I just finished a Zoom TEAM TRAINING WORKSHOP with one of our partner colleagues, and we had a great team-wide discussion on the three main keys to managing practice metrics:
1. Having a clearly defined objective for each metric (what good is checking my acuity if you don’t have that objective regarding 20/20?).
2. The entire team knows the outcome relative to that objective.
3. Remembering the entire point of tracking metrics – that we have opportunity for department-specific and team-wide dialogue about IMPACT!
What that team and I have discovered as we’ve progressed through the Training Workshops is the practice is doing a fantastic job of engaging the team in regard to outcomes. We’ve also discovered we still have great opportunity to further clarify and bring the team closer to defined objectives for these vital signs, and to a team-wide understanding of the extent to which we’re achieving them.
As you well know from our series on IMPACT, such is the case for nearly all practice teams when it comes to managing practice production. Keeping that in mind, and having covered Receipts, Revenue-per-Patient and Capture Rate so far, let’s talk IMPACT on the final metric we’re tracking together – Production Scheduled.
This one comes by many names – Production Capacity, Production Booked, Appointment Capacity, Booked Ratio and others. We’re calling it Production Scheduled in our tracking together, as this seems most descriptive of the question we’re really asking and managing here – how “booked up” are we?
We get our official answer to that question each week by dividing the number of comprehensive exam slots filled by the number of comprehensive exam slots available in the same period. I like to see this one at a good 95%-plus. I’ll add that we figure this based on slots for which the patient actually showed up, and don’t include no shows. So the stat keeper here simply counts (at the end of each day) the exam slots for which a patient actually showed up, a little adding of those daily numbers for the week, a little elementary division, and we have it.
If you’ve been tracking metrics for awhile, you know this one is the production tone-setter all day long. Every other production metric we’re managing, both collectively and in our individual practices, pretty much gets its life from this single vital sign. So a program for managing metrics is not a program for managing metrics if the whole team isn’t watching this one like a hawk and taking on-going initiatives for IMPACT.
Booked Solid Strategy #1 –Pre-Appointing
I recall decades ago the looks I’d get when recommending this one: ”Wait a minute, WHAT? … You want us to schedule their next year’s (or two year’s) appointment now? Are you nuts?
But this one is real simple for me. Pre-Appointing is the single most effective patient retention strategy of all time. Period. And the more uncertain the times, the more certain I want to make my schedule. My question now is the same as my question back in the day – why in the world would any practice owner not do this?
I literally had this conversation with a client yesterday. He and his partner (his son) are getting ready to spend some really big money on a practice expansion, and as they’re getting ready to pull the trigger, his question to me was one I hear a lot: “Tom, how do you see the future of independent optometry? Is this something we should be doing right now?”
Perhaps you’re pondering a similarly important decision that requires serious investment of resources, so I’m glad to share my answer here. “Dave, I think the future is fantastic. Clearly there will be fewer of us, but that’s not a new trend. But I’m seeing consumers valuing the relationship they have with our practices, unique in all of healthcare, as much as ever. As long as we keep teaching them to do that!”
I likened it to sailing and wind. If you’re going to hoist a new sail, a sail involving a major capital investment, let’s hoist that sucker into a stiff sailing wind! When we put that sail to the wind, let’s make sure it’s blowing well and predictably. And without a doubt, the absolute best way to do that is pre-appointing.
That said, let’s recall my “to live by” Marketing Rule #6: If it’s good for the patient, it’s good for the practice. What will never change in my life, and I hope ours together, is that this is the guiding principle of all marketing strategy.
Perhaps you’ve heard the story of Lloyd, which I tell all over the world. He was a patient in a client’s practice in Iowa thirty-plus years ago that happened to be in for an exam the very day I was observing in the practice. It had been five years since his last exam, and when the doctor asked if he’d been receiving the recall notices (which were a cartoon of Garfield), to which Lloyd said what so many poorly educated consumers (including our very own patients) might say even today – “Yea, but I’ve been seeing fine.” I will never forget the look on that man’s face, nor the feeling I had taking this all in, when he learned he’d suffered an irrecoverable loss of vision from Glaucoma (which his mother had, it turned out), and we could not just fix it this time by whipping-up a new pair of specs. What I’ll say today is I’m sorry for Lloyd, but I’m grateful these decades since for this experience that changed my life as a marketing consultant.
There’s the reason we do pre-appointing. Right there. But it sure is nice that what’s good for the patient (best vision for life because of best chance of detection because THAT’S THE WAY WE THINK IN THIS PRAcTICE!) is good for the practice (a confirmation-based recall system is literally twice as effective on first contact as a solicitation-based model).
Also, remember that setting an appointment a year in advance is no longer anything “extraordinary.” Most of us pre-appoint all kinds of things now months or even years in advance. My wife pre-appoints her brain scans two years out after having had brain surgery a few Christmases ago, and I 100% guarantee you she will not miss that appointment. It doesn’t matter if they call her, text her, email her, send a post card, hire a service to do it or do it themselves (that debate is totally overrated – they all work fine!), she’ll get the message. And I’ll bet my favorite fly rod she’ll be there.
