phone is the difference between losing a patient, especially a new patient, or not.
Have a real person answer the phone when your office is open… not a robot or an answering service. Your availability is critical to customer service improvement. Don’t keep a patient “on hold” if possible, because it often leads to forgetting them or they somehow get “cut-off” by accident. No staffer would do that on purpose… would they… really?
Don’t delay your phone calls back to patients if possible. Letting patients know that you return all calls between certain hours of the day, which allows patients to make themselves available
at the hour.
Someone on staff should be accountable for prioritizing your phone messages relative to urgency and liability danger.
Not returning phone calls tells patients that you don’t really care about them, at all.
5. Applaud your patients
You do have at least a few patients who have made their mark in the local community… right?
Recognition by others is an essential element of a person’s self-esteem. You will discover that there are patients in your practice that are well-known or celebrities, make news in the newspaper, are involved in events and happenings that make a difference, and accomplish wonderful things.
Celebrating your patient’s success, regardless of what that is, should be acknowledged by you.
Not only do those patients relish the recognition you give them for their activities, but also your unexpected compliments, especially from a busy doctor, are something they will remember well.
Have a bulletin board, put up their newspaper story clipping when you discover their hidden talents, skills, or interest. You are in essence promoting their fame to your other patients and marketing their name and business (if any). Reciprocity is the key to this behavior model. You do something for them and they feel the obligation to do something for you.
Often these patients are moving in higher social circles and would refer the higher quality of patients to you. Most potential high-quality patients are associated with affluent people looking for a “special” caliber doctor. You’re it when you take time to develop this lead generation
source of patients.
If you get only one new patient a month, annually it will increase your income by a few thousand dollars. You know it’s important because you lose patients from your practice and
need replacements.
When you want to grow your medical practice business, you have to maintain many more new patients coming into your practice than those leaving.
It means that you have to maintain a log in your office of every new patient and every patient leaving your practice to even begin to understand whether your medical practice business is growing or declining. Believe me, you definitely need to know those statistics. It’s the primary cause of physicians ending up with financial problems and have to sell their medical practices to hospitals.
Zig Ziglar, a famous business expert, said, “If you help enough other people get what they want, you will get what you want”.
Comment: The last 5 money making suggestions will be continued in the next article PART 2.
----Professional Probe----
"No one is too young to help you handle
the marketing load you feel"
You may believe your private medical practice marketing, as well as your medical practice business management of medical practice is impossible for you to handle, like the toddler in this
photo--it isn't.
You can handle it because you already have an entrepreneurial mindset that you use daily to seek out solutions to health problems your patients walk in the door with.
You are used to being confronted with symptoms and disease signs that seem impossible to do much about, but you engineer the solutions yourself or with your peers.
After my education in business and marketing, I discovered that we all are very capable of accomplishing more in your medical career than we thought possible.
At the time I left medical practice, knowing nothing about business or marketing, I had the strong belief that I had accomplished much more in my medical career than I ever expected. Little did I know that there was much more hidden from me to be had.
The same hidden resource is still hidden for 99% of all physicians, dentists and even attorneys. None of those other career professionals know any more than you do about running a business profitably.
I can't say for sure, but probably 99% of them also resort to on-the-job learning about what you should have been taught in the beginning by your medical school.
And that method has been failing miserably, at least for physicians, for decades...the disheartening torment today is that the one resolution to the problems we see today with doctor attrition has been totally ignored by medical academics.
Providing a business education along with the medical school curriculum is the dangling medical education cure of the century.
I hate it that I now have to look back at the medical education system that continues to throw physicians out into private medical practice completely unprepared for adapting to the constant changes in the business of medical practice.
My military experience confirmed for me that it is not a good decision to send soldiers into battle without any ammunition. Same thing in my opinion.
Competent Doctor + Business Ignorance = The Success Factor
Competent Doctor - Business Ignorance = The Factual Truth
"The myth" about ever reaching your optimal competency, skills, income, capabilities, goals, expectations, and satisfaction with your career, without a business education, remains the supreme lie that has been perpetuated by the medical schools in our nation for over a century.
Of that I am sure!
----Professional Probe----
"What better and warm place
to take a nap?"
Physicians involved in private medical practice management often find a quick nap a pleasant way to ease the stress from an office filled with patients, either over lunch time (if lunch time ever happens) or at your desk during a "no show" patient slot. President Jack Kennedy often took a quick nap in the middle of a boring group meeting with his head laying on his arms on the table.
Short naps of even 20-30 minutes can be a refreshing tactic for the mind. The flow of this topic is to remind all physicians that to carry the laziness into their offices during working hours may have the opposite effect and dull the mind instead. The fact is that lack of sleep that a number of Obstetricians encounter nights and weekends tend to distract them from private medical practice management.
Articles © 2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #67, 3-16-22
