This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Creative thinking required for marketing your practice
Quality medical care is paramount, but there is a lot involved in keeping patients happy and attracting new ones.
Every good physician is concerned with patient satisfaction.
If I’m a well-educated, empathetic and effective listener, my patients will be happy. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But there are other things to consider. A clean, comfortable, pleasant-looking office is imperative. Color helps create an inviting atmosphere and especially in pediatric offices, themes can be helpful. The theme should not be too age specific because your patients range in age from birth to 23. So, do you paint Disney characters, sports-oriented figures or popular movie themes or … wait a second, maybe everything should be geared toward the parents. After all, they pay the bills!
Maybe you should forget the decorating and focus on providing quality medical care. After all, we went to medical school, not charm school. Patients and their families should be happy enough to have good pediatricians, right? The answer here is both yes and no. Everything is important if you want to attract new patients, keep your existing patients happy and still be able to smile when you get home at the end of the day.
First and foremost, you must stay well-informed regarding current medicine. Your reputation as a bright physician with excellent diagnostic skills and the ability to correctly treat your patients is certainly one of the most important aspects in having happy patients and in maintaining the ability to attract new patients to your practice. You must keep up-to-date by reading journals, attending conferences, and interacting with sub-specialists, residents and medical students. Being knowledgeable about new medications, new vaccines and new treatment modalities will help you treat your patients effectively.
If you don’t know the answer to a patient’s question or can’t diagnose a problem, do not be afraid to say you aren’t sure. Honesty is always the best policy and your patients will respect you more for it than if you try to cover your lack of certainty. The manner of your response is critical. Rather than saying, “I don’t know,” a more comforting response is “I’m not sure.” If you decide to send a patient to a sub-specialist you might say, “I would like to have a second opinion on this matter.”
Another way to help stay current is to have medical students and pediatric residents in the office. The interaction is always educational, for both teacher and student. I learn as much from them as they do from me. In my experience, most parents are pleased to know that these students and residents are in the office to learn from their pediatrician. I can’t express how heartwarming it is to hear parents say to the students, “You are learning from the best.”
Appearances are important. Just as the look of your office sets a tone, so too does your personal appearance. If you want to be treated as a professional, you must look like one. I wear a shirt and tie to the office and the female doctors in the office dress professionally as well. For the men, if a tie is not for you, a nice shirt and pants, clean and pressed, should be worn. For women, if a business suit is not your style, slacks, sweaters or an appropriate blouse is fine. Jeans and sneakers are great, just not in the office!
The appearance of your staff is also important. Jeans, warm-up suits, improperly fitting and food-stained clothing should not be allowed. All employees must look neat and clean. Hair should be washed and tied back if long and unruly. In my office, all staff wears the same colored scrubs except the office manager. It creates a neat, professional look.
Now that your staff looks efficient and professional and your office looks warm and welcoming, don’t forget that periodically you need to repaint and touch up. It is important to ensure that the office is always clean. Cobwebs are never acceptable nor are dirty or stained sinks and toilets. Also remember that we are pediatricians dealing with children and the office should reflect that. We have placed stick-on fish in our sinks, and coins at the bottom of the toilets in order to have some fun. Our waiting rooms have murals that appeal to different ages. We accessorize the walls and ceilings throughout the office, a giant diaper pin hangs on one wall, a porcelain cat on a swing hangs from a ceiling and photographs of and paintings by the children hang throughout the examining rooms. When my wife and I were traveling in Scandinavia we saw a street vendor in Denmark throwing different colored plastic figures against a wall! After they hit the wall, they would down it. Silly? Yes! Childish? Certainly! We bought a dozen of them and patients of all ages love them.
Now let’s discuss some grown-up marketing techniques that can help increase patient satisfaction and attract new patients to your practice. Newsletters are educational and patients love receiving them. You can post new policies in the newsletters such as charges for form completion or listing expanded office hours. It is true that newsletters are time consuming to write and costly to mail. To limit the problems and defray the costs, you can maintain a website or mass e-mail the information to your families. The initial work involves preparing and maintaining an email list of your families or designing a website. After your initial investment of time, a push of a button is all that’s needed and you are in business.
