New Patient Acquisition, Part I, by Jeffrey M. Blumberg
New Patient Acquisition, Part II, by Jeffrey M. Blumberg
New Patient Acquisition, Part III, by Jeffrey M. Blumberg

MGE’s weekly webletter, Issue 1.

Welcome to the first edition of MGE’s new weekly webletter.The purpose of this webletter is to provide ideas, tips and suggestions to make your practice more successful.

Feel free to send us your comments and suggestions, or requests for future webletter topics you would like to see covered.

This week’s article:

New Patient Acquisition, Part I

By Jeffrey M. Blumberg
Chief Operating Officer, MGE

When the average dentist wants more new patients, he or she normally thinks the solution lies in some form of marketing – internal, external or both.

It is merely a component part. You could say that marketing or promotion is the spark that lights the fire. Or, the fuel in the fuel tank – it is not however what makes sure the fire actually stays lit or what drives the car!

You could say that the component parts of new patient acquisition would be:

Marketing or promotion of some kind: Whether this is mailers, internet, TV, radio, internal marketing or just word of mouth.

New Patient Management: This would include how new patients are handled when they call in as well as scheduling and finally making sure new patients actually show up.

Service: On top of any clinical considerations (i.e. quality of care) this would include how your patients are handled when they come into the office by both the staff and the doctor and the level of satisfaction the patient has with your service.

Each of these three are component parts of the new patient “machine” so to speak (important parts of the whole – yet still just parts). None of them work particularly well without the others.

Beginning with this post, we’ll take a closer look at each one of these so you can compare it to what’s going on in your office. We’ll start with point #1 – Marketing:

Marketing

 

Without getting into a bunch of marketing ideas, I’ll say this: Marketing should be:

1. Targeted
2. Consistent
3. Of adequate volume to produce the result you are looking for.

Let’s break these down a little further.

1. Target Marketing

This may sound stupid, but I’ve seen it violated too many times – Marketing should be done to the demographic that you are actually trying to attract. I say this because I’ve seen dentists who want to do a lot of crowns, bridges and implants blow thousands marketing to college students. Now, you may have several different demographics you’re interested in (i.e. families, potential restorative patients, etc.) and each of these would be marketed to differently. Ultimately though, when spending your marketing dollar, you should have some idea as to whom you are marketing.

Another aspect of targeting is surveys. For someone to receive your message, it has to be delivered in a manner in which they would be willing to listen. For example, let’s say you were selling tires and your target public was families with large vehicles (minivans and SUVs). You survey these public and find that their biggest concerns with regards to tires are safety and reliability. Well, you would theme your marketing campaign that way as this is what this target public wants and needs. You would not do some type of ad with a shiny Ferrari sitting on a showroom floor as this is not what that public is looking for. Dad might think its cool, but he’s looking for safe, durable tires for the vehicles which will transport his children. You could imagine that the “Ferrari” campaign for your tires targeting families with minivans and SUVs probably wouldn’t sell a lot of tires – and selling a lot of tires is why you’re marketing in the first place!

So, you would need to survey your demographic to find out what is wanted and needed to ensure that your marketing actually works. We teach you how to do this on the MGE New Patient Workshop.

2. Consistency

OK, so you have a great marketing idea, you sent it out via the internet, mail, TV, etc., etc….once.

Take a look at any product you’ve purchased (as the result of advertising) in the last 12 months. Some you may have purchased the first time you heard about it. If you are like the majority of Americans – you heard about it multiple times before you bought it.

So, this tells us that repetition is an important component of your marketing.

Then there is the simple fact that if you have a promotional campaign that brings in 30 new patients, you could in theory promote again in a similar manner to bring in 30 more. This is not to say – even if you promoted once – that you shouldn’t expect a good response. What I am saying however is that for consistent results, you need to market consistently.

3. Adequate volume/amount

A couple of years back, I was speaking with a prospective client with regards to his marketing efforts. He was upset and went on and on about how the marketing he was doing just wasn’t working. I asked a few simple questions and found that he was getting about 10 new patients per month and wanted over 30. Probing further, I found that his marketing efforts consisted of 200 postcards being mailed out from his office every month. 200 postcards to get 20 new patients would be a 10% response – which would be phenomenal – and definitely not something you could count on. Worse than this, even if 20 people responded to this doctor’s postcards, there is no guarantee that they would all shop up!

The moral of the story – ensure that your marketing effort matches the result you are looking to achieve.

