Imagine this. You reach into your jacket pocket and pull out a check for $132,000.
Don’t you love finding money…
You know, when you reach in your pocket and find a $20 bill you had forgotten about. Even though it was yours to start with… it feels like a gift.
So about that $132,000. I’m going to make a bold claim here and tell you that’s only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. You’ve got well over $132,000 in additional annual revenue in your practice, just waiting for you to claim it.
Best of all, you can do the above, make more while working less. And no, my allergies haven’t gone to my head. Just stick with me for a minute and I’ll show you how.
What’s the one thing every practice owner I talk to tells me? It’s they are working dawn to dusk, putting in endless hours and they are burnt. It’s too much. Which is true.
Now imagine you could work less and make more money… interested?
Here’s how.
Start by TAMING your front desk staff. When I had my practice, my front desk staff thought their goal was to schedule as many patients into my day as possible. Which meant I had no time to eat, think or focus on growing my practice. I was working 7-7 and exhausted.
The first thing to do is to cut back the number of hours you see patients so you have time to focus on strategy and manage your team. My goal was to have 7.5 hours a day for patient care and 1 hour for follow up reports and email. One hour for lunch. I didn’t schedule breaks back then but now that I do use them mid-morning and mid-afternoon I wish I had used them back then.
Give your front desk staff a schedule of when you want to see patients and block out time for exercise, organizing your day, eating lunch and going home at a reasonable hour so you can enjoy your family too.
If you don’t tell your front desk staff when you want to see patients, they’ll go WILD and schedule you to exhaustion – which doesn’t actually do anyone any good.
Of course if you have a patient who calls and wants to come in right away, to be squeezed into your schedule, you’ll need to provide your front desk staff with a few sample talking points to use to satisfy the patient’s concern and avoid overloading your calendar. Not sure what to say? Talk to us.
Next, give your front desk staff a limit on which type of patient visits to schedule. Eg. so many new and repeat patients for sales purposes each week. So many for hearing aid checks, etc.
Speaking of hearing aid checks, it’s common after fitting a hearing aid to have a patient come back at 3 months, which is a good idea. But after that, every 6 months is plenty! By cutting back on hearing aid checks, you’ll be making more time so you can see new patients or just leave early to see your kid’s school play. Ask us about our greeting card marketing system so you can keep in touch with patients and free up your schedule.
Have a question on how to attract more patients, reach your goals and get more out of life? Talk to us today and take action to grow your practice.