Patient Retention: How to Learn From Retail
By Martin Green, DC

Patient retention is predicated on understanding and using your clinical case presentation and follow-up skills. Patients return and adhere to your suggestions and recommendations if the communication between you and the patient is effective.

As is the case with all communication, there are specific points you should include in the case presentation if the patient is to follow through with your recommendations. In addition, the manner and posture (literal and figurative) with which you conduct the presentation will help dictate the result.

Your level of success with respect to retaining patients begins with understanding as much as you can about each patient. Do not make the mistake of lumping all patients into the same category. There is no such thing as a generic patient report of findings, case presentation or reassessment.You need to personalize your delivery of this type of information.

So just what are the different aspects of communication you need to consider?

They include:
• content
• body language
• person-to-person interaction
• believability
• demeanor
• inflection of your voice.

Content means just that. Have you described in detail what was negative, what was positive, and the clinical significance of each? Person-to-person interaction means you encourage the patient to ask all questions salient to your suggested treatment and diagnosis. Patients’ memory is selective as a general rule.

Many doctors have the reputation of overselling; don't be one of them. Demeanor means your approach should be relaxed and confident, but not pushy. Inflection of your voice should be strong but not overly loud. Emphasize by modulating your voice for particular points.

Another critical issue regarding patient retention is understanding the financial situation of the patient and his or her family. A patient will not pay your office a disproportionate share of his or her take-home salary for an extended period of time. Most patients will pay for treatment more readily when they are acute. Universal recommendations of care are not viable. One size fits all does not work.

Ultimately, your practice should be a combination of new patients and retained patients. Remember that a patient may not have seen you for quite some time, but that does not constitute the loss of a patient; it merely means that the patient is inactive and you still have an opportunity to explain the benefits of prophylactic care.

It is imperative to maintain some sort of correspondence with your patients when they become inactive. This contact may take the form of a newsletter, direct mail, seminar series, or other public-relations activities.

Every successful business conducts public-relations activities. A professional practice is in essence a retail service business. Patient retention, therefore, is no different than customer retention in any other retail business; the product is different, but the concept is the same.

To learn more about specific nuances of patient retention, you can go to your favorite bookstore and browse through some books on communication (see “Recommended Reading List,” next page). Then read as many books as you can in the biography section on successful entrepreneurs such as Sam Walton and others. What has worked for successful retailers should work for you. The bottom line in understanding effective patient retention is to know what the customer wants and furnish the service in a forthright manner at a fair fee.

There are internal activities you can institute and train your staff to implement that will insure patient retention. One such activity is weekly seminars on various health-care topics. For example, you may speak about prevention of weekend sports injuries one week, and weight reduction exercises and diet the following week.

You should create a calendar of health talk topics for eight weeks at a time and use it as a college uses a course outline. This type of educational program keeps patients interested in your office and gives them a sense of connection. Just as people like belonging to a club, they will want to stay connected to your office. The more such activities you offer, the better it will be for business. It is imperative that you train your staff to talk up the program and personally invite each patient, along with a friend or relative. You should delegate this program to one specific staff member, who in turn reports to you each week with a list of prospective attendees and their responses afterwards.

Another important activity is use of a patient suggestion form placed at the front desk. Each patient is asked to write his or her suggestion(s) for additional services he or she would like your facility to offer. This is a fabulous opportunity to discover exactly what patients want. Patients who are not receiving everything they want from you generally will stop coming, rather than telling you what their disappointment is. Therefore, by implementing a patient suggestion system, you find this out before they decide to leave you. It is much easier preventing a patient from leaving, than it is to reacquire a patient once he or she has left.

Unquestionably, the most important thing you can do to improve and sustain patient retention is to offer additional services to your office. This is how all successful retail businesses operate.

Keep in mind that offering additional services does not require you to be the deliverer of those services. It should go without saying that you need to ensure you are in compliance with state and federal laws before you ask other practitioners to join your practice.

The more services you offer, the larger your business will grow. In addition, adding services can decrease your proportionate overhead percentage. Consequently, you can increase net profit as well as gross revenue.

Dr. Green is president of Integrated Holistic Solutions, Inc., a consulting firm for the holistic health-care industry. He is a former clinical faculty member of New York Chiropractic College and adjunct faculty member of Long Island University Graduate School for Health Sciences. He can be reached at 800-227-9269 or ihsgreen@aol.com.