50-100 Patient Visit Increase in 30-90 Days
Friday, October 22, 2010 at 1:37AM
Eric Huntington, DC
Co-Owner Developer of the Chiropractic Business Academy
The Challenge
A friend challenged me to write a one page blueprint article on increasing your patient visits by 50 to 100 visits in 30 -90 days. Since this sort of increase is typical of new CBA clients, I figured I’d give you my viewpoint on the topic.
Step One – Capacity
Decide what increase in patient visits you want and then add that to your current volume. Look this new number and figure out if your current facility can handle it. Who is holding what posts? How close to maxed out are the staff now and what would it be like at the new volume?
For prediction, you can use this simple tool. It shows the number of staff, weekly volume and minimum monthly collections
1 DC + 0 Staff = 50 pv/wk = $10K Month 1 DC + 1 Staff = 100pv/wk = $20K Month 1 DC + 2 Staff = 150pv/wk = $30K Month 1 DC + 3 Staff = 200pv/wk = $40K Month
These numbers tend to hold fairly true throughout the spectrum of various styles of chiropractic, however once a practice goes over 200 pvs, and depending on what post the owner doctor chooses to hold, the staff complement will vary.
This is only a tool. If you’d like help evaluating your practice against this guideline, call CBA and one of our consultants will go through it with you.
Hiring
If you determine you need to hire, start now. Chiropractors often fail to predict the amount of time it takes and the number of people you’ll interview/hire before you find one person to hire. Want to know how CBA clients hire? Read my article “How to Hire Staff” at: chirobizacademy.com/wordpress/
Assess the Capacity of your Space
Look at the space in your office compared to the volume you want. Do you have the necessary space and equipment for the increase? If so, great—if not, decide to either adjust your space/ equipment or settle for a smaller increase that will fit the office.
Step 2 –Current Procedures
First we will take up what you are already doing. This is a first line of action that can increase many clinics by 50 visits, alone.
How Well Are You Keeping Them? Look at your new patient procedures. Do you have an effective initial office visit and report of findings that is resulting in 90% or more of referral patients and 75% or more of all patients accepting your recommendations?
Are your recommendations exactly what you believe the patient should receive? Or are you basing it on something else such as insurance coverage or what you think they will accept or can afford?
Look at the rate of fall off in your clinic. This can often be hidden in a disorganized office. However, most doctors know roughly how often this is occurring. Most patients should be finishing your recommended plan.
Now take a look at the percentage of patients that resign onto maintenance care. CBA strategies often result in a resign rate for our clients that ranges from 70%-90%. CBA also teaches a procedure that will encourage every patient to return to your office for a checkup within a few months even if they don’t elect routine maintenance.
Do whatever it takes to address deficiencies in these areas, quickly.
Step 3 - Marketing
New patients into a practice is the gas pedal of the clinic. What will it take to hit your targets? Determine how many additional patients starting on care you’ll need to increase by the desired 50-100 visits. One way is to divide the increase you want by 3. This is assuming new patients start care at 3x/wk.
The other factor is how many weeks at 3x/wk. Let’s assume it’s 8 weeks. You then have 8 weeks to pump up the volume before patients who started in week one begin to decrease frequency. Take your desired visit increase (ie 50) and divide by 3. This is how many additional starts you need. Take that number and divide by how many weeks you want to put between you and your goal. To get a 50 visit increase in 8 wks you need 2.1 additional starts/wk.
Determine your New Patient to Patient start ratio over that same time period. For example, if you’ve averaged 3 starts per week off of 4 new patients, then you see how many more new patients you need in order to hit the starts target.
In our example above, if you determine you need 2.1 additional starts per week for 60 days to hit your target, then you would need 3 additional new patients per week. However, if you are mainly a referral practice, and you decide to start external marketing, it is important to realize that starting non referral patients onto care is more difficult, so you may want to build in a cushion, so let say you’ll need 4-5 additional new patients.
How To Get More New Ones!
Internal marketing is a great place to start. However, depending on your target, this may not be enough. CBA teaches many very effective internal and external strategies.
When it comes to external marketing, CBA clients have found it most efficient to train non doctors to this. However, unless a doctor is trained on how to manage this activity effectively, it can be a total flop. So, for many of our new CBA clients, we will teach them the most efficient external marketing they can do, without staff. This includes lectures, corporate massage events, and internet marketing.
For example, one massage or lecture event per week can generate an additional 5-10 new patients per week. So, for the doctor who knows how to do this, it can be an efficient way to spend a couple of hours.
So figure out your plan today and target out for a 50-100 visit increase in the next 30-90 days! CBA would be happy to help you plan out your expansion (in a free consultation), or just provide you with more info on our program. It’s up to you!
October through December is the best time to start working with CBA. This is because we can teach you our Incredible Holiday Promotion which has proven to increase practices by 50-100 visits per week in the months of January and February!
Learn more about the CBA program or our holiday marketing program. CALL 888-989-0855