Category Archives: Patient Retention

The Most Cost Effective Tool You Have to Build Your Chiropractic Practice and Help Your Patients – and you probably are barely using it!

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what if I told you copy

 Forget about the roller tables, stretching bands, balance boards, traction devises, taping, decompression, protein powder, vibrating platforms, laser, lipo body sculpting, ultrasound, stim, tens, supplements, orthotics, etc.

Any or all of these may or may not be appropriate for your practice, but they should not be your first choice in providing a modality or ancillary service to your patients.

Think about this: what could you do for your patients, in addition to your adjustments, that would help them improve their health the most?

EDUCATE THEM

The more the patient knows about how chiropractic works – and how your services help them – the more motivated they will be in following through with their health care plan.

People don’t know about subluxations just like they really didn’t know about asbestos or cigarettes. It was a while ago but advertising was rampant on television and in print promoting cigarettes. MD’s were often used to legitimize the use of cigarettes.

Today, your patients are also being inundated with propaganda about food, drugs, and basic lifestyle choices that are not healthy, let alone not true. They are told that drugs are safe solutions for headaches, back pain, and other ailments when in many cases they are found to be poisonous. (Vioxx, Accutane, Cylert, Darvon & Darvocet, for example.) Nearly all the food they eat has various toxins, from aspartame in diet food to herbicides that linger (glyphosate, used in “Roundup” and sprayed on your kid’s schools playgrounds).

Educated patients are better equipped to keep to their treatment program and continue improving their health. Isn’t this what you want?

This is your #1 ancillary service.

#1 Marketing Tool
Educated patients are more motivated to refer those they know to you and to help you set up external events. They can become your ambassadors, field representatives and sales force. They know that someone with headaches, low back pain, or other odd symptoms may be helped by chiropractic and your services. They may be able to refer them directly, or you can help them by providing special workshops, special events, and opportunities for external programs at their place of work.

#1 Team Management Tool
All of this also applies to each of your team members as well.

We are all “numbed down” by a conventional lifestyle and a culture that is greatly manufactured by just a few large industries such as Big Pharma and Big Food that use media and government to achieve its ends.

And, frankly, we tend to take what we do for granted. Imagine a patient who had a headache for years and after your care is now pain free and can get a full night’s sleep and her relationships with her family have improved., etc.  Amazing, right?  But for us, pretty routine. We can end up being more concerned about billing her secondary or supplement insurance or keeping her scheduling than in just celebrating with her.

Almost anything you know about health care will be “new news” to your patients and probably many of your staff. Plus, we all tend to forget what we once knew.

What is the big difference with you from when you started chiropractic college and after you graduated (Besides debt) . THE difference was and is that you were motivated. And you were motivated because… you were educated and even more, you were enlightened. You were able to see things in people’s health conditions that you never saw before. And with all this understanding, you were now more motivated.

But in time, awareness can dim and so can motivation. New patients start dropping off, treatment plans get shorter, and the quality of staff performance erodes. The solution is to keep educating patients and team members so that they stay awake and motivated.

In other words, WAKE THE FLOCK UP!

Patient and staff education provide the best ROI of any activity you have. Modalities and extra services have many overlooked costs such as staff time to account and bill for the therapies, extra staff to apply the services, someone to take inventory of the products and to sell them, etc. Patient education is pretty much a no cost proposition. How much does a care class cost? Watching “Doctored” or “Food Inc. ” or “Bought” with your staff and then discussing it afterwards (that is very important), it is much cheaper than flying to Las Vegas.

And if you do it often and effectively, you will be able to afford that next seminar in Hawaii.

As the doctor, you are the CEO, the Chief Evangelizing Officer. I first heard this term from Guy Kawasaki, who was called this when he worked for Apple when the Macintosh was first launched in the early 80’s. Macintosh was trying to win over users from IBM computers to the Apple Macintosh.

You are creating converts to a chiropractic and natural health lifestyle.

Remember that education, both staff, patients, and your own education as well should cover not only what your services do, and how they do it, but WHY you provide these services. In fact, your emotional connection to the reason you do your services communicates the strongest.

