increase surgery conversions Archives

Essential Front Desk Etiquette for Growing Your Weight Loss Practice

Posted on September 13, 2023September 13, 2023 by Karol Clark

Focus is often put on software solutions for attracting, tracking, and converting new leads into established weight loss patients. However, your team has an integral role in personalizing each step for optimal success.

While software is critically important to streamlining your practice communication and operations, your team is the personal touch that can make or break your practice growth. In particular, your front desk team can greatly influence your patient’s perception of your practice. To build a thriving weight loss practice, it is important to prioritize front desk etiquette and ensure that such customer service is continued with each patient interaction.

Exceptional front desk etiquette can create a welcoming atmosphere that fosters trust and nurtures patient loyalty. Some guidelines for cultivating excellent front desk etiquette are outlined below:

Efficient Appointment Scheduling

Efficient appointment scheduling is crucial in your weight loss practice since patients often have busy lives and tight schedules. Make sure that your scheduling team is well-trained in your appointment booking system. While some appointments may be made online, many are scheduled through your team. They should be able to offer flexible scheduling options and assist patients in finding appointments that suit their needs. Of course, this needs to be balanced with the finesse to efficiently block schedule various appointment times/types to avoid long waits in the office.

Professional and Friendly Greetings

Gone are the days of slowly sliding the glass door open after a patient approaches the front desk. Your first impression and your impression at each appointment (virtual and in office) matters. Train your team to greet patients with a warm and professional demeanor. A genuine smile and a friendly greeting can make a world of difference. Whenever possible, encourage them to use the patient’s name and to maintain eye contact throughout the greeting. A polite and welcoming tone sets a positive tone for the entire patient experience.

Effective Communication

Clear and effective communication is key to maintaining patient satisfaction and trust. Your team should be fully knowledgeable about your weight loss programs, products and services so they can provide accurate information and any associated costs. Encourage them to answer phone calls and respond to e-mails and text messages within your EMR/tracking system as promptly (same day) as possible. Such personalized and transparent communication is appreciated more than you may realize.

Confidentiality and Privacy

Of course, in healthcare, confidentiality and privacy is critically important along with following all HIPAA requirements. Ensure that your team is well trained in these requirements for all methods of patient communication. Your patients should feel confident that their personal, financial, and medical information is safe and secure.

Conflict Resolution

Inevitably, for various reasons, conflicts and misunderstandings may arise. If and when they do, your team needs to respond with professionalism and empathy. A calm and empathetic approach to conflict resolution – fully engaging, listening and recognizing the concern – can turn a potentially negative experience into a positive one.

Maintain a Clean & Organized Front Desk Area

Cleanliness and organization go a long way when it comes to impressions and promoting a sense of calm – no matter how busy you and your team may be. Encourage your team to maintain a clean and organized workspace free of clutter and food. This not only reflects your professionalism, but helps with efficiency.

Open Communication

Encourage open and transparent communication with your team. Promptly address concerns and invite feedback from your team on how to improve productivity, customer service, and efficiency. If an issue arises, address it quickly and privately in a professional manner. Offer training and constructive feedback for continuous improvement and be sure to have a chain of command in place for the rare occasions when a situation at the front desk may escalate.

Front desk etiquette is a vital component to growing your successful weight loss practice. By following these tips, you can create a welcoming and efficient environment that not only retains existing patients, but also attracts new ones through word-of-mouth referrals.

Take the time to personally test and experience any automated communication from your office as well. Being able to have a personalized touch to automated communication is well-received. In addition, having multiple ways to communicate with your patients such as secure e-mail, test and phone calls goes a long way since people have varying preferred communication methods.

If you are looking for an all-in-one seamless platform for tracking new and existing patients and communicating securely in all modes, there is a solution. You can learn more at https://www.pronexinc.com/ And, it is one of the few solutions that is inter-operable with most EMR systems and can serve as a powerful EMR as well – making it truly an all-in-one system.

About the Author: Karol Clark, MSN, RN, is a best-selling author who has a passion for helping physicians integrate effective, profitable weight loss services and retail sales into their practice while improving patient outcomes and enjoying the journey along the way. Her use of non-traditional (easy to implement) medical marketing strategies, along with her dedication to a positive ROI makes her a uniquely different and sought-after weight loss business consultant. Karol is the CEO of Weight Loss Practice Builder and the exclusive membership program for weight loss practitioners, www.BariatricBusinessAccelerator.com. She has more than 20 years of experience working with surgical and medical weight loss physicians and their teams helping them simplify creation of a profitable and enjoyable bariatric practice.

