As a Private Practice Owner, one of the things you end up having to deal with is preventing cancellations. If not kept under control they can cause all kinds of problems that will either immediately or eventually effect the bottom line of your business. A cancellation can lead to lost income, early discharges, low staff productivity, low staff morale, and much more. Many of us are actually pretty good at “getting new patients” but when push comes to shove, we are not so good at “keeping them” and truly helping them get to what we want, a “SUCCESSFUL DISCHARGE”. The main reason why most practices don’t do well at keeping their schedule full and their staff busy is that there is not a system or process for staff to follow when any of the above things happen.
To control cancellations, we must first acknowledge them for what they are: lost income as a business owner and a lost opportunity to truly help a patient achieve their goals. It is that simple. Whether they didn’t come in because they were sick, or they had a meeting at work or whatever the reason, it is lost income that we need to think about as a private practice owner. Think about it, if your average reimbursement is $75 per visit (as an example) then every empty spot (for whatever reason) is a loss of $75. That is typically what you pay a PT for about two hours’ worth of work, or a front office staff for about 4 – 5 hours’ worth of work.
So how do we control and better yet prevent cancellations that possibly are causing you to lose sleep, worry about making payroll, and ultimately effecting our profitability as private practice owners?
- SELL THE VALUE OF WHAT YOU DO AT EACH TREATMENT. This brings us back to the fact that PT’s need to be awesome salespeople. I’ve written about this before (check out my previous post on Pt’s being salespeople – https://www.facebook.com/mike.bills.7946281/posts/127252005220010). But in short, we need ALL OF OUR STAFF to be able to create value for what we do and be INTERESTED in the patient getting in for therapy that day and finishing the full plan of care. As PT’s we spend a lot of time training to be good clinicians, we need to train to be even better salespeople. I always tell my staff that treating a patient (regardless of diagnosis) is 80% mental and 20 % what you do with them in treatment. If you listen, patients have a lot of objections and reasons why they can’t make it to therapy. Truth is they are being bombarded with so many requests for their time, their money, their energy. When they cancel, they are telling you indirectly that they didn’t place as much value on your services as they did on something else; whether it be that cup of coffee every day, eating lunch out, having a fancy phone, watching Netflix when they get home from work, or whatever their excuse is for not making it to therapy. A good salesperson will be able to really ask the right questions and listen to the patient and then handle those issues fully.
- HAVE A CANCELLATION POLICY IN PLACE. I don’t mean a policy that is meant to punish the patient or charge them a ton of money but a policy that tells them what is expected of them as a patient in your clinic. Yes, this means you have to assign a “punishment” (lets say $50) to a now show or late cancellation but what it really means is that you want to educate your patients on what you want them to do and WHY. Over the years I have discovered that patients don’t buy what you do, THEY BUY WHY YOU DO IT. The purpose of the “cancellation policy” is to allow us to educate our patients on what we expect them to do, what we need them to do when they can’t make an appointment for any reason and best of all UNDERSTAND WHY THAT IS SO IMPORTANT. They can’t get better if they don’t come to therapy regularly. I always relate it to a patient like taking antibiotics. Your doctor gives you antibiotics, you don’t take them only when you feel like it and expect to get better. You take them as directed and low and behold you get better. PT is the same way – don’t think of it any differently.
- TRAINING. We must train ourselves, our staff, and even our patients in order to be successful in controlling this aspect of our clinic. As I said earlier, as PT’s we were never trained to be salespeople and our front office staff have never had that training. Our patients have also never really been taught to be patients and so we all run around like squirrels wondering why we don’t get what we thought we would get out of an experience. TRAINING is vital to anyone being better at what they do. Look at a professional baseball player with regards to hitting. The play 162 games a year, sometimes day after day on end yet they still hold batting practice before every game and have practice on the days they don’t have games – and they are professionals. Why would we not want to train the same way and improve our batting average. Even a few percentage points of an increase will improve the bottom line. TRAIN YOUR STAFF.
This is something I am passionate about as a practice owner. Early on in my practice ownership years I learned this data and put it to use. We have grown our business by a minimum of 20% every year over the past 14 years. Putting these three aspects in place was how we grew our business significantly for two years straight – just by improving arrivals, reducing cancellations, and stopping early discharges.
I would love to help you have the same success. Join me for my upcoming Patient Compliance webinar. Go to this link to register: https://measurablesolutions.com/webinars/
