Welcome to another episode of OMD TV & Podcast show – the place to be to grow and scale your practice.
I’ve been questioning myself…
How do companies like Starbucks, whose coffee is highly overpriced for its quality, get away with increasing prices without experiencing the slightest drop in loyalty? They’ve mastered the art of creating a brand that resonates.
I feel that every doctor who runs their private practice is an entrepreneur. However, we oftentimes limit ourselves to thinking we are only clinicians. In an environment where consolidation is on the rise, it is more important than ever for the next generation of medical professionals to rise and lead the charge.
You may have noticed, more and more large practices are founded and led by non-doctors. It is upon you to safeguard your great profession.
If you are thinking about expanding to multiple locations and have the vision to be the Starbucks of your sector, here are the 3 things you need to set up;
1. Create a patient-centric business model
So basically, you need to focus on the patient experience first. If people just wanted to buy coffee for the sake of drinking coffee, they’d go anywhere but Starbucks. And save a ton of money. People buy experiences–or perceived experiences. For example, think about the car you are driving now, what does your car brand stand for when you think of them? Lexus for example, promises luxury and reliability.
I also observed the pharmacy model and noticed how the more prominent groups are dominant in all primary markets. They have the best real estate with excellent visibility, parking, and access.
What’s more, pharmacies are open seven days a week, accept insurances, and have drive-through facilities. In addition to getting prescriptions filled, a customer can also pick up some milk and bread during their visit. In short, these pharmacies seemingly do it all.
During this time, I became acutely aware of an under met need in the medical industry—to be more accommodating to patients. As doctors, you probably often perceive your patients’ desires through the lens of your convenience as providers.
This includes the days and hours you work, how you refer out treatments, or how you reschedule patients . . . all practices that would lead to certain failure in most businesses but are somehow widely accepted in the medical field.
2. Create a differentiator, tell your story and be consistent in your branding
Find your differentiator. Think about the services or procedures that you are promoting now? Well, there are a handful of practices like you in your targeted area. You need to find the thing that sets your practice apart and focus on building your brand around it.
One way to set you apart is to tell your story and share it. Whether it’s the tale of how you struggled for years going to medical school, paying off student debt and setting up your own private practice or the innovative approach you take when doing your procedure, everyone has a story. Tell yours to patients. They’re more likely to want to be a part of it.
Just think about the extraordinarily successful companies, they always have one product or service they’re most known for or that makes them the most money even though they are offering many other products or services. For McDonald, that’s their burger, for Google, their one thing is their search engine, for Apple, that’s the Iphone, and whatabout Starbucks? I think you know the answer. You can relate this to your practice, what is the one procedure that you want to be known for and makes you the most revenue? The most successful practices know this and are always asking “What’s our one thing?”
You need to create what we call your one thing, a signature procedure or product that keeps attracting and getting people to talk about it…
If you look at multiple-location clinics, do you notice how consistent they are with their branding from the website to how the design of the clinic’s interior looks and even the type of location?
Your clinic should be 100% standardized, and this is key. The look, feel, colour, smell, all the way to how your staff answer the phone, have to all be uniform if you want to be the “Starbucks of your sector.”
3. Create a step-by-step standard of procedures for all procedures and every role in your practice
This is how you can replicate to the next clinic location without dealing with hassles, It is a fundamental step for all types of businesses including medical ones if you want to scale.
You need to build clinical training playbooks for every staff position, primarily focusing on customer service excellence and standard operating procedures (or SOPs) for every single main service that you are providing.
Well-crafted SOPs help employees provide service to patients and execute their duties and responsibilities while maintaining the operational standards and expectations deduced from business goals and strategies. These SOPs remove all kinds of subjectivity and the employees get convergent with what to do and how to do it.
You need to create processes and systems for all aspects of running your practice so you can ensure the consistency and seamless flow of operation.
But most importantly, you need to build an organization where your staff could develop and grow. The opportunity to allow individuals who begin their careers, for example, as a front office associate to move into an office manager position, and then into a regional director, for example.
Now, patient generation is a crucial part of growing and scaling your practice, if your one thing right now is to double your new patient enquiries in the next 6 months, I would suggest that you attend our webinar called 3 Must-Do Strategies to Generate More New Patients and Referrals that we have talked about on our previous shows, I would suggest that you spend one of those first early hours of your morning attending that webinar…
I’ll leave a link to it in the show notes so you can sign up.
If you need to speak to us about a custom patient generation plan for your practice, I’d like to invite you to take the next step which is to book a 15 min discovery call with us so we can learn more about you and see how we can help you achieve your goals,
Thanks for tuning in and hope to speak to you soon!
No Comments
Add Comment