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What to Say When Your Clinic Is Too Busy To Accept New Patients

No clinic owner likes to turn patients away. Not only does it feel like turning money away, it also means you don’t get to help that person get better, which is the main reason you chose this profession. But what can you say when a patient calls in and you have a three-week wait list? Are there phone scripts for how to handle that? 🤔

The good news is – Yes! There is something you can say in that situation, which we’ll get to in a moment. But first, you must recognize the fact that having a three-week waiting list is itself a sign of a much bigger problem at your clinic. Paul Wright explained why in a recent episode of New Patient Secrets.

Increase Your Rate of Return from Your Physician Referral Marketing

As you probably know if you’ve succeeded in securing even one solid source of referrals from another doctor, getting their cell phone number is a big step in the process. 

Having direct access to a doctor means you have a healthy enough relationship with them that you can reach out about getting referrals without seeming pushy or annoying.

With their cell phone number, you are no longer a clinic owner seeking money. 

Now you’re a familiar face and a familiar name.

Pharmaceutical reps have told me that the moment they get the cell phone number for a doctor, that’s when they start getting business from them. And if you’re tracking where each of your new patients are coming from like these reps do, you’ll know how well your marketing to doctors is working once their referrals start calling you.

Don't know how well your marketing to doctors is working? Watch this 30 min training video on how to measure how many new patients are booked from doctor marketing, emails, google, facebook, webinars, community events, and website. 

In this post, we’ll explain why doctor marketing is important and 3 "non creepy" ways to get a Doctor's direct phone number 

Physician Marketing Unleashed – the One Question You Need to Answer

In the continuing search for new patients, many chiropractors, physiotherapists, and massage clinics have steered their marketing to doctors, looking for referrals. 

It’s a smart move, because there is no more trusted source for a patient referral than from their own doctors. A patient referred from their doctor is virtually guaranteed to become your patient, and when you develop a strong relationship with a doctor, you can get a steady stream of business from them.

But if you’ve ever tried to win over a doctor so they start referring their patients to you, you understand where the challenges lie. First, doctors don’t have any time, so even finding the opportunity to win their trust is a great challenge. But beyond that, assuming you do get to talk to them, what do you say? And what should you NOT say?

In a recent episode of New Patient Secrets, I interviewed Jamey Schrier about what to say and what not to say when marketing to doctors for referrals. 

How do you win their trust? How do you become memorable instead of forgettable? How can you position yourself as a guest and not a pest? Jamey helps answer these questions in his interview. 

Every clinic needs more revenue, especially as we continue to wrestle with this pandemic and can’t fully operate our practices the way we want to.

As you’re about to see, the path to quickly accelerating your revenue doesn’t depend on finding new patients. It depends on making outbound calls to patients who have already reached out to you, and then using outbound call recording to improve your conversion rates.

To help you understand how this works, here are seven types of outbound calls your clinic can start making – right now to make you money.

Note: If you prefer videos to reading, you can also watch a video that explains the seven types of outbound calls.

Find Out What’s Working and Multiply Your Weekly New Patients!

You are probably engaged in a variety of marketing strategies for your clinic.

Before COVID-19, you probably felt fairly good about it because in most places there were more patients than the supply of clinicians could serve. So you were busy and didn't require to be a good at marketing.

As the lockdowns start to end, some people will probably be a little reluctant to jump back in to a normal routine. And that includes coming in to your clinic. Some will continue to prefer Telehealth and video treatment sessions. But either way, your demand will be much less than it was before, at least for a while until the unemployment rates rebounds. 

And if some of your marketing wasn’t working too well before, if you keep pouring money into it once you re-open, you may suffer losses too great to recover from after such a long dry spell.

What Marketing Are You Using?

Chiropractors, physiotherapists, dentists, massage clinics, and other healthcare businesses can use a broad array of strategies, including:

• Website marketing and SEO
• Doctor marketing for referrals
• Live community events
• Email marketing
• Google Ads
• Facebook Ads
• Social Media 
• Webinars 
• Workshops
• Print ads
• Radio
• Newspapers
• Postcards and other direct mail

Check out this video and learn the 2 marketing basics if you want more new patients:

You can use all of these healthcare marketing strategies and probably many more. But the question is – which ones are working for you, and which ones are wasting your money and time?

You need to start ramping up your game and get really good at some specific strategies, each of which depend on having good data.

In this new normal, you need to be really good at 4 things or you will be dead in the water because the demand is not going to be the same with the unemployment rates in this country

1. Getting patients to commit to their full care plan
2. Generating a continuous flow of new patient leads through your marketing
3. Increasing conversion rates for inbound phone calls
4. Increasing conversion rates for outbound phone calls like follow-ups, winbacks, reactivations, and self-discharges

Here’s a guide to growing your revenue and improving staff and patient morale through specific healthcare marketing strategies

Learn the Easiest Way to Boost Your Clinic’s Revenue by Thousands per Month

Which of these is easier: 

A:  Win back a lost patient who didn’t book an appointment in their first call

B:  Win new patients using online or doctor marketing

If you’ve been running a dental, chiropractic, or physical therapy clinic for any amount of time, you should know the answer is A.

