|
Issue 3 - March 2005
The Strategic Planner:
Who are you targeting — and why?
By Tom Deters, DC
The business of chiropractic is simple: It’s all about treating patients. To grow your practice, you have to either see more of the patients you already have or recruit more patients — or both.
But before you can think about growing your practice, you must arm yourself with detailed knowledge of your present patient base. This data includes how many patient visits you have per week, how many unique (or individual) patients you see, the average number of visits per patient and the demographic make-up (gender and age, for instance) of all of your patients.
You must also know how your annual revenue breaks down in terms of patient categories — managed care, personal injury, workers’ compensation, government-insured or cash — so that you can direct your future business by identifying a specific category and then focus-ing your marketing and advertising efforts accordingly.
This data gives you a basis to measure your efforts and your growth.
A PLAN OF ATTACK?
While each practice is different, with different objectives and opportunities for growth, the rule of thumb is that growing a practice from the “inside out” is usually the most efficient and profitable method.
It is easier, and less costly, to keep or grow a patient relationship than it is to develop a new one. Therefore, consider internally driven, or organic, growth the focus of your first efforts before you begin outside marketing and advertising.
However, internally driven marketing probably should not take the focus off the overall priority of recruiting new patients.
What should be included in your strategic plan for patient recruitment? The plan should identify specific strategies in order of priority and then break down each strategy into tactics, tasks and deliverables.
The following is an example illustrating growing cash patients as the first priority; it is not meant to represent a complete plan. It is shown to illustrate the thought process behind coordinated and successful recruitment efforts.
Note: If this were your plan, under each task you should create a list of various “deliverables” or “things to be done.” Your plan would be different from the example, depending upon your individual needs and priorities and your categories of business such as personal injury, managed care or sports injury, will vary.
STRATEGY 1:
INCREASE NEW CASH-PATIENT VISITS
Tactic A. Develop an external marketing plan
• Task 1. Develop a community outreach plan
• Task 2. Develop screening programs
• Task 3. Identify events for sponsorship
• Task 4. Establish relationships
• Task 5. Create brochures, mailings
• Task 6. Create a Web site
• Task 7. Create an e-newsletter
Tactic B. Develop an external PR plan
• Task 1. Identify newspapers and magazines to which you can submit articles
• Task 2. Identify electronic media outlets
Tactic C. Develop targeted advertising plan
• Task 1. Identify target market
• Task 2. Identify ad vehicles
• Task 3. Determine frequency, costs
• Task 4. Determine content and style for the ad
• Task 5. Develop creative
• Task 6. Implement and monitor ads
STRATEGY 2:
INCREASE CURRENT PATIENT VISITS
Tactic A. Develop an internal marketing program
Tactic B. Develop patient education protocol
Tactic C. Develop corrective care procedures
Tactic D. Increase inter-office cross referrals
STRATEGY 3:
INCREASE REFERRALS
Tactic A. Increase referrals from current patients
• Task 1. Improve patient education
Tactic B. Increase outside referrals – develop contact sources
• Task 1. Grow relationships with outside sources
Deliverable 1. List and make appointments with doctors
Deliverable 2. List and make appointments with organizations
Tactic C. Increase office staff referrals
The ultimate business decision on how to recruit new patients rests on analysis of information and on some form of estimating process. By doing this, you can track your success and modify you course of action accordingly. And you will not only grow you patient population but also increase your revenues and your profits as well!
|
Case study: Evaluating a recruitment strategy
A chiropractor’s practice is located directly across the street from his com-munity’s largest fitness center. The gym has asked him to set up an information table (on injury prevention) as a benefit for gym members. The doctor would not have to pay for the table and he would be able to educate people about chiropractic and use the table as a recruitment tool for his practice.
Is this a good opportunity for him?
To answer this question, the doctor needs to assess the following:
“Describe the patient that you would most like to recruit?”
“Do you have any specific services that you want to showcase?”
“How much do you make per hour?” (If your salary is $100,000 a year, you earn about $44 an hour.)
“What is your average revenue per patient?”
“How much time will you be spending at the fitness center?”
“When will you be at the fitness center?”
“How many new patients do you need to recruit to justify the costs?”
“Will the gym advertise your presence in mailers, banners etc?”
“What promotional materials do you need to have prepared?”
“How many weeks or months are you willing to test this program?”
“What type of benchmarks would determine if you should continue or pull the plug?”
“What is the demographic make-up and timing of the gym traffic?”
In this real-life case, this doctor had just begun a weight-loss/nutritional counseling program in his office. He was targeting females ages 25-55 for his program, “mostly Moms.”
The best gym traffic hours for his target audience turned out to be from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. (not the typical fitness center “rush hours” with the highest volume of total traffic).
The doctor negotiated for the gym to feature him in its next mailing and put a banner in the window. He prepared handouts and brochures and decided that he would commit to the program twice per week, for a month — hoping to get, on average two new patients each appearance, or approximately 20 new patients per month as a test.
The point: Evaluate any recruitment strategy with planned steps and guidelines to maximize your effectiveness.
|
For further information on seminars, workshops and consulting on strategic practice development by Dr. Deters, go to his Web site, www.tomdeters.com or you can e-mail him at info@tomdeters.com.
|
