ANCHOR ARTICLE: Written for KRISTIN MOLZON AND LISA SELDEN by Val Roskens Tews

It isn’t enough anymore…

It isn’t enough to open the doors to your PT clinic and expect patients to magically appear.

It isn’t enough to know you are better than the competition.

It isn’t enough to simply be an exceptional PT clinic.

Today you have to not only prove you’re exceptional, but also you have to make it known!

We can help you!

Do you know what to do, how to do it, and can you find the time to do it, all while treating your patients? For many, marketing is overwhelming – and so it doesn’t get done properly. That’s where we, Kristin Molzon and Lisa Selden of Advanced Rehab Management Services, can help you.

First step

The first step is to find out about your practice and what your goals are. This is crucial because otherwise the marketing won’t be effective. Not everyone has the same goals, so we custom create a marketing plan specific to helping you.

This is a big mistake that we see other marketing companies and consultants making. They assume every person has the same goal, which is to increase whatever it is, and not everybody does.

For example, we have a client who doesn’t have a “typical” marketing problem. She has enough patients. She consistently fills her whole schedule, but she’s not making enough money. We’re able to come in with 20 years of experience and identify why that’s happening and fix the problem. After that, we will help her with marketing her clinic in areas that will increase her profits.

Solutions to battle against changes

You don’t need to be told that things have changed in physical therapy. Today you’re competing against physician-owned therapy clinics and hospital clinics. We surveyed our clients and the top three concerns are:

• Decreasing new patients/visits
• Declining insurance reimbursements
• Billing problems (which leads to lost revenue)

We have solutions to help you. Increased revenue and new patients can be achieved through referral source marketing, patient marketing, and community awareness. All three are needed for a well-rounded marketing plan.

Referral source marketing

A referral source is a medical practitioner who directs patients to your clinic. Referral source marketing is when you market your expertise to these three main sources: doctors, certified nurse practitioners, and physician assistants. Most patients will seek advice from their doctor (or medical practitioner) when they are in pain. You want to be the clinic the doctor is thinking about when they need to refer their patient for physical therapy.

The purpose of referral source marketing is to establish patterns and develop relationships with the doctors, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants. The cost effectiveness comes in when you get them on board, because it gives you a broader reach of people you can help. Instead of marketing to one person, you’re marketing to one person who has hundreds of connections. This includes referral sources who are currently sending their patients to your clinic and those who are not at the moment.

One note about direct access: don’t stop marketing to your referral sources just because the patients can come to you without a referral. People still rely on their doctor to give them direction about where to go for something like physical therapy, with or without direct access.

Patient marketing

Focusing on patients – current, past, and potential patients – is a valuable source of marketing. Another name for this type of marketing is direct to consumer or direct access (which means a patient can receive therapy services without a physician referral).

Your happy patients can be virtually a never-ending supply of referrals. Some may happen naturally, but some may require reminders to do so. You want current patients to refer their family and friends to you. And you want potential patients to hear about you so that they will choose you when there is a need.

Community awareness

Community involvement and giving back to the community that you serve is another component of the marketing plan. This can be as easy as offering a free balance assessment or holding a workshop in your clinic as a way to introduce potential patients to your services. These kinds of programs can show people how you can help them. It also brings top-of-mind awareness to the community in general.

It’s important to realize when doing these events that there is a certain strategy that goes with them. The goal should be to show them that physical therapy will help them. You can miss a huge opportunity if your staff is not trained properly to say the right words that will make that person feel good. It’s crucial to know what actions are needed to follow-up from the assessment or workshop.

We have a lot of experience in training PT clinic staffs on what to say, how to make the patient feel they were given a lot of value, and how to make them feel special in general. You want their “free experience” to be so good that when they need physical therapy services, you are the one they call.

Here’s the key to all of this

It’s essential to present yourself as the expert and show how you can help the person in a professional and caring way. Everyone, every person in the clinic, every role in the clinic, has a place in marketing and every staff member has a role to play in bringing in new patients. Every single one!

It’s about building trust. A free assessment can be one way to start building that trust because it shows you value the person and are trying to help. It can be as simple as reaching out to patients and reminding them of your connection. The bottom line: you want the patient or the doctor to think of you when physical therapy is needed.

Out of the box thinking

Grass roots marketing remains a viable solution to generating referrals and new patients, however, this marketing alone will not provide fast results. It should be part of your long-term plan for brand awareness. The good news is that we know how to speed up results. Not only that, we can help you figure out where your time and money should be spent for the most effective results.

We look at what is working and what is not. We don’t keep doing something that isn’t working. We have 20+ years of experience, so you can skip the mistakes we made and only get the good stuff! At some point, maybe we try something totally out of the box that’s creative. A small amount of your budget can be used for that. And then it will be assessed – which parts worked, what can we change or adapt?

Helping you to continue to be thriving and profitable

Advanced Rehab Management Services is here to help you. We provide solutions to achieve a thriving and profitable physical therapy practice.

Reach out to see how we can help your practice get more patients, obtain higher reimbursements for your comp and auto patients, and help get your billing in order. There are many ways to increase revenue – and we want to share with you how to do that.

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Contact information for Kristin Molzon and Lisa Selden:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinkocismolzon/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisaselden/
kmolzon@ar-mgt.com
lselden@ar-mgt.com