How to Get More Patients

I am certain you would agree that this, if answered satisfactorily and with some magic, happens to be the million dollar question (and answer) to many a practitioner!

Having many years of experience consulting multitudes of practitioners, I have to tell you that unfortunately, I haven’t found any magic. The good news is that there are many actions you CAN do from where you are sitting that can result in an increase, sometimes to optimum levels.

The one thing that would obtain some results is being interested. You might be thinking, “That’s broad!” Yes, it is broad and it should be reflected at all levels of your company:  your promotion should show that you are interested in helping more patients; your receptionist should show that she is very interested in any caller (whether it is an inquiry, a patient or even a vendor) or patient walking in. Your therapists should be extremely interested in their patient’s well being and this should be evident in all their communications with them while going through the process of getting them well. Your billing and collections personnel should be extremely interested in communications about payments, whether they are positive or negative and last but not least, your referral development folks should be extremely interested in your referral sources’ needs and communication.

In addition to the above, you as a practice owner should be extremely interested in making your planning become actuality, in your staff having the tools they need to do their jobs successfully, in measuring productivity, in staff growth, in correcting the course of treatments that may have proven ineffective, as well as correcting the staff that applied these incorrectly.

Now, if you just showed interest at all levels described above, how would that help you get more patients? Here’s an anecdote to prove my point. I recently did a long road trip and had to eat in restaurants along the way for a few days. I went to a chain restaurant where the major difference I noticed was that the attendant was interested. This made me interested. I asked a lot of questions and he answered them; all with interest. He also showed that he was interested in the company he worked for, interested in other staff at the company, etc. The result was, for the rest of the road trip, I only stopped at restaurants from this chain. And interestingly enough, I had the same experience throughout.

So, seek to implement some of the above and see what happens!