Your client's will get great outcomes and will be loyal to you if you nurture them carefully in their journey.(c) Can Stock Photo / 4774344sean
As a Private Practice Owner, there’s usually two things that are always on your mind, how do you keep your appointment books full and what are the best patient retention strategies for growing your clinic.
You don’t want to wait for your appointment books to become patchy or freak out with the urgency of trying to fill the books of a recently hired practitioner before you implement patient retention strategies for growing your clinic.
If you are the main practitioner, seeing the bulk of the patients or you’ve transitioned to owner status (not consulting at all) then it can be a real frustration to see gaps in the diaries of your other practitioners.
The gaps mean your income becomes unpredictable, practitioners may get bored, lack drive, look for other opportunities and the possibility of growth is a distant unicorn, placing even more burden on you to do it all yourself.
Im sure you don’t want to be in that position, however, if you don’t implement and constantly refine the patient retention strategies for growing your clinic, then you’re going to be consistently stressed that you won’t have enough income to survive.
The great thing is that it doesn’t have take massive amounts of money or time, there are some patient retention strategies for growing your clinic that you can implement now for quicker, smaller returns and there are strategies that yield bigger, longer term and more sustained results.
You’re going to need both!
After working with 100’s of private practice clinic owners, and as part of the Business Academy we’ve helped implement some of the most fundamental patient retention strategies for growing your clinic, and we have the tried and tested methods that will help you.
In this article, I’m going to share with you a list of the patient retention strategies that you could use to fill your appointment books now and over the next couple of months to help Grow Your Clinic.
Make sure you read the Patient Retention Strategies disclaimer at the bottom of the post to get some further context 😉
You need to be outcome focused when it comes to running your business, especially when you’re investing time and money in growing your clinic.
What’s your immediate need?
Are you approaching a historically quiet period of year, are you about to hire, have you just lost a heap of patients because of season, environmental, team or economic changes etc?
These factors will determine the speed you need from your strategy on two fronts:
It’s very easy to get side-tracked and focus on strategies that are not ‘high value‘ (aka most suitable or have the best return) for you.
There’s no one size fits all, so we use guiding principles and criteria to help make any decision on strategies to fill your books:
“Where can i get access to my ideal client in their greatest concentration, where they are in a state ready, willing and able ‘buy’ from me, with the least risk, lowest aggravation and best return on investment of my time, effort and money”
If we use that, then you’ll run any patient retention strategy through your own filter to make the most sound decision for you and your business/clinic
There is a great fable called The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho that delivers a definitive message about the importance of looking at the opportunities right in front of you before trying to chase or do the next best or latest and greatest new strategy.
In your case, that would mean exploring the INTERNAL opportunities, the patient retention strategies within your own clinic walls first.
Addressing things in your immediate control by implementing quality systems.
Being in business is so demanding on your attention, there’s always something or someone needing your assistance. It can be overwhelming and stressful!
If you are able to adopt set of guiding principles that enable you to make quality decisions and take focused action each time, you’ll be much more effective in the long run.
It might just help avoid the burnout of being a health professional in business.
Now, because i don’t know your personal situation right now and because i cant directly speak with you personally in this moment, here’s how i can help tailor the strategies for you.
Here are some principles you could use when deciding on the best strategies to help you grow your clinic.
If you want to read more on principled thinking, we recommend this book, Principles by Ray Dalio;
Internal means that the process is typically within your circle of influence, the opportunities right in front of you.
External would refer to processes that are typically outside of your day to day operations e.g. online marketing
If you’re a bit tight on cashflow, you’ll see some strategies that are low-cost or no-cost to implement, they may take a little more sustained effort and time to get a return.
If you have cashflow to invest, you’ll see some strategies that can be very effective at getting the results you’re after in a quicker time frame if you’re willing to invest money.
The list below is a guide, it covers a small but important fraction of the strategies you could use. The list is not exhaustive and it gives you and impression of what you could do.
You will find the systems, methodology and “Know-How” inside of our Business Academy.
Please do not think that this about arbitrarily ‘keeping’ clients booked in so that your business can benefit, that is unethical!
You should run each of these patient retention strategies through your own filter of what you do in your own clinic.
I’m just sharing with you the opportunities for maintaining a client’s ideal care plan in the acute healing phase and the chronic wellness or optimisation phase of their care.
This is about closing the gaps in your leaky client journey where patients leave your clinic because they were not fully nurtured to their ideal outcome or given the opportunity to experience the full health transformation through your healthcare.
The aim of retaining a client is that they get better quicker and stay that way for longer, all with your help!
You need to know what systems and strategies to put in place to ensure those outcomes are achieved.
Implementing patient retention strategies is vital to the sustainability and growth of your clinic.
You need to have systems for each of these strategies and a way to track, measure and report so that you can improve.
If you want to serve at the level you are capable of, if you want a team of like minded professionals to help you make that difference within the community then you MUST always be focused on implementing the strategies to attract and retain more of your ideal clients.
You shouldn’t wait until you NEED to fill your appointment books before you start actioning some of these strategies.
You don’t want to rely on just 1, 2 or 3 strategies either…
Over the course of the calendar year, you should be constantly implementing new strategies and refining the existing patient retention strategies to attract and retain clients.
Always begin with the internal strategies first! They are often in your immediate control and are low-cost or no-cost to implement.
As a member of our Business Academy, you’ll receive all of the systems and ‘know-how’ so that you have the ‘done-for-you’ templates to implement immediately and get results fast. Maybe it’s just the structure, accountability, mentoring and support you need to grow your clinic…
Until next time;
Live with Passion & Serve with Care!