Sometimes using social media is not the best way to get new patients

In today’s technology-driven world, most of us use lots of it in an effort to increase efficiency and reduce the drone of repetitive minutia in our lives. It asks us to increasingly invest our time in it for the exchange of making our lives easier and more productive.

But does it?

You need water to live, but you can also drown in it. I coach of some of the finest DC’s on the planet and most of them rely heavily on technology, social media, EHR, billing software, etc.

They all are helpers; they are not the Holy Grail.

Spoiler alert:  many of these DCs were already successful before, during and after the next ‘big thing’ in technology.

While the rest of the profession fawns over new patients as being the only solution to your practice woes, TNR has a refreshing counterintuitive approach:

Now, new patients are indeed important, but you have to ask yourself what’s happened to all of the previous new patients you’ve had.

In other words, what will you do with them once they walk through your door?

New patients may be the problem, but retention is the solution.

Keeping new patients or retention is less frustrating and more economically satisfying than plowing through low-quality new patients…whether you attracted them online or offline.

The point is to embrace whatever works for you, but don’t get dependent or tied to any one method of attracting new patients.

Here’s why: the vehicles of attracting new patients come and go, as well as constant change. How you care for patients is based on principles that don’t change. Care for the patient like you would care for your child. Their best interests will also be your best interests.

Do you remember that sweet paying insurance that turned into a nightmare? You thought it was the golden goose and would never end laying the golden eggs. You became dependent on it and then it dried up. Continue to adapt to the changing vehicles, but don’t bet the mortgage on any one method.

When you know how to treat your patients in a sacred fashion and recognize them and understand them, they reward you by being a long-term patient, sending in referrals, and they are willing to pay inside or outside of insurance.

The more things change, the more they stay the same!