Watching your medical practice crumble in front of you, tears at your soul and can easily be avoided. Thankfully, some strategies and tactics for guaranteeing a successful and envied medical practice have already passed the test of time. These bits of intellectual genius can easily be sourced from very successful businesses that have already run the gauntlet.

For those doctors who adhere to the proud tradition of self-employed practice, nothing is more important than creating a medical practice crowded with satisfied patients. You know the ones—-patients who remain with you for years, and brag about how great their doctor treats them.

What patients need and want: It’s not beautiful offices, good-looking doctors, great reputation, or number of credentials hanging on the walls.

Information about their care

Good personal service

Trust in doctors

Reliability of their doctor

Communication that works

Friendliness—relationships

State of the Art updated medical care

Strategies that are experience proven:

1. Information: Research on the Internet documents the number one sought after product is information. Making medical information available to patients by personal discussion, handouts, or video/audio techniques, will dramatically improve your credibility with patients.

Forget the shiny commercial brochures that contain watered down almost useless information. Create your own library of information that you know would help patients.

2. Personal Service: Business retailers discovered years ago that customer service is critical to survival. Medical practice is a business that deals almost exclusively in customer service. Patients expect to have their health care managed in an efficient way.

Make it a priority to hire office staff that thrives on making patients comfortable and understand what efficiency means. “Things” need to be completed on time, done thoroughly, and devoid of procrastination. Replace anyone who has his or her own agenda.

3. Trust: It’s earned—-not automatic. Ongoing good health care by you is the prime factor in patient’s trust. It takes 6 or 7 visits with a doctor to get there. Web surveys have shown that a customer will not buy from your website until they have visited your site 6 or 7 times and have enough trust to buy.

Trust is the end result of all seven aspects listed here. Testimonials from other patients go a long way to establish trust. That occurs in your waiting room among patients. Appointment scheduling by the “wave” technique accomplishes this.

4. Reliability (doctor and office): Would you keep going back to an office that keeps messing up you appointments, prescriptions, and communications with the doctor and office? Absolutely not! Dependability is the essence of reliability. Patients demand this. Always respond to patient’s phone calls promptly.

Hire a person to do that if need be. Doctors should be available to patients at all times. It doesn’t mean immediately. It means when a patient must reach the doctor that the doctor will always respond as soon as possible. In addition, always will respond to the call.

5. Communications: Nothing is more frustrating to a patient than dead end communications. Calls and messages are ignored or forgotten. Other problems such as “dropped calls” (cut off), repeatedly put on “hold” for long periods, and continually getting busy signals are fuel for the fire. You will lose patients.

Make sure that the management of your office includes every means of avoiding these detrimental communication difficulties. If you haven’t done it already, using e-mail in patient communications will save you unbelievable time and frustration. The medical information privacy issue is being resolved. Most patients are using computers, or soon will be.

6. Friends: Patients prefer to work with doctors and offices where they can make friends—not simply contacts. Creating an environment with that priority is essential for a good medical practice. Patients are social beings—not just a disease with legs.

It is a bonding thing when a patient knows some personal facts about the office staff and doctors. It creates and implants in patients a relationship that says, “friends never treat their other friends badly or improperly.” Do what it takes to give all patients the feeling that, “I just can’t wait to get to the doctor’s office today to find out——–.”

7. State of the art medical care: Patients are a lot smarter than they used to be just a few years ago. Patients know if you are keeping up with your medical knowledge and skills. Don’t be fooled into thinking they don’t know.

Let your patients know when you go to Continued Medical Education courses, and what you learned. Not only is that respect shown to patients, but also a way to establish trust. If you can’t answer a patient’s medical question, find the answer, and get back to them—–95% of doctors do not do that.

Comments: Can you believe it? Marketing your own medical practice without spending a cent. The economics of medical practice today forces doctors into seeing more patients every day and results in neglect of the business success secret strategies. Learning what works and using those factors daily in your practice will insure your success, and make your professional careers productive and fun.

The author, Curtis Graham, M.D., is CEO of L & C Internet Enterprises, Inc. For over 38 years in medical practice, he has written articles, medical information products for his patients, a book on infertility, and marketing information for his practice. He has been published in Modern Physician, an elite magazine for physician executives, and is credited as an “Expert Author” by Ezine Publishers.

Retirement from medicine now permits expansion of his passion to continue helping people by writing pertinent, practical, and detailed articles about many topics. Check out the websites that he and his wife share with a passion:

http://www.Health-Care-Info-Doctor.com

http://www.Healthcare-Toolbox.com

Please feel free to copy, send, distribute, or make this article available to others that might be interested. In doing so you agree to leave the author’s bio and article intact.

Copyright 2006, Curtis Graham, MD, L & C Internet Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Earlier this year, the Associated Press and other popular news agencies reported on the disturbing results of a study published in the March 16, 2006 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine that concluded that Americans receive, on average, only 55% of the care that they should receive at any given time 1,2. This study evaluated the care that individuals, from a wide variety of ethnic and economic backgrounds, receive in a variety of different healthcare settings (clinic, hospital, etc.) here in the U.S. The authors came to a conclusion that was, to me, very startling; but, as it turns out, this is not really new information.

