Dr. Kelley S. Mulhern

Influence and Impact II

A couple of weeks ago I attended several sessions of the virtual Influence and Impact Summit produced by Michael Hyatt of Platform University. It was seriously one of the best online summits I’ve ever participated in. (If it happens again next year make sure you sign-up for the free event!) The speakers were insightful, the topics were impactful, and the take-aways were truly meaningful. In my last blog, I reviewed several quotes by the legendary John Maxwell. (Missed it? Check it out!) As I mentioned in that blog, I actually had two favorite sessions. And because I couldn’t pick a winner, I chose to talk about them in alphabetical order.

Today, I’m happy to share my other “tied-for-first-place” speaker from the Impact and Influence summit: Amy Porterfield. Now, I confess…I LOVE AMY PORTERFIELD! I’ve been following her on social media for some time, I subscribe to her blog, and I’ve purchased several of her products. She’s a gifted entrepreneur who’s changed the lives of countless people. Honestly, I almost didn’t listen to her talk because I thought I was familiar with her message. I’m so glad I changed my mind! In all the time I’ve been tuning in to Amy, this was the first time I saw her “unscripted” in an interview.

She was absolutely magnificent. Her vibrant personality and genuine compassion were evident from word one. Amy was engaging, funny, sincere, and humble while sharing pieces of her story and motivation. What struck me the most from her 30-minute interview was how much I could relate to her on a personal and professional level. We’re in completely different fields, but she has the same fears and worries that I do. (Well…she didn’t come out and say she’s afraid of zombies, but isn’t everyone???)

I was floored to learn that Amy sometimes worries her products might not be good enough…that her success might vanish…that there might not be enough money for future needs… Wow! Does that sound familiar? Do you ever have those same fears or worries? How do you handle them? When faced with these fears, Amy gives herself 10 minutes to worry about it, then she consciously shifts her focus to the next important thing. What a great tip to use in healthcare practices! (The host, Michael Hyatt, said he’s a worrier too. His wife tells him “wait to worry.” Basically, there’ll be time later to worry, right now you need to buckle down and get to work. Invariably, by the time “later” comes, there’s no need to worry!)

Another interesting lesson Amy shares is how, when she left her 9-5 job to begin her entrepreneurial journey, she was scared. So, she took on consulting clients for the first two years. She later realized that while comfortable, this was a distraction holding her back from her true path. Have you ever struggled to make something fit your life or your practice, to no avail? Then, when you stop pushing, you realize you were meant to go in another direction? (Me too!)

One last impactful moment in the interview occurred when Amy shared “What’s ahead of you is where the magic is.” We can get bogged down in the minutiae of today or the regrets of the past and lose sight of the future. We can’t change what happened yesterday…and the actions of this moment may have little impact on today. But…the future is molded by the thoughts and actions of today…it’s completely up to you. You can have a future that looks identical to your present life if you change nothing. However, if you plan carefully…choose your actions with intention…take deliberate steps…your future can be magical!

So how does this relate to healthcare practice marketing? If you change nothing about how you market your practice…if you fail to put a plan in place…then you’ll get the same level of practice success you’ve always had. Or, you can experiment, try new marketing strategies, take intentional marketing steps, and create new levels of practice success.

One last thought about the summit, and then I’ll go back to my normal healthcare marketing blogs…there were so many fantastic speakers. I have to give honorable mention to several more: Dr. Josh Axe, Dave Ramsey, Carrie Green, Donald Miller, Bob Goff, and Andy Andrews were all amazing. If you think about it, there’s no shortage of inspirational leaders. Even if they aren’t in the healthcare field, their messages can translate to your healthcare practice. Block some time out of your schedule to listen to a few of your favorites (via podcast, e-book, interview, etc.) every week. Their messages can raise your energy, motivate you, and help you intentionally create the practice – and life – of your dreams!

What about you? Who are your favorite inspirational leaders? Please share your comment, quote, or story in the comments section!

5 Steps to Create Your Healthcare Marketing Calendar: A Strategic Guide for 2025

by Dr. Kelley Mulhern

Creating a healthcare marketing calendar is a vital step for any successful medical practice. Just as you carefully plan your office layout, design your brochures, and structure patient care protocols, your marketing efforts deserve the same level of thoughtful preparation. A well-crafted marketing calendar—sometimes called a Connections Calendar—helps you map out all the community touchpoints and promotional activities your practice will engage in throughout the year.

A desk with a calendar, computer, and marketing materials. Post-it notes with "healthcare marketing" and a pen. A phone with scheduling app open

Planning your healthcare marketing in advance allows you to maintain consistent patient communication and capitalize on seasonal opportunities. Rather than scrambling to create last-minute campaigns, a marketing calendar gives you the structure to build meaningful relationships with your community while efficiently managing your practice resources.

Key Takeaways

A structured marketing calendar helps healthcare practices maintain consistent patient engagement and community outreach throughout the year.
Planning your healthcare marketing efforts in advance allows for better resource allocation and more strategic promotional activities.
Creating a comprehensive marketing calendar transforms reactive healthcare advertising into proactive patient connection opportunities.