WHAT TO DO
1. First, keep yourself aware and amazed at the innate healing power of the body and the great affects your services provide. Provide an hour or two of study for yourself each week. Just like you work IN your office, you have to work ON your office – and that includes yourself.

2.  Let yourself get emotional about what the FLOCK is going on!  Don’t be “correct”, well heeled and a good little domesticated “provider.” It is natural that you become somewhat “riled up” about the injustice that your patients and their family and friends experience in receiving “health care” or at the misinformation “fed” to people about healthy living.

3. Educate your team. Watch a movie with them and then have a discussion period afterwards. (The discussion is very important as it helps get everyone engaged in the process.)

4. Staff Meetings. Go over a case history or two.

5. Patient Care Class. There are many different names for this, but all patients get better, faster, and stay healthier longer if they know more about chiropractic and health. Make it a part of their treatment plan and bribe them with food!

6. Start a Lending Library and position your office as an educational facility.  Even  if you lose a few books or DVD’s each month, it is worth it as your patients will see that you are serious about health and health education. Give each staff member a bonus for a book report presentation at a staff meeting.

There are many ways to educate yourself, your team, and your patients.  Done right, education turns into enlightenment and this will produce a greater return than many other activities you do.

# # #

Patient Retention in Chiropractic and Delivering Happiness

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In our webinar on chiropractic patient retention, we reviewed some basic procedures that can be used to decrease patient drop outs.

More significantly, we looked at a new paradigm for patient retention that many businesses are using successfully.

If your visit average is less than 60, then you can benefit from the material we covered.

The webinar also included a short presentation on an effective patient recall system used many years by Linda Skiles, former Chiropractic Assistant of the year in WI. The forms discussed in the webinar are located on our PM&A members site.

We discussed why patients drop out of care – the basic reasons, and ten strategies you can put into place to improve your visit average .

One of the last strategies examined a company called Zappos. This is an online shoe selling company that began in 1999 and ten years later was selling a billion dollars worth of shoes.  We looked at a couple of key features on how it did this.

Under the strategy of “Take Care of Each Other”, we reviewed their ten core principles.  According to the founder and CEO ,Tony Hsieh, employees are hired in part based upon these core values. He discusses this in his book, Delivering Happiness.

These are the ten core values that Zappos employees live by:

  1. Deliver WOW Through Service
  2. Embrace and Drive Change
  3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
  4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
  5. Pursue Growth and Learning
  6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
  7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
  8. Do More With Less
  9. Be Passionate and Determined
  10. Be Humble

What are the core values of your office? Have you defined them? Should you? Does each team member live by them?

Below are two links to two short videos that illustrate how Zappos applies these core values. The first is a music video put together by Zappos and their employees. Just fun – and maybe even inspirational.

Then, watch as Rachel Ray anonymously calls in to place an order on Zappos and see how she is treated.

Zappos illustrates the strategy we call: “Taking Care of Each Other” and “Creating a Community.”  Both of these are effective strategies that can help increase patient retention.

You can use these videos at a staff training meeting and discuss how it could apply to your team.

If you are an active client, you can also watch the webinar on our members site.

Your patients may come to you for health and relief, but they stay because of friendship and how you make them feel as people. By hiring the right team members and helping each other stay true to patient centered core values as exemplified by Zappos, your patients will want to come back and see you again and again.

If you are having trouble viewing the video above, please click this link:

http://youtu.be/4gHlEBU_NSg

If you are having trouble viewing the video above, please click this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td-nVat6cLY&feature=colike

2014 Appointment Calendars

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It’s that time of year again!

Many of you are starting to make multiple appointments for your patients which automatically takes you into 2014.

Below are some helpful appointment calendars that you can use help get those appointments scheduled and keep your patients on their treatment plans.

Appointment-Calendar 2014

Personal Appointment Calendar 2014

PMA members can find a word doc version of the calendars, for customization, on our members side under the Front Desk Library

Pilot of the Wheelchair: The Girl and Her Passenger

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This short story may not seem at first to pertain to your chiropractic office, but it does.

In the hot afternoon Sunday traffic, in the right lane waiting to turn right, our lane had stop moving.