One last thing. There is a difference between doing pre-appointing and doing it right. With my eye doctor of nearly forty years retired last year, I saw my new eye doctor (although a twenty-year friend) just two weeks ago. As I was checking in with the front desk, literally two minutes after meeting the receptionist (who was named Tom), he was setting the pre-appoint with me for next year. Although I love the tenacity, DON’T DO IT THAT WAY! The critical importance of the pre-appoint must always be established by the doctor first, then come the logistics with staff. Marketing has an order of things!
OK, as my son, Dane, would say, LET’S GO.
Booked Solid Strategy #2 –Diagnostic Feedback
Another game-breaker here, Colleagues.
Remember that Active Rate (the metric for average length of time between scheduled exams across the patient base for a given period of time) is more a matter of the future of vision than vision. I may be seeing just fine, but the conditions of the structures of my eyes are changing nonetheless, and the key is our assessment of how those changes are occurring vs. what is normal and expected, right?
So, again using my own experience as a patient two short weeks ago, let’s talk about diagnostic feedback.
Think of yourself going to the doctor today “for testing.” Think about what that implies and means to you. And think about what things you want to know about that testing.
My decades of study on this have revealed very clearly that when a patient (doesn’t matter of what discipline) is having “testing,” she wants to know four precise things in a precise chronology:
1. What you’re doing. Like EXACTLY what you’re doing. As in, “Tom, this test is called ophthalmoscopy, which is not a vision test, but more like a future of vision or eye health test, that helps us …”
2. Why you’re doing it, and for what you’re looking. As in, “What we know, Tom, is the condition of these structures in your eyes will change over time. What we don’t know is will those changes be as we expect, and when they’re not…”
3. What you’re seeing WHILE YOU’RE SEEING IT! As in, “Tom, I have a beautiful view of your retina now, which is the one place we can actually see the vascular tissue, and I’m seeing a very healthy retina here. I’m really pleased with this. Look up just a bit … Good, looking now at your optic nerve …”
4. Your end conclusion, Doctor, and when you want to do this again, as in, “Tom, you passed ophthalmoscopy with flying colors. But we want to remember these conditions will change over time, and we always want to make sure those are changes are what we expect them. to be So this is an evaluation we’ll want to do again in X (time) … By the way, if the marketing guy tries to tell you when to see your patient, fire him! That’s 100% your call, Doctor, not mine (nor the insurance company’s). My job is simply to help make darn sure it happens that way!
The really good news, the great BLESSING, in fact, of optometry, is that our patient doesn’t have to be sick to experience the absolute pinnacle of diagnostic care in our offices. We can give them the very best care the world has to offer, coupled with our complete and undivided attention, and without a single terrible thing having to be happen. We can give them our utmost when they’re at their best, not just when they’re sick. It’s just not typically that way in healthcare, colleagues. To get the doctor’s undivided attention, something bad typically has to be happening. It’s amazing if you think about it. Who gets to do that?!
Despite the fact that “testing” is often the GOOD NEWS in our practices, patients still want to know the exact same four things as if they’re having “testing” in the oncologist’s office. And knowing those four things totally sets the stage for retaining them as patients. Which, in turn, keeps us booked solid. Don’t you just love Marketing Rule #6?
So to quote Dane again, LET’S GO!
Production Scheduled Strategy #3 – Re-Activation
Did you ever decide to leave a provider (of health care or something else), and later decide you wanted to go back? That you’d like to give them another try or another chance? You have patients in that exact predicament right now.
They tried the internet/mail thing, the big box store or $58 for the exam and two pairs complete (and somehow ended up spending $400 – go figure). Now that they have that experience on which to base perceived value, they think of you differently – likely even more valuable – than before.
But here’s the thing, Colleagues … It’s a bit awkward now. A little embarrassing for them to come back, hat in hand, and ask you to take them back.
That’s why we need an olive branch. At least once a year, we need a full on Re-Activation Campaign. We need to put together that list of patients that haven’t responded to your recall efforts in a while (your call, but perhaps 3 years or more) and be in touch to let them know we want them back! Put a letter together FROM THE DOCTOR and blast it out there. So much to gain (for patient and practice) and literally nothing to lose.
By the way, this is a great time of year for a Re-Activation effort. Once summer comes and they’re off on that trip to Yellowstone, hold-off until after back-to-school (September).
So again, LET’S GO!
Need a Little Help with This? LET’S GO!
If it would be helpful to talk more about these and other strategies to accomplish that booked-solid Production Scheduled metric, shoot me an email or give me a call. Exactly what we’re here to do at THRIVE, Colleagues, and love doing it!
Let’s pick it up there next time …