Why You Need a Marketing Calendar for Healthcare Success

A busy healthcare office with a desk covered in colorful sticky notes, a computer open to a marketing calendar, and a team collaborating on ideas

A well-planned marketing calendar serves as the backbone of your healthcare practice’s outreach efforts. It brings structure to your promotional activities and helps your practice grow in several important ways:

Focuses Your Efforts
A marketing calendar helps you prioritize activities that align with your healthcare brand and practice goals. This focused approach prevents scattered efforts and maximizes your marketing impact with potential patients.

Controls Budget Flow
Planning your marketing activities in advance allows for better financial management. You can:

Allocate funds strategically throughout the year
Avoid unexpected expenses
Ensure resources are available for high-priority campaigns

Optimizes Staff Scheduling
Your calendar helps coordinate everyone involved in marketing efforts:

Practice staff
External partners
Volunteers

This coordination prevents burnout while ensuring proper coverage for events and activities targeting your niche market.

Prevents Missed Opportunities
Without a planned calendar, important marketing opportunities can slip through the cracks. Last-minute marketing rarely delivers the same results as well-executed, thoughtfully planned campaigns that connect with patients in your location.

Remember, successful healthcare marketing strategies require planning. Your marketing calendar transforms good intentions into actionable steps that attract patients and build your practice.

Get Ready!

A desk with a computer, calendar, pen, and coffee mug. A person is organizing and planning healthcare marketing activities

Block dedicated planning time on your schedule for creating your marketing calendar. You’ll need 1-2 full days either working alone or with your team during a staff retreat. This focused time ensures thorough planning without interruptions.

Gather essential planning tools before you begin:

Calendar with important dates marked
List of holidays and planned vacations
Schedule of major local events that might affect attendance
Inventory of potential marketing activities
Basic supplies (pens, paper, calculator)
Digital tools if you prefer electronic planning

Brainstorm creative marketing ideas by developing a master list of successful past activities and new concepts you’d like to implement. Consider your practice strengths and market opportunities while being mindful of potential threats and competition.

Personalize your approach to reflect your unique practice identity and values. Your marketing calendar should showcase your strengths and address your weaknesses through strategic planning.

Remember that your marketing calendar is a living document. You can and should update it regularly as you track progress, respond to market changes, or identify new opportunities. Flexibility is key to maintaining an effective marketing strategy that grows with your practice.

5 Steps to Build an Effective Marketing Calendar for Your Healthcare Practice

Creating a well-organized marketing calendar helps your practice stay on track with promotional activities throughout the year. Here’s how to build one that works:

1. Gather Patient Feedback

Ask your patients about their experiences with your previous marketing efforts. Create a brief questionnaire with questions like:

Which events did you enjoy most?
What activities would you like to see in the future?
How do you prefer to receive practice updates?

This feedback provides valuable insights about what resonates with your target audience and helps shape your marketing strategy.

2. Block Out Your Calendar Year

Start with the basics by marking:

Holidays and office closures
Staff vacations and time off
Industry conferences and events

Then plan at least three marketing activities each month:

One internal office event (staff or current patient focused)
One community-focused external event
At least one social media or content marketing activity

Remember: It’s better to plan conservatively than to cancel events due to time constraints.

3. Establish Clear Marketing Goals

Set specific, measurable objectives for each marketing activity. For example:

Increase new patient appointments by 15% this quarter
Generate 25 new reviews on Google by June
Grow email newsletter subscribers by 100 people

Your goals should be realistic, time-bound, and aligned with your overall business goals. Write them down and revisit them regularly.

4. Implement Tracking Systems

Every marketing effort needs a measurement plan:

Marketing Activity	Tracking Method	Success Metric	Person Responsible
Patient referral program	Referral cards	Number of new patients	Front desk staff
Educational webinar	Registration form	Attendance rate	Marketing coordinator
Social media campaign	Platform analytics	Engagement and clicks	Digital marketing team

Proper tracking helps you determine your ROI and informs future marketing tactics.

5. Ensure Team Alignment

Your entire team needs to understand:

The marketing activities planned
Their specific responsibilities
How success will be measured
Why these efforts matter

Hold regular meetings to discuss upcoming events and review past performance. When everyone understands the “why” behind your marketing calendar, they’ll be more invested in its success.

Pro Tip: Create a dedicated folder system (physical or digital) organized by month, with subfolders for each marketing activity. Include all relevant materials, budgets, checklists, and post-event analysis in these folders for easy reference when planning future events.

By following these steps, you’ll create a structured approach to your practice marketing that drives patient engagement, builds brand awareness, and supports practice growth throughout the year.

Common Questions About Healthcare Marketing Calendars

What should you include in your healthcare marketing calendar?

An effective healthcare marketing calendar needs several key elements to work well. You should include:

Important dates such as holidays, industry events, and health awareness months
Marketing campaigns with clear start and finish dates
Content publication schedule for blog posts, emails, and social media
Budget allocation for each marketing activity
Team responsibilities showing who handles each task

Your calendar should also include specific and measurable goals for each marketing activity. This helps you track progress and measure success.