Crossing the busy six lane intersection heading toward us was a man in a motorized wheelchair.  His face was full but motionless and looked worn. I couldn’t be sure, but he had that straight-ahead look of someone who was blind. He was maybe upper thirties or mid forties with short hair, perhaps a wounded veteran who paid no mind to the antsy cars that waited for him and his wheelchair.

Sitting on his lap was a thin little girl. Maybe eight years old.  She was curled up, cuddled with one of her shoulders against one of his. As they were crossing the last three lanes, she stretched out her arm with an open hand as if to say “halt, please let us cross.”

She had the look of a girl who had not had an easy life but was happy to be with this person whose immobile legs she rested on.

Once they made it to the other side our lane started to move. The pair moved closer as I moved forward. It appeared as if she was acting as the man’s eyes and told him when to go. I had the sense that he was a family member, perhaps her father, by the bond they seemed to share.

As I passed them in my nice air conditioned car, I looked closely at the girl and waved to her and smiled. She looked at me directly as I drove by. She gave me a wave and beamed a big smile as if to say “Thanks. We just made it across a busy road and me and my pa are having a Sunday outing.”

In my mind, her face reminded me of pictures of Anne Frank, the girl in Amsterdam that kept a diary before being taken by the Nazis to her death in 1945.

I would have liked to stop and help her in some way. Or say “hi” to the man in the wheelchair who looked so stoic. Maybe there was something I could do for them.

But the fact is – they did something for me.

They set an example – of courage, caring and love. They had heart: For each other, for their goals, and seemingly for their adventure.

Not everything can be put into a mission statement or measured by statistics.  No “boot camp” can teach this, and even if all your policies and procedures were followed perfectly, you could still miss it.

Heart.

One office I know has so MUCH heart the whole town loves the office and the office loves the town. The fact that there is a 2-3 week waiting list of new patients is the biggest challenge the office has.

By training and professional experience, I have a bias towards procedures, organizational structure and production.  No doubt, without these, offices would experience anarchy or insolvency. But I have also learned that heart is more important.

We can all become discouraged at times. Emotions and confusions can affect your patients as they do you and this can put a barrier around our capacity to care.  This may be affecting you or your office now.

But this is only temporary and not the real you.

This is what the little girl gave me. Her wave to me was a “thank you for stopping to let us cross the road”, but also, “we are all in this together.”

That is the lesson I am left with.

There is heroism all around us. Simple and quiet examples of selfless caring and love pass us by daily if we were to notice.  People want to help others and want help as well. Why? Because we are all in this together. Because we care. Because we have heart.

Training on procedures such as the report of findings is fine, but your patients aren’t adversaries and neither is your community. They want to get better and they want to help others to get better.   Really care for them, really love them, be honest with them, and have the courage to always do this, and they will never leave you.

Whatever your office mission statement says, if you have one, it should say what is in your heart. And if you follow that, I am sure you can successfully pilot your team on its adventure.

#  #  #

Ed Petty

Finding the Right Mix for Your Chiropractic Promotions

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THE PROMOTIONAL RIVER

I sometimes receive emails and calls from chiropractors requesting a quick fix for their lack of new patients.   I often wonder if they ever got the idea of symptomatic care versus corrective and wellness care.

Effective marketing requires more than just a killer advertisement or long copy reactivation letter or a spinal screening.   It has been said that good marketing doesn’t depend on one promotion to get 50 new patients, but rather 50 promotions each generating one new patient.

Generating a high volume of new patients in your chiropractic office requires multiple channels of communication.   Consider how a river grows – through lots of tributaries. The Mississippi starts out like a creek, but then other creeks run into it and it grows and grows.

We call this the promotional mix – the blend of different approaches you use to communicate the benefits of your services.

On the following page, we have listed just a few important categories of effective promotions for your office.  Of course, there are others, but we have found that these work well and can act as a good foundation.

Mississippi

FOUNDATIONS OF PROMOTION

Effective promotion starts with individual and team motivation. It then should be entwined with all of your basic routines each day, from the way the phone is answered to the consultation and patient examination.

Beyond this, you can schedule specific health topics months in advance and offer them as workshops or “Awareness Weeks” where you provide a free screening exam and info.

