“When and if 8 out of 10 physicians finally recognize
the true root source for over 50% of their practice
income, they will then still lack the necessary medical
practice business platform, marketing knowledge, and
motivation to effectively create a financial income system
for their medical practice that can triple their present
practice income persistently year after year.”
If there ever was a time in the medical practice history timeline when private practice physicians should seek-out and use the medical practice business tools now available, it’s today. I’m not talking here about tools to enable doctors to work harder, see more patients each day, or change their practice location to affluent neighborhoods.
I am talking about the statistical facts that demonstrate the sound validity for every physician to focus an extraordinary amount of attention on the real source of their professional
business revenue.
Why this is so critical to the survival of private medical practice today...
Investigations, surveys, and many clinical studies have confirmed that about 60% of new patients join your medical practice as a result of other physician referrals of patients to you.
Approximately 35% of new patients decide to join your medical practice as a result of referrals from your own patients, word of mouth, and specific marketing tactics promoting your practice. That leaves 5% of drive-bye patients to make up the difference.
Many of the marketing tactics referred to here happen coincidentally and go unrecognized by the majority of medical doctors. Many physicians know that some things they do result in acquiring new patients but fail to see the need or advantages of creating an ongoing recruiting strategy for a perpetual flow of new patients.
What goes unrecognized by private practice physicians today is the necessity of gaining business knowledge, if for nothing else than to save their own asses in medical practice.
The root question is… why is it that the revenue connection between acquiring new patients on a perpetual basis through unsolicited referrals doesn’t seem to impact physicians strongly enough to inspire them to take any action to increase the process?
Beyond that, why is it that most physicians believe that they deserve a continuous flow of spontaneous unsolicited referrals of medical patients throughout their medical practice careers? Who do they think they are?
Beyond that, one has to ask in light of your knowing that increasing the flow of new patients through referrals increases income and that 95% of those new patients arrive in your office because of referral sources, why any doctor neglects such an obvious and profitable source of continually growth of their medical practice business?
What are your reasons for neglecting your primary referral income sources?
1. Did you not know where your new patients
are really coming from?
2. Weren’t you aware that your practice income
was so closely tied to referred patients?
3. Were you not thinking that referred patients
had such a profound effect on your practice income?
4. Are you so arrogant that you expected to get
all those referrals because of your reputation,
medical talents, medical school prestige,
sociable personality, and excellent treatment
of your patients, absolutely earned it for you?
5. Later, when your practice competition increases
as other physicians start medical practices your community,
did you believe that your referral patient’s volume
would keep rolling-in the same as before?
6. Did you never come to realize that today,
in order to survive in private medical practice,
it’s mandatory to do what you have avoided for
years… start to market your medical practice,
promote your practice and yourself, and
do this using effective business and marketing
strategies (called business tools)?
I tell you to do this for yourself for two primary reasons. First, hiring a marketing experienced genius is very expensive and costs more than you pay all of your employees.
Second, no outside marketing expert (assumed to be a marketing expert at some level) will
never understand the intricacies of a functioning medical practice well enough, nor your
personal desires and instructions about the marketing strategies that you want the marketer
to use for the best fit for your medical practice business income.
What that marketer wants to do is...
- Be totally in complete charge of the marketing of your practice and make all the necessary decisions about it--even if they agree to follow your instructions in the beginning.
- The person doing your marketing wants to be on full-time salary for a prolonged period of time which is necessary to reveal the full results and benefits of the marketing program. I doubt any will work for you part time, unless they are desperate for work. The fact is that business and marketing professionals already know that nearly all physicians have had no business education, which makes it easier for who you hire, without knowing the financial tricks they can play, to make more income from you.
- If you find it necessary to hire a marketer, you are usually already seeing your income dropping and need to recover from that. So being able to pay the hired marketer becomes even more of a financial problem for you.
- The marketer wants to know that you have the income to pay him or her. So you reveal how much you can spend and when you can spend some of the office overhead money. When the marketer has decided that their approach to marketing your practice will cost you far more than you want to pay, at least at that time, then the issue of who is the decision maker and does the oversight of the program is the beginning to become a continuing sequence of almost daily conflicts and more stress.
