Clinical Solutions Blog

I talk to a lot of clinic owners and when I ask them what their biggest challenge is, they often tell me it's their patient engagement.

According to Strive Labs, 20% of patients drop out in 3 visits and never come back again. That's a lot of new patients who self discharged and never came back to your clinic.  

I’ve previously written quite a number of blogs on this topic:

• Why do patients self discharge and what to do about it
• How to measure patient satisfaction and boost referrals
• How to boost patient compliance that drive repeat visits

These blogs also have the highest open and click through rates, which just confirms that it’s a topic you may need help with too.

As a clinic owner, you spent a lot of money on marketing or building your brand (aka word of mouth). When a patient comes to your clinic and sees YOU, they stick around and complete their entire plan of care. And they even come back for massage therapy, buy that knee brace you recommended, and give you a 5 star Google review - they are the perfect patient.

Where the problem lies is when the new patients see one of your clinicians. Because your clinic is expanding, you seem to give your practitioners tons of new patients, but for some reason they can't keep them. Your leaky patient funnel is causing these patients to self discharge after the third visit and never come back again. Even worse, they may leave you a bad review which will affect your brand.

What are you to do?

Well, you certainly don’t want to do nothing. As you know, it’s super competitive out there so you can’t afford to lose new patients who come into your clinic. You want to make sure you maximize your marketing dollars and have every patient complete their care plan and keep coming back for more.

So let’s talk about:

• What this metric is and how to use it
• How to make sure your metric works to boost engagement
• How doing this right can double your revenues

Let’s dive in…

I recently talked to a frustrated clinic owner who had many people at her clinic leave recently - front desk, clinicians and unfortunately, customers too!

When we drilled down into the problem, she revealed that, behind the scenes there was a lot of betrayal going on - rumors, and bad gossip. You get it. That awful stuff that just shouldn’t happen.

Another clinic owner I spoke with a few months ago, found out their most senior physiotherapist - who had been loyal to the business for years and is the highest biller in the business - was partnering up with the office manager to setup a clinic across the street! 

This is like your worst nightmare. And when this stuff happens to you, you start questioning your leadership abilities, your ability to positively influence people and why you became an entrepreneur in the first place.

I totally understand what this feels like because I’ve been there myself. Over my many years of being in business I’ve learned many things the hard way, which is why I often share them with you - so you can take the easy road.

Seriously though, I lost a lot people over the years. In fact, it took me 5 years of constant bad leadership to finally get it, for the light bulb to switch on.  

Today I want share how I managed to turn it all around and how you can get your staff fully engaged so that both your staff and your customers absolutely love your business.

We’ll cover:

• The most important factor to win over employees and customers
• How focusing on these factors dramatically improves your business
• Some critical steps to focus on first to ensure success
• 8 effective strategies to give and get customers to love your business

We're racking up a great collection of clinic owner interviews that all have the potential to completely transform your practice.

Quite interestingly, one of the most recommended business books mentioned by clinic owners so far is The E-Myth by Micheal Gerber. If you've never read that book, Gerber talks a lot about working ON your business, not just IN your business. And putting systems and processes in place that can help automate the majority of things and make things easier for you to make more money in less time.

Many top entrepreneurs speak about the same principles in business. And today we've got one clinic owner who has used these principles to grow out of clinical practice, selling a multichain of clinics, and now travels the world as a business coach and consultant for healthcare business owners.

Meet Paul Wright. Australian-based physiotherapist, turned successful entrepreneur, business consultant, speaker and educator. In this interview, Paul shares some of his secrets on how you too can work on your business, design your business freedom blueprint, and live more of the life you want to live.

Here's what we cover:

• Learn Paul's journey of opening 10 clinics 
• Why you always need to think about positioning your business to sell
• What to do BEFORE you think about opening your next clinic
• How to get the biggest bang for your buck on marketing
• One key thing to never put a monetary value on

Let's dive in...

This is our 5th awesome interview so far in this clinic owners interview series. If you have a story to share, please get in touch, we want to share your inspiration with others, too.

I absolutely love sharing the stories of successful clinic owners because people’s journey’s always reveal so many powerful insights.

Today is no exception. We have the honor of sharing a young woman’s journey to success.

Meet Charlotte Anderson, physiotherapist and owner of ALPHA Health Services.

In just 3 short years Charlotte has built a team of multidisciplinary experts and ALPHA is set to soar to even greater heights in the next 12 months to come. Not only has Charlotte been busy building a business, she has also been undergoing a PhD in an area of physiotherapy that is lacking research, an area she hopes to expand as a specialization for physiotherapists far and wide.  Awesome thing is she is less then 30 years old and only works 10 clinical hours per week.  

Here’s some of the insights you’ll gather:

• How she manages to only work 10 clinical hours per week
• How learning to trust your gut and the process builds a better business
• Why she decided NOT to have partners and go solo
• The power of referrals and what type works
• Why she is switching over to Jane App

If you’re like most clinic owners, you treat a lot of patients and don’t have much time to grow or manage your business. It’s hard to juggle the two, let alone make sure your employees and contractors are engaged and committed to their roles.