How to Effectively Manage Your New Patients from Inquiry to Weight Loss Surgery

Posted on August 1, 2023 by Karol Clark

The weight loss surgery industry is highly competitive. Effectively following up with patients interested in weight loss surgery and showcasing why your practice is their ideal choice for attaining the transformation they desire is critical to your success.

If you are reading this, then you likely know how competitive the market is for weight loss surgery practices. Traditional marketing strategies are not as effective and patients have many options to choose from for both medical and surgical weight loss. It is time to embrace this as a good thing and learn how to outshine your competitors, feel good about your engagement efforts, and create better outcomes for those you serve.

In order to make this happen, building trust, showcasing your expertise, and providing exceptional patient care and support are essential. When you effectively do this, you are better able to attract new patients and allow them to see why you are the best option for their weight loss surgery journey. Below are nine building blocks to making this a reality in your weight loss surgery practice:

Engage with Empathy

From the moment a lead reaches out to your practice, prioritize empathy and understanding. You will also want to respond promptly to their inquiries, addressing any concerns or questions with care. Create a welcoming and supportive environment during initial phone calls, e-mail exchanges and/or text communication. This helps to establish a positive first impression that should continue throughout their journey.

Educate and Inform

Nurturing leads involves providing valuable and educational content about the questions they ask most, in addition to information they should be asking about. Offer resources like informative blog posts, videos with your providers, ongoing e-mails, and helpful downloadable guides, recipes and tips for success. Educating your potential new patients helps to foster trust and positions you as an expert in the field. Much of this can be automated.

Personalize Your Communication

While there are similarities, every potential new patient has unique needs and expectations. Therefore, it is important to personalize your communication to address their specific circumstances. During your interactions and initial consultation, take the time to listen to their weight loss struggles, address their concerns and questions, and develop a plan that aligns with their desired goals while also keeping expectations realistic. Of course, you and your team likely already do this, so this is simply a reminder.

Share Success Stories

Social proof is something that prospective new patients can and will search for online. It is critical that you share your success stories and testimonials from previous patients who have achieved outstanding (yet likely typical) weight loss results with your practice. This should be shared in the form of graphics, blogs and short videos for maximum leverage and impact. Seeing this – as well as positive online reviews – instills additional confidence that you and your team are the right weight loss surgery choice.

Offer Convenient Complimentary Webinars & Seminars

It has never been as easy as it is today to share information with your current and prospective patients. While in person seminars may be great for conversion purposes, you can be just as effective with online methods. Hosting free educational webinars and seminars can be an excellent way to not only share information but what makes you and your practice unique. You can also address common misconceptions, answer questions in real-time, and create a trusting bond so that whenever they meet you in person, they feel as if they know you already. Coincidentally, when done well, they are also farther along in their decision process and often ready to get started.

Provide Ongoing Support

Nurturing leads goes well beyond your initial discussions and consultation. Support must be offered throughout their decision-making process in the communication form they prefer. This could be email, telephone, texts or one private HIPAA compliant portal that can accommodate them all. In such an option, you can also keep track of their entire journey in one place so anyone on your team can see it at a glance. Once they are an established weight loss surgery patient, continued communication as well as access to ongoing support groups and resources is important.

Address Concerns & Objections

Understand that potential patients may have concerns or objections regarding weight loss surgery. It is important to address these openly and honestly. Provide them with the information they need so they can make an educated decision. Such transparency builds credibility and trust.

Offer Flexible Payment Options

No doubt, financial considerations can be a significant factor in the decision-making process for your prospective new weight loss surgery patients. Flexible payment options, including financial payment plans or insurance coverage information can help overcome this potential barrier and create greater accessibility to the services, programs and products you offer.

Showcase Your Expertise

Your patients are searching for convenient, educational information and answers to their questions so make sure you show up in their search. You can do this economically by sharing organic (non-paid) content that showcases you and your practice’s expertise, as well as what sets you apart from your competitors. You can do this through expert articles, videos, blogs, podcast interviews, local media, among others. Demonstrating your knowledge and experience can reinforce your position as the top choice for weight loss surgery in and around your geographical area.

Every new lead that comes into your practice is an opportunity to develop a lasting relationship. One filled with trust and positive outcomes which commonly leads to additional referrals to your practice. By implementing the building blocks above, you can set yourself apart from your competitors and increase the number of patients choosing you and your practice for weight loss surgery.

If you are looking for an all-in-one platform for implementing these building blocks, there is a solution. You can learn more at https://www.pronexinc.com/

4 Valuable Patient Flow Features that Positively Impact Team Performance and Patient Care in Your Weight Loss Practice

Posted on July 6, 2023 by Karol Clark

Quality care, enhanced patient satisfaction, effective engagement, optimal resource utilization, and growth of your weight loss practice all rely on efficient patient flow management.

The days of having to manually track new leads for your weight loss practice, referral sources, secure communication, patient conversion, requirements for weight loss surgery insurance authorization, and ongoing patient education are over. While manual processes may work for a period of time, they prove to be time-consuming, prone to errors, and in the long run, more expensive than streamlined options. And, if you are serious about growing your weight loss practice, such manual efforts can hinder your progress.

As you are likely aware, Patient Flow® is one of the most robust and reliable software systems available to practitioners and health systems that actually allows you to do all of this in one place. In addition, you can save money by consolidating some of your software systems. You can also integrate Patient Flow® into your current electronic medical record for added automation to easily keep everything secure and up to date.

You may be wondering what other valuable features are available that can positively impact your weight loss practice day-to-day operations as well as your patient care processes. Below are some of these features:

Real-Time Patient Tracking

Patient Flow® software enables healthcare teams to track patients’ movement in real-time throughout their healthcare journey. This feature provides an instant overview of the status of each patient as they move from being an interested patient to an established patient. You no longer have to worry about people ‘falling through the crack’. With real-time patient tracking, your team can better manage their workflows, allocate resources efficiently, and provide more efficient care and communication. This also enhances your patient experience and the likelihood of a positive review and more patient referrals.

Automated Task Assignment and Reminders

Patient Flow® software includes the ability for automated task assignment (for your team and for your patients) as well as reminder features to streamline communication and coordination of your care. You determine the automatic tasks based upon predefined rules and priorities. By automating these processes, you can make sure your patients know exactly what they need to complete – even their own customized ‘to do’ list. Your team can then focus more on delivering quality patient care with less time on manual coordination of tasks and tracking patient compliance.

Data Analytics and Performance Metrics

Patient Flow® software offers powerful data analytics capabilities for one location or across an entire business enterprise. These analytics tools can generate comprehensive reports with graphic representations that enable you to identify potential bottlenecks, analyze trends, and make data-driven decisions. By monitoring key performance metrics, you can identify areas for improvement and continuously improve nearly every important aspect of your practice. At any point, you can gauge the health of your practice.

Streamlined Patient Processes, Software and Communication

Are you tired of maintaining multiple databases? Perhaps a database for new patient leads, customized e-mail communication, text messaging, phone calls, website inquiries and more! Yet, none actually communicate with your EMR? It is very convenient for you and your team to have everything in one HIPAA compliant place. And, Patient Flow® is inter-operable with your existing EMR so you aren’t entering information more than once – saving time and precious financial resources. You can automate all documentation as well as patient education. While it may seem too good to be true, such comprehensive software improves the efficiency of your team while improving patient communication and satisfaction.

Patient Flow® software has revolutionized the way healthcare team’s manage patient care, leading to enhanced team performance and improved patient outcomes. The features outlined highlight the true power available to you and your practice today.

If you are looking for an all-in-one platform for implementing such remote healthcare education and communication services, you can learn more at https://www.pronexinc.com/

How to Increase Referrals for Your Weight Loss Practice

Posted on May 8, 2023May 8, 2023 by Karol Clark

Referrals are an effective strategy for attracting new patients and growing your weight loss practice.

Having a consistent stream of new patient referrals is a great compliment to you and your team. Sometimes it may feel as if referral patterns are already established within health systems and medical groups. However, there are always opportunities to influence positive referral patterns for your weight loss practice.

Referral Sources

To start, it helps to determine your current and potential referral sources. This allows you to identify missed opportunities as well as what is working well.