- For all these reasons I often advice physicians to employ an appropriate family member who can follow your instructions closely without disagreements as to which strategy or tactic is best fitted to your practice income available for this purpose. A wife with a college degree and has the time and desire to help can be a good option--because the pay goes back into your net income. It does require you to have the marketing/business knowledge to make it work.
- Most importantly, a physician must have a reasonable marketing knowledge to begin with to direct, oversee, and properly readjust the the marketing strategies being used to increase medical practice business income that can be adjusted to fit the purpose you have for the increased income and what you can logically afford to set into action.
Today, if you are new in private medical practice, you probably are wondering why I need to talk about these factors which are easy to understand.
The fact you are so busy with loads of new patients joining your new practice that you are undoubtedly convinced that there will be no end to this tsunami of new medical patients. Unfortunately, almost all new physicians in private practice fall into this trap.
Older physicians usually have run the gauntlet of private medical practice ambushes. They are quick to understand what needs to be done to remain in private medical practice business financially--even when they are lost in the new healthcare crisis environment (which seems to never end).
That’s because 99% of physicians have never been taught, nor took the time to learn, the basics of medical practice business planning. The best you can do is stumble along using trial and error as your crutch.
The "get referrals" game...
Once you accept the fact that 60% of your new patients joining your practice are referred by other physicians, it should wake you up. The fact that 35% of new patients originate from your own patient referrals or word of mouth, should stick in your mind. Those patients don’t just show up in significant numbers on their own accord. They need to be incited by you enough to realize that you are the only physician within miles that can meet their medical needs. And you are probably the best looking of all of them... right?
If you don’t know how to play the game and play it well, you always may be able to sell your medical practice to your local hospital and serve as an employee in your own practice. In that situation you no longer make the big decisions. You are no longer your own boss. You essentially give up control of your career destiny.
If I were starting out again in private medical practice, I would never consider doing it without having at least a basic business and marketing education. And, I would nurture the referral process so extensively that my peers would be utterly astounded about how effective referral marketing becomes. How I would do this is discussed later in this article.
Consider the unique and profitable aspects of an established referral system you can put in place...
Pay attention now to how you can breathe life into a referral system that not only can triple your medical practice business income but also provides a continuous and increasing flow of new patients into your practice while other physicians are whining about losing patients.
Like every other potential profitable idea, you have to take action before anything happens.
Your mission is to build a referral network that 98% of other physicians dabble with, neglect to consider a serious or worthwhile endeavor, or aren’t willing to take the time to even try it. The process is not new. It’s been a functional element of every successful business out there for centuries. Why is it not a profound requirement in every private medical practice business?
Read my article titled, "How to Create A Referral Marketing Program That Floods Your Practice With Patients"
When you visualize a referral system as a low-cost, easily available, highly profitable, and fertile resource for growing your medical practice persistently over your career, you will be amazed at how this one simple effort can make your medical practice financially stable in any economy or financially hostile environment.
Just think about the opportunity you have available right next door.
Other physicians will always have patients that need medical care and have medical problems that physicians are not knowledgeable about or qualified to manage. The medical patient’s physician must refer them somewhere. Why not send them to you because you are the expert in treatment of that medical problem. You may have an area of expertise that no other doctor has in the local area.
To make that happen you need to position yourself by means of several methods of “positioning” to be the one physician that first appears in the mind of the patient’s physician the instant he or she thinks about referring the patient to the best physician around to treat that medical problem.
Read my articles about “Positioning” and "Promoting"on this website titled,
"How To Promote Yourself By Word of Mouth---Yours" #17
and
"Positioning: The Sum of All Marketing Strategies" #29
Your familiarity with the 35% medical-patient referral group is a profitable advantage...
Your medical practice business management and profitability depends on the level of your effort to create a high-powered perpetual system to draw incoming patient referrals the day you begin your private medical practice. It’s a numberless nationwide resource for obtaining medical
patient referrals.
What if I were to tell you that this source of free referrals to your medical practice is profitable enough to keep you in business even if every physician in your community disliked you and never sent you another referred patient again, or ever.