Sometimes, it can seem like a struggle to get a bigger commitment from them. You really want your staff to work for you like clinic owners who care about the business. But, for some reason it doesn’t seem to work out that way.

The secret to having a highly engaged team and a winning business is not as difficult as you think. In fact, it’s actually pretty easy.

What you need to do is: Build a culture that everybody loves!

Culture is the one core element that will make all the difference. And from there you take the time to celebrate small wins, keep track of your score so you know you're winning, and you hire the right people.

In this post I will share:

• How paying attention can inspire action
• A super easy technique to engage staff right now
• The one key thing you need to do right now that will make all the difference
• A quiz to test your team's engagement

I really don’t like the word receptionist. I mean, the front desk team do more than just “reception” work. They answer phones, book patients, bill insurance companies, talk with insurers, laundry, take payment, schedule next week appointments, show and sell product to patient, fill charts, and the list goes on.

The front desk team are really customer service reps or patient care coordinators or clinic ambassadors/hosts.  

Given that more than “70% of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels they are being treated,” Source: McKinsey, the front desk team are crucial to the patient experience.

You need to hire the right person. Someone with passion, trustworthy, loyal and great positive character. But for some reason this is more difficult than it seems.

Does the following sound like a familiar scenario?

You put a job posting on Craigslist or Indeed and you get over 100 applicants in your inbox. What next? Who do you choose? You barely have time to even look at over 100 emails, let alone work out how to choose the very best candidate. And in the past you’ve wasted tons of time interviewing potential candidates, who in the end, just don’t fit the bill.

If this is the case, chances are you don’t have a hiring process in place, which is why we’re going to cover this right here, right now, because there is a much more efficient way to go about this.

We’ll cover:

• Common problems and concerns with hiring
• Why first impressions are your number one priority
• The exact 6 steps to follow to hire the best front desk team

No matter what circumstances you’re in, increasing the value of your clinic should be one of your primary goals.

Take the following scenarios as examples:

Scenario 1: You’re looking to sell your clinic in the next 2-5 years. Therefore, you can use the following information to position your clinic as 'the place' to buy for potential prospects.

Scenario 2: You might not want to sell now but one day in the future it could be on the agenda. Think of your clinic like owning a house. If you upgrade your kitchen, your house will be worth more money when you decide to sell later. Same goes for your clinic. Therefore, you can use the following information as a checklist to make your business worth more each and every day.

Scenario 3: You will need an exit strategy and it might be one you did not expect. Many business owners never think about their exit strategy; then somewhere down the track they are forced to sell due to health issues, divorces, relocation because their spouses job is moving, something happens to the partnership and the partner wants to buy you out, and the most common thing - your business is losing money. Therefore, you can use the following information to safeguard your unforeseen early retirement and be ready to face the challenges - no matter what they are!

As you can see, one of these scenarios is bound to be before you at some stage in your professional lifetime. Therefore, increasing the value of your clinic should always be one of your primary goals.

But how exactly do you do that?

It’s certainly not rocket science. In fact, it’s much easier than you might think.

That’s why we’re going to cover:

• How to build a company that people want to buy
• Things you should be continuously focusing on to help you reach the final goal
• 12 great ways you can increase the value of your clinic

Ready to increase your clinic value?

Great. Let’s get started.

Something I (very) often hear people who work in healthcare businesses complain of, is the amount of time it takes to do everything, and that they just don’t seem to have the time needed to get everything done.

Sound familiar?

Trust me, I KNOW busy!

On the business side:

• I run CSC, an eCommerce business that is growing 70% annually
• I own 2 physiotherapy clinics in Alberta
• I help clinic owners with the Canadian Physiotherapy Association
• I have a consulting business where I help clinic owners with marketing
• I own a software business that helps businesses answer more calls

On the personal side:

• I just recently moved back to Victoria  
• We had a baby, well, Kylie, our baby girl is now 18 months old and still isn't sleeping through the night!

Like I said, I KNOW busy!

In this post, I’m going to show you:

• Exactly how I organize my day to get so much done
• How to focus business to the right places
• Effective time saving hacks to help you get more done in less time

Ready? Let’s go.

Recently, I was having a conversation with my clinic accelerator client about how he wants to expand his clinic and double his space. Part of his renovation plans are to build a product retail area into the clinic.

I asked him: “Why do you want to sell retail?”

He said: “I believe in the complete care model and my competitors - physiotherapist and chiropractors - are all offering products so I need to remain competitive.”

That’s smart business.

Patients are always going to purchase products they need. If you don’t offer them products they will buy poor quality, bad fitting products from the dollar shop or pharmacy. Or, they may even purchase them from competitors.

And let me share a little secret, your product sales should makeup 5% to 10% of your gross revenue. If you’re doing $300K of annual gross revenue, that’s $30K. If you’re doing $500K, that's $50K. If you’re doing $1M, that’s $100K. Regardless of your revenue, you can see that adding product boosts up your bottom line.

And, it’s not difficult to do, if you just know how to do it right.

So, in this post we’ll lay out:

• The wrong way to set up product displays
• How to display product like the professionals
• Tips for making a display look awesome
• Secrets to selling product at your clinic

Lots of examples included!  You ready?