When you consider your current and potential referral sources, think about where your patients seek advice or information prior to finding you. Most commonly this includes:

Patients/Word of Mouth: Patients who have had a great experience are likely to tell others and openly share their positive opinions.
Family & Friends: It is common for patients to ask trusted family and friends for their opinion regarding practitioners and related weight loss services.
Online Research & Reviews: Online research and reviews tends to be one of the most common ways people will discover you and your weight loss services. Patients tend to search for services, read online reviews, check credentials, make comparisons (and often decisions) before they ever reach out to you directly.
Other Physicians and Specialists: Referrals from other physicians and specialists is one of the other common sources of patients for many physician practices. This is more likely to be the case if they see repetitive positive weight loss outcomes experienced by their patients that utilize your services.
Drive-By: While location isn’t necessarily important for every specialty, it can be very helpful for weight loss practitioners since it increases awareness for those who have weight loss top of mind. When they see your signage on a regular basis, you readily come to mind as they contemplate their care decision.
Hospitals and Clinics: Depending upon your location and how active you are with your local hospitals and clinics, they can be a good source of new patient referrals.
Insurance companies: Insurance companies can refer patients seeking weight loss to a physician practice, particularly if they are in their network of providers.

All of these can be great referral sources for your weight loss practice. If you aren’t documenting exactly where your patients are finding you, begin there. This data is invaluable in order to determine the most impactful actions you can take moving forward and measure the impact of your efforts.

How to Increase Referrals

The process of obtaining referrals, processing referrals, thanking referrals, and nurturing your best referral sources often gets put on the back burner (or taken for granted). You are busy! This makes it easy to be bogged down with the day-to-day operations of your practice or get overwhelmed with determining how to create an efficient referral system. It is often easier to simply accept whatever referrals you get instead of actively seeking additional quality referrals.

The actions below will help you and your team accelerate your efforts when it comes to obtaining more referrals and growing your weight loss practice.

1. Back to Basics: While likely second nature for you, it is important to ensure that you and your team review the basics of what creates effortless and natural referral patterns. The basic ingredients include:

Provide Outstanding Patient Care: The foundation of your weight loss practice is your outstanding patient care. Delivering personalized, compassionate, and effective care to your patients leaves a positive impression and creates a natural desire for them to share their experience with others who seek the same outcome.

Establish Positive Relationships: Your patients remember how you made them feel throughout their journey to better health. Getting to know them on a personal level and providing the education, support and accountability they may or may not realize they need goes a long way.

Facilitate Desired Outcomes: Help your patients set realistic goals that guide them to their desired outcome. Provide them with the tools and resources they need to attain long-term success. When patients feel empowered and informed, they are more likely to appreciate your expertise and accountability. This also increases the likelihood of them sharing their positive experience and referring others who desire similar outcomes.

Involve Your Team: Your team is your reputation. They are also the best resource for establishing and systematizing your entire referral process. While one person may oversee the referral system, everyone plays an important role in making it successful.

2. Identify Your Ideal Referral Sources: It is important for you to determine your best referral sources. For weight loss practitioners, this typically includes successful patients, referring physicians and some local groups. For your patients, in addition to having ‘referral’ prompts such as literature around your office about how to refer friends/family and testimonials on your walls, you will want to identify what patients you (your team) wish to approach for a referral. The best time to ask for a referral is typically when they are the happiest. For surgery patients, this is usually at 6 months, 9 months or 1 year. For medical patients, it is when they are ecstatic about their results and telling your all about the positive impact weight loss has had on their life. For referring physicians/groups, select those that want/need their patients to lose weight such as prior to a surgery to improve safety and enhance the patient’s outcome. This tends to be plastic surgeons and orthopedic surgeons as well as bariatric surgeons if they do not have an established medical weight loss program. For local groups/businesses, select ones that are looking for educational offerings/programs and have the demographic you desire to serve.

3. Systematize Your Referral Process: Predictability comes with established systems. You and your team need to make it easy for patients and other providers to refer patients to you and your practice. Involve your team and make sure someone takes ownership for setting up the system and tracking results. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways. Since some people are more traditional and others more tech savvy, it helps to provide both written and electronic ways for the referral to be made. What is simple for THEM is what will get done. You can tie in an incentive if you desire. If you do, rewarding both the person referring and the person referred is a nice gesture. However, most referring patients and practitioners do not expect something in return for sending you a referral – often a simple written ‘thank you’ means the most.

4. Showcase Your Results: Another great way to obtain more referrals is to showcase the results of your happy patients. For patients, if they are happy enough to refer other patients to you, they are likely more than willing to write an online review that can be showcased online as well as in your office with their comments and photo. Always obtain their permission. For referring physicians, be sure to communicate regularly to them regarding the progress of the patients they have referred to you. Send them a kind thank you note as well.

Building a strong referral program takes time and effort. However, it is a valuable tool for growing your practice. You can also automate the process by leveraging technology. If you are interested in learning more about how to leverage all-in-one software solutions that simplifies your efforts, feel free to schedule a no pressure informative demo by clicking here.