Occasional special promotions should be scheduled, such as “Kid’s Day”, and community services should also be scheduled, such as screenings, relationship building with external referrals sources, and workshops.

Your presence on the Internet has to be constantly added to.

These are some of the main categories of your promotions, though advertising and public relations events can also occur now and then.

PromoMix(larger image)

KEY PROMOTIONS   

1.   Motivation.  You and your team’s desire to promote the benefits of your services create the energy to make your marketing work. Constantly nurture this.  Start with WHY?

2.   Basic Service and Chiropractic Care Procedures.   This is your foundation. Marketing is embedded in the heart of all the basic duties you do every day.  You should constantly review and try to improve on the marketing aspect of your procedures.  Be ever more cheerful, more genuine, more caring, and giving of extra-ordinary care and service.  Have “Present Time Consciousness.” It is helpful to have a checklist of these procedures to review.  Little things can slip aside and go unnoticed and a checklist helps flush everything out for inspection.  Work on a procedure or two every month so that you are constantly improving.

3.   Special Promotions. These are promotional events that can be internal, external, or both. For example, flowers to women on Mother’s Day, a Kid’s Day, Community Appreciation Day, Anniversary Day, etc.  They can be tied in with holidays, community days, parades, donation drives, etc. Most have an offer for a free service, but not all. These are IN ADDITION to the monthly education themes. Schedule these every other month or so. Promote these on the Internet and in newsletters.

4.   Community Education Program  (Monthly Health Themes) We have found that this program gradually builds momentum and if managed well, brings in more patient referrals, external new patients, and returning patients directly and indirectly. Here are some steps to make it successful.

a.    Select monthly themes around a condition or healthful topic. Can include headaches, kid’s health, motherhood, nutrition, cooking class, exercise, golf clinic, etc.
b.    Schedule a workshop time or “Awareness Week” (free screening exam last week of the month)  at the end of each month.
c.    Customize a poster. Samples on our Members site or make up your own.
d.    Do a YouTube video on the subject the month before. Post on Facebook, web site, YouTube channel and embed in your email
e.    Send out an email notice promoting the event, with a link to the video Health Tip, testimonial, etc.
f.    Send a hard copy newsletter with testimonials mailed to some of your patient files now and then (3 months) and all files every 6 months.
g.    Posters distributed locally and as statement stuffers.
h.    Press releases can be sent to local papers/electronic calendars.
i.    Ads are an option.

5.   Community Services. These are scheduled each month and include screenings, workshops and external referrals source development (MDs, businesses, DDS, auto body shops, etc.)

6.    Keep The Conversation Going: Internet And Newsletter.  Update your Internet presence and post new info regularly. Set a goal of how many hours it gets worked on each month, eg.  1 hr a week.  You could also use a checklist (we have one on our PM&A Members site). This would include Facebook postings, YouTube, directory sites (Yelp, Healthgrades.com. etc.), and search engines (Google, Bing, etc.).  And, of course, your website/blog.  Add patient testimonials, photos, and health tips. Keep posting – but keep most of the info local and “newsy,” just short of gossipy.  Also, send out electronic and hard copy newsletters with similar newsy content and notices for upcoming promotions, talks.

7.   Public Relations and Advertising.  Radio ads and print ads promoting specials events can be helpful now and then. Public relations such as press releases and donation drives can add long term good will and should be done a few times a year

3 Month Marketing Planner [Link]

Chiropractic Practice Management, Marketing, and Leadership Recorded Training Webinars

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This is a list of our practice development recorded webinars.

Each is a recording of a slide show driven lecture, each filled with an abundance of practice information derived from in the field work – and plenty of slides!

Currently, you have to be active on a PM&A program. By this summer, these will be available on and individual basis for a small fee.

 Chiropractic CEO Webinars

 Creating your Dream Team Summary and VideoA virtual “live” interview with the doctor and staff of a true chiropractic dream team. Find out what they do to achieve high numbers, profit, and fun.

