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November 2007

Trust building with your new patients

Build trust with new patients
By Timothy J. Gay, DC

People are skeptical of healthcare. And who can blame them? They are bombarded with advertisements, TV commercials, newspaper articles, and overexaggerated claims about techniques or products.

They don’t know what to believe. No wonder attracting new patients can be difficult.

The key to attracting new patients is to build trust — something that begins with the first telephone contact you have with a patient and continues with every encounter thereafter.

• Telephone contact. First impressions begin when a potential patient calls your office. How your assistant answers the phone and reassures the individual can cause that person to either keep his appointment or become a no-show.

Key: Train your assistants in telephone skills. Educate them about chiropractic so they may answer anticipated questions a new patient may have.

• First visit. First impressions continue when the new patient arrives at your office. What will he see? Does the exterior of your building look professional and well kept? And when he opens the front door, what kinds of sights and smells confront him? 

Just as important — how does your staff treat him?

Key: Appearances count. Maintain your building. Fresh paint goes a long way in making a good first impression. Assess the office’s furnishings, from chairs to pictures to magazines. Keep them fresh and clean.

Train your assistants to be reassuring and help the patient complete paperwork.

• Exam. You continue to build trust with the patient by the way you conduct the exam. Take a complete medical history and ask questions pertaining to the patient’s health conditions (not symptoms). Take x-rays.

It is during the

examination you define what you do. Communicate to the patient a believable and credible clarification explaining chiropractic in your office. As you discuss loss of nerve function or interference, you initiate the patient to understand chiropractic.

Key: Whether you use the term subluxation or not, talk to the patient so he can go home and tell others in sixth-grade terms about chiropractic.

• Report-of-findings. The explanation of care, or report-of-findings (ROF), is the time to make a correlation between the patient and you concerning how you will work together to get the best results for the patient.

Key: Give long-term recommendations for care with a complete explanation of why, how, when, what, and where.

• Rules of engagement. After the report, ask your assistant to come in and explain the rules of engagement — the responsibilities you and the patient have to each other.

• Adjustment. Obviously, the final step in this process is to make an adjustment and explain what you are doing. If you adjust the patient on the first day — unless the patient has extreme indications — you take away a certain amount of trustworthiness you are attempting to build. Wait until you have conducted a thorough exam and given an ROF.

You can transfer trust to you and chiropractic. Take responsibility for your own advertising and marketing, making sure everything you represent has integrity, quality, and truth.

Timothy J. Gay, DC, has more than 20 years experience in chiropractic health and wellness. The founder of Ultimate Practice, he is also a national speaker and author. He can be reached by phone at 866-797-8366, by e-mail at timothygaydc@ultimatepractice.com, or through the Web site, www.ultimatepractice.com.

 

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