About the Author: Karol Clark, MSN, RN, is a best-selling author who has a passion for helping physicians integrate effective, profitable weight loss services and retail sales into their practice while improving patient outcomes and enjoying the journey along the way. Her use of non-traditional (easy to implement) medical marketing strategies, along with her dedication to a positive ROI makes her a uniquely different and sought-after weight loss business consultant. Karol is the CEO of Weight Loss Practice Builder and the exclusive membership program for weight loss practitioners, www.BariatricBusinessAccelerator.com. She has more than 20 years of experience working with surgical and medical weight loss physicians and their teams helping them simplify creation of a profitable and enjoyable bariatric practice.

How to Streamline Patient Care & Education in Your Weight Loss Surgery Practice Without Losing Your Personal Touch

Posted on April 3, 2023 by Karol Clark

Do you ever feel like you are saying the same things over and over to your weight loss surgery patients, yet have avoided streamlining your education and other functions of your practice because it may seem too impersonal? Here are some effective ways to streamline your education and patient care while improving engagement.

As a busy weight loss practitioner, your time is one of your greatest assets. This is also the case for your entire team. And, while education is an integral part of a successful outcome for your weight loss surgery patients, wouldn’t it be helpful if you could provide the perfectly timed education and accountability your patients need while saving you and your team time? It has never been as easy as it is today. This applies to streamlining your patient care process as well without losing your personal touch.

While it may take some time to set your system up, it is well worth it. Streamlining your patient care and education can improve patient outcomes, increase patient satisfaction, improve office efficiency, create predictability, and reduce your overall costs.

Below are five ways to streamline your patient care and education while maintaining your personal touch:

1. Create Educational Assets: Creating standardized educational assets for the education and guidance you and your team provide every day. This includes assets such as webinars, videos, e-books, PDF guides, purposeful automated e-mails or a combination. A great use of such assets is timed distribution to your patients at just the right time in their journey to keep them informed and your practice top of mind. It is also a great way to address commonly asked questions, while anticipating their needs every step of the way. You can even leverage your content by putting your pre-operative and post-operative education into an actual book and use helpful tips from your content in your social media marketing plan to attract new patients. Leveraging your content in such ways also saves you time, increases the consistency of your message, allows your patients to review the information when convenient for them, and allows you to track their progress – all while setting your practice apart from your competitors. Start with creation of one type of asset and if desired, you can create additional educational assets that can be available in various learning formats. Then present them electronically or in person to your patients at just the right time before or after surgery. Automation, mixed with personal contact has been found to be extremely helpful.
2. Maximize Use of Technology: Technology can be frustrating at times. However, when you find what works for you and maximize its use, it can transform your life and practice. Technology is also an expectation of most patients who have grown accustomed to the convenience of online scheduling, patient portals, engaging video education, prompt text support and everything in between. Finding a solution that combines everything in one, easy to use HIPAA compliant application, simplifies the process even further. Some specific technology applications you can find included in one integrated software solution includes:
1. a. Patient Lead Tracking: Track the lifecycle of your patients from the moment they find out about you and your services. Keep them engaged and educated every step of the way.
2. b. Telemedicine: Offer the convenience of telemedicine appointments for those who prefer this type of visit as appropriate. Telemedicine can also increase your reach and ensure your patients keep up with their follow-up appointments.
3. c. Online Registration: Integrating online registration functionality helps improve demographic data accuracy, office efficiency and timely onboarding of new patients.
4. d. Ongoing Communication in One Location: All of your communication is in one place so you aren’t looking for phone messages, texts and e-mails in more than one inbox. Keep your entire team up to date and follow-up with your patients more efficiently.
5. e. KPI Tracking: You can monitor the progress of your patients with real-time dashboards and outcome tracking instead of multiple spreadsheets.
6. f. Patient Education: You can augment your in-office education with automated (or fresh off the press) educational materials delivered to your patients in your portal, via a membership site, your educational app accessible from anywhere as well as conveniently via secure e-mail or text.
3. Optimize Use of Your Patient Portal: Patient portals are an excellent way to provide access to educational materials, appointment reminders, health records, and obtaining any required documentation prior to submitting authorization for surgery. It is also a great way to keep patients informed of updates and providing ongoing support or links to convenient applications you use.
4. Train Your Team: Include your team on selection and implementation of any new technology. Your team will likely be an integral part of your educational asset creation. They should be aware of – and assist with creation of – your communication plan. Maximize the use of team talents and let them help create and document your implementation systems.
5. Measure Outcomes: As mentioned earlier, streamlining your patient care and education creates data points that are easier to track. You will know where your patients come from, actions completed at every step of your patients journey and key performance metric reports. And you can find these real-time metrics in one convenient location.

