Knowing you can count on revenues coming in consistently and reliably without the financial roller coaster and sleepless nights is the goal.
But how do you make that happen?
The answer is… Better Patient Experiences
Hi there, It’s Huyen here and welcome to OMD TV & Podcast show, the place to be to grow and scale your practice.
In this episode, I’m going to talk about How To Generate More Predictable Revenues?
Did you know that better patient experiences can help you gain more predictable revenues? This is because your patients like you and how you make them feel.
Good patient experiences can drive a 1.3X to 2.4X increase in revenues per patient.
So, if a patient’s average value to you is $5K, you can increase that from $6,500 to $12K.
AND, with that influx of revenues, you can decrease your new patient acquisition and advertising costs by 3-10 times.
So, you make more and spend less in the process.
Also, pricing comes into play.
Here’s an interesting statistic from Scalable.com…
64% of people who have good customer experiences are willing to pay 18% more on average.
Isn’t that true? I know I have and I’m sure you’ve paid extra because paying extra saved you time, money, hassle and you felt good about your result and experience.
The secret is to change your mindset, team and processes to cater to those patients who care more about the relationship and experience they have with you than they care about saving money.
The patient experience also affects the retention which impacts your profit and valuation an average of 2.75 times.
So, if your revenues are $1M per year, they could be $2.75MM if you would simply retain the patients who already know, like and trust you.
BTW, 40% of patients who leave and don’t return is because of their poor patient experience with you. That’s significant.
And then in terms of referrals, it can directly impact your revenues because good patient experiences have been shown to increase referrals by 9 times on average, whereas poor patient experiences tend to decrease referrals and revenues by about 16 times. YIKES!
These are very significant swings impacting the growth and health of your practice.
In terms of actual numbers:
Let’s say you spend $100K per year on new patient acquisition and you improve the patient experience, so they return and refer their friends. You’re now able to drop that expense up to 67% to only $33K per year.
That means you’re going to decrease cost and increase profits directly because decreasing your patient acquisition cost helps your bottom line. You don’t have that huge expense anymore. That expense is going to go away by $67K.
Now for revenues, having the price increase of 18% (because you are catering to patients who pay extra for good customer service) gives you an extra boost of revenues. So $1MM becomes $1.18MM or an extra $180,000.
Now for retention, let’s say you increase the lifetime value of a patient from $5K to $10K which is going to directly increase your profit. If you only do that for 100 patients per year (out of the thousands you usually have in your database), that’s 100 x $5K of extra revenues or $500K.
And then in terms of your referrals increasing by nine times, let’s say on average, you get 50 referrals per year, that jumps to 450 referrals per year. Even if a newly referred patient is only worth $1K that for the first year, that’s still an extra $450K.
So, when we look at the total benefits of just upping the game on your patient experience, we’re talking about significant revenue increases.
Because the annual cumulative effect of:
- Saving $67K in patient acquisition advertising costs
- Making an extra $180K by increasing your pricing
- Increasing your retention & average lifetime value of a patient is an extra $500K
- And the extra referrals are at least another $450K
That’s an extra $1.2MM
The point being… the impact of something that seems as intangible as having a good patient experience can be very dramatic.
Here are my recommendations:
Meet with your team with the sole purpose of Dissecting the Entire Patient Experience from beginning to end to find ways to make their experience more comfortable and more memorable.
Start with the initial contact the patient has with your office:
- If they called, what happened?
- If they opted in to a website form, what happened?
- If they DM’d you on social media, what happened?
- Then if they scheduled an appointment, how easy was it?
- What was the pre-appointment or consultation like?
- Did they get a welcome package or email or video explaining what to expect on their visit?
- Did you make the paperwork process as hassle-free as possible?
- Did you send them appointment reminders and so on.
- What is their initial visit like?
- Are they greeted by super friendly staff who make them feel welcomed and comfortable?
- Are they seen on time or left waiting?
- Does your in-house signage and visuals subtly educate them on everything you offer so you never hear them say, “I didn’t know you did that”?
- Then what? What’s the next step to examine?
- If they came for a non-surgical treatment, what is the process before, during and after their treatment?
- If they came for a surgical consultation, what is the process before they meet the surgeon, during the consultation and afterwards?
- How do you present quotes and help them make a decision?
- Then, how do you follow up when they don’t book a procedure or when they do?
- What’s the pre and post-op processes like so the patient feels cared for and comfortable.
What are your processes for?
- Patient Consents
- Before/After Photos
- Referrals
- Online Reviews and so on.
It’s this kind of detail that differentiates you from your competitors, attracts a more sophisticated patient, and allows you to charge more.
If this makes sense to you, let’s talk. We’ll find and fill in the gaps costing you too much in lost profits.
Ok, that’s it for this week and I hope you got a lot of value from this.
If so, please subscribe to OMD TV and Podcast show and share it with your staff and colleagues.
And, if you haven’t done so already, please leave me a review since that helps me reach a larger audience.
If you want to talk more about your specific situation, just book a 15 min discovery call with me where I will show you the problems and the opportunities that you could have with your current website and digital marketing campaigns.
Thanks so much and hope to talk to you in our discovery call soon.
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