Intro
Hey, I'm Dr. Ariana DeMers. I'm an orthopedic sports medicine surgeon, and I have successfully integrated orthobiologics into my busy practice so that I can provide a continuum of care and treat patients who are in the gap. The gap is this gray area in orthopedics where standard conservative treatments have not been effective, but surgery may not be warranted. And we usually tell our patients, come back when it's worse. What? These are your patients coming to you for help. Orthobiologics is that solution that can fill the gap and help you treat your patients who are in your office looking to you for help. Orthobiologics can also be an excellent treatment for frustrating problems without good surgical outcomes. This podcast will help you create the orthobiologics business that will make you love your job again. We will focus on value of orthobiologics, patient selection, how to talk to your patients about money, office setup, and other logistics. If this is something you've always wanted but don't know where to start, join me in "The Business of Orthobiologics" podcast.
Dr. Ariana
Hi, welcome. We're going to talk today a little bit about the Million Dollar Consult. Here's what we're going to cover. Do you schedule it or do you do it on the fly? Do you charge or do you bundle? Do you send marketing education before the consult? Make sure that it's goal-oriented, and then get the correct diagnosis, give them all the options, and we'll talk about the read-the-room technique, step-by-step guide, a quick money discussion, and focusing on the goals, not how you get there, but the goal on the other side. So, here are some of the items that you need to decide what's best for your practice. Who gets a consult? Is there anyone-- is there any selection criteria? Do you pre-qualify? Is it a free consult versus a paid consult? Do you do the consult with every patient that you see or just select diagnoses? And then we have to decide what the goal of the consult is. Is it just to educate? Is it to provide solutions for your patients? To guide your patients, to have a treatment with you, to sell products? To provide the best treatments for your patients, and then make sure all the options are given. Now, remember, there's only one you, and there's not enough hours in the day. You know your patients best, and you know yourself best. Remember, you can always change tactics and change decisions. That's no problem. Okay, so when we're scheduling the consult, I'm going to recommend charging at the time of the scheduling of the consultation. That way, the patients have more skin in the game and they'll show. If it's a free consultation, just be aware that that can have a high no-show rate. And then you get to set expectations of education, guidance, and value as to what they're going to expect. And then make sure that they understand that this is a personalized consultation to determine if they are a candidate for these orthobiologic treatments. Next, I recommend pre-framing the patient with either written and or video content before they're in the room. We send a welcome video prior to entry to our practice, and we also educate on orthobiologics. At the time of the patient's arriving to our practice, we then identify patient goals, reasons why they're here, maybe pain points when they're checking in, and my nurse is talking to them while they're rooming them. Now, I want to share with you a technique called Read the Room. This is a rapid-fire technique. This technique helps to probe the whys, the deep, dark secrets between why they're here as a consultation seeking treatment from you. This helps to clarify what they're hoping to achieve. And what you do is you run through a bunch of common reasons that other patients have come to see you, or, you know, common reasons that people are here, you know. Is it pain? Is it a dysfunction? Sometimes people feel like they are unable to do the things they love. Have you been held back? And you just keep rapid firing and you're going to see one that lights their face up. And that's the one that you really kind of need to hone in on as a clue as to the driver why they're there. And they won't, a lot of times tell you. And then what you can then do is verbalize your understanding of their why. And then also ask what they would consider a win. You can help them based on your consultation to decide what that win would be. You know, maybe their reason is because they couldn't pick their grandkid up and they got embarrassed. And so you can say, well, okay. So if we were able to solve that problem for you where you could pick up your grandchild without even thinking about it, would this be a win for you? Or is there something else that you are requiring? The next step in this consultation is to clarify and confirm the diagnosis and be really, really sure that this is the diagnosis that is causing the discomfort or the pain or any of those things that is happening. This is critical because we have to really do this well because without a proper diagnosis, any solution that we give them may or may not work if it's not the right solution to the problem. So really, really, really critical, this is my number one goal is to clarify and solidify the diagnosis. Then all the contributing factors that you may also need to modify during your treatment plan. Next, we give them a comprehensive treatment option presentation. We present all treatment options. From nothing, they can do nothing, and they're just here for education all the way up until surgical intervention. We then educate on orthobiologic treatments and review their orthobiologic treatment options that are for their treatment diagnosis. We then want to go ahead and evaluate the patient's medical history, severity of the condition, and lifestyle factors to determine if they're suitable candidates for orthobiologic treatments or not. We've got to discuss those potential risks, benefits, and alternatives. Now, we also want to discuss that candidacy expectation with the MOT tool that I've talked about earlier. This is talking about the longevity of the treatment, expectations, invasiveness, how much it costs, and how long it lasts. And then obviously we use shared decision-making with the patient based on the best science available. And we tie those options that we previously presented back to achieving the goal that they set and make sure that the treatment options allow them to then achieve their goals. The next step would be addressing any questions and concerns and then laying out a customized treatment recommendation. Oh, the money. Yes, just spit it out. The money discussion stresses everybody out. Everybody hates talking about money, and we know it's on their mind, and they're worried and they're nervous and they feel judged to talk about money. But honestly, just spit it out there. Put out the price, discuss the cost of the procedure, potential insurance coverage, or available payment options. If there are financing plans available, just tell them. You have to put it out there. You can't beat around the bush or tell them or somebody else will tell them. Just put out the price and make no judgments about it. Don't say, oh, gosh, well, it is kind of expensive, or, yeah, it's just a mirror you know, X, Y, or Z. The less judgment you can apply to this the better. Just put it out there, and they can decide whether it's valuable to achieve these goals or not. Then you can help them decide based on their goals, what may benefit them the most. You focus on the goals. You don't sell a bridge. You sell what's on the other side of the bridge. You don't sell the how you're going to get to the goals. You sell the goals. You focus on the goals of what they're going to be able to achieve after this procedure. Then we talk about the next steps, and you have to make this super easy. Make it really, really easy for them. Just get scheduled. So schedule a procedure. Offer the patient an opportunity to schedule the orthobiologics procedure during the consultation. Coordinate with your clinic scheduling team to find a suitable appointment date and time for them. Walk them up there. Run them through the schedule. This is important. And then follow-up and patient support. This is so, so important. If they make a decision to schedule during your consultation, make sure that they don't feel left out in the cold. Provide contact information for how the patient can reach out if they have additional questions or need further clarification or maybe just need to reschedule. Assure the patient that your clinic is here for them throughout the process. So, here's your quick 12-step guide for effective orthobiologics consults. Super straightforward. Number one, greet and establish rapport. Number two, actively listen to the patient history. Educate the patient, explain treatment options. Number five is assess the candidacy. Sixth, set realistic expectations. This is not magic. This is not pixie dust. These are real treatments that have real opportunities for benefit, but there are some drawbacks to some of the opportunities. Number seven, address the concerns. Number eight, customize the treatment plan. Number nine, financial considerations and just talk about the money, give them a price. Number 10, schedule the darn procedure. Number 11, follow-up and patient support is critical. And then 12, super important, gratitude that they came to see you and that they're trusting you enough for their care. Be thankful. They can go anywhere. They chose to come here. Express that gratitude, and be excited that you have the ability to help them. So what we have is patient goals, all the options, and schedule the procedure. That's that million-dollar consult. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk about our next topic in the next session. Thanks.
Outro
This has been "The Business of Orthobiologics" podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you want to know more, please join us on the website, "PRP-Now.com", and click on the FREE masterclass. Also, don't forget to "SUBSCRIBE" to this podcast to get more guidance on integrating PRP in your busy practice. Bye for now.