Aaron LeBauer explains why he ditched insurance reimbursement for physical therapy and switched to direct pay. He found that patients don't care about lower prices or one-on-one manual therapy. They want to know what transformation they'll get. Insurance, he argues, is a middleman that controls money and limits treatment.
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How do I convince patients to forego their insurance? How do I. How do I say, you know, oh, it's just too expensive. Okay, well, you know what? Really, if you think about it, I'm only charging $95. I mean, this is 10 years ago when I first started only charging $95. I meanS mean, I'm only seeing patients once a week. If you come and see me once a week instead of three times a week, you're going to save money. Even if it's a $50 copy, you'll save $50 a week. People are like, no, I got to use my insurance. Click. I knew I had to have a better way. It even was like this. I was like, okay, if someone calls and they don't even mention insurance, I'm not going to say anything until they show up and, and I deliver an amazing treatment. And then they go, whoa, you don't take my insurance? I thought you took my insurance. And I was like, no, it's one hundred and something. 120 at the time. $110. Like, what? Oh, my God, no, I can't afford this. I'm like, even after I just spent an hour with you, you can't afford it? Or people would call like, oh, I can't afford to come back. I gotta find somewhere to use my insurance. I realized one day that explaining to patients what their financial benefit would be to come see me wasn't the conversation that was going to work. It's not the thing that's going to convince them. There's no way we can convince patients to come see us. We can't convince them. And what I realized was that I have to have a little bit longer conversation with people. I have to show them the value that I provide and how it's different and it's also not good enough. And I did this too. It's like, oh, well, I do one on one. It's one hour. It's all hands on manual therapy. My flash release. There are a few people that know what those things are, but majority of people don't know that. Don't know what those mean. They still don't know what that is. And those are features my business. Okay, what are your features? You got features of your business, right? Features. Well, I can compare. Can I get this feature down the street for a copay? So what I realized is it's not the features and it's not the price. It's the transformation people really want. So when we started talking to our patients about the transformation in their life that they wanted and how we could provide that to them. Boom, they started becoming patients. And it's much more than the features of our practice and the things that we do for them in the hour. So once I realized that, then it changed our business, that changed our practice. Like, things grew tremendously. And it's all about mindset. We weren't taught to sell. We weren't taught to be business owners. We weren't taught to market, but we were taught to treat patients. So what do we know? We know how to treat patients. My features are better than your features. But you know what? Who's to say? I mean, we can argue all day long about research of the features, but it's all about how we put ourselves out to patients. In health care, insurance is like this middleman, and unfortunately, they're controlling too much of the flow of money because patients pay someone way over here to get a service over here. But what I really should be doing is not just communicating with the healthcare provider, but paying them directly. I think that's the most ethical way to form this relationship, because the middleman, the insurance company, has too much say over how our patients are treated. And they're not saying, you can authorize this or not authorize this. I was just talking to. I was recording a podcast this morning with Ryan Debelle, who some of you may know is a chiropractor, actually doesn't identify as a chiropractor. We'd get on that in the podcast, but he was saying that as a chiropractor, he can get. He doesn't need pre authorization to manipulate, but he needs pre authorization to teach exercise. And if he's only treating patients once a week or once every other week, he can only get two to four visits with them. But if he gets the one pre authorization, he can see him three times a week and, you know, do three times a week. And he's like, you know, but that's over. Treating people like that's unethical, and I totally agree. So a big part of what we try to do is, is connect with who we want, talk to them about what they want, not what I want. I'm not in the business of delivering to patients and clients and customers what I want. I got to find out what they want. If they want something I can provide, then I let them know how they can get it. That's the secret to marketing.