Before wrapping up for this week, I’ll leave you with this:

The ultimate purpose of marketing is to create a demand and to sell something. Whether you are selling your office or a specific service or product – you are attempting to induce someone to purchase or do something. Having said that, keep in mind that the direct result of a promotional campaign will be a response or interest – not necessarily the sale itself.

About ten years ago I was speaking with a client who claimed that his new patient promotion was “not working” because he was getting “more new patients” (only 5 had come directly from his advertising the prior month). I asked him to tally the number of responses (calls) he had the prior month off of his new patient marketing. He called me later that day and was very quiet at first. Then he dropped the number of responses on me – 55. Yes, 55 people had called and only 5 scheduled. His problem was not marketing – the marketing was doing what it was supposed to do. The real problem had to do with the staff member answering his phone. New patient marketing isn’t going to put people in your dental chair. It will however get prospective patients interested in and contacting your office. Whether this person actually becomes a new patient has everything to do with your staff and their skill at new patient management, which we’ll cover in next week’s post.

If you haven’t done the New Patient Workshop, we strongly recommend you do so. This two-day workshop will give you immediate tools to fill up your practice with new patients. Click here to register!

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PLEASE NOTE: This article provided by MGE: Management Experts, Inc. consists of suggestions and ideas that could be used to help improve the solvency and viability of a dental practice. There is no guarantee that the information provided is appropriate to your practice. Each practice, their owners, officers and staff are individually responsible for ensuring that any system implemented in the practice complies with the applicable federal, state and local accounting, tax and employment laws, rules and regulations governing the place in which your practice is located. These suggestions do NOT constitute legal or accounting advice. You should seek advice from your own accounting and legal advisors as to what is appropriate to implement in your practice, prior to implementation. MGE: Management Experts, Inc., its officers, directors, shareholders, employees, agents and the writer of this article, are not responsible for any claims, real or otherwise, associated with this material and information or any part thereof.

MGE’s weekly webletter, Issue 2.

Here is the second edition of MGE’s new weekly webletter. The purpose of this webletter is to provide ideas, tips and suggestions to make your practice more successful.

Feel free to send us your comments and suggestions, or requests for future webletter topics you would like to see covered.

This article is part two in a series of three articles covering New Patient Acquisition.

New Patient Acquisition, Part II

<By Jeffrey M. Blumberg
Chief Operating Officer, MGE

In last week’s article, we covered the three components of New Patient Acquisition (Marketing, New Patient Management and Service) with a focus on Marketing. In this week’s article, we’ll dive into the second component – New Patient Management.

The term “New Patient Management” can mean any number of things. For our purposes in this article, the term “New Patient Management” will cover:

1. How prospective new patients are handled when they call in.
2. The scheduling procedure used.
3. How the office ensures the new patient actually arrives.

What happens when a patient shows up to the office will fall under the heading of “Service,” which we’ll cover next week.

As we covered last week – marketing’s job is to create a phone call or other form of contact to your office. Your marketing’s effectiveness could be measured by tracking the number of “responses” meaning phone calls or contacts generated by a particular marketing effort.

This brings us to a hardbound rule: ALL new patient inquiries of ANY kind MUST be kept track of and broken down by source (i.e. Radio Ad, Yellow Pages, referral, etc).

I mention this now, as most offices don’t track the number of new patient inquiries; they only track number of new patients.

Failing to track your new patient inquiries puts you at a loss when attempting to determine:

a) Whether any type of a marketing effort is actually working and

b) Whether your front desk person is handling new patient call-ins properly.

c) If your office has a procedural problem (i.e. the procedure followed to schedule new patient appointments).

I can’t stress how important this is. While most yellow page ads track the number of calls by using a different phone number, your best bet is to have a mechanism that does this with ALL new patient inquiries.

I could spend hours telling you stories of offices that had 50 new patient call-ins to schedule 3 people. Front desk contact, while not the only problem with new patient acquisition, accounts for much more of the problem than you might imagine.

It has nothing to do with whether your receptionist is a nice person. Chances are your receptionist is great. The problem most often lies in how they handle the new patient call-in.

Assuming you’re tracking inquiries, you can compare the number of calls and contacts to the number of people who actually scheduled. From this you can work out:

1. If your front desk is doing a good job handling these calls and
2. What marketing is working and what isn’t.

First contact – the right attitude

The biggest mistake I’ve seen with new patient inquires has to do with the attitude of the person answering the phone. Again, this is not to say that your receptionist is mean or rude. The problem in attitude is that they need a clear cut idea of the end result they are going for. Too many receptionists think their job is to “answer the phone” or “answer questions.” With the amount of money you might be spending to get the phone ringing – this becomes very important.

