It’s popular to assume that virtually any malady facing a chiropractic practice can be solved with simply an injection of new patients. Income down? Get more new patients. Mid-day down times? Get more new patients. Higher co-pays? Get more new patients. Higher gas prices? Get more new patients. Higher rent? Get more new patients.
And while it’s true that a surge of new patients might temper the particular “ache or pain” your practice is experiencing, what about next month and the month after? A practice becomes stable from long-lasting relationships, referrals and reactivations. If you continue to have a voracious appetite for new patients after 10 years or longer in practice, you may have a new patient addiction.
Which is a fairly accurate metaphor. Self-medicating your practice with more new patients can numb you from a far greater pain:
The pain of having not adequately educated patients in the past.
The pain of having allowed your personal overhead to get out of hand.
The pain of having not saved any money during the Insurance Era.
The pain of having little loyalty from the patients you’ve helped.
The pain of having a sense of dread and impending doom.
The pain of feeling isolated, alone and generally unappreciated.
The pain of feeling powerless as you see your income erode.
The pain of feeling trapped in a career that isn’t as fun as it used to be.
The pain of not knowing what to do to escape the oppression and pain.
Sure, more new patients will temporarily distract you from the pain, but they won’t get to the underlying cause. (Sound familiar?) Instead, the solution lies within you and your practice. It’s where all true healing occurs. (Sound familiar?) And since it’s taken a while for this problem to develop, it’s going to take some time for it to resolve. (Sound familiar?)
As I was musing about this predicament among customers and past customers of Patient Media, I started wondering about what we were doing to help the thousands upon thousands of chiropractors who pass up other patient education resource companies to buy from us. What are we doing to help address the underlying cause? Here’s what I came up with:
1. Maximize your income by increasing patient retention. Do you see chiropractic as a lifestyle decision, and not a short-term treatment for episodes of neck and back pain? Then you understand that effective patient education improves clinical outcomes, patient satisfaction and creates a more profitable practice. Get back to the basics, which always starts with effective patient education, which should not be confused with patient teaching.
2. Stimulate more referrals by making it easier to refer. Patient Media brochures aren’t just for your patients. They’re for the people your patients know. They’re “new patient seeds.” While we’d love to come to your office to hand them out for you, it’s more practical if you and your staff attend to this simple, yet amazingly effective procedure. It’s a numbers game.
3. Reactivate inactives by regularly and inexpensively keeping in touch. Bet those inactive patients of yours still think of you as their chiropractor. But you’ve virtually ignored them! Many just need a nudge; a reminder and an excuse to get back on the bus. Our patient newsletter, postcards and letters are easy ways to do just that.
4. Restore financial ease by Converting to Cash. Get real! Reimbursement is not going to get better. Plan for still higher deductibles, higher co-pays and higher documentation burdens. Avoid the other lemmings who still think better coding or offering off-purpose billable services is the key. The light at the end of that tunnel? A train.
5. Get new patients from the Internet with a Perfect Patients website. While the main focus of our sister company is to help extend the reach of your practice into the homes and offices of your current patients, many report snagging a few patients a month from people using a search engine to find a chiropractor. Today, practicing without a website is like practicing without a telephone.
6. Volume discounts when you buy your favorite Patient Media tools in bulk. If you’re in the penny-pinching mode, increase the margin of your practice by stocking up. With discounts at four-or-more, and 10-or-more of the same item, you can usually save enough to pay for your shipping. Buy in bulk. Living hand-to-mouth, with something as essential as first visit handouts or report folders doesn’t demonstrate faith in the future. Or yourself.
7. Headspace and implementation ideas to maximize patient response. A year’s worth of Monday Morning Motivation broadcasts are archived here. There are over 800 pages of articles, book chapters, how-tos and the essential headspace needed for a patient-centric practice. As you renew your mind and see the ignored opportunities and new possibilities, your practice will pick up. Lasting success happens no other way.
Bottom line? It’s time to get back to work. Telling the story. Saving lives. Planting your flag. Taking a stand. Being proud of what makes you and your approach so different from the mainstream. This isn’t the time to freeze with inaction, go fetal or hold a pity party. This isn’t the time to cut back, shut up or toe the line!
Start taking names!