How can you add digital marketing to your healthcare calendar?

Digital marketing should be a core part of your healthcare marketing calendar. Here’s how to integrate it effectively:

Schedule regular social media posts about health topics, services, and patient education
Plan email campaigns for appointment reminders and health tips
Coordinate website updates with your other marketing efforts
Schedule search engine optimization (SEO) reviews quarterly

It’s important to combat misinformation and provide accurate health information in all your digital marketing efforts.

How do you align your marketing calendar with organizational goals?

Your marketing calendar should directly support your healthcare organization’s broader objectives:

Goal Type	Calendar Alignment Strategy
Patient growth	Schedule campaigns targeting new patient acquisition
Service promotion	Time marketing around service launches or slow periods
Brand awareness	Plan consistent messaging across all channels
Community engagement	Include community events and outreach activities

Before creating your calendar, survey and gather insights from stakeholders to ensure alignment with organizational priorities.

When should you start planning your marketing calendar?

You should begin planning your healthcare marketing calendar at least 3-6 months before the start of the new year. This timeline allows for:

Thoughtful strategy development
Budget approval processes
Content creation lead time
Coordination with other departments

Many healthcare organizations create an annual calendar but leave room for adjustments. Start by filling in holidays, vacations, and office closings before adding marketing activities.

How can you measure your marketing calendar’s success?

To track the effectiveness of your healthcare marketing calendar:

Set key performance indicators (KPIs) for each marketing activity
Use analytics tools to monitor website traffic, social engagement, and conversions
Track patient acquisition sources to connect marketing efforts to results
Conduct regular performance reviews against your goals

Your calendar should include tracking mechanisms to measure performance and make data-driven decisions.

How often should you update your marketing calendar?

Your healthcare marketing calendar requires regular reviews and updates:

Weekly: Check for immediate adjustments needed
Monthly: Review performance and make tactical changes
Quarterly: Assess larger trends and strategic alignment
Annually: Complete overall evaluation and planning for next year

A written marketing calendar provides focus and consistency to your strategy, but it must remain flexible enough to adapt to changing circumstances and opportunities.

Membership Medicine

by Dr. Kelley Mulhern Leave a Comment

Practicing as an in-network provider can be the path of least resistance in terms of new patient acquisition. But if you want your dream practice, a membership medicine practice is worth the effort.

In-Network

It’s understandable that some practitioners choose to be in-network with insurance companies when they first open their practices. A new doctor hasn’t yet established a patient base, and when you’re in-network, you don’t have to work as hard to bring new patients indoor doors. The insurance company sends people to you by listing you as an in-network provider. open-966315_1280

All you have to do is hang out your shingle, and the patients (and insurance checks) start rolling in. It seems too good to be true and eventually, you start to understand why it is.

Less Money, More Hassle

There’s a lot of overhead involved when you’re an in-network provider. You have to hire someone to do your billing and to chase down missing payments. And let’s not forget the copious paperwork; sending corrected claims, sending requested progress notes, and filling out paperwork for pre-authorization. Doing all of this costs time and money. If you run a busy practice, the details can start to fall through the cracks. By the time you figure out why the insurance companies aren’t paying up, you’re drowning in overdue business-19156_1280 paperwork.

When the checks finally do start coming in, you might wonder if there are some missing zeros somewhere. There aren’t. As we’re all aware, insurance companies reimburse for “customary and reasonable” expenses. But that number is reasonable to them, not necessarily to you.

In addition, almost every doctor I’ve ever spoken with is fed up with insurance company “paper-pushers” interfering with the clinical care of their patients. Often, the insurance company employees responsible for approving or denying claims have little to no clinical training. To keep it in perspective, let’s not forget that most insurance businesses are publicly traded companies trying to make a profit. While you’re trying to look after your patients, they’re trying to look after their bottom line.

Membership Medicine

If the above paragraph sounds too familiar, there’s a solution; membership medicine. This practice structure cuts out much of the insurance company hassles and puts care decisions back into the hands of practitioners and their patients. You charge a fee; it can be yearly, monthly, quarterly, whatever works best for you and your patients, and that fee covers a variety of treatments, services, and procedures. Patients are encouraged to keep a catastrophic policy with a high deductible, but most of their routine care is covered by the membership fee.

There are many ways to structure a membership medicine practice, and they go by a few different names, but what they all have in common is eliminating the headache, expense, and interference from insurance companies. However, a membership medicine practice has its own challenges.

Education, Promotion, Connection

Dr Kelley Mulhern increasing costs Building a membership medicine practice takes work. Once you extricate yourself from the insurance companies, they’ll no longer send patients your way. And there are a lot of people who won’t even consider seeing an out-of-network practitioner. Who can blame them? Consumers pay an exorbitant amount of money for health insurance and they want to use it! People think medical care is expensive, and they’re right. When a third-party (insurance company) is involved, prices are artificially inflated to handle the costs associated with dealing with them.

When you eliminate insurance companies from the equation, it’s entirely possible to provide a high level of care. Often you can provide a higher level of care than you could when you were in-network. You aren’t under pressure to see more patients in less time in order to make a living. And the insurance companies no longer get a say in what’s best for your patients.