A potential patient who has already called you is a far more promising lead than people who have never heard of you and still need to be reached with marketing. 

Yet, even though we all know this, most clinic owners devote far more energy to their marketing than they do to winning back lost patients. 

Today, you’re going to learn how to boost your clinic revenue in the easiest possible way – by winning back lost new patients using specific phone scripts (without feeling salesy) and call tracking strategies.

You can also learn more about call recording and what you can do with call recording.

Learn How to Sell Your Physiotherapy or Chiropractic Practice at the Right Time, for the Highest Value

Is now the best opportunity for you to sell your physiotherapy or chiropractic clinic? Should you wait five years? Or are you on the flip side and looking to expand by buying more clinics? 

If you want to sell a physiotherapy or chiropractic practice now or in the future, you will need to know how to determine an accurate valuation for your practice. If you’re looking to buy, you’ll need the same set of skills to assess how much the one you want to acquire is really worth.

Consolidation Is Coming for Your Clinic (and Community)

With the increasing consolidation in healthcare caused by corporate takeovers, mergers, and acquisitions by private equity, if you own a clinic and haven’t been approached by a big corporation yet, just wait. It will happen. And while your first reflex may be to show them the door, the idea will be planted. 

Someday, you will want to sell your physiotherapy or chiropractic practice, and now is the time to learn how to do it such that you reap the valuation you’ve worked hard for.

This is what happened to a clinic owner in Ontario some time back, who was asking for my help with a dilemma he faced during a mentorship call.

He and his wife are in their 50s. With kids still in school, they’re not ready to retire yet, but it’s on their mind. His physiotherapy clinic has been earning about $1 million in revenue the last five years. He’s not quite ready to sell because the sale is his retirement plan. Selling now would remove his source of income too early. At least, that’s what he has been saying. 

But then he got an offer from a "big corporation" that owns hundreds of clinics, and wanted my help to decide how to respond. 

What would you do in this situation?

He has an offer now. If he doesn’t take it, what if he can’t find a buyer five years from now? And is this even a good deal? He doesn’t really know what his clinic is worth. 

I’ve talked to a lot of clinic owners this past month on our quarterly 1:1 coaching sessions and the topic that keeps popping up over and over again is online marketing trends. 

They hear about how they should be doing online marketing but are confused and overwhelmed. It seems to change every week and they barely have enough time to run their business and treat patients.

The mistake I see clinic owners make is they market like big corporations do. They do brand marketing. They want to build a brand.

The problem is unless you have millions of dollars to spend like these big corporations and willing to wait years (or decades) to see if it works. It just won’t work for you.

"Followers" or "Likes" don't feed families

Brand marketing doesn’t make your phone ring. You can’t measure and have no idea if it’s working or now. What really makes your phone ring is direct marketing. Whether it’s direct marketing for Physical Therapists, Chiropractors or Dentists.

It allows you to know exactly with 100% confidence if your campaign is working. How many calls you’re generating from that marketing campaign like CallHero software tells you. You know exactly what your ROI is. 

10 Money-Saving Provisions that Can Save You Stress, or Cause It If You Overlook Them

You’ve found the perfect location for your next clinic startup or perhaps you're renewing an existing lease, now what?

You need to learn how to negotiate the most favourable lease possible for your clinic. You want a lease that protects you from getting run over by the landlord, should certain conditions arise, and one that saves you money. 

Before you sign on the dotted line, here are 10 provisions you need to look at when negotiating your commercial lease for your physical therapy, chiropractic or massage clinic. 

Note: If you prefer videos to reading, you can also watch a video that explains these same 10 lease provisions.

1st Clue: Are They Showing You Marketing Metrics that Actually Mean Something?

Which marketing metrics should you pay attention to, and which ones can you ignore?

I had a talk recently with a clinic owner in my #clinicboss community that shines a light on all the ‘dead numbers’ marketing companies like to boast about.

Here’s his story:

He’s been operating his clinic for about five years, and has been crushing it, hitting almost $1 million in sales last year. But in terms of revenue, he noticed he has been starting to plateau (if you are growing less than 15% a year, you have plateaued in my world). Have you ever experienced this? When your revenue flattens, you have a few choices for what to do:

1) Nothing – just be content with whatever profits you’re making, and hope nothing changes for the worse

2) Make changes to your clinic business – including monitoring marketing metrics like call tracking

3) Jump down the rabbit hole of online marketing

You can guess which one this clinic owner chose (the same one you probably think you need to do more of, because it’s what everyone is obsessed with these days).

That would be #3 – the classic mistake of believing online marketing can fix all your revenue problems.

He noted that all the new clinics starting up seem to be on Instagram and Facebook (aka Wastebook), and so he felt compelled to do the same. If they’re all doing it, it must be working, right?

So, for the past three months, he’s been spending $1000 per month on Google and Facebook marketing. In that time, he’s seen no measurable increase in new patients, and his revenue still clings to the same plateau line. No growth. No change.

But his marketing company sure is excited!

They’ve got all these next-gen marketing metrics like site impressions, unique visitor counts, click through rates, likes and followers. And look – they’re going up! Isn’t it exciting? Your marketing is “working,” they tell him.

But is it?

The very reason I was having this conversation was because his revenue was still flat.