Lecture 5.2 - The Art of Efficient Scheduling

Discover the key to a seamless patient experience by establishing a clear scheduling process and optimizing for orthobiologics procedures. Create an impeccable patient journey with education resources that turn consultations into valuable insights, not sales pitches!
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Seize the chance to refine your patient journey, enhance communication, and boost financial management. Listen and implement for success!

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Transcript

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

Okay, welcome to Scheduling Patients. This is so exciting. We are now going to dive into the importance of patient scheduling in the successful implementation of your orthobiologic in your practice. Efficient scheduling is the key to ensuring a smooth patient experience. We'll also review patient acquisition as well as discuss the financial management piece. Let's begin by establishing a clear and efficient scheduling process. We've got to make sure you have decided how you're going to schedule your consults and how you're going to schedule your procedures. I also want you to clarify the rules and responsibilities of your staff involved in the scheduling and what your ideal schedule looks like. Make sure that you identify what patients will be on the schedule, how you will identify potential candidates, and how you will make sure that they have the time that they need in your schedule. Definitely optimize your scheduling system for the orthobiologics procedures. I do recommend setting aside a day to do orthobiologics consults and procedures. As the mindset for this service, for cash patients, may be different for the patient as well as for you. Additionally, make sure you have effective communication with your patients for a seamless experience. Please make sure that you have created an impeccable patient journey, as well as the education resources to make the consultation process easy and not feel like a sales job, but more like a valuable education and guidance section to be able to help clarify and identify why the patient should be moving forward with orthobiologics. When you're scheduling these procedures, make sure you provide clear instructions on how the patient should prepare for their procedures. You may want to create handouts on how to prepare, handouts on frequently asked questions, and then definitely manage the patient expectations regarding timing, both for blood draw, for procedure, and then expectations of downtime and when to follow up. Your scheduling process should be both efficient and flexible. Be prepared to adapt to changes and emergencies while minimizing disruptions. Consider scheduling tools or software to streamline this process. Initially, keep your schedule light and be able to take enough time, as well as adjust the processes to better fit the clinic, the practitioner, and the patient's needs. Action items for you are to develop a standardized patient scheduling process, train your staff in efficient scheduling, processes, and procedures, and confirm your scheduling tools that you're going to be using or the software to improve that efficiency. Obviously, we've talked a lot about this, patient scheduling guidelines, and communication templates in Module 3. Just make sure that when you're scheduling, make sure you consider your needs for just a scheduler or an electronic medical record, or a customer relations manager that will best fit your needs. Don't try and reinvent the wheel. And if you don't like it, you can always change it. So start small and inexpensive and pick one that does the job. Let's talk a little bit about patient acquisitions and really identifying that target patient and target patient demographics. And then obviously, you create a message and craft a message that resonates with those potential patients. You select your marketing channels, including digital print, referrals, and online. Your existing patient population may be ideal. When you're building and maintaining your website, make sure that you adhere to the FDA and FTC guidelines regarding orthobiologics. Definitely leverage social media and your online reviews and then build your referral networks and talk to your current professionals that you are already referring to you and establish those relations. Let them know that you're going to be starting an orthobiologics clinic, what it is, who the ideal patients are, and that you would love to help take care of their patients with this new cutting-edge treatment. Make sure that you have effective communication collaboration and create an easy way for other physicians and practitioners to send you their patients. And then offer value to potential partners that maybe you'd like to provide them with an orthobiologic injection so that they know the power of orthobiologics and can educate their patients on their experience and send them to you. Definitely, when we're talking about patient acquisition, we want to develop the materials to educate the patients about orthobiologics. And then also when they're in the clinic, ensuring that you have informed consent and that you have already answered all of their questions. So action items for patient acquisition include that 10-step marketing plan, making sure that your website is compliant and that you have excellent patient education materials, and then make sure you identify those potential referral partners. So go ahead and use the previous module templates and resources. Make sure you're compliant with the FDA and FTC regarding orthobiologics and leverage those referral networks. I wanted to talk a little bit about the financial management and billing. Just make sure that you have a way to understand the billing and coding, whether you're seeing patients from your existing practice in an insurance-based model or you're doing a standalone cash practice, make sure that they know one way or the other whether this is going to be covered under insurance or this is cash-only and outside of insurance. Regarding Medicare, you have to be compliant with Medicare regulations. And if they're going to be seeing you for cash-based or non-covered entities, make sure you have that ABN sign, that Advanced Beneficiary Notice. Regarding pricing, I want you to make sure that you have your pricing strategy completed and set the right price point for orthobiologic treatments. I'm going to recommend that you set it at a minimum of $1,500. That has been researched and that also takes into account, your cost of client acquisition, as well as making sure that you have overhead and all of your staffing taken care of. Additionally, make sure that you have considered strategies for increasing the value proposition for patients, understanding that it's not just cost but value, and explain and demonstrate why it's so valuable, whether it's a decreased downtime, no surgery, or just a more natural application to help the patient heal. When you are taking cash, make sure that you have a way to track and analyze your cash payments, whether that's your electronic medical record or regular financial software. Make sure you can identify how much is coming from cash, how much is coming from insurance, and where there are areas for revenue growth as well as cost savings. When you have patients who are paying for out-of-pocket expenses, make sure you have options for payment and explore those various options, whether it's Square, Stripe, medical financing, the prepayment, or cash check, those kinds of things, and then really optimize that payment collection process. Obviously, we want to be transparent in the pricing and review that pricing, but please try-- best practices are to collect a payment upfront when they schedule this orthobiologic injection-based therapy so that you can use that to pay for the kit, any other costs that are going to be associated with this injection. When we are talking about pricing, it is best practice for the physician to tell the patient how much it's going to cost. I want you to review your pricing and have it memorized and then practice saying it out loud. Then after that, don't say anything else. There should be no justification as to why it is that price. That's just the price. Action items. Please train your staff on billing and coding recommendations as well as the communication with the patient about non-coverage. Make sure that you have your pricing strategies completed and your financial tracking tools available, as well as a variety of payment options, check, cards, care credit for the orthobiologics procedures, including flexible spending accounts, and health savings accounts. Make sure you have the ability to take all of those different payment options. Thanks so much for listening. I'm so excited for you to get ready to schedule your patient for these orthobiologic treatments.

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.