And, that circumstance happens frequently in medical communities all over this country today for many biased and intellectually aloof reasons--especially in the physician community. I know it because I witnessed many examples of it happening in my own medical practice community area.
The referral groups I’m talking about here are the para-medical businesses owned by healthcare professionals that exist in almost every community…from family counseling services
to chiropractors.
The most fruitful are those medical businesses providing services to clients and customers. Many physicians don’t think of connecting with those para-medical businesses because of their own “positioning”, hierarchy level within the medical industry, and the advantages associated with maintaining the perception that they only associate with their peers for referral patients.
Perceptions about referrals from other physicians validate your credibility and trust...
- It validates your own expertise because other doctors refer patients to you.
- It provides you with the best quality of patients and no physician wants that to be thought
of as picking up scraps from elsewhere.
- It implies high respect for how you manage referred patients.
- It documents trust in your professionalism and integrity when referrals come from other trusted physicians and medical personnel.
- It offers you a great deal of prestige because your quality of referred patients are derived from other physicians, implying you are not scraping the bottom of the barrel for patients.
1. People who may refer medical patients to you...
- Other doctors to you
- Yourself to other doctors
- Your own patients
- Social groups and friends
- Medical organizations
- Local healthcare businesses
- Hospital employees
- Charity groups and employment agencies
- Family members
- Medical referral services
- Practice consulting groups
- Business friends
- Church groups
- Fraternal organization
2. Media sources medical patients use to refer themselves to you...
- Print media (medical articles, medical newsletters and
journals, etc.) - Social media (social media networks, groups you belong to, etc.)
- Advertising media (radio, TV, Internet, etc.)
- Marketing media (direct mail, email, newspapers, publicity,
press releases, etc.) - Conferences-- DVDs, CDs, and video digital information
3. Ephemeral sources that provide medical patient referrals...
- By reputation and how you treat patients
- By recommendations
- By news stories
- By public speaking
- By charity work
- By your books and articles
- By teaching and coaching work
- By casual conversations
How many non-physician healthcare providers do you think find medical problems their patients have that have to be referred to physicians? Most of these providers have the knowledge to recognize significant medical problems that they wouldn’t, or by specialty, can’t treat.
Think about...
- · Dentists
- · Chiropractors
- · Nurses
- · Physical therapists
- · Physician assistants
- · Nurse practitioners
- · Nutritionists
- · Family counselors
- · Pulmonary therapists
- · Midwives
- · Psychologists
- · Rehabilitation therapists
- · Message therapists
- · Many more that you know well.
Unlimited sources for medical patient referrals are at your fingertips...
These are just a few categories and resources to consider working with to farm for patient referrals depending on your personal preferences, connections to, and interactions with.
In each case, it all gets down to who you really are and discover for yourself what it is about you that attracts referrals and new patients to your practice. Once you figure that out, use those qualities to expand your attraction even further. When you discover one that works, continue using that and find another one. Are you humorous, good public speaker, teach your patients, etc?
Have you ever asked your patients what they like about you or what they respect about you?
You should!
Why would physicians ever want to seek referral patients from sources outside the professional medical community?
A few reasons might be...
- During a physician’s medical practice career in private practice, physicians rarely have more than 3 or 4 other physicians that ever refer patients to them. About 2 or 3 of these referral physicians rarely refer any patients in significant numbers.
- One referral patient’s dissatisfaction with your care often leads to never receiving another referred patient again from that medical professional. Unless you track your referrals well, you won’t know about the complaint nor the future lack of referrals from that professional. Patient complaints about you rarely result in feedback to you. You need to hunt them down, even among your office employees that patients talk to about things you will never find out about.
But if you never see a referred patient a second time, you know something is up. When you see a referred patient for a consult only, you don’t expect them to come back unless the referring doctor says, "the patient is yours to keep."
However, if you have treated that referred patient with your special rapport magic, you will often find that they will return to your care later when they decide to change doctors.
- When and if you are a physician who chooses not to socialize very much with the medical community and its events, you commonly will not get many referred patients from medical professionals. They have to like you and trust your medical expertise before they will refer medical patients to you. Choose to be friendly and available in the local medical community.