Some patients don’t understand this. All they hear is “out-of-network” and they simply find someone who’s in-network. It’s up to you to educate your patients on what membership medicine is; the benefits and the costs.

Transitioning from a traditional practice to a membership practice is less scary than starting day one as a membership practice because some of your existing patients will stay with you through the transition, particularly if you’ve properly educated them on the advantages.

But you’ll lose some patients and the insurance companies won’t be sending you new ones, so you have to promote your practice yourself. Start by setting some marketing goals. Understand who your patients are and how your practice can give them solutions to problems. For example, a common patient complaint is the lack of time a practitioner spends with them. In a membership medicine practice, patients get the time and attention they want and need, neutralizing this issue. stop-watch-1135771_640

If you go out-of-network, you’ll have to connect with your community in a way you didn’t before. Put yourself out there, go to health fairs, give workshops and lectures at schools, churches, and community centers. These are the places where you can introduce yourself and your type of practice to potential patients.

Is It Worth It?

This may sound like a lot of work compared to letting insurance companies send patients to you. So is it worth it? That depends. If you like freedom and flexibility, a membership medicine practice is absolutely worth it. Under this model, you can make more money in less time, eliminate interference in clinical decision-making, and eliminate a lot of paperwork and overhead.

If that sounds better than what you’re dealing with now, perhaps you should explore membership medicine further.

For more information on building community connections, I encourage you to read my new book Community Connections! Relationship Marketing for Healthcare Professionals. If you want more valuable information about how to Connect with YOUR Community, you can find FREE healthcare practice marketing content, PowerPoint Presentation Jumpstart Kits, workbooks, blog articles, and my FREE “Practice Marketing Planner” Now!

Continuing Care

by Dr. Kelley Mulhern Leave a Comment

One of the best areas to focus your marketing and patient education on is continuing care, especially if you are running or hoping to transition to a concierge practice.

Marketing Strategies for Massage Therapists Part 1

Cheaper to Keep ‘Em

Just as it’s less expensive to keep good employees than to continually hire new ones, it’s also cheaper to keep existing patients coming back than to always be marketing to find new ones. Happy patients also do a lot of the marketing work for you. They refer their family and friends to you. That kind of marketing costs you nothing and is the best endorsement you can receive.

Keep ‘Em Coming Back

If you’re practicing in a concierge model, you obviously need to sell continuing care. People aren’t going to join a membership practice if they only need to see you once a year or can stop coming in after the initial complaint is (or feels) resolved.

You have to show them the value of continued care, that it’s good value for the money they spend and for their health too.

Continuing Care Requires Continuing Education

If you want patients to keep coming back to your practice, you have to educate them on how they can benefit from continuing care. You aren’t just selling your specialty; you’re selling overall health and wellness. It’s common sense to us as practitioners that what we do impacts more than the initial issues that brought a patient into our office.

But not all people have been educated on matters of holistic wellness. When we do A, B through Z can be impacted, negatively or positively. I once worked with a chiropractor who told all his patients, “Always run it by your chiropractor.” What he meant was, no matter what health problem you’re having, even if you think it’s unrelated to what he does, let him know about it. Chiropractic does a lot more than heal a sore back or neck. pain

Even if their complaint is something you can’t help with, you can help guide them to the proper resources. That helps build trust between you and your patient, and helps to keep you involved in their overall health.

Structured Education

You shouldn’t take a haphazard approach to patient education. You want to have a structured program in place and apply it to everyone who comes into your practice. The first step is to educate potential patients on the structure of your practice. As soon as some people see “concierge practice,” they think it’ll be too expensive.

We know that isn’t true, especially for patients with high-deductible plans. But we have to show them it’s an affordable model.

Once you get past the money hurdle, you have to educate them on the value of continuing care. You can frame it like a subscription service. Rather than getting a package of makeup or snacks every month for a monthly fee, they get robust health!

You should devote part of your education plan to the benefits of continuing visits after the initial problem they sought help for has been resolved. This is the most important part of educating your patients. You want to build a relationship with your patients that lasts for many years, not just see them when they’re suffering and in pain.

Always Teaching

You want to have steady contact with your patients, but you want there to be value in every e-mail, newsletter, or mailing. If there isn’t that value, people start to think of stuff from your office as spam or junk mail, and they’ll treat it accordingly. spam

Everything you send to patients should have a component of education in it; when you alert them to your holiday hours, you can include information on how regular chiropractic visits can help to improve immune function. If you’re sending out information on chiropractic and kids, let them know you’re holding a clinic on the proper use of backpacks (this is a great one to get people back in the office if they’ve been putting it off during the summer).

It’s the education they’re receiving that creates value in their minds.

Make Your Job Easier

Educating your patients on the importance of continuing care makes your job easier. Patients are more compliant, they’ll trust you more, and they’ll keep coming back!

For more information on building community connections, I encourage you to read my new book Community Connections! Relationship Marketing for Healthcare Professionals. If you want more valuable information about how to Connect with YOUR Community, you can find FREE healthcare practice marketing content, PowerPoint Presentation Jumpstart Kits, workbooks, blog articles, and my FREE “Practice Marketing Planner” Now!