Your patients want and need streamlined care and patient education. You and your team need added efficiency and a way to track key performance metrics for your practice and your patients. Creating such a system will benefit all involved while allowing more time for your ‘personal touch’.

If you are interested in learning more about an effective all-in-one software solution for your practice, it’s time to learn more and schedule a demo by clicking here.

How Can PatientFlow® Improve Efficiency, Patient Satisfaction and Profitability in Your Weight Loss Practice?

Posted on February 6, 2023February 6, 2023 by Karol Clark

You take such great care of your weight loss patients. Now may be the time to give your weight loss practice an honest examination to see where you can update your operations for improved business health and longevity as well.

There are many choices and decision points for anyone losing weight as well as anyone running a successful business. These choices and decision points can become overwhelming – especially if you lack a clear vision of what you want most or – more commonly – have too many complicated tools and strategies at play. Yet this happens all the time both in life and in business.

What are the possible consequences? Inaction or implementing too many strategies at once, poor follow-through, lack of progress, wasted time and money, recurring daily chaos, and blurred vision regarding a solid strategy that will bring you the results you desire most.

In your weight loss practice, each of these potential consequences tend to cause frustration for you, your team, and often, your patients. For most weight loss practitioners, primary frustrations usually revolve around human resource issues, acquiring new patients, converting interested patients into established patients, improving patient engagement, payer mandates/decreasing reimbursement, overlapping technology with poor integration and/or obtaining meaningful metrics. Can you relate?

Some specific questions you may be asking when you experience such frustrations include:

Is this marketing campaign working or is it a waste of time and money?
Why do we have lots of leads and yet my schedule isn’t full?
How many potential new patients do we have in the pipeline?
What holds people back from scheduling their first appointment?
Why do we have so many different software systems and data bases?
Why don’t patients seem engaged, understand what their next step is, and feel educated about what to expect and next steps?
Why don’t we have more online reviews?
Why can’t I get a simple snapshot that shows who is interested in our services, how they found out about us, where they are in their approval process, who is ready for their consult, and who is falling through the cracks?
Why are we so ‘busy’ and yet profitability isn’t what it should be?

If this sounds familiar, the best place to start is to stop or pause. Take inventory of what is working well and determine the root cause of your primary frustration(s). Beware though, because all too often, you may be tempted to double down on what really isn’t working because it seems like your only path or the only path you know. As a result, you may feel as if you just need to do more, hire new team members and work harder.

Yet, when you stop or pause long enough to take a fresh look, specifically at your ‘patient’s life cycle’, it usually becomes obvious where you need to focus your energy. This focus also tends to conveniently solve many issues or frustrations instead of just one. Fixing your patient life cycle improves overall efficiency (time and cost), ensures higher patient satisfaction (team satisfaction too), and creates greater profitability.

Your weight loss patient life cycle – which you need to create purposefully – includes a variety of important phases:

Awareness: finding you and your practice in a very noisy marketing world
Trust: learning more about you, what you offer and your expertise/authority; public proof of your outcomes in the form of online reviews and testimonials; and relatability/understanding of what makes you different from the many choices readily available
Expressed Interest: reaching out to learn more and get to know you even better
Conversion to Established Patient: deciding you are the right choice for them
Engagement & Ongling Education: remaining engaged with your services (call, text, e-mail, opt-in, direct message online), education, content
Transformation: attaining their desired outcome/transformation
Lifetime Client & Referral Source: desire for more of your services/products and gladly providing online reviews, and referring others to you who desire a similar transformation

Bottom line – your patient life cycle is at the core of creating your successful weight loss practice. So, it is critical that you have the ability to track each and every step in one place (and even use as your EMR or integrate with your EMR). Sound too good to be true? It is possible with PatientFlow®. I know this because my team and I have experienced this firsthand and I see this transformational software product making a significant difference in many weight loss practices across the United States.

If you are on a never-ending hamster wheel with too many systems – or no systems – in place and are unable to efficiently track every step of your patient life cycle in one place, there is a better way.