 The Fast Flow Practice CEO  -55 minutes webinar video and summary.
One of the biggest challenges in running and growing your business is the time it takes you away from seeing patients and from your family.  We have solved this with what we call the Fast Flow Practice CEO System.   A new system derived from old principles.
Management by the Numbers: 44 minutes – Summary and Video
Management is a subject that has techniques to help you go from where you are to where you want to be.  Management By the Numbers (MBN)  can be faster and more accurate than other forms of management, and help build staff morale and make it more self directed.

Capacity Constraints : 33 minutes – Summary and Video
Do you work hard but you just don’t get as far as you should? The reason may be that you are running into unseen bottlenecks that are choking off your production and suffocating your growth. This is the subject of Capacity Constraints.

How to Be an Effective Practice CEO  Video
If you are struggling with the ups and downs of a stressful practice, or have finally “settled” into a comfort zone producing much lower than you know you are capable of, this program is for you.

~~

Chiropractic Office Manager Webinars

 Chiropractic Manager Webinar – Roles and Goals  Summary, Video and Study Guide
What Are The Key Roles In Your Office? A hidden barrier in many offices has to do with confusing roles and job duties. Clear these up and see how much smoother patients and paper flow, and happier the team becomes.  Small office or big health business, clarify these 8 roles and the numbers will go up.
 

Chiropractic Manager Webinar – Job and Performance Reviews    Video
Employee reviews are often neglected, or are dreaded by employee and doctor. This webinar covers the basic steps to make them effective and positive for both doctor and employee.  Approx 37 minutes.

Chiropractic Manager Webinar – Motivating Your Staff – Video  Ms. Phyllis Frase shares 5 secrets to keeping yourself and your staff motivated.

 Chiropractic Manager Webinar – Team Meetings   Summary, Video and Study Guide. This is an overview of 8 essential actions to help you improve your meetings and make them faster, more fun, and more effective. Plus, different types of short meetings that your team can grow.

 Chiropractic Manager Webinar –  The Office Manager Job Description  Summary, Video and Study Guide. This class covers 17 essential duties of the office manager. Both the doctor and the office manager should watch and discuss these duties.
 

Chiropractic Manager Webinar-  How to Best to Train Your Staff  Summary, Video and Study Guide This webinar covers eight tips  to improve the performance of your team.  Training plays a big part in team building.
 

Chiropractic Manager Webinar– How to Hire the Right Team Member   Summary, Video and Study Guide.
This webinar  covers eight priniciples for hiring the right team member from knowing when to hire, who to hire and how to hire.
 

Office Manager Webinar – It’s All About the Patient, the Doctor and the MISSION [Summary, Video and Study Guide]
There are procedures to help the patients and procedures that help the doctor help the patient and then there is Everything Else.  Tips on how to deal with Everything Else. (30 minutes)

Office Manager Webinar- Part II – Tips and Tricks to make the office more efficient[Summary, Video]
Part II reveals tips and tricks of what an office manager can actually do in the office on a day to day basis to make things run smoother and  significantly improve the volume and quality of services. (55 minutes)

 Office Manager Webinar- Part I – Fundamentals of Practice Management [Summary, Video]
Part I covers the fundamentals of Practice Management (55 minutes)

 

Chiropractic Marketing Webinars

Innate Marketing  (55 minutes) – Webinar plus Summary.
There are stories that float around every now and then about how some offices can simply “think”  “New Patients” and they come in.
Are these stories an urban legend? A myth, or a fact? Can staff or doctors “concept” new patients in the door. Is this true? If so, how can you do this?  10 steps to help you generate more patient visits through “concepting.”

Chiropractic Special Promotions  (55 minutes) – Webinar plus Summary.
This webinar covers different promotions by month. You will learn 2-4 different practical promotions for each month of the year. More importantly, you will learn how to organize them so that they are time effective and productive.

Patient Retention – Summary and Video
If you understand the underlying basics of patient retention your appointment book should always be full.  Covered in this webinar is: Patient retention should be based on Principles – not gimmicks. Where are we you taking your patients? Why they quit?  The cost of not getting them there.

 Chiropractic Patient Education – Summary and Video (45 min)
We go over 7 basic strategies that cover the entire horizon of patient education and explain why it is so necessary to educate your patients if you want them to be healthier.

