Looking Inward – Part 1 Continued from page 10 If you’re like most of our clients, your answers to these questions are something like this: “I’ll generate a LOT more revenue per hour by spending time with regular patients, and those are the patients who are likely to continue their treatment with me.” So, if you generate more revenue by spending your time with existing patients, and you’re more certain they’ll continue to be members of your practice, then why in the world would you spend so much time up front with new patients? WHEN THINGS GET RUSHED, THEY DON’T COME BACK You’ve surely heard the old carpenter’s saying “Measure twice, cut once.” What that’s telling us is that it’s better to take a little more time up front and be sure we’re right, than to make a mistake and be left with a disaster on our hands. In the case of new patients, the “mea- suring twice” piece is in making sure you’ve answered all of their questions, dug deep to see if they had any questions they weren’t asking, and made sure they understand the full treatment process. The only way you can do this is to help them understand what you’re doing, and how it works. When these things aren’t focused on – when things get rushed, and patients walk out without these un- derstandings – new patients are far less likely to come back. When new patients don’t come back, you’ve effectively robbed your existing patients of time they could have had with you, and you’ve robbed yourself of that time. On the other hand, when you ensure that every new patient who sees you walks away with a real understanding of what will go into their treatment, you’re much more likely to keep them and have them become long-term patients. CUTTING ATTRITION IN HALF Let’s change gears, and talk about patient attrition. Who’s more likely to be in for an appointment within the next month – a patient whose last appointment was yes- terday, or a patient whose last appoint- ment was six years ago? The answer – and the point – is obvious. The patient who was in more recently, will 26 • CANADIAN CHIROPRACTOR | MAY 2009 be most likely to come back. In fact, it’s such an obvious point, that almost all practice owners overlook the importance of it – which is extremely costly, both in monetary terms and in terms of patients lost. WHY IS THIS OBVIOUS POINT SO IMPORTANT? This point is important because it is a vital factor in two of the most impacting and important marketing activities your practice can engage in – patient retention and patient re-activation. They’re both incredibly powerful strategies. However, most consultants and “experts” spend more time talking about patient re-activation, and for good reasons – it’s one of the absolute best ways to spend your marketing energies and it’s pretty easy to track. But, even though most chiropractors clearly understand the importance of pa- tient re-activation, they also understand that there’s a more powerful strategy: “I don’t want to have to RE-activate my patients! I don’t want them to be leaving in the first place!” So, what systems do you have in place to let you know when a patient is getting ready to stop seeing you alto- gether? Many chiropractors will say, “It’s impossible to set up a system that lets you know when a patient is not going to continue treatment.” Here is the real question you should be asking: how many days can go by be- tween appointments before a patient can be considered inactive? When we ask this question of chiro- practors, they are often puzzled. They explain, “Well, you can’t say. There are too many variables. Just because John Smith is inactive after 20 days, doesn’t necessarily mean Jane Doe is.” In fairness, these DCs are half right. But the half they get wrong is that in almost all cases – certainly enough to set up a reliable and very effective system – the most relevant variable is how many visits the patient has had. OUR OLD FRIEND, ‘MODELLING’ In the case of patient retention, one of the models we can create is an analysis of just how much time can go by between visits while patients remain active. DCs already have an intuitive under- standing of this. On average, patients may have only four days pass between visits one and two, while they may have 12 days, or more, pass between visits 34 and 35. But, can averages be trusted? In fact, in many cases, they can hide a lot more than they show. For example, if you have 500 patients who are 20 years old, and 500 patients who are 60, the average age is 40. But that tells you nothing about your REAL patients. So we recommend you don’t work on a model of “average days between visits.” Instead, it’s much more useful to look at cumulative totals. How many patients have just had their visit within one day of their previous visit? Within two days? Within 10 days? Within 100 days? THE 90 PER CENT METHOD We suggest that chiropractors consider adopting the “90 per cent method.” Sim- ply stated, you can find out what’s “nor- mal” in your practice by looking at what 90 per cent of your patients do. Then, you can fl ag anybody who falls outside of that range, and get in touch with them to help keep them on track. For example, let’s say that we generate the model for your practice, and it shows that 90 per cent of all of your patients let no more than 35 days pass between their 19th and 20th visits. In this practice model, the 90 per cent method says that when a patient has 19 visits, and more than 35 days since their last visit, you should be actively getting in touch and trying to bring them back in. The 90 per cent method lets you know when you should start making active retention efforts. Yes, it does differ based on how many visits your patients have had. Yes, you can make it extremely specifi c. In fact, the more specifi c, the better. That’s why we often set clients up with a visit-by- visit breakdown, and create systems that automatically fl ag patients who are cross- ing the “90 per cent threshold.” It will be the absolute highest return on any time, effort, or energy you can spend on marketing and practice growth, and it will drastically reduce the number of patients who “slip through the cracks.” Please check the June issue of Canadian Chiropractor for part 2 of this article, where Shawn and Scott will discuss patient react- ivation strategies and overall effi cient use of strategies for best practice outcomes.• www.canadianchiropractor.ca
Chiropractic + Naturopathic Doctor May 2009: Page 26