It only takes one untoward event, whether true or not, to destroy any referral sources you may have at the time. Male OBG physicians are perfect targets for claims of sexual harassments or worse.
That issue may happen anywhere… operating room… your office… in the outside community. When that event reflects an outrageous and unacceptable personal or professional issue concerning you or your behavior, your reputation within the community will often be spoiled to some degree. An uncontrolled outburst of temper and profanity is one of the most common triggers for ridicule
or chastisement.
Your marketing knowledge associated with the 60% category of patient referrals will become even more critical over time.
The effects from the changes of the referral tide to your practice are significant...
I would not hesitate to guess that the overall volume of referred patients from other physicians has been decreasing in numbers significantly over the last decade. Huge changes in healthcare over the last decade and presently are reducing referrals being made in private medical practice, even to unexpected lower levels. When insecurity is increasing in our nation, including more intense beliefs in racism, control, citizen rights, education teaching anything goes, and the freedom to commit crimes without punishment, healthcare becomes infected in the process.
This down sliding of our culture and it's effects on the physicians, medical school education, and practice of medicine extends to bad effects on medical practice exemplified by an article in the Wall Street Journal on 4-19-22. Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, former associate Dean of Curriculums at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania carefully describes in his article titled, "Keep Politics Out of the Doctor's Office," increasing influences of these cultural radical actions and beliefs and their effects on how medicine is being changed and practiced today because of these political forces.
Dr. Goldfarb documents the fact that doctors are being bribed into discriminating by race which is leading to increased physician burnout and early retirement among other egregious pressures.
The most obvious changes that are occurring...
- Doctors are moving their practices and changing locations today more than ever at a rate over 12 to 14% a year. Your referral source is here today and gone tomorrow.
- Rather than refer a medical patient to another doctor for a litany of simple medical treatments primarily done to avoid malpractice risks, doctors are now expanding what they feel competent to do in their offices and surgical outpatient centers. It has become a need to financially benefit themselves by increasing procedures being done by themselves when they are competent and qualified.
Examples are skin biopsies, excision of breast lumps under local anesthesia, removal of sebaceous cysts, proctoscopy, sigmoidoscopy, EKG’s, hypnosis, acupuncture, and etc.
- The lingering after effects of ObamaCare and the rapidly increasing numbers of medical practice restrictions has changed the shift of new and old medical doctors away from private medical practice. The fee restrictions drastically decrease practice incomes to the point that large numbers of physicians are finding employed positions. Although referrals are made uncommonly among the various managed care facilities to outside doctors, it becomes one of convenience for the patient or special medical circumstances.
In a sense, large numbers of referring doctors that used to refer to their choice of private doctors are now prevented from the referral of patients to outside-the-plan doctors. The physician source for referral of medical patients in private practice is slowly disappearing along with private medical practice.
The above information provides sound reasoning for radically escalating your knowledge and actions regarding the creation of a hell-on-wheels system for recruiting new patients for your private medical practice… if you intend to stay in private practice.
How you respond to, and manage, the referred patient is paramount to your
practice destiny
Your response to that patient also includes how your office staff interacts with a referred new patient (as well as a referred patient you have seen previously).
Every single point at which your office staff members and yourself interact with any referred patient either creates a place of special hospitality where they feel quite comfortable, or a healthcare delivery environment that they perceive to be ubiquitous in nature as expected.
Your aim is to make their visit at your office an experience to remember and one they would have no reservations about returning to again.
It means this patient should be treated in a much more thorough and professional manner than your own patients…for many reasons. I might point out that this is an investment in your future maintenance of new patient flow.
It’s common for a one-time transient patient to return to a medical practice that treated them so well for all their medical care long term. (The patient who moved elsewhere and returns for a family visit and makes an appointment with you or a patient who moved away a long distance and is willing to drive long distances to see you again)
Some physicians believe that referred patients take it for granted that their doctor has referred them to a physician with similar practice characteristics and personality as their own doctor, which
is rarely true.
For this reason, it is incredibly important to start off with a referred patient in a soft and pleasant manner that would surprise even your own mother.