Another effective educational opportunity and marketing strategy is to offer classes in your office. The topics can be age driven like nutrition geared specifically for infants, young children or teenagers. You can offer behavioral techniques to deal with the terrible 2s or the sullen adolescent. Normal and abnormal developmental issues can be offered dealing with patients as young as the non-verbal toddler, to the socially immature young child and to the mid-adolescent with an identity crisis. Either you be the lecturer or bring in outside professionals such as child psychologists, nutritionists, learning disability teaching consultants, speech and language therapists, etc. Posting sign-up sheets in your office is effective as is advertising in your local newspaper so that non-patient families can attend as well. These classes are great exposure to the community for your practice.
With the explosion of retail-based clinics in Walmarts across the country, it doesn’t hurt to offer extended office hours in the evenings and weekends. Walk-in hours in the early morning are another accommodation that many patients appreciate. These clinics charge less than physicians do and many are open 12 hours a day. You must educate your families about the benefits of having a medical home, your medical home. You know the children and the family unit. You are a specially-trained board certified pediatrician while most of the retail based clinics are staffed by nurse practitioners or physician assistants with no special pediatric training. It is not your goal to sell over-the-counter medications or to fill prescriptions in your office. This past summer some of the retail clinics offered suntan lotions and bug spray for free to compensate the patients for the fee they charged for a camp physical. Imagine the way Stark laws are worried about physicians and conflicts of interests!
It is good marketing strategy to be as accommodating to your patients as possible. If one of your patient’s parents asks you to treat a visiting relative or visiting friend’s sick child, it is good PR to say yes. If a patient from a colleague’s practice calls your office seeking a second opinion, it is good PR to accommodate them. Never bad-mouth another physician if you don’t agree with his/her diagnosis or treatment plans. Rather, explain your treatment plan or your diagnosis of a speech problem, which in your opinion should be addressed now.
When bringing a new associate into your practice take this opportunity to advertise in your local paper. Do the same if you extend office hours or if you are offering any other new services. I will use this to the best advantage by running an ad for a few weeks. If I obtain one new family from that ad, it has more than paid for itself.
Another excellent marketing and business opportunity is to have a child psychologist, a nutritionist or educational evaluator in our office. Parents are happy because they trust that this specialist must be good if they work from your office. The children are happy because they are comfortable in your office.
I encourage you to get out into your communities. Become involved in your local schools, or speak at community events such as junior women’s civic groups, synagogue or church functions and health fairs. Meet the other doctors in your community. I receive many referrals from internist, sub-specialists and surgeons with whom I exchange pleasantries in the hospital corridors, clubs or groups with whom I have a common interest. You never know where new patients will be found.
A nice way to welcome a new family into your practice is to have a customized patient booklet (my wife’s idea). Write about your philosophies on medications, breast-feeding, how and when to treat a fever, why your practice doesn’t use antibiotics to treat a virus, etc. List your office hours. Mention which OTC medications parents should have at home and what supplies to have at hand. Discuss the family’s financial responsibilities for the child’s medical care. Pediatricians are all too familiar with the mantra, “I paid you my co-pay Doctor, the rest is your responsibility.” It isn’t and your families need to understand you expectations. If an EOB states that the patient owes you money, they owe you, not their insurance company. If a rendered service is not a covered service, the patient owes you that amount. Remember, we have contracted to participate with their insurance company but they have chosen that company. They too have financial responsibilities related to their healthcare.
I know that you already love the practice of medicine. With any luck you are learning not to hate the business of medicine. I hope that you find these suggestions useful. It would make me happy to learn that some of these ideas have helped you increase your bottom line.
For more information:
- Richard Lander, MD, is in private group pediatric practice. He serves as clinical assistant professor of pediatrics for the UMDNJ and is also a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics.