04.08.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:01 pm by amit
A couple of years ago we noticed that although we’d had a great year as far as new patients were concerned, our return visits seemed to have flattened out. Patients seemed pleased with the service, success rates were high, but it still felt like we were gaining new patients but not growing.
The problem, of course, was in the scheduling.
If your office is reasonably busy, a great booking strategy can increase your profitability almost overnight. If you’re not-so-busy, there’s good news here as well: Effective booking drives return visits like nothing else.
Here’s how we worked with our staff to create a more effective appointment strategy.
Strike While The Iron’s Hot
There will never be a better time to book the patient in question than right now. Whether they’re on the phone, or standing at your front desk, do it now. The patient who doesn’t book now is going to come back fewer times. Or never. It’s that simple.
Tell, Don’t Ask
You need to approach booking from a place of confidence. Adopt the attitude of assuming patients will book/rebook. Why? because your inner confidence is reflected in how you speak, in subtle ways that shift the likelihood of success.
- Wrong: “Did you want to schedule a follow up?”
- Right: “Let’s schedule your follow up.”
Small difference in words. Big difference in outcome.
Leverage Our Love of Routine
Humans tend to be creatures of habit. We like consistency. Giving your patients recurring appointments in the same time slot makes it easy for them, and gives them a sense of ownership in the process.
- Wrong: “When would you like to come back?”
- Right: “If this time slot is convenient, I can get you in at the same time on Wednesday at 10:30.”
If you can’t offer the same time, offer the same time of day: “We can get you in again on Wednesday morning next week.”
Narrow the Options
While you’re at it, consider offering just two options for any appointment. It’s easier for everyone. There’s some surprising research that shows that people buy more when their choices are not overwhelming.
- Wrong: “What day is good for you?”
- Right: “We have an opening on Wednesday at 10:30 again, or Thursday at 2:15.”
Don’t Create Islands
When you’re offering up those two time slots, pick them carefully. Cluster your appointments back to back. You’ll work more effectively than if you schedule appointments haphazardly over the day, and you won’t end up with tiny windows that people who might need longer appointments, like new patients, can’t fit into. There’s nothing more frustrating than having a day full of holes, but not being able to see a new patient.
Create Scarcity
Many people (like me) don’t want to book a follow up if it’s too far in the future. Others just don’t want to commit ever. What gets me every time is the idea that if I don’t book, I might not get an appointment.
- Wrong: “Okay. Call us in three months.”
- Right: “The schedule tends to fill up quickly. We should book it now so that we can be sure to get you in.”
Remind People
I also don’t like to book too far out because I’m afraid I’ll forget. Reassure your patients by giving them an appointment card, and by telling them you’ll call a few days before the appointment to remind them.
Step On a Crack
We also have a monthly protocol for catching those stray patients that might fall through the cracks. Every month, we print a list of every patient whose birthday is in that month. That report shows the patient’s status (active, inactive, etc.) and when their next appointment is. Every active patient who doesn’t have a next appointment is examined to make sure we haven’t lost someone along the way.
If you know the annual value of a patient, it’s not hard to see that the few minutes it takes to scan through a few pages of names is well worth the time.
Protect the Schedule
All your best scheduling efforts are in vain if your patients don’t respect their appointments. Read our master list of tips for reducing no-shows, cancellations, and reschedules so that your booking strategy pays off.
Implementing most of these strategies is as simple as educating your staff. This list is essentially the blueprint that we used to write up a short booking policy for our front-line people. Use it if you find it helpful. What works even better is to use this list as a starting point for discussion - have your staff read it over, and then discuss any additional ideas and adjustments they might have.
Then, of course, let us all know in the comments!
Related posts:
- No Islands A Patient Booking Strategy for Your Alternative Health Practice
- Reducing Cancellations and Reschedules
- How to Reduce Cancellations, Reschedules and No-Shows: Our Strategy
- Avoiding the Pitfalls of Advance Patient Scheduling
- Charging for Missed Appointments
appointments •
booking •
scheduling
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03.25.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:41 pm by amit
We’ve discussed scheduling problems in the past, pointing you to a few resources here and there, but we’ve never really provided a comprehensive approach for those scheduled appointments that go off the rails due to patients canceling, rescheduling, or simply not showing up at all.
Here are the exact strategies we’ve put in place over the last few years. If you’ve got something that works in your practice, leave a comment and share it with us.
Make Reminder Calls
We all forget things, and appointments (particularly those with a long lead time) are among the easiest things to lose track of. Appointment cards are helpful, but in the end, a phone call is your best bet. Email, text message and other automated solutions are starting to make some headway, but a good old-fashioned telephone call is still the most effective tool to combat schedule disintegration.
- Provide some lead time. Don’t make your calls the night before. Give patients at least 2-3 days notice.
- Don’t leave wiggle room. Saying, “Call us if you can’t make it,” is an invitation for people to reschedule.
I don’t think we started making these calls as early as we should have. When you’re not busy, it can feel like it doesn’t matter as much, but the truth is that it does matter. In fact, you could argue that it matters more - those cancellations are pretty painful in the early days.
Some practitioners argue that reminder calls encourage people to reschedule. I don’t buy it. Better to know, and take steps to deal with it, then have a sudden hole in your day.
Stay on Time
If you want patients to respect your time, then you need to start that process by respecting theirs. Make sure you stay on time. Don’t reschedule patients. Keep regular office hours.
Yes, emergencies crop up, but your clients will accept that if you explain it to them, apologize, and don’t let it happen regularly.
Book Tightly
What we’re really after here is teaching your patients to value their appointment. A large part of that is demonstrating that you’re busy and run a tight ship. Many practitioners tend to spread patients out over the course of a day, but for us the looser the schedule gets, the more reschedules we seem to encounter - patients figure they can get an appointment on just about any day, so what’s the big deal? It is a big deal, and it starts with effective scheduling.
Don’t Overbook
However, if you’re tempted to treat your appointment book like a discount charter flight and book it 120% full, you’re going to have problems. Overbooking to deal with last-minute scheduling changes is like treating symptoms instead of causes - it’s not getting to the root of the problem. In fact, just like running late, it’s probably creating more of them.
Book Acute Care Visits ASAP
Acute care visits are fertile ground for scheduling glitches. When patients call with an acute care issue, it’s because they want to be seen now. If you can’t see them soon, recognize the fact that they might get better or find someone else in the meantime. That increases the likelihood of a no-show or cancellation.
Follow the 1-2 Month Rule
When a patient wants to reschedule or cancel, remind them that they may not be able to get another visit for 1-2 months. Patients often reschedule simply for convenience, and this technique can often resurrect the appointment. You can read more on this approach here.
Deal With Repeat Offenders
You may discover that a large proportion of your problem appointments are with the same small group of patients.
We do have a no-show fee, but we use it with discretion. And while we don’t often charge people for missed appointments - unless they have some hard cost like custom formulated IV treatments - we do try to educate these people over time by explaining that someone else could have used their time slot.
Failing that, we follow a three-strike rule. After they bail a third time, we usually don’t hurry to call them back. If they call, we try to fit them in that day, or tell them to call back again another day when we might be able to provide same-day service.
Track Your Results
Although you may have a general sense of how well your appointment book holds together over the course of a month, nothing beats having some hard data. The easiest way is simply to have your staff track the numbers. This also lets you identify patterns that might crop up based on the time of day, week or year.
If your software doesn’t do this for you, it’s still easy to implement using pen and paper. Head to CalendarsThatWork.com, and print a lined version of their monthly calendar. Use the first line for reschedules, the second for cancellations (with no reschedule) and the third line for no-shows. Have your staff just put a tick on the appropriate line each time, then add them up at the end of the week/month. You can even enter your email address, and the site will send you the same calendar just before the start of each month.
Everyone has a role to play in keeping the schedule healthy -you, your staff, and your patients - and much of this is about teaching everyone involved about the value of a scheduled appointment. Consider yourself the Dean of the School of Appointment Value, and train your students accordingly.
We’ve noticed some dramatic improvements over time using these strategies - if you’ve got any other tips, we’d love to hear them!
Related posts:
- Reducing Cancellations and Reschedules
- Avoiding the Pitfalls of Advance Patient Scheduling
- Building a Busy CAM Practice By Acting Like One
- Why Your Practice Needs a Receptionist: Missed Calls
- How To Handle Free Advice-Seekers
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03.07.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:32 pm by amit
The Online Nursing Degree Directory listed us in their Top 50 Alternative Medicine Blogs. Thanks to the ONDD!
The list is worth a gander from a practitioner perspective. It’s well categorized, with a few good sites I’d never seen. Head over and take a look.
Related posts:
- CAM Information Resources
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02.27.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:24 pm by amit
A few weeks ago we talked about how to increase professional referrals to your practice. Developing this referral source is essentially a networking exercise, but the point of the post was to provide a framework in which to do it without feeling weird, creepy, or uncomfortable.