If you can’t usher in such a scenario, then fake it. At least it would help to prevent the loss of 20 future patients that you would never see who heard the story this lady or man would tell about their, “terrible medical visit with that ________ doctor.”
When you greet that patient for the first time, it’s essential that you do two things that instantly set up the integrity of the rest of the visit. These should always be the first two things you do every time you greet any patient at any time… even your own patients you have followed
for 20 years.
You make direct eye to eye contact and physically touch the patient in some manner, handshake, pat on the back, gentile grasp on the forearm, etc.
These two techniques instantly insure the mind of the patient that they are right then the center of your complete attention. Nothing in medical practice is anywhere near as persuasive as these two gestures done at the right time.
If you want to add a bit of spice to those two techniques, immediately include a verbal polite question that always results in a “YES” answer. “Isn’t it a beautiful day out there today (if it
actually is)?”
Just because the car salesman pulls the same sales technique on you when you go to buy a car, a series of simple everyday questions that draw yes answers from you right at the start, doesn’t mean it is less efficient in your medical office.
It’s a subliminal persuasion technique where a series of yes responses automatically creates a positive permissive attitude in the mind of a patient, making them, or anyone, much more inclined to respond to the later questions in a positive way, “Would you love to buy this car today?”
In a medical interaction something like, “I’m prescribing this medicine that I want you to take for the next 7 days. It’ll cure your throat infection faster than any other medication.” And, the patient is happy to comply.
Understanding that about half of your patients won’t take all the pills you prescribed, it’s a very persuasive means of inspiring most of those patients to take all the medication without spending time explaining to them all the consequences of not taking all the medication.
We all know that explaining the consequences of not taking all the medicine prescribed, if time permits, is the absolute most persuasive way to convince patients to do as you say just out of fear. Persistent problems with that medical issue may recur if meds are not taken as you
have prescribed.
You will instinctually spend more time with a new referral patient to accomplish all the
above advantages.
Referred patients should be scheduled for longer appointments for this and other reasons. To be deliberately more tactful, you place yourself in a position of being more thorough in answering the patient’s questions.
Take longer than usual to explain your findings and treatment options and take more time blending social conversation into the medical one than you would normally do.
Another very effective tactic to use to make a patient more comfortable is to permit the presence of a family member or friend in the exam room during the consultation (never children under the age of 10 to 12) and later during your post exam discussion and follow-up visits for that
same problem.
A young child or baby in the exam room will always compromise the attention of the patient, create distractions to your medical comments, and create a potential medical liability for you whether you believe it or not. In pediatrics, it’s a different story…there are always exceptions.
Here are a few more of my favorite methods to create a perfect patient referral visit...
- Permit female patients to disrobe and put clothes back on in private... not while you stand there with your back to them or not.
- If possible, have washable cloth, not paper gowns for patients. I did that and often patients commented positively.
- Never leave this patient in the exam room for more than 5 minutes alone, or they will leave. Someone has to peek in the door and ask if the patient is OK and present the excuse
for the delay.
- Make the discussion about your findings and treatment options with the patient outside the exam room if possible (office or consult room). It depends on your patient flow packed into
your schedule.
- When possible, call and inform the patient’s own doctor of your thoughts right in front of the patient at the time. Because you have no idea about that doctor's circumstances when you call, it often is a dead end. Make a rule with your office staff that you want to be interrupted whenever another doctor calls you (most doctors will not do this and miss
referral opportunities commonly).
- When language is a problem, make sure the patient brings an interpreter person with them to the scheduled referral visit.
- Avoid answering any phone calls during the visit…emergencies are the exception. The one other exception might be a doctor calling you.
- Be sure to maintain a conversation all through the office visit…even when you are reviewing the patients records...(on the PC or in their folder). Silence by you in the patient’s presence for 3-5 minutes or more disarms patient rapport and aggravates patients.
- When confronted by a hostile patient, don’t argue about any point they make…never argue with any patient. Instructional and informative debate is fine. Apologize.
