How To Improve Your Allied Health Business

For us, we started with using AI in the consult room