When it comes to new patients, their job is very simple – get the new patient in and in the chair!

Having said that, you’d be surprised how many front desk staff interrogate a new patient inquiry for ten minutes to determine if this is a “quality” patient, or some such thing. I’ve even seen cases where the new patient inquiry isn’t even asked to set an appointment – but told to call back when they “can get their full mouth x-ray from their last dentist.”

Keep it simple – make the person feel happy to have called. Have a caring attitude and listen to what the person wants. Your front desk person is not a “gate keeper” who scrutinizes people to determine who they’ll let in the door. A person calling your office for the first time has no idea who you are. Establish good communication, get any needed information and get them scheduled and in for the appropriate type of appointment. Don’t get into a long philosophical discussion about your office, dentistry, the insurance industry, etc. You’re not going to find out everything there is to know about a patient or clue them into everything about your office over the phone. You’re better off sorting out who’s who when a patient is in your office, face-to-face, not over the telephone.

Now, I know you might have questions about what to do with people who are out-of-network or “shoppers.” I have an excellent four-page write-up titled: “Getting New Patients in the Door” from an MGE client who has a very high new patient conversion rate. This write-up deals with specifics as to how to handle new patient inquiries. If you’d like a copy, click here and fill out the form and we’ll email it to you.

Scheduling Errors

OK, so your marketing is working, and your receptionist does a good job with new patient inquiries. Everything should be great – right? It should be – unless you make an error in scheduling.

To determine this, ask your Office Manager or receptionist to come and see you for a minute and ask them:

If a new patient were to call in right now for a “cleaning” (not an emergency), when is our first available appointment for:

1. After 4 PM
2. First thing
3. Between 10 AM and 12 PM.

If any of those come up as more than a couple of days – you could be blowing new patients off.

Making a prospective new patient wait weeks (or even one week) will cost you. Sure some people will show up, but who likes to wait?

The lesson here is: make sure your schedule is arranged (somehow) to accommodate new patients preferably within 24-48 hours.

Parting Shots

We just had our first MGE Owner’s Conference of the year this past weekend (the next one is in November). For those of you who don’t know, the Owner’s Conference is a seminar where MGE graduates meet to update their skills and share successful actions.

During the Round Table section of the Owner’s Conference (an open forum where ideas are shared) a number of very useful ideas came up with relation to new patient acquisition. I’d like to share one idea in particular that a client shared (which another MGE client had suggested) and I found very intriguing: Have the doctor him or herself confirm new patients the night before. The client who discussed this said his new patient no-shows have more or less disappeared since instituting this. You wouldn’t call just to “confirm” – you could call and say you wanted to call ahead and see if they had any questions before you meet the next day, etc. Whatever, you feel like here is OK. Patients are pretty impressed with a doctor phone call. And, if you have five or six new patients on the books for the next day, this wouldn’t take very long.

Summary

Improve your new patient numbers by:

1. Tracking your incoming new patient inquiries (regardless of where they come from).
2. When it comes to new patients, make sure your front desk person is focused on “getting them IN THE CHAIR,” instead of something else.
3. Make sure you can accommodate new patients FAST – don’t make them wait.

If you haven’t done the New Patient Workshop, we strongly recommend you do so. This two-day workshop will give you immediate tools to fill up your practice with new patients. Click here to register!

 

 

 

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PLEASE NOTE: This article provided by MGE: Management Experts, Inc. consists of suggestions and ideas that could be used to help improve the solvency and viability of a dental practice. There is no guarantee that the information provided is appropriate to your practice. Each practice, their owners, officers and staff are individually responsible for ensuring that any system implemented in the practice complies with the applicable federal, state and local accounting, tax and employment laws, rules and regulations governing the place in which your practice is located. These suggestions do NOT constitute legal or accounting advice. You should seek advice from your own accounting and legal advisors as to what is appropriate to implement in your practice, prior to implementation. MGE: Management Experts, Inc., its officers, directors, shareholders, employees, agents and the writer of this article, are not responsible for any claims, real or otherwise, associated with this material and information or any part thereof.

MGE’s weekly webletter, Issue 3.

Here is the third edition of MGE’s new weekly webletter. The purpose of this webletter is to provide ideas, tips and suggestions to make your practice more successful.

Feel free to send us your comments and suggestions, or requests for future webletter topics you would like to see covered.

