I met with a surgeon last week, and she was telling me how her surgery numbers were lighter than normal, and she was trying to determine the issue.
She’s not alone. A lot of practices are feeling this on some level, so I wanted to pass along some of the insights I shared with her.
There are a number of possible reasons why numbers are down, so let’s talk about ways you can figure out the issue and how to fix it.
1. Follow the Patient Journey
If you’re like most of our high-performing clients, you have some kind of CRM with a bunch of dashboards and reports.
So if you’re having volume issues, best place to start is by following the Patient Journey. Look at the reports in order of the steps a patient takes with your practice – leads, conversion to consult, no-show / cancel, conversion to SX, kept sx, reasons for NOT scheduling, etc
And you can dig further into those – days btw lead and consult, conversion to consult within 7 days of becoming a lead, conv rates per doctor / scheduler and more.
But by looking at your reports in parallel with your patient journey, you can start to see (in a practical way) where the leaks are happening.
We do this by running our Conversion Diagnostic. And for this particular practice, we pinpointed 4 specific challenges standing in her way of more volume.
2. Do a Touchpoint Analysis
Two terms you’re probably familiar with if we’ve worked together or you’ve been reading my emails for a while – Decision Points and Incubation Periods.
Decision Points represent each decision a patient faces with you – deciding to contact you, schedule a consult, show up for the consult, schedule surgery, show up for surgery, and become a raving evangelist after surgery.
And then you have the Incubation Periods a patient goes through – these are the time periods between decision points. For example, if someone calls on a Thursday and books a consult for the following Wednesday, the 6 days in between is an Incubation Period.
In the “Follow the Patient Journey” exercise, you honed in on the Decision Points to see what the data was telling you.
Now do a Touchpoint Analysis, which is a dive into the Incubation Periods. Then you’ll see opportunities to move patients from Decision Point to Decision Point. (i.e. down the Patient Journey pathway)
For example, what are the touchpoints between lead and consult? Literally WHAT are you sending / doing / saying, WHEN is it happening, WHO is doing it, etc.
And to be clear, the ultimate goal for your touchpoints is to get your prospect to show up excited and ready to consider the next step.
Hint: It takes more than reminders in 2024.
We used to talk about having enough reminder notifications. “Make sure people don’t forget!”
Now reminders are the price of admission. You can’t even get in the game without reminders. No reminders = no seat at the table.
But if you want WIN to game… if you want to dominate the high roller table… it takes more than just telling people when and where to be there.
Think about it – you know the difference between someone who comes in excited, comfortable and ready to have a convo, vs someone who comes in anxious and unsure. Night and day contrast, and you convert a lot more of the former than the latter.
There are dozens of creative ways to enhance your Incubation Periods and build rapport / excitement with prospective patients. A few of the fun approaches we’re testing now:
- Custom AI videos (where we say the name of each patient)
- Supercharger Confirmation Pages (a totally underutilized yet possibly POTENT space on all practices websites)
- Personalized SMS messaging around age / demo / desires of each lead (stop sounding like a robot)
And yes we’re automating as much of this as we can (so for the 10% that needs to be done manually, our clients will have the time / bandwidth to do it right!)
3. As you look through all this data and figure it out, you also want to address the question:
“Who is responsible for getting more patients to surgery?”
Depending on the roadblocks you uncover as you go through step 1 and step 2, there will be certain tasks that need to get done. Marketing, technicians, sales, phones (probably a mix) will have some adjustments to make.
But I ask this question on a philosophical level.
“Who is responsible for getting more patients to surgery?”
There is only 1 right answer for every person on your team. And the answer is “I am.”
Every team member in your practice is responsible in some way or another.
Every team member in your practice has some level of control and some area of influence on the patient journey.
Every team member in your practice can contribute to a patient-focused culture and positive vibes in the office.
Every team member in your practice can gather and share feedback in an effort to improve the patient journey for everyone.
Every team member in your practice is responsible for getting more patients to surgery.
And they need to remember WHY that’s important:
Because the more patients you get to surgery, the more lives you have changed.
The more time you’ve saved people. The more money you’ve saved people. The more you’ve helped them do their jobs better. The more memories you’ve helped people create. The SAFER they are. The more FULFILLED they are.
THIS is the win, and it’s a WIN for the patient. The revenue coming into your practice is a byproduct of doing all this right.
And the only way you can do it: you have to work together.
What if you have folks who don’t see it as their responsibility?
Not uncommon for that to happen. Fingers pointing. Complaining about others. Combativeness between teams with the practice.
The lower the surgery numbers drop, the higher the tensions in the office become. I get it, but that’s a recipe for failure.
You didn’t bicker / in-fight / dramatize your way to where you were when your numbers were optimal. And that’s not gonna how you’re gonna get BACK there (and beyond).
So if you have this happening in your practice… CUT it out, sing a little Kumbaya and get refocused on the mission.
Every week in our live coaching meetings, I spend at least a few minutes on the topic of unification and team work. I want clients leaving those meetings excited, educated and empowered to TAKE RESPONSIBILITY to make things happen.
And if you have someone on your team who can’t get on board with that, then you might not be a good fit for each other. Which is totally fine.
Alright, that’s enough for now. I need to go finish out the “DISC for Doctors” presentation I’m sharing in our Green Room Coaching Community today. (DISC is a phenomenal communication tool btw, especially how we teach it as applied to sales)
I hope this is useful, and if you have questions, hit me back.
Best,
T
PS – On the marketing side, we currently have ZERO openings for new marketing clients. But if you’d like to dive deeper on any of this, our private community for practice marketers is a good place to get more insights, coaching, templates and brainstorming with like-minded practices. Reply for the details…