The Cost of Good Employees

by Dr. Kelley Mulhern Leave a Comment

Employees can make or break a practice. Even the best doctor can’t overcome a bad staff. If you want to keep your practice successful, you need to understand the cost of good employees. cost

The Front Line

We all know the cliché that your staff is the front line of your practice. They’re the first impression potential patients and patients get of your practice when they call or come into your office. And many of us emphasize this ad naseum to our employees.

But if they don’t feel valued and appreciated, they aren’t going to give their best. Once you understand the cost of good employees, their frustrations, and how you can reward them, your practice will thrive.

The Real Cost

The real cost of keeping good employees is high, very high. It’s estimated that it costs between 6-9 months of salary to replace a salaried employee. For high turnover, low paid positions, which account for many medical office jobs, it costs 16% of the annual salary to replace employees making less than $30,000 per year.

dollar To replace employees making between $30-50,000 a year, the cost is 20% of the salary. These costs account for things like hiring and training expenses.

We all know the cost in time and stress can be even higher. The hiring process is ponderous and frustrating. And some people interview really well, but turn out to be less than ideal once hired. It puts additional stress and responsibility on your long term employees too. They have to pick up the slack of constant turnover, and spend time training new co-workers. If you’ve ever trained someone you know how tiring it can be.

Hard vs Easy

Some positions in a practice are not necessarily hard, as in difficult to perform or requiring a lot of skill. And that’s why many people in those jobs are paid a low hourly wage, don’t get health insurance, retirement plans, paid holidays, paid vacation or even paid sick days.

But believe me, as someone who has been on both sides of the desk, just because a job isn’t hard doesn’t mean it’s always easy. Patients take out their frustrations on front desk and nursing staff in a way they wouldn’t dare with their doctor.

Reward Them

Not all practices are raking it in all the time and so can’t always afford to reward staff with pay increases. However, if you’re doing well, that certainly isn’t due to your efforts alone. Your staff is part of your success and you should share it with them.

There are other ways to reward your staff so they feel appreciated. Remember their birthdays and buy them a gift. Bring in lunch for the office occasionally. Give them a gift card when they’ve gone above and beyond for a patient. clouds

Even just asking if everything is all right when it seems like they’re having a bad day can go a long way to making sure they feel appreciated.

Listen to Your Staff

From time to time have individual meetings with each member of your staff. Ask them if they have any concerns or problems that need to be addressed. Sometimes a good venting session is all they need to feel better.

Have Their Back

We all know that when you deal with the public there are just certain things you have to put up with and most people are generally pleasant enough. But every office has a patient or two who are a real challenge.

You probably know more about the reasons behind that than your staff. You see a person frustrated by a health problem. Your staff just knows there’s someone who is nasty to them during every interaction. If your staff understands the reason behind the behavior, they’ll be more understanding.

That said, no patient has the right to abuse your staff. If you have a patient who consistently does so, you need to address their behavior directly with that patient. No one should be expected to accept abuse as part of their job.

Cheaper to Keep Them

It’s cheaper to keep good employees happy in terms of money, time, and aggravation. (Not to mention the well being of your practice.) Things run more smoothly when a team has been working together for a long time.

It gives a better impression of your practice when patients see and speak to the same people each time. When there’s a lot of turnover, people start to wonder if the problem is you.

It’s better for everyone, yourself included, when the office has a positive energy or feel. Patients will pick up on a happy office and want to be a part of it!

Metrics to Measure By

by Dr. Kelley Mulhern Leave a Comment

In order to gauge the success of your practice, you need to track certain data. In a sea of numbers, you need to know what metrics to measure by. ruler

Revenue Per Visit

It’s never easy to raise your fees but sometimes it’s necessary. You don’t want to do it arbitrarily, on January 1 for example, because it will seem to your patients, well, arbitrary!

You should have a solid number to base rate increases on. That’s what revenue per visit will give you. To calculate your revenue per visit, calculate the average amount you collect from patients and subtract the average cost of conducting a visit. Now that you have that number, you can determine if you need to increase your fees. (For additional information and guidelines, you can consult the most recent edition of the Physicians’ Fee Reference book.)

Not Always Dollars

Revenue isn’t the only metric you should judge your practice on. If you want to have long term success, you need to have a high patient satisfaction rating. You can design a brief survey for patients to fill out rating you on things like waiting time, ease of scheduling, how well you listen, and how helpful your staff is. A simple 1-10 rating on a few key questions is all that’s required to get some good data here.

stars-1128772_1280 If patients don’t feel they can address these issues with your office, you can bet they’ll address them on public forums like Yelp and Zocdoc and give you a poor review. Give them the chance to explain any frustrations to you.

Not Always Patients

It’s not only patient satisfaction you should be concerned about. How happy is your staff? How much turnover do you have? Unhappy employees aren’t going to treat patients the way you’d like them to be treated. Unhappy staff quit, and it’s frustrating for patients to see a different face each time they come in. It makes you look bad and it’s expensive to continuously hire and train new staff.

