A career as a rehab and wellness professional is rewarding. Bearing witness to patient transformation as a direct result of the knowledge we impart and the skills we deliver puts a spring in the step and drives us to become better at what we do. Yet part of running a practice is related to profits. Without sufficient income, it’s difficult to flourish professionally and privately.
Time also limits the ability to deeply connect with your patients and explode your income. After all, there are only so many minutes in a consultation and people you can help in a day. With the cyber age, though, harnessing established and emerging technology enables you to be virtually in two places at once, to create patient loyalty, to inspire greater results and to seriously propel your profits.
Here are three approaches that we strongly recommend:
1. Implement an autoresponder series
An autoresponder platform — like Aweber, MailChimp or iContact — enables you to schedule emails to be sent automatically in whatever succession and delivery time frame you wish. For example, you could create a new patient seven-part email sequence that is set to deliver on alternating days. Each new patient could be added at the time of their first appointment, triggering the series to begin. Each email would deliver value, acting as a touch point where expert information is delivered at just the right time. This maximizes results, builds rapport, and increases compliance.
Before writing this email sequence: Consider a usual new patient journey. What do they need to know and when? What questions arise and at which point? What advice do you repetitively share? Use these insights to create uber helpful, well-timed emails.
Other sequences: If your practice is like most, you’ll see a high proportion of certain conditions. If you often care for those with back pain, headache, fatigue, or even people seeking wellness, consider crafting a separate new patient sequence for each. When you share tailored information that perfectly matches your patients needs, trust automatically rises.
Autoresponder series’ save time and, in essence, are a set and forget strategy. All practices should implement a range of these relationship-building email sequences.
2. Host a membership site or mobile app
A membership site or mobile app provides gated access to only those who have permission. This can be offered as an ethical enticement for an upsell, as part of a new patient offer, or as a standalone product for patients who desire a higher level of care.
A single practice could host several membership sites: a digital course to address a specific problem, a members-only community, and an evergreen library. The former might be tailored for back pain, the second could include a private place for member discussion and live practitioner-hosted webinars, the latter could contain a variety of health and eating tips, articles, videos and recipes.
Memberships can be priced as a once-off purchase or attract a continuing monthly subscription. For example, they could be included in an ongoing wellness pack, bundled with your care.
3. Harness tech to deliver tailored consultations and profitability
Traditionally, face-to-face consultations are the means of service delivery. This limits a practice to geographical location and office hours. Cutting-edge technology, however, is transforming the scope of practice. It enables the internet to connect practitioner with patients, to provide treatment or care options via a digital medium, and allows you to brand your specific expertise and charge higher premiums.
Fiizio, for example, which combines both web and native mobile apps, has been designed to empower the practitioner-patient relationship, enhance health outcomes and propel practice revenue growth and profitability. In short, this cutting-edge technology has been custom built for rehab and wellness professionals and provides the exact tools needed within a single, simple platform, from practice marketing to patient engagement and powerful therapeutic functions. This saves significant time, complexity and money while delivering higher quality patient care and creating a platform to generate new revenue streams.
As mentioned above, autoresponders are crucial. They really ought to be a non-negotiable as the difference they make to patient outcomes and your practice’s bottom line can be profound. This function is included within Fiizio.
Fiizio also allows you to offer a membership service via its mobile app. This enhances your communication with patients and allows both parties to enjoy enhanced service and care at a premium everybody appreciates.
And of course, while Fiizio extends much beyond an exercise prescription app, it also provides an extensive database of video exercises that puts its Home Exercise Program (HEP) offering on top of many similar other solutions. Fiizio allows you to prescribe a tailored exercise program and monitor your patients progress. The patient receives exact exercise instructions on their smartphone; videos and instructions are included. All you need to do is make the recommendation, and the mobile app provides your patients with the information they need. You can even quickly upload your own exercise to your private library, on the fly from your mobile phone. Think about how often you explain certain exercises and how regularly you need to follow up and re-explain how to perform these correctly. This app eliminates this repetition and encourages those in your care to follow through on your recommendations.
Ingrained thinking can lead us to believe that consultations ought to happen in-practice. For many of us, it’s how its always been done. However, there are certain types of appointments that don’t require your physical presence. Would you like to follow-up with a patient’s nutrition or exercise progress? To update a program? This can be done online, providing you have secure video technology like Fiizio. Maybe you’d like to schedule shorter video consultations where a patient can ask questions. This, too, is an easy process via Fiizio.
If you stop and think, you’ll realize there are a range of exciting and profitable consults that can be conducted digitally. There are technologies that can supercharge your practice profits and growth. And, that also offer a high level of patient care, save you and those in your care travel time and cost, and enable you to work from home or somewhere exotic. It truly is win, win.
The technological advances over recent decades have opened previously unattainable possibilities for health professionals. Autoresponder series’, membership sites and native mobile apps, and cutting-edge technology like Fiizio which simply, powerfully combines the tools you need, leads to improved patient results, creates justified loyalty, and generates greater profitability and ethical practice growth and success. Many practices linger in times past, unaware of the ability to serve more fully. This puts you in the perfect place to benefit greatly.
Are you ready to harness your future?