Doctors: 7 Reliable Ways To Insure Your Practice Thrives—That Are Neglected By Others

Watching your medical practice crumble in front of you, tears at your soul and can easily be avoided. Thankfully, some strategies and tactics for guaranteeing a successful and envied medical practice have already passed the test of time. These bits of intellectual genius can easily be sourced from very successful businesses that have already run the gauntlet.
For those doctors who adhere to the proud tradition of self-employed practice, nothing is more important than creating a medical practice crowded with satisfied patients. You know the ones—-patients who remain with you for years, and brag about how great their doctor treats them.
What patients need and want: It’s not beautiful offices, good-looking doctors, great reputation, or number of credentials hanging on the walls.
• Information about their care
• Good personal service
• Trust in doctors
• Reliability of their doctor
• Communication that works
• Friendliness—relationships
• State of the Art updated medical care
Strategies that are experience proven:
1. Information: Research on the Internet documents the number one sought after product is information. Making medical information available to patients by personal discussion, handouts, or video/audio techniques, will dramatically improve your credibility with patients.
Forget the shiny commercial brochures that contain watered down almost useless information. Create your own library of information that you know would help patients.
2. Personal Service: Business retailers discovered years ago that customer service is critical to survival. Medical practice is a business that deals almost exclusively in customer service. Patients expect to have their health care managed in an efficient way.
Make it a priority to hire office staff that thrives on making patients comfortable and understand what efficiency means. “Things” need to be completed on time, done thoroughly, and devoid of procrastination. Replace anyone who has his or her own agenda.
3. Trust: It’s earned—-not automatic. Ongoing good health care by you is the prime factor in patient’s trust. It takes 6 or 7 visits with a doctor to get there. Web surveys have shown that a customer will not buy from your website until they have visited your site 6 or 7 times and have enough trust to buy.
Trust is the end result of all seven aspects listed here. Testimonials from other patients go a long way to establish trust. That occurs in your waiting room among patients. Appointment scheduling by the “wave” technique accomplishes this.
4. Reliability (doctor and office): Would you keep going back to an office that keeps messing up you appointments, prescriptions, and communications with the doctor and office? Absolutely not! Dependability is the essence of reliability. Patients demand this. Always respond to patient’s phone calls promptly.
Hire a person to do that if need be. Doctors should be available to patients at all times. It doesn’t mean immediately. It means when a patient must reach the doctor that the doctor will always respond as soon as possible. In addition, always will respond to the call.
5. Communications: Nothing is more frustrating to a patient than dead end communications. Calls and messages are ignored or forgotten. Other problems such as “dropped calls” (cut off), repeatedly put on “hold” for long periods, and continually getting busy signals are fuel for the fire. You will lose patients.
Make sure that the management of your office includes every means of avoiding these detrimental communication difficulties. If you haven’t done it already, using e-mail in patient communications will save you unbelievable time and frustration. The medical information privacy issue is being resolved. Most patients are using computers, or soon will be.
6. Friends: Patients prefer to work with doctors and offices where they can make friends—not simply contacts. Creating an environment with that priority is essential for a good medical practice. Patients are social beings—not just a disease with legs.
It is a bonding thing when a patient knows some personal facts about the office staff and doctors. It creates and implants in patients a relationship that says, “friends never treat their other friends badly or improperly.” Do what it takes to give all patients the feeling that, “I just can’t wait to get to the doctor’s office today to find out——–.”
7. State of the art medical care: Patients are a lot smarter than they used to be just a few years ago. Patients know if you are keeping up with your medical knowledge and skills. Don’t be fooled into thinking they don’t know.
Let your patients know when you go to Continued Medical Education courses, and what you learned. Not only is that respect shown to patients, but also a way to establish trust. If you can’t answer a patient’s medical question, find the answer, and get back to them—–95% of doctors do not do that.
Comments: Can you believe it? Marketing your own medical practice without spending a cent. The economics of medical practice today forces doctors into seeing more patients every day and results in neglect of the business success secret strategies. Learning what works and using those factors daily in your practice will insure your success, and make your professional careers productive and fun.
The author, Curtis Graham, M.D., is CEO of L & C Internet Enterprises, Inc. For over 38 years in medical practice, he has written articles, medical information products for his patients, a book on infertility, and marketing information for his practice. He has been published in Modern Physician, an elite magazine for physician executives, and is credited as an “Expert Author” by Ezine Publishers.
Retirement from medicine now permits expansion of his passion to continue helping people by writing pertinent, practical, and detailed articles about many topics. Check out the websites that he and his wife share with a passion:
http://www.Health-Care-Info-Doctor.com
http://www.Healthcare-Toolbox.com
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Copyright 2006, Curtis Graham, MD, L & C Internet Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.