And honestly, a lot of doctors don’t know how to run the front desk. Some don’t even know how to schedule an appointment, let alone the complicated stuff like insurance billing or sending out blood for lab testing . If your entire staff quit without notice (whether that’s one person or several), how bad off would you be? You probably don’t want to find out.

You likely give feed back when a staff member does something you’re unhappy about. Give them the same opportunity to provide feedback to you. And make an effort to tell your staff when they’re doing something right!

Traffic Patterns

What times of day are you busy and slow? Do you open at 10:00 and wait until 12:00 for your first patient to come in? It’s easier for working people to come in before work or during lunch than late morning or late afternoon. Would your patients benefit from evening appointments? open

Start asking your patients if they’d have any interest in Saturday appointments. For people who are paid hourly, they lose money if they aren’t at work. Saturday appointments might work really well for them and increase patient satisfaction for you!

There’s a lot to be said for working a typical 9-5 schedule, but even if you were available one late evening a week or one Saturday a month, it might help increase your patient load.

Slow Times

Make note of busy and slow times of year too. Summer is typically slow for many practices. Use those times to go on vacation, to do renovations, or to do major systems upgrades. Sometimes if makes financial sense just to close the office rather than pay staff when it’s quiet.

Referrals

You should know where every patient who comes into your practice was referred from. By an existing patient, a Facebook ad, Google, another physician? If you want to grow you practice,you need to know where to concentrate your energy and money when it comes to attracting new patients.

If you aren’t getting patient referrals, something is wrong with your patient satisfaction or education. How can you fix it? If you aren’t getting a lot of referrals from people who were Googling, you need to improve your SEO.

If you aren’t getting traffic from ads you’re paying for, you need to rethink your advertising strategy. If you aren’t getting doctor referrals, you need to work harder at building relationships with your colleagues.

If You Don’t Measure It, You Can’t Improve It

You should always be striving to improve every aspect of your practice. And maybe you are, but if you aren’t using metrics to measure your improvements, you don’t know what impact those improvements are having. Or not having. And that wastes money, time and energy. If you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it.

Marketing Among the Madness

by Dr. Kelley Mulhern Leave a Comment

Summer is over and everyone’s lives are hectic again. When you’re marketing among the madness, make sure your message doesn’t get lost. Vacation

Vacation is Over

Summers tend to be slow for a lot of practioners. We hope you used your slow summer season productively. But summer is over now and we need to make up for the downtime and ramp up business through smart marketing. However, during this time of year, when people head back to reality, your marketing has to compete with all the other things vying for the attention of potential patients.

Make Partnerships

The two main things taking the attention of your potential patients right now are school and work. So instead of competing with those two things; partner with them! If you’re a chiropractor, hit the schools! A big concern for parents is the heft of backpacks their kids carry. Some schools are doing away with lockers for safety reasons and that means kids have to haul around all their books.

Offer to do a talk on backpack safety on the first parent’s night of the year (usually within a few weeks of classes starting). The parents are already at the school, so you have an automatic audience!

Human resources departments are always looking for ways to improve employee health because it saves them money both in insurance premiums and productivity lost to sick days. What are some large employers in your area who could benefit from wellness talks? If you have an employer near you that has shift workers, offer to talk about how to get good sleep. The WHO has classified working nights as a probable carcinogen. There’s your opening pitch. Not only is poor sleep dangerous to a worker’s overall health, but it’s also dangerous on the job. Lack of sleep is responsible for 274,000 workplace accidents a year.

Hit the Field

School sports are another area getting into high gear as we go into fall. One of the most controversial aspects of kids playing sports is head injuries. In the not too distant future, we may see sports like football eliminated in many schools. Until then, there are still plenty of kids who play and you can teach parents and coaches how to keep them safe. Helmet

Of course, head injuries aren’t the only injuries student athletes suffer. There’s plenty of room to talk about other safety measures and even things like proper nutrition and hydration for young athletes.

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like…

Christmas is how the lyric finishes and while it seems to start earlier and earlier each year, there are still some holidays between now and then you can incorporate into your marketing. Halloween is a fun holiday to do a bit of marketing.

If you have a lot of children or families in your practice, have a contest during the week of Halloween for the best costume. Even if you just stay late and hand out candy at the office, this is a good will gesture for your community. Candy

For Thanksgiving and Christmas, you can hold a food or coat drive. Coat drives are especially effective because nearly everyone has a few in their closets they’d be happy to get rid of and see go to a good home. Make sure you have gift certificates for sale and that you let patients know they’re available. What’s better than the gift of health?

You can also hold an open house. Do this soon after Thanksgiving as people tend to get booked up with parties and events the closer we get to Christmas. A great way to get people to attend is to hold a raffle. Sell tickets for a small fee with the money going to a charity. The winner must be present at the time the names are drawn in order to claim the prize.

Use it or Lose it

HSA dollars that is. Many plans require that the money set aside in an HSA account be spent on qualifying medical expenses by the end of the calendar year or it’s lost. This is your patient’s hard earned money! Encourage them to make appointments before the end of the year, not only so you can help them devise health-related New Year’s Resolutions, but so they don’t lose that money too.