 Infomercials. – Summary and Video .
Whatever happened to Infomercials? They’re still around and they still work. And you can do them very inexpensively. You just need to know how. This webinar will give you practical examples and include forms for you to use in producing your own amateur and informational marketing that can help you create more new patients and keep the ones you have.

 Internet Marketing and Social Media. – Summary and Video . This webinar covers some fundamentals regarding social media, Facebook, and general Internet marketing. (35 minutes) (not yet posted)

 The Art of Spinal Screenings. – Summary and Video . Spinal Screenings – The Queen of External Marketing.  Everyone has done at least a few  spinal screenings. You have probably had some success with them. But how much better could you do if you knew the fundamentals of this time tested external marketing activity?  This is a three part series on spinal screenings. This session we will review the most fundamental principles of screenings. Get these, and all else will follow.(45 minutes)

 Scheduling Screenings and other External Events – Summary and Video .  How to Schedule External Events And Create External Referral Sources.  Types of events, Outcomes, Purpose. How to plan the events and get them scheduled.(30 minutes)

Marketing Tips: Earth Day, Spring Promotions, and other Tips – Summary and Video This webinar covers: Powerful internal marketing script, Report of findings referral procedure,  upcoming spring promotions, with special attention to utilizing Earth Day as an opportunity to promote your services.

Short Overview of Chiropractic Marketing Management with Some Marketing Tips – Summary and Video   This is a short version of marketing management and some tips for the upcoming months. What are the three levels of marketing?  What part does communication have in your marketing?  How to engage your patients in your marketing efforts.  Upcoming special promotions. (30 minutes)

Marketing Management, Part I and Part II – This is the longer version of how to manage your marketing, and why.

Chiropractic Marketing Management – Session I – Summary and Video The Why, What and How of Marketing. Getting your Marketing off the Ground. (55 minutes)

Chiropractic Marketing Management – Session II – Summary and Video  Specific Marketing Manager Duties – Your Job Description.  General Overview of the Most Effective Marketing Procedures in Each of the 11 Marketing Categories (55 minutes)

 

Chiropractic Health Never Takes a Holiday

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AUTHOR NOTE:  The links below are now working…. if you have a problem accessing, please contact Linda at 262-749-0221.

This is a busy season, isn’t it?

But, usually a productive one. Although there are the usual complaints, in the big picture I think we all do very well. For the most part, we accomplish many good deeds during this time.

First, there is the Spirit of Christmas – which is always a good thing. Regardless of how devout you are to Christ’s birth, different religions and different cultures recognize this time in their own way. We are all maybe just a bit nicer to each other, or at least called upon to think about having more compassion for each other.  Tragedies also remind us of this.   In my opinion, the Spirit of Christmas transcends all religions.

Then, there are the reunions. Family and friends get together. Hectic? Usually. Messy? Often. Sometimes agitating? Yes.  But still, it is a time for meeting together and talking and eating and sharing. And loving.

Did I say eating? Yes. That is usually yummy good, as long as we do not over indulge in too much or too bad food.

 NOW TO A PRACTICAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT SUGGESTION: Don’t’ forget to politely remind your patients – “This is NOT a time to fall off the Wagon of Health!”

Health Doesn’t Take a Holiday

Embrace this time. Have fellowship, share kindnesses – and have yourselves a Merry Little Christmas. But maintain your health and insist your patients do as well.

Keep them to their appointments and schedule them through January.

The links below direct you to pdf posters for examples.   They say: “Health Never Takes a Holiday.” You can place these on your front desk and in your adjusting rooms to remind patients to keep to their schedules and to get scheduled if needed.

Clients may go to their members’ site and pull down the same files as customizable Word posters. There is a link for that below.

If you are not a client and want a Word file, just let us know.  We will get you one.

Use them if you want, or make your own.

Also, just for fun there is a link to a poem adapted from “The Night Before Christmas”: “Twas the Day Before Christmas.” Not sure who wrote and would like to know for attribution.

Now, if you think about it, what is the most important element to real health care?

… (thinking)….

Getting adjusted? Eating right? Exercising right? Yes, all these and more.