PatientFlow® is an online application that helps you conveniently and efficiently guide and track your prospective new patients from expressed interest through every aspect of your customized patient experience (pipeline) outlined above. It provides you with a convenient way to securely communicate with your patients via all forms of communication (even directly from your website), track your marketing efforts; customize/streamline your workflow; engage, educate and track patient progress; and obtain real-time custom reports/metrics that matter most.

Here are three specific positive impacts PatientFlow® can have on your practice:

Efficiency

When you have every step of your customized weight loss patient workflow systematically delivered and tracked in one place with ability to automate personalized communication to keep your patients engaged and on track, efficiency sky rockets.

Your team is no longer looking for ongoing patient communication as they ask questions or follow-through with pre-surgery requirements in separate e-mail, text and phone messages.
Your team is no longer sharing and updating Google sheets or Excel spreadsheets trying to keep up with the hundreds of patients in your pipeline.
You can systematize insurance requirements for all of the payers you accept and your patient can automatically receive a checklist that can be updated in real-time for them and your team to track.
The number of calls to your office decreases because patients know what to expect and everyone can quickly communicate securely in one place rather than playing phone tag.
You have everything in one place when it comes time to submit patient information for insurance authorization.
Documents can be easily added to your EMR or integration is also possible for automated updates between systems.
Your education can be in one place and shared automatically or personally with your patients.
Reports are available real-time so you can identify any bottlenecks and understand the health of your patient pipeline at a glance.

Patient Satisfaction

When patients know exactly what to expect they tend to manage their own expectations better and feel more secure in their weight loss journey with you and your team. With less surprises and easy/open communication, you can anticipate their needs and more easily provide them with the WOW experience they appreciate and enjoy. Their satisfaction is higher and you have less complaints. All of this tends to improve team satisfaction as well. In fact, through PatientFlow® you can also obtain real time patient satisfaction reports and more easily obtain online reviews and testimonials.

Profitability

When your practice is efficient and your patients are loving their journey and getting the results they desire most, profitability naturally increases. You are also not paying for multiple software solutions which makes a positive impact on your bottom line. Happy patients, more referrals, higher team productivity and lower costs all add up to more predictable profitability for you and your practice.

If you are looking for an all-in-one online (customizable) system that tracks everything in one place that you, your team and your patients will love, the ProNex, Inc. team can help. For more information or to schedule a free practice assessment, click here.

7 Ways to Improve Patient Conversion from Inquiry to An Established Weight Loss Surgery Patient

Posted on January 9, 2023January 10, 2023 by Karol Clark

Conversion rates for your weight loss surgery practice go beyond your marketing campaigns. Your focus must also include efficiently converting qualified leads into new weight loss surgery patients. Fortunately, there are ways to simplify this process for your patients and your team.

Imagine attracting qualified patients, knowing exactly where they are in their process to becoming an established patient, improving patient and team satisfaction, while increasing your surgery caseload. Yes, this is possible for any weight loss surgery practice – including yours. Best of all, you can do it without having to use any complicated Excel spreadsheets.

As you know, there are many steps a patient goes through from initial inquiry to their decision (and follow-through) to have weight loss surgery – with you. Understandably, it can become very overwhelming for them and for your team. This shows up in a variety of ways.

For the Patient:

Multiple inquiries
Various ‘starts and stops’ to the process
Confusion regarding their best option
Impatience (sometimes mis-directed anger) with the process
Lack of follow-through
Excuses as to why weight loss surgery won’t work for them even if they are an ideal candidate
Missed appointments
Misunderstandings regarding next steps, required education and fees
Cancelled surgeries
And more…

For Your Practice:

Overwhelming number of phone calls/e-mails/texts from patients
Difficulty tracking patient progress and getting everything required for approval in one place
Wasted time and energy
Confusion regarding how or lack of means to attain true conversion metrics
Cumbersome shared spreadsheets and reports that never seem to be up-to-date
Duplication of efforts due to lack of interoperability amongst multiple non-integrated software systems for marketing, tracking & documenting patient education and care coordination.
Unproductive time chasing telephone, text and e-mail communications with the patient
Less primary weight loss surgeries than expected/desired
Team burnout
And more…

It is time to tame the chaos and improve the patient flow process for your team and your patients. While this doesn’t happen overnight, the benefits are well worth your strategic (and measurable) efforts.

However, before we address 7 strategies you and your team can implement to get started or fine tune, it’s important to address your patient conversion metrics.

Patient Conversion Metrics

Understandably, your patient conversion rate from inquiry to surgery is one of the most important metrics to track in your weight loss surgery practice. However, it is often is one of the most misunderstood and poorly tracked metrics for many practitioners and their teams.