This is the final installment of a three-part article on New Patient Acquisition. If you would like to review Part I of this article, click here. For Part II, click here.

New Patient Acquisition, Part III

By Jeffrey M. Blumberg
Chief Operating Officer, MGE

Two weeks ago, I began my first article by defining the three components of New Patient Acquisition (Marketing, New Patient Management and Service) and discussed the first component: Marketing. In last week’s article, we focused on New Patient Management. I’ll wrap up this week with a look at “Service.”

Everything we’ve covered to date concerns getting new patients arrived at your office. Now, we’ll take a look at what happens after they get there – i.e., “Service” and its impact on new patient acquisition (and your practice in general).

Among other things, the level service in your practice is going to determine:

1. Your “conversion rate.” By this I mean if the person actually stays on as a patient in your office for the long-haul or not.

2. Whether this patient refers other patients (leading to more new patients).

3. Whether this patient accepts comprehensive treatment plans that may be proposed (which in turn will impact collections).

Looking at 1-3 above, you can see that this “service” point is of paramount importance and immediately impacts collections, new patients (by way of referrals and goodwill) as well as your number of active charts.

As a health care practitioner, you’re in the “service” business. You sell and deliver “services” as opposed to “things” or products (cars, jewelry, boats, etc.). For the purposes of this article, we’re going to touch on the non-clinical (administrative) aspects of service in the office with a focus on how it relates to new patients.

Bad Service

Much has been written about the dangers of “bad service.” Why? I’ll give you an example you can relate to:

Let’s say you see 20 patients per day (between hygiene and your schedule). Nineteen are happy with their visit. Several are extremely happy with what you’ve done for them. One patient however is problematic: rude to the staff, difficult in the chair and all in all, not the type of person you’d like to see in your office. Out of these 20 people, who is it that your staff talk about at the end of the day? For that matter, when your spouse asks about your day at work, what’s the first thing you talk about? Chances are, it’s that one patient who you had problems with. No one’s talking about the 19 (95% of your day) patients who were happy. Instead you talk about the one (5%) that went wrong. Why is this you might ask? The specifics behind this phenomenon are not the subject of this article. However, I believe you can see that this phenomenon is real to some degree.

Now, let’s take this phenomenon (focusing on the negative experience) and extrapolate it to a business. It explains a few things. It explains the theory of people who are unhappy with your service talking about it to more people than those who are happy with your service.

As far as how many people a dissatisfied customer talks to, I’ve seen this number vary from 3 to 10. Run the math and you can see that enough dissatisfied customers will destroy your goodwill and tank your business.

So, with that said, creating a positive service experience for your patients becomes all the more vital. A word of caution though – don’t get all caught up worrying whether people “like you” or too “careful” about offending anyone. Provide good service and you’re in good shape.

Service from the Patient’s Point of View

Take a few minutes and imagine that you are a new patient entering your office for the first time. How would you like to be handled? What would you expect to see? Obviously, you’d expect to handle your chief complaint clinically, but what would “sell” you on becoming a “permanent” patient in your office?

There are the basic points: Is the office clean and well kept? Does your staff dress professionally or in such a way you’d expect in a dental office? Is the office actually open during posted business hours?

Assuming this all checks out, we move on to the rest of the experience.

General Service Attitude

From the moment they walk in to the moment they leave, would a new patient consider that a) they are receiving adequate attention b) that you and your staff display a genuine care/concern for them c) that both you and your staff communicated and related well with them and c) that their experience in the office was well controlled?

These are some of the “little things” that add up. Were they greeted promptly and taken care of (given forms to fill out, get their questions answered, etc.)? Did your staff relate to them well or did the patient feel like a “number”? Were they made to wait excessively – either in reception or in the dental chair? Were they politely directed as to where to go, sit, what to pay, etc.?

Thirty or more years ago, most service stations were “full-serve” (of course…I’m too young to remember this…I read about it in a book). You drove your car in, they checked the oil, tire pressure, cleaned the windshield and filled the tank. Gee, that would be nice wouldn’t it? Gradually we’ve moved over to “self-serve.” Don’t be an inattentive “self-serve” office. Make the patient important.