Health is a Priority

Health is a priority for most people, but life can get in the way. Devise your marketing strategies during this time of year to push those health priorities to the forefront. It will mean better health for your patients and a healthier practice for you!

Transitioning To A Concierge Practice

by Dr. Kelley Mulhern Leave a Comment

To transition or not to transition, that is the question. What are the factors involved in transitioning to a concierge practice?

Education

The biggest fear most doctors have when they consider transitioning to a concierge practice is the loss of patients. When many patients hear the words “concierge practice” they think they can’t afford it.

This is where education comes in. Educating your patients on what this transition means is the single biggest factor that will determine whether your transition succeeds or fails. That means you will have to go above and beyond to help your patients understand that yes, they can still see you and no, they won’t go broke doing so.

Sending out a letter detailing the changes is a good way to start the education process. Next, you many consider scheduling one on one meetings with each patient or with those you think would be interested in the idea or conversely, those you think will be most resistant, to explain what the transition will entail.

If you have too many patients for one on one meetings, you can hold an informal “Ask the doctor” night where patients or potential patients, are free to ask any questions about the new practice model.

Preparing Staff

Your staff is more important than ever when you are transitioning to a concierge practice. The first thing most prospective patients will ask is if you accept insurance. If all they get in reply is a curt, “No,” most will hang up, and you will lose a patient.

There are many ways to structure a concierge practice. It doesn’t automatically mean that patients can’t use their insurance. Will your office file on their behalf and assign the benefits to them? That means that they are paying out of pocket up front, but you want the first half of this sentence to be the first thing your staff tells a potential patient, not the second half.

If you are going to eliminate insurance from your practice entirely, people will feel much more comfortable if they know the pricing up front. Think about it, would you order from a restaurant that had no prices on the menu? Establish a price list for your services and make it widely available; on your site, in your office, and included with any advertising you do.

Realistic Expectations

While you may eventually make more money with a concierge practice, it may not happen right away. And not all of the money will come from your patients. A lot of what makes concierge medicine appealing is the ability to get rid of lots of overhead which will save you money over time.

You need a big runway to launch this; some experts recommend having as much as $100,000-250,000 set aside to sustain your practice during the transition.

The ability to see fewer patients, spend more time with each one and make more money is also appealing, but when people are paying out of pocket, some will demand greater access to the doctor. Know that you may be dealing with patients after office hours than you are currently. Your days may not be as rushed and hectic as they were when you had a traditional practice, but they may be more intense.

Market, Market, Market

While some existing patients may not be interested in being with a concierge practice, there are plenty of people out there who would love to find one and so far haven’t found one in the area. There are also people who have not yet heard of the concept but will be really interested in this kind of care.

When you decide you’re transitioning to a concierge, you need to be prepared to mount a full-on marketing blitz. If you have been frugal with your marketing budget, you may need to spend some real money while you’re transitioning to a concierge practice. You need to do some market research to make sure the money you are spending is reaching a receptive audience.

Find Support

Concierge medicine is in its infancy but it’s been around for about two decades now so plenty have come before you. Some have failed, and some have succeeded, and both have advice to share. Seek out other practitioners and ask if they would be willing to talk to you about what worked and what did not work for them.

A Worthwhile Transition

If you are considering transitioning to a concierge practice because you think it will make you wildly rich, you’re doing it for the wrong reason and it likely won’t. But if you’re doing it because you want to provide your patients with a higher level of care, the transition will be worthwhile.

Financial Challenges Facing Physicians

by Dr. Kelley Mulhern Leave a Comment

There are unique financial challenges facing physicians. We earn more than the average person but we have some problems that our contemporaries do not.

Student Loan Debt

The average student loan debt for recent medical school graduates is nearly a staggering $200,000. The average salary for a primary care physician is $195,000 per year, the average for a specialist is $284,000, the average for an “alternative care provider” can be anywhere from $30,000 to $150,000. Add on another $8,000 in non-education related debt (most likely due to credit cards) and perhaps a mortgage. Being a resident or new in practice may not pay well, and there isn’t time for a second job, so a lot of life’s expenses get charged.

You Have a Late Start: Part One

Doctors start their careers full time much later than their contemporaries. Most people who attend college will start working full time in their early to mid-twenties. A doctor may not start earning full-time money until their early thirties. That also means they get a later start on paying back student loans.

You Live the “Doctor Lifestyle”

Rolex You worked hard to become a doctor, and you want to reap the benefits of that hard work. For many doctors, that means living the “doctor lifestyle” complete with big house, fancy car, expensive watches, vacation home; you get the idea. All of that not only adds up, but it might also be distracting you from paying off your student loans and investing.

You Have a Late Start: Part Two

Because doctors spend so many years pursuing education, they get a later start at other important things too; namely starting a family and investing. Delaying parenthood means you have less time to save for college if you want to help fund your children’s education. Currently, the average cost of one year of college ranges from $9,410-$32,405 depending on whether the college is public or private. By the time a newly minted doctor’s kids are ready for college, we can only shudder at how much higher those numbers will be.