With some minor variation across the boards, people were either under or over treated, for a variety of conditions ranging from alcohol dependence to urinary tract infection. This means that, although we have very well defined screening, diagnostic, and treatment protocols, nearly half of the time these protocols were not followed by physicians, other health care personnel, or the institutions in which they work.

While the Associated Press story decried this as “woefully mediocre… care,” and the New England Journal authors concluded that the “problems with the quality of [health] care,” are “widespread and systemic,” I personally see this as an outright tragedy. Although we spend more money on health care than any other nation, and our massive research efforts have well defined the ideal mechanisms to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease, we are still unable to provide our mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, husbands and wives, with the care that they all pay for, deserve, and that is available. I find the idea repellant that people’s quality and duration of life is routinely compromised in this manner.

Although this is profoundly disturbing, this is also not a new problem by any means, but instead is simply another aspect of an inadequate and dysfunctional health care system. In 1999, the Institute of Medicine (http://www.iom.edu/), a private, non-profit research arm of the National Academy of Sciences, published “To Err is Human,” which reported that somewhere between 44,000 and 98,000 individuals die annually, and that “hundreds of thousands” of others are injured or narrowly escape injury, as a result of avoidable medical errors (also available free on-line at http://www.nap.edu/books/0309068371/html/) 3.

While hospital systems and healthcare providers attempt to begin the lengthy process of remediating this situation by initiating a number of changes across the country (including,as oneexample,instituting an electronic, all-inclusive medical record accessible from any clinic, hospital, or emergency department, among other changes), one area has yet to be addressed - patients are far too often unaware and uninformed about their diagnoses and treatments, and as such, are unable to make informed decisions about their healthcare. Although we are far past the days of following the “doctor’s orders,” and “the doctor knows best,” we have yet to provide patients with one of the best protections available -a thorough understanding of their health and the knowledge to be actively and effectively involved with its maintenance and restoration.

There are a few barriers to this process, however, in the current system. It is not uncommon today that a physician has far less time to examine, diagnose, prescribe and counsel to a patient than the time that it takes to change the oil in your car, or get a haircut, etc. Some physicians, in fact, have to average less than ten minutes per patient! It is impossible to expect that any physician, even the most caring and dedicated, could adequately explain to a patient their diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis within that time frame, and answer questions as necessary. Furthermore, some providers are worse than others at this skill, and the current system most certainly does not encourage or help them in this regard.

The current system does not really value, then, an informed patient. While we are taught in medical school that patients need to be properly “informed” in order to make “competent” medical decisions, the system currently in place clearly does not encourage this sort of activity. If anything, in fact, it discourages it.

The time has come for external systems to try and pick up this role, and to help patients and their families understand any and all aspects of their health. It is unlikely that any time soon physicians will have more time to help better educate patients (new cuts in Medicare reimbursement, as a matter of fact, just approved in July of 2006, will, if anything, make it even harder for physicians to spend time educating their patients). Services must be established (some are already in place) that can help patients answer questions that they might have about their diagnosis or treatment options. Unfortunately, at present many of these services are offered with little oversight as to the quality of information that is provided.

Without the help of a professional, patients often try and find answers for themselves to their health-related questions. While there are many valuable internet resources that are available (WebMD., etc.), there are many more available that offer inaccurate, incomplete, or incorrect information. If taken at face-value by a patient, this can present a profound problem as patients can then base potentially life-threatening or life-changing decisions on this information. So a guide, in many respects, is really necessary to provide accurate information, and then to make sure that the patient understands it.

Improvements like the electronic medical record will most certainly help reduce the incidence of medical errors, and should also help ensure that patients receive care up to the current standard. But improvements must also be made in other areas as well, including patient education, because patients can most often provide far better oversight of their own care than any pre-designed system, no matter how “high tech” it might be. It seems that patients have already realized this, and are seeking out information from any available source. Hopefully hospital and insurance administrators, and government officials and healthcare providers will also realize this, and dedicate funding and efforts to fill this substantial, but presently ignored, gap in the provision of healthcare.

- Jonathan Fay, M.D., August 14, 2006.

References

1. Asch SM, Kerr EA, Keesey J, et al. “Who is at greatest risk for receiving poor-quality health care?” N Engl J Med. 2006 Mar 16;354(11):1147-1156.

2. “Study Says Americans Get Equally Mediocre Health Care” - Jeff Donn, Associated Press, 3/15/2006.

3. To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System. Institute of Medicine, Committee on Quality of Health Care in America. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C. 2000.

Copyright © 2006 Jonathan Fay, M.D.

Dr. Fay is a personal medical consultant, providing answers to patients’ questions about their health, diagnosis, and well-being (available on the internet at http://www.doctorfay.com). He has helped thousands to better understand their health, and to be in a far better position to be highly involved in their own healthcare. As such, patients can make better decisions about treatment options, that better fit their own personal preferences (and not those of their physician, another provider, or anyone else).

Dr. Fay is also the author of numerous articles about the state of healthcare today in the United States, new developments in medicine, and articles to help explain medical treatments and diagnoses in terms that patients can easily understand.

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