Opening your first private practice and being your own boss is cause for both excitement and knee-knocking jitters. You’re doing something, frankly, that you know nothing about. You are filled with hope and a desire to succeed. But you know the factors that put the majority of start-ups on the rocks, and what things you must know to navigate to success?
A client wrote me a thank-you note echoing sentiments I had heard for decades - he “wished he’d known back then what he knows now.”
“PT school was more like a course designed to help me pass the license exam. We never really learned anything about Private Practice at all. In fact, we were encouraged to ‘get a job at a hospital’. ‘Administrative Training’ was a one-hour lecture titled, ‘Writing an Equipment Budget’. Since I am not a very good employee, I sort of had to work for myself until I met the professionals who helped me. From marketing, management and organization to billings and collections—I learned pretty much everything I really needed to know to run my business after I left school.” NC, PT, Seattle
Despite many years of clinical or professional training, most clinicians receive virtually nothing in the way of starting or running a practice, let alone the level of education or practical experience needed to ensure success. This “other half of your education” in private practice involves specific marketing, management and financial control skills indispensable to your ultimate success.
Some of your peers will never reach for the help they need. The sad fact is they are trapped by fixed ideas, myths, speculations or have accepted well-meaning advice that occurs from colleague-to-colleague or even during formal training. These are assumptions of how something should work or be, but not how they actually are. Such ideas are deceptive and need to be looked at head-on. You need to be able to spot these as traps or they will surely undermine your understanding of this subject.
If you want to maintain profits, peace of mind and see your practice succeed, pay heed to some common fixed ideas as they relate to the Keys to Practice Success—Patient Referral Development, PR and Marketing, Organization, and Cash Flow. In this article we will take up a “myth” of PR and Marketing followed by the truth of the matter, and then immediate “first aid” advice.
MYTH #1: PR AND MARKETING:
“Just hang out your shingle, deliver the best quality care you can and patients will spread good word of mouth. The doctors will appreciate and support you, and new patients will not be a problem. To be safe, spend a bit of time each month on promotion and PR.”
The Hard Facts: One can have the best quality care in the world and starve due to lack of new patients. Unless prompted, only one in ten satisfied patients will bother to tell anyone about their success, let alone the referring doctor who sees them for perhaps, ten minutes. Conversely, only one disgruntled patient will tell ten people about his bad experience, especially going out of his way to tell the referring doctor.
Quality of care is indispensable as even the greatest public relations tactics won’t overcome shoddy patient care. But the single biggest mistake I see business and practice owners make is to underestimate the effort required in promoting their practices to obtain a broad and stable base of referring doctors as well as good word-of-mouth referrals from patients.
PR and Marketing Strategies for Success:
1. Institute a coordinated, on-going referral development program with physicians, both general practitioners and specialists, and even non-healthcare professionals you would like referring to you. This program should stress personal interaction. Discover from your referral sources their needs and build a relationship based on helping them better service their own patients. Never, ever, act subservient to doctors: offering gifts, hot lunches and such—they will equate such efforts in the same category as drug reps or equipment salesman. It may get you a lunchtime in-service training workshop, but in the long run, you will lose face. Keep it professional and be interested in their needs with the common purpose of doing what will best help their patients.
Referral development is the keystone of every successful practice. More than 90% of the clients that come to us for hands-on help have this as their chief area of interest, and it is the first to get tackled. If the idea of personal interaction distresses you, or you’re afraid you come across sounding like a salesman, tune into our free monthly Webinar on Referral Development. It may also be time to contact our Hands-on Help Hotline.
2. PR and Marketing is best coordinated under one knowledgeable and effective manager. Ensuring that plenty of patients arrive is equally important as quality of patient care. Even in a small clinic with just a few staff, having one person devoted full-time to this area is not unrealistic—if this person is trained and effective. A Marketing Manager who knows his job will drive in enough business to keep you producing at maximum and well above bottom line.
3. When your patients are positively commenting about their treatment, have them write brief testimonials, or “success stories”, stating what improvements they’ve experienced physically and emotionally from being in your care. Share these with the referring doctor, but don’t make the mistake of mailing them broadly. Most doctors perceive such broad mailings as shameless self-promotion and junk mail. It could also get you in trouble with regard to patient privacy. If the patient gives legal permission and state laws permit, you may publish the success on your bulletin board or use it in promotional materials such as newsletters.
4. Develop and follow a calendar for your PR and Marketing activities that include sending out a monthly or bimonthly newsletter; conducting a promotional call-back program every 3 to 6 months with your patients for services such as free checkups; hosting monthly events or in-house seminars; and participating in health fairs out in the community.
Results reported by our clients show the two most effective forms of practice promotion are personal contacts with referral sources and public speaking opportunities. This calendar is the roadmap for both you and your Marketing Director.
Mr. Schmiedeke is the nation’s foremost authority in the development of professional referrals, private practice management and marketing. As co-founder of Survival Strategies, Inc. (http://www.survivalstrategies.com), a consulting company for private practice health care professionals, located in Burbank, CA, he has helped more than 4,000 clients achieve real independence, flexibility, and the freedom to make their own decisions—the very qualities that attracted them to the business in the first place. He is the author of the book “Keys To Private Practice Success—Marketing and Management Skills They Didn’t Teach You In College”, http://www.survivalstrategies.com/email/kpps_book_promo.htm, the “Owner’s Manual” for private practice owners and other training materials.