The most important way to grow your money through investing isn’t how much you invest but how long you invest. Here’s an example of the power of time when it comes to investing:

Person A invests $10,000, and because they started young, that money is invested for 40 years. Person B, a doctor, gets a later start and invests $50,000 for 20 years. Both get a rate of return of 7%, which is average over a long period of time. Neither person invests any more money, just those initial amounts.

At the end of 40 years, Person A’s $10,000 has turned into $149,744.58. The doctor’s $50,000 has turned into $193,484.22. The doctor only made $43,739.64 more even though they invested five times more than what Person A invested. That is the power of time when it comes to investing your money.

What Can You Do?

The first thing to focus on is debt repayment, especially credit card debt which can have interest rates well into the 20% range. Student loan debt usually has a lower interest rate, so that can be secondary to credit card debt. You need a plan to pay off debt, just throwing whatever is left over at the end of the month isn’t good enough. It’ll take longer and cost you more. Follow either the stack or snowball method of debt repayment. Both have their pros and cons, but both are effective methods of debt repayment. Snow

Once you have all, or at least a big chunk, of your debt out of the way, you can focus on investing. Don’t let the fact that you’re late to the party make you ignore one of the most important tenets of investing; limiting risk. The same rules apply to you that apply to any other investors, ignore them at your (portfolio’s) peril.

Another big factor is avoiding “the doctor lifestyle” and lifestyle inflation, which can happen to anyone. Lifestyle inflation means that every bump in income means a big upgrade in lifestyle, a bigger house, a newer car, first-class flights and five-star resorts instead of flying coach and booking an AirBnB. Invest those income bumps rather than upgrading every facet of your life.

If the thought of managing your money is just too much to deal with when you’re busy with your career and family, there’s nothing wrong with getting some help and advice. There are a lot of generic financial advisors out there, but because of the unique situations doctors find themselves in, look for one who specializes in helping doctors manage their finances. One size does not fit all when it comes to financial advice.

You Still Have an Advantage

Don’t let all this get you down. As a physician, you have a great deal of earning power and, unlike some jobs where you’ll be pushed out upon reaching a certain age or physically unable to do a job anymore, you have many years ahead of you to earn money.

Patient Education

by Dr. Kelley Mulhern Leave a Comment

Patient education can make or break your practice. No amount of marketing can make up for a lack of patient education.

What Do You Do?

It sounds like a ridiculous question, but ask the average person what an orthopedist does. Answers might range from “I don’t know” to, “Something to do with knees.” But what if you’re an orthopedist who specializes in shoulders? A potential patient with a shoulder problem might pass you by because they don’t know orthopedists do more than deal with knee injuries.

It’s up to you to educate patients on what you do…everything you do.

How Does That Help Me?

The most important part of patient education is to teach how what you do can help a patient. (Also, why is it important for the patient that they should take care of their health issue?) Sure, fixing knee pain takes care of the immediate problem, but what else happens when the knee is fixed? When the body is taken care of, walking and exercising are less painful, favorite hobbies can be resumed, and quality of life is improved.

Educate patients on the positive “side effects” of using your services to resolve their current health issues — and to prevent future health concerns.

Your Site is Your Chalkboard

In 2012, 72% of people used the internet to find health information, and you can bet that number is even higher now. This means that one of your first (and best!) opportunities for patient education is your website. You want all the nuts and bolts such as your hours and if you accept insurance. However, you want more meaningful forms of education available, too. Tell your potential patients what you can do to improve their lives.

This is where having a section of your site devoted to blogging can be useful. It’s a more personal way to connect with patients and tell them all the great things you can do for them and their health.

Videos are Worth a Million Words

While you have patients in your waiting room, you have a captive audience. Rather than fill that time with outdated copies of People Magazine, set up televisions to play patient education videos. Sure, a few people might read brochures or check their FaceBook while they wait, but others will allow their attention to be captured by something on TV. Leverage the time patients spend in your reception area by using it to educate them on your practice.

Train the Troops

Make sure your front desk staff knows how to properly educate patients on the telephone. This is especially important if you don’t accept insurance. If that is the first thing a prospective patient hears, they may say, “Thank you,” and hang up.

Do you file with insurance as a courtesy? Do you have low-cost monthly plans that make your practice affordable for those who don’t have insurance? These should be the first things your staff is trained to convey to prospective patients calling with insurance inquiries.

Patient Seminars

Seminar Holding patient seminars is a great way to share your knowledge, educate current patients, and engage with potential new patients in a relaxed, informal setting. You can demystify procedures that seem “scary” to some people, showcase services that current and future patients may be unaware you offer, and increase awareness of yourself and your practice within your community.

These seminars can be very inexpensive, especially if you have space to hold them in your office. You’ll want to advertise the event on all your social media outlets and perhaps take out some ads in local media. Patient word of mouth will likely be your best advertisement, so encourage patients to bring along a friend or family member.

Always Be Teaching

Every encounter – physical or virtual – you have with a patient or potential patient is an opportunity to educate, and that’s an opportunity to grow your business. Patient education is one of the most important aspects of any practice. Always be teaching!