- Review the entire patient’s medical information just prior to entering the exam room, or speaking with the patient...don’t enter unprepared about responding to their medical needs. At the very least, know the patient's name so you can greet the patient using their name or "Mrs. Smith" in the case of an elderly female patient.
- Humor is very helpful for relaxing a patient when used with patients that you feel are receptive. Don't tell jokes.
- Always review the exact information that the referral doctor spoke, sent, or faxed to you about his patient, with the patient, at the beginning of the visit so all discrepancies are quickly
ironed out.
One day I saw a new referral patient who told me that she made the appointment for a hysterectomy. The family doctor told her she needed one. She didn't. Now what do
you say to both?
How to manage your interactions with the referral doctor to your advantage and his or her pleasure...
A reasonable volume and flow of communications with the referral physician is the most effectual means of insuring future referrals from that physician or office staff. Sometimes the office manager is the one referring the patient for their doctor. It is a common professional courtesy and ethical behavior to instantly answer any phone calls from physicians.
When physicians take the time to call you themselves, you either take the call right then or lose any probability of future patient referrals from that physician.
You obviously can’t stop in the middle of a procedure to answer the phone, but this is easily appeased by a staff member who explains the situation to the doctor on the phone and arranges a time for you to call them back within a very short time (within 30 minutes).
Usually the referral process is handled between the two office’s staff members by phone without the involvement of the physicians. When a physician is involved, the referral is often an urgency or emergency and should be handled the same day, or within 24 hours at most.
The minimal array of communications sent doctor to doctor should be at least
the following...
§ Responsibility for treatment and follow-up visits and management. Most referral doctors make it clear at the time of the request for their patient to be seen who is to do which part of the treatment and follow-up… them or you… or even to keep the patient forever (ex. A dermatologist refers a pregnant patient to an OBG doctor).
§ Same day phone call back to the referral doctor about your findings, thoughts, advice,
treatment options.
§ Written communication reviewing the details of your findings, thoughts, and treatment options…within 24 hours of consult.
§ If you are to treat and follow the referred patient for that medical problem, then a follow-up written report and phone call back to the referring doctor about the recovery and
outcome is important.
§ If the patient was referred only for a diagnostic and advice consultation, then all treatment
will be done by the referring doctor.
In this case, a written report of your findings, advice, and treatment options should be sent to the referral doctor to use as part of his or her education in case they are not fully informed of the most recent and upcoming new treatment options available.
At the same time, it is also wise to make it clear in the message that you would be happy to help them further at any time with this patient, or even take over the care of the referred patient should her own doctor run into problems with the patient's treatment…leave all options open.
Additional communications can be the elements that set you apart from, and above, what other doctors don’t or won’t do. Remember that marketing your practice is the foundation for your stability of income and referrals.
Here are a few more of my favorite methods to create a perfect patient
referral visit...
- Increasing hostility of the patient requires you to instantly leave the exam room, in silence, and let the office staff manage the patient. An apology at the time is ineffective because the patient takes it is a form of intimidation.
- Make every effort to avoid and prevent the presence of small children in the exam room... those over 10 years old are OK and rarely distract from the doctor-patient communications. It does remain a potential malpractice risk you take.
- Occasionally photos of a patient's medical problem or disease is appropriate, with the patient's approval. It is an excellent means of verifying the problem for the medical record and serves as a means of confirming healing and response to treatment.
- Offering medical handouts to the patient or special information and instruction is a very smart means of promoting your credibility and promotion of your practice, should the patient later return to your practice as a permanent patient.
- Avoid sending the referred patient on to another doctor for evaluation or consultation without the approval of the primary referral doctor. It's not a rare happening.
The marketing rule and dogma here, is...
Do what other doctors are not doing!
Comment about marketing your medical practice to the best referral sources.
Depending on your thoughts about the kind of medical patients you prefer to have in your practice, your marketing efforts should be directed to those referral sources. "Only send me patients that _________ ."
The most profitable resources for patient referrals are the physicians in your local city and medical community within a 7 to 10-mile radius. Some physicians prefer to deal with the volume of patient referrals and some in the quality of the patients referred to them.
You are quite aware that you are able to see and treat only a limited number of patients per day, per week, per month. The level of income produced in your practice from that limited number of patients is dependent on many aspects of your practice business.