But even more fundamental is doing them. And to do them, you need to schedule them. This is why I place such an importance on the dynamic nature of the Front Desk. If patients are not scheduled, they don’t come in, and nothing else can happen.  Too obvious, but often overlooked or under stressed.

In the real world, the best guarantee for chiropractic health is the SCHEDULE.

From all of us at PM&A

Have yourself a merry little Christmas, and
May your hearts be light …

–Ed

Health Never Takes a Holiday (PDF)

Health Never Takes a Holiday-2(PDF)

Links to the members site for the fully customizable version of Health Never Takes a Holiday. (You will need to enter your user name and password.)

Health Never Takes a Holiday (DOC)

Health Never Takes a Holiday-2 (DOC)

Chiropractic Christmas Poem – “Twas The Day Before Christmas”

 

 

 

10 Strategies for Improving Patient Retention

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In our recent webinar on patient retention, we reviewed basic procedures that can be used to decrease patient drop outs.

More significantly, we looked at a new or model for practice retention that many businesses are now using successfully.

If your visit average is less than 60, then you can benefit from the material we covered.

The old approach to patient retention is focused around patient control procedures designed to “plug up” the “leaky bucket.”  These still work and we covered some of the more effective procedures.

But this approach tends to address the symptoms more than the causes.  A more effective approach is focuses on teamwork.

Patients, like customers, want two things: results and a “good feeling.” The “good feeling” is a product of how much each doctor and staff member genuinely cares about that patient at the time he or she is interacting with that patient.  Patients will even tend to stay with a doctor and a practice if their results are not satisfying IF the service is extraordinary.

An effective method of improving patient retention includes role playing the “moments of truth” each team member has with patients. These include phone and walk-in greetings from the front desk, patient encounters with the doctor, therapist, and with the billing department for financial consultations.

Here are ten strategies you can put into place to keep your chiropractic patients coming back.

10 Strategies To Improve Patient Retention

__1. Love The Services You Provide.   If you don’t love what you do, how can you expect your patients to?   People buy based upon confidence – and if don’t have faith, confidence and love for your services, your patients won’t either and they won’t come back. (They won’t refer either.)

__2. Love Your Patients.  People can tell if you are being real, or just reading a script. You see it when you go to the chain stores and the checkout clerk says “hello”, or “have a nice day.”   They say the words, but it isn’t genuine.  They just don’t care. Practice and improve these “moments of truth.”

__3. Their Goals. Be goal oriented with your patients. Get them to set and commit to a goal for improving their health. Keep them recommitting.

__4. Coaching Patients.  Once you have their commitment, you now can use your patient control techniques. The webinar included a short presentation on an effective patient recall system used many years by Linda Skiles, former Chiropractic Assistant of the year in WI. The forms discussed in the webinar are located on our PM&A members site.

__5. Education to Make Your Patients Self-Motivated. Would you as a chiropractor, or experienced chiropractic team member, stop getting adjusted? Of course not.  And why not?  Because you know it how important adjustments are to maintaining your health. You have been educated.

__6. Help With Finances. Third party pay is confusing. Financial concerns can be embarrassing for your patients. Providing friendly and easy access to personal help in working out paying for their services can assist keeping your patients coming back.

__7. Stand for Something.  Your mission has to extend beyond relieving pain, just like Apple goes beyond computers or Starbucks beyond coffee. If you honestly embrace a greater purpose, your patients will see why you do what you do, not just how you do it. They will want to support that purpose as well by getting adjusted regularly

__8. Family.  People like to belong to communities. We like to have friends. Some offices call their patients “Practice Members”, while others have “wellness clubs”,  and advisory committees.  However you do it, your patients should feel like they are part of your inside circle.

__9. Measure, review, improve. Constantly work on improving your service.  That which you don’t improve upon eventually atrophies.

__10. Take care of each other.  We spent a lot of time on this one, but need to spend more. One of our webinars later this year will zero in on how this action helps create a winning team.

As it turns out, the way you treat each other is the way you will treat your patients.

The webinar is located on our PM&A members site now. PM&A Members: Marketing Training/ Patient Retention

[Download version of this file for your staff meetings and reference: 10 Strategies for Patient Retention. ]