Most practice owners are very busy, overloaded, and going crazy trying to be the healthcare provider these days with all the Covid regulations. Trying to make a practice profitable, at the same time as finding good staff, and marketing to bring in new patients or clients are just added burdens to the picture.
A lot of practitioners think that the solution to increasing their income is to double their overhead by starting or buying another practice location, or by getting into bitcoin investments, or by downsizing their staff to cut down on overhead, and so on.
However, those are usually the wrong answers and can pull you away from the real solutions which lie right inside your own practice – right in the plain light of day. Here are the 4 key components to generating an increase in your income.
The 4 Secret Ingredients
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Handling Shoppers
Your staff needs to close every person who calls in from whatever marketing you’ve done and spent money on. Most professionals tell us that they think their staff are great at this. However, unless they have someone do secret shopper calls or a recording system for listening to each call, you have no idea! We have worked on this and found that 90% of receptionists regularly fail to convert some of the shopper calls into new patient appointments. And, honestly, you can’t fault them because 90% have not had one-on-one training on this to make them great at it. That means that your practice loses approximately $2,000 to $10,000 per week right there, as that potential new patient that was lost may have stayed with you for life.
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Prevent NP No Shows
It’s all very well to book a call-in for a new patient appointment but there are ways to do it right and an infinity of ways to do it wrong, and then the “new patient” never shows up. Even if they call in and say, “I’d like to book an appointment,” they can turn around and change their minds overnight or forget about it or any number of things. Again, really getting into a great conversation and being totally interested in the potential new patient is vital to prevent that.
When scheduling them, the receptionist needs to build a relationship with this person and get them to share all their pertinent information that is needed to open a chart (name, address, cell phone, home phone, work phone, personal email, birthday, insurance policy #, etc.) Once all that has been shared by the new patient, it is highly unlikely that they will not show up.
And, to seal the matter, it would be awesome if the practitioner were to do a little selfie video-text the night before the appointment saying how much he/she is looking forward to meeting _______ (name of new patient) and “seeing how we can best take care of you.”
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Treatment Plan Presentations
Now we move to the practitioner who does the exam and presents the findings and recommendations as to what treatment is needed. In our experience of consulting and training close to 2,000 clients over the last 32 years, only about 2% of the practitioners were routinely top-notch at getting patients to go for the highest quality care they could provide.
The results from our 2-day Sales Workshop show that most practitioners increase their income by $5,000 to $20,000 per month just from being trained by us on treatment presentations. Patients and clients deserve the best treatment possible but it often takes a lot of skill to help them be willing to accept it.
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Organic Growth
And here is the Star Secret to generating more income, and cut down on marketing costs: Patients who are enthusiastic about you and your team and the care and service they received, will tell the world about you through Google Reviews, RateMDs, and Facebook, as well as their friends, family and co-workers. If you increased the number of patients leaving your practice enthusiastic about you and your practice, your income will go up organically.
The trick is to look at your practice for ways to increase the levels of service, friendliness, and strong interest and care that is put into each person. If you do this effectively, the number of new patients will also increase. It is not how technically perfect you are as few patients will have any idea about that. They don’t particularly care that you have the latest big, expensive piece of equipment that you are so excited about. They do care how they are talked to, how they are cared for, how interested you are in them and their thoughts and needs.
Increase Your Income
Work on the 4 Secret Ingredients and watch your practice grow!
For help and training on any of the above 4 points, fill out this form.
