Emails & Contact

Right after putting up the last post and mentioning contact with patients and clients to keep your services in their mind and let them know that they matter to you, I stumbled upon this article, It's no LOL: Few US doctors answer e-mails from patients. If you don't use email to correspond with patients, it's worth the read.

On our clinic websites, www.SFPhysicalTherapy.com and www.WestBayPT.com, we have all of our therapists' emails listed. We also put them directly on our business cards, the ones we hand out to patients. It makes for an easy way to interact with patients, send them occasional updates and reminders, and provide them another level of access. The remarkable thing is that it has hardly ever been abused.

And as Dr. Sands puts it in the article, "Any message that takes more than two volleys back and forth should not be done by e-mail." At that point you just pick up the phone or recommend that the patient come in to see you.

If you are not using email to communicate with patients, consider it and maybe run a short pilot. You might be surprised at the results.

What’s a Patient Worth?

I wanted to first thank Jerry and Sturdy for the opportunity to post on their exciting new practice business website.

I’m David Straight, PT and my passion is helping physical therapy private practices with marketing especially through the use of the Internet. My company provides physical therapy private practices with top quality and affordable:
· Websites
· Newsletters
· Survey systems
· Search engine listing
· Pay-per-click advertising
· Corporate identity – logos and stationery

I wanted to talk about a concept that isn’t taught in school and is often overlooked by new practice owners and seasoned PT professionals alike. It is the concept of “lifetime market value”.

Lifetime market value describes the value of a patient or referral source over the lifetime of your business. Let’s think of this concept in terms of a patient. When one patient comes in your door and you see him/her for one course of treatment, you may make, say $800, for the sake of this discussion. If you treat that patient well, exceed their expectations, they may come back to you 3 to 4 times over the lifetime of your business. In essence, that patient is really worth $3200.00. You can quickly see why it is so important to provide the best service possible and the potential rewards for you hard work.

Let’s take the concept a step further. The patient goes back to the doctor and talks you up. That same patient also tells two friends. The lifetime value of that patient could then be worth tens of thousands of dollars.

How does this concept relate to what my company, www.e-rehab.com does? We provide you with a website that will provide a great image of your practice, answers FAQ’s, and describes how patients can benefit from PT. Our newsletter system welcomes patients to the practice even before their initial evaluation and stays in touch with them after discharge.

The Five Second Marketing Plan
If you want to be successful in a service business, here is a marketing plan that is sure to lead to success:
1. Realize that your patients are customers and they have expectations!
2. Exceed those expectations.
3. Look for ways to improve your service every day.

My parting thoughts are that you need to realize the lifetime market value of your customers (your patients), provide great and dynamic customer service, and if you need help using the most powerful communications tool to do this (i.e. the Internet) give me a call.

David Straight, PT, MPT, OCS is the President of www.E-rehab.com. He can be reached at 800-468-5161, email: dave@e-rehab.com or on the web at www.e-rehab.com .

New Resources Coming

We're working on several projects to get more content up and available for you.

In the meantime, send me an email telling me what you would like to see on this blog and on our website: www.JDSMManagement.com.

The current plan is to add more information from experts in marketing, billing, metrics, entity formation, asset protection and HR. What we need to know is what products will make your life easier? What would you like to see offered to help you run your practice better or make your start up easier?

If you have suggestions or burning questions about your business or practice, please send them along to sturdy@jdsmmanagement.com. I'd love to hear from you.