Seeing referred patients that are in the low-income category, rarely becomes loyal patients, and encompasses much more of your attention medically, which can result in a poor practice income.
If you deal with the large volume of referred patients, then you are forced to hire more staff. The extra employees are necessary to do more of the medical advice and instructions, manage minor treatments, and handle the majority of medical patients who don’t need to see the doctor.
As a medical student in the early 1960s, I remember a center city OBGYN doctor associated with the teaching program known for seeing an average of 200 patients a day in his office, which was difficult for me at the time to comprehend. My mind kept wondering how that was possible and finally considered it just a myth.
It’s not difficult to understand now that it is possible to run large numbers of medical patients through your office daily, but it isn’t the doctor seeing most of those patients. It’s clear that this doctor was well ahead of the medical practice game by demonstrating the efficient use of midlevel medical providers.
If your intent is to create a medical practice primarily composed of well educated, medically informed, and well paying patients, you must focus your marketing efforts on the referral doctors who can send that kind of patient to you.
Those well-established referring physicians require a higher level of marketing to get their attention and to refer their patients to you. That’s why it’s so important to begin your medical practice in a location where this is possible and your mix with that society is possible from the start.
This may not fit your ideas about the kind of practice you want, but it is the fastest way to wealth in the profession if that is important to you.
You can become wealthy in any practice setup if you know how to go about it. It’s a skill you will never be taught in your medical education. You learn that from life experiences, your friends and mentors, and from your own intellect and intuition.
If we all knew the secrets, we’d all be rich…if that was the goal of medical practice. Most doctors seek fulfillment in helping patients fight disease, trauma, and disability. Fulfillment is something wealth itself doesn’t provide.
However, creating a high practice income by marketing your practice does not exclude fulfillment at the same time. I believe that high practice income is deserved and provides more intensity of fulfillment because you are then able to afford learning new medical skills and knowledge.
You are a better physician in the long run when you can afford to gather the knowledge and skills to maintain yourself on the cutting edge of medicine. In doing so you are able to serve your patients at a higher level of expertise. If that’s not true, then I will have much to regret.
Even the minds of the world-renowned business and marketing experts teach these very same steps to success in all businesses. I’m referring now to an article written by Dan S. Kennedy, considered to be the most in-demand marketing strategist in the world.
The main points of his article are...
(Applying these comments to medical practice.)
- Word-of-mouth is the most effective business advertising.
- The tremendous persuasiveness you have with your patients enables you to
ask for their help to promote your practice.
- People usually enjoy telling others about physicians they try and like. People
love to be appreciated and that is gained by being helpful to others.
- There must never be any form of pressure, bribes, or “inducements” used
for creating this process.
- Prospective patients are the lifeblood of your medical practice business.
They are the greatest asset of your business.
- Recommendations from your loyal satisfied patients are a profit multiplier
for your practice.
“It’s not what you are going to do,
but it’s what you are doing now that counts.”
---Napoleon Hill
Requirements for maximizing your medical practice income
1. Good knowledge of medical practice management
2. Having the energy for continuous medical practice marketing
3. Medical practice business planning is important.
4. Marketing for physicians and their office staff is a winning set up.
5. Learn what makes a medical practice business successful.
6. Your medical practice business system is essential.
7. Bothe practice marketing and physician marketing is rewarding.
8. Business success is the objective of all physicians in private medical practice.
9. My business website—www.marketingamedicalpractice.com
----Professional Probe----
"Can you detect the one that's not a dog?"
Opportunities are often hidden in plain sight just like this fox. It pays to be vigilant in your business to discover the factors within your medical business that most of us pass by and never see.
You may remain skeptical of the value of statistics, but this is one that if never recognized and never taken advantage of will continue to haunt your efforts to improve your practice revenue.
Knowing that the overwhelming sources of income from your medical practice come directly from referrals to your practice, is something well worth your persistent attention and taking action. Creating every means of obtaining patient referrals is not difficult and is a business function that can be delegated to your office staff to perform. As always, your oversight is required.
Articles © 2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #50, 3-16-22