I know there are a lot of alternative and complementary practitioners who are involved with networking groups like BNI. While I don’t generally promote those groups a great deal, I read a fantastic tidbit from Ivan Misener, the founder and CEO of BNI, in a piece on Entrepreneur.com:
3. Word-of-mouth is more about farming than it is about hunting.
Building your business through word-of-mouth is about cultivating relationships with people who get to know you and trust you. People do business with people they have confidence in. One of the most important things I’ve learned in the past two decades is this: It’s not what you know, or who you know, it’s how well you know them that counts. [emphasis mine]
It’s a great metaphor for the development of your professional referral base. The approach we recommend - of slowly gathering background and connections before you approach someone - is aboutchoosing to farm relationships. Nurture them gradually in the form of inquiry, research and contemplation. Plant them, water them, and watch them grow, but don’t harvest them until they’re ready.
And whatever you do, don’t hunt them. That’s what everyone else is doing because they haven’t yet realized that you can only eat prey once, but you can harvest a garden forever.
Related posts:
- New Patient Referrals: The 5 P’s
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02.23.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:54 pm by amit
An
acid reflux diet typically restricts the intake of certain foods that are known to increase stomach acid. Some people even claim that there are foods that âcureâ the syndrome.
You can currently find for sale acid reflux diet books, alongside other popular diets and cookbooks. One author states that apples âcuredâ his acid reflux. He is now selling a report in which he details âthree natural remediesâ for acid reflux.
These are supposed to be foods that cured his acid reflux. He does admit, however, that they may not work for everyone. In our opinion, it may be more effective in the long run to design your own acid reflux diet, using a food and symptoms diary to record what foods seem to trigger symptoms.
Natural remedies for acid reflux include changing the foods you commonly eat and even when you eat, how much you eat, and in what circumstances you eat. Such changes, believe it or not, may be effective for reducing symptoms of acid reflux.
Most doctors and other healthcare professionals recommend that in order to control symptoms, an
acid reflux diet should exclude certain foods that are known to increase stomach acid. Tomatoes and citrus fruits, for example, are highly acidic. So is chocolate. And fried or fatty foods can also increase stomach acid and worsen symptoms.
You may think that an acid reflux diet must be bland, but while some spices trigger symptoms, some commonly used cooking herbs are considered natural remedies for acid reflux.
Changing from garlic and chili powder to ginger, fennel seed and turmeric may help. Ginger, fennel seed and turmeric were used in traditional medicine to treat indigestion and heartburn. Modern herbalists have combined some of these âherbs for heartburnâ to create natural remedies for acid reflux.
In addition to following an acid reflux diet that limits highly acidic foods, experts say that eating less than three hours before bedtime increases the likelihood that you will have nighttime symptoms.
This is because lying down after eating allows gravity to work against you and makes it easier for stomach acid to creep up into the esophagus. Knowing this, some companies sell wedge-type pillows calling them natural remedies for acid reflux, but some doctors who specialize in treating the syndrome maintain that these pillows may actually worsen symptoms by âfoldingâ the stomach.
These doctors recommend raising the head of the bed (with blocks, for example) 6 inches higher than the foot of the bed, so that gravity can still help keep acid in your stomach, without âfoldingâ and creating extra pressure on the stomach.
If it isnât what you eat or when you eat, it could be how much you eat. An effective acid reflux diet plan may include several small meals every few hours throughout the day, rather than one or two large meals. The more food that is in the stomach, the more likely that acid will reflux.
Another one of the often suggested natural remedies for acid reflux is simply losing some weight. Extra pounds put extra pressure on the stomach and more acid creeps up. At night, this can lead to sleep disturbances, coughing, snoring and even sleep apnea.
Following an acid reflux diet plan that is low in fatty and fried foods and calls for meals every couple of hours is not only one of the effective natural remedies for acid reflux, but it could help you lose weight since it primes the metabolism.
Doctors typically recommend antacids or proton pump inhibitors, at least for short-term use, to prevent or neutralize stomach acid. There are a number of herbal and botanical products that may do the some thing.
For example, mangosteen juice (a health drink), taken before meals, effectively dilutes stomach acid and may be considered one of the natural remedies for acid reflux. An acid reflux diet alone may not be enough. If not treated, acid reflux can lead to damage of the esophageal lining, which can lead to esophageal cancer.
Components of the mangosteen have been shown to reduce inflammation and actually prevent the formation of cancerous tumors in laboratory studies. Tell your doctor about which acid reflux diet and what natural remedies for acid reflux you are using and get regular check-ups, even if your symptoms seem to be under control.
by Mike Leuthen
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