This has much to do with staff attitude. During business hours, patients are the only “important” people in the office. I use the word “important” loosely and this is not to say that you or you staff are not “important,” but it does mean that when the office is operating – the attention is 100% on patients. When hiring a staff member, I look to see if they are inclined or willing to provide unselfish service to the public. Someone who feels that getting a patient a cup of coffee, or taking out the trash is “beneath them” can create serious problems for a business. My viewpoint: At work I’m not very “important;” our clients are. Someone who gets so caught up in how “important “ they are immediately places attention on themselves and NOT the public and will find certain parts of a service job to be a problem. I’m not so important that if I see something that needs to be cleaned up or handled I can’t fix it. I’m here to provide service to the public.

Promptness

How fast you handle patients, their requests and concerns is another factor. With relation to the schedule, this is obvious; they shouldn’t be made to wait. NEVER, EVER, EVER.

If patients are “waiting,” there are usually three reasons:

1. You had a clinical problem with the patient or two prior which threw you behind, or

2. Someone’s goofing off (talking to other employees, etc.) and not doing what they’re supposed to or

3. Your schedule is unrealistic.

#1 above will happen from time to time and there’s nothing you can do about it. If it does happen, it should be handled as EARLY as possible; don’t have the patient find out you’re an hour behind (when you knew this two hours ago) right when arriving at your office. They should be notified FAST and directed as to what their options are. This would not be: “Doctor’s running behind, what do you want to do?” Instead, you should direct them as to what options they have: reschedule, come later, see the associate, etc., etc. Meanwhile, the front and back offices should work together to get the schedule back on track.

#2 is just plain bad service and NOT OK. If you see these kinds of things, handle them – they’ll only get worse. #3 is on the doctor. If a procedure really, actually takes you two hours, you are better off scheduling more time than was needed than scheduling only 1 ½ hours. Build a little bit of EXTRA time into your scheduling policy on how long certain procedures take. It allows you to make up the time if you run behind on a procedure and also finds you time to start additional work if you’d like. The point – be real, make sure your scheduling policy at least reflects how long things actually take.

When it comes to handling patient communication, correcting billing errors and the like – apply the same concept – HANDLE IT FAST. It tells the patient, by your actions, that you truly care about them and their needs.

Relating to the Doctor

When you meet a patient for the first time, they know very little about how great you are clinically. Their first impression of both you and your office began with your staff and now is monitored by how well you communicate and relate to them.

Here’s where we enter the realm of “sales.” I know most doctors hate that word, but in fact that is what you are doing. You’re selling the patient on your office and when it comes to recommending treatment, you’ll have to sell them on your treatment plan. Now, by sales I don’t mean lying to them, holding their arm behind their back, etc. I mean communicating to them in such a way that they understand their treatment plan and thereby become willing to pursue it.

Poor sales will kill both your collections and referrals. You may also lose patients. If you were to do a multi-pin amalgam on a patient that really needed (and should have had) a crown and this restoration breaks a few months later (while they’re on vacation), how happy do you think that patient would be about coming back? How many patients do you think they’d refer?

“Patch-up” work done as the result of inability to sell costs both you and the patient. You lose the fee you would have made by doing the kind of work you felt was needed clinically. The patient loses as they didn’t get what was best for them.

My recommendation here would be to really learn how to communicate and sell.

We at MGE do quite a bit of training on this subject. For more information on our Communication and Sales Seminars, click here.

Final thoughts

There is so much to this subject, it could fill a book (and some will accuse me of trying to write one with how long this article is…).

You could survey your new patients on what they liked most and least about their experience and work on improving things from there.

I try at least weekly to walk around our business and look at it from the viewpoint of a client or new client and correct things I see need fixed. There are a million variations on this and I’m sure you could come up with a number of ideas. If anything, you can’t go wrong by placing a strong focus on providing the best service possible to patients.

If you haven’t done the New Patient Workshop, we strongly recommend you do so. This two-day workshop will give you immediate tools to fill up your practice with new patients. Click here to register!

Back to top

PLEASE NOTE: This article provided by MGE: Management Experts, Inc. consists of suggestions and ideas that could be used to help improve the solvency and viability of a dental practice. There is no guarantee that the information provided is appropriate to your practice. Each practice, their owners, officers and staff are individually responsible for ensuring that any system implemented in the practice complies with the applicable federal, state and local accounting, tax and employment laws, rules and regulations governing the place in which your practice is located. These suggestions do NOT constitute legal or accounting advice. You should seek advice from your own accounting and legal advisors as to what is appropriate to implement in your practice, prior to implementation. MGE: Management Experts, Inc., its officers, directors, shareholders, employees, agents and the writer of this article, are not responsible for any claims, real or otherwise, associated with this material and information or any part thereof.