Your conversion rate quantifies potential bottlenecks that can occur throughout your patient process. It is your window of opportunity for figuring out why patients are – or are not – following through so you can make appropriate course corrections and pathway improvements.

Understandably, not everyone is an ideal candidate for weight loss surgery and some may not have the insurance benefit and/or want to pay out of pocket for surgery. However, if screened properly, these should contribute to a small percentage of your non-converting metric.

So, what is a good patient conversion rate for your weight loss surgery practice? Honestly, you should not settle for a percentage less than 75%. In fact, with a solid qualified patient acquisition method and an efficient system for patient conversion to surgery, a higher percentage is possible.

How to Improve Your Weight Loss Surgery Conversion Metrics

If you want to improve your weight loss surgery conversion metrics, below are 7 strategies that will positively influence your results. These are essential for short- and long-term success.

Get the Right Team on Board & Clearly Communicate Your Desired Outcome: The surgeon is a critically important part of your process. However, it is your team that creates the initial and ongoing relationship that guides patients across the (sometimes intimidating) bridge from their first inquiry to initial consultation with the surgeon. Your team contributes significantly to the ‘vibe’ in your practice that not only attracts patients but makes them feel sincerely valued and want to stay. Your team also wants to do a good job. In order to do so, they need to be aware of your specific surgical goals and be invited to participate (and lead) a streamlined process. They need to help you reverse engineer what is necessary to get to your goal. When included, they become a much more active participant and their efforts become more of a mission rather than a job. This reverse engineering typically includes:
1. Who is your specific ideal patient?
2. What is your desired weight loss surgery volume?
3. What is your current conversion rate?
4. How many qualified leads do you need to meet this volume based on your current conversion rate?
5. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your current patient acquisition and conversion process?
6. What can/should be changed in your process to make your goal a reality?
7. What is the plan to make this happen?
Attract the Right Patients: It is impossible to attract the right (your ideal) patients if you don’t define this in the first place. The messages and advertisements you share should ‘speak to’ these people specifically, address their greatest frustrations, show how the transformation they desire is possible, and why you are the best option for care. This relates to all types of online and offline communication such as your website, your social media, your blogs, your videos, your brochures, and your testimonials/reviews.
Simplify the Patient Inquiry Process: The next step is helping people know the next (easy) step to move forward with you and your practice. Commonly called a ‘call to action’, you are giving them instructions such as ‘click here’, ‘ask questions here’, ‘watch this webinar’, ‘text us’, ‘contact us’, ‘join our challenge’, ‘download our free guide to weight loss surgery’ or similar. Patients seeking weight loss surgery are researching all hours of the day and night. You need to show up and have an easy way for them to contact you or access more information about you and what you offer.
Personalize Your Prompt Follow-Up: We live in a world of immediate gratification. Healthcare consumerism has made this a desirable factor for patients as well that cannot be ignored. Luckily, this is where you can combine your personality with technology so you, your website, your social media, your webinars, and customized follow-up messages are available 24/7/365 without overtime for your team. Of course, reaching out personally is a desired and required action, but in this way patients are not delayed in finding out more about you and their next steps to becoming your established patient.
Systematize Ongoing Patient Tracking & Communication: Particularly in the field of bariatric surgery, you tend to follow the same steps and say the same things over and over. Fortunately, it has never been as easy as it is today to automate the process of tracking new patient leads, getting them started on their journey, engaging them in the process, informing them of their ‘to do’ list and next steps while continuously nurturing and educating them along the way.
Leverage Technology for a Seamless (and Enjoyable) Process: Manual processes may work up to a caseload of about 150 surgeries/year but after that (and even with this caseload), automation will ensure a good patient flow and care coordination, less patients ‘falling through the cracks’, increased patient satisfaction, and an ability to grow your caseload. It is best with one seamless system but integrations to a systematic patient flow system can fairly easily be integrated into your current EMR.
Monitor Your Metrics: What you measure tends to improve. This includes key performance indicators you assign to your team. While you likely monitor metrics closely for billing/collections and budgeting, tracking your referrals and patient conversion metrics (among others) cannot be ignored. No matter what size your practice is, metrics matter.

It is important to take proactive measures to ensure you can accurately track qualified leads from initial inquiry to weight loss surgery. The strategies outlined here can help you significantly improve your conversion metrics and help you attain your weight loss surgery practice goals with greater predictability and peace of mind.