Hey there!
A good practice is product driven, which is why schedule control is crucial.
And the most important thing all practices should produce is patients who have achieved their goals and are living their very best life.
But let’s consider that statement. HOW long will it take before that happens?
For an orthopedic patient, that could take 10-14 visits ON AVERAGE!
For pediatric and neurologic patients, it could be an ongoing journey that can take years.
And that’s only IF the patients get that far!
#1: PATIENTS ARE LOST EVEN BEFORE THEY START
Believe it or not, potential patients are calling your office ALL day long, more than you think.
And if your Patient Care Coordinators converted 90% of those potential patients using schedule control, your practice would be expanding.
Here are the usual ways people find and reach your practice:
Referrals
Calls
Emails
FB contacts
Website contacts
Walk-ins
Ask yourself this:
ARE potential patients handled and converted or are they just 'helped'?
You might be surprised but many patients are NOT converted when they initially reach out. (In fact, the average leads converted to scheduled evaluations during the initial call is closer to 50-60%.)
WHY?
Because people who aren’t sure what they need or want will ask a lot of questions.
And your PCCs, wanting to be nice and ‘help’, will answer those questions BEFORE they handle and convert that potential patient.
This IS a problem.
Most front office staff have the wrong understanding of what the word ‘help’ means. They believe that it’s answering someone’s questions, asking if they ‘want’ to schedule, asking if a time ‘works for them’. They believe that being ‘nice’ is helping.
However, that is NOT helping the patient get what they need.
TRUE help is getting someone SCHEDULED and ARRIVING for the care they NEED to live their very best life! Enter schedule control.
That means that your front office staff must be able to:
Recognize the potential patient
Learn to control the conversation and stop answering the ‘shopper questions’
Have a proven process that converts them to a scheduled evaluation
And uses a proven process to get them arriving for care
The first step to practice success is converting MORE potential patients to scheduled AND arriving new patients.
Because every new patient properly handled by your Patient Care Coordinators is more likely to continue to schedule and arrive for their full plan of care.
You can do achieve this through schedule control.
True Schedule Control Starts with Proper Training
To truly help your patients, your PCCs must think differently. They need to understand that they are selling all the time and they need to be trained in sales.
That may seem scary and a bit overwhelming. But what if you didn’t have to recreate the wheel?
What if someone has a proven, successful process and you could learn this process with them so you’re all on the same page, working and learning together?
What if you could convert MORE new patients in just a few weeks?
What would that do for your practice? And what would it mean for you?
Schedule Control is Key to Success
As a provider and practice owner, I know how hard it is to find the time to train staff to achieve success.
And I also know that untrained staff is the #1 cause of turnover: especially at the front desk.
All you need to do is CLICK HERE and join The Front Office Training Academy.
With The Front Office GURU Training Academy®, you can have the tools you need to provide consistent training to your front desk.
When you provide consistent training, your team is more successful and success in their position helps to decrease turnover.
Here are just a few of the essential topics we cover in this program:
How to have the right mindset when speaking with patients.
How to get more new patients to schedule and arrive for their evaluation appt
How to talk about the cost of care and handle patient worries about costs
How to PREVENT cancels and no-shows (and also how to handle someone to keep it from happening again)
How to fill your schedule and keep it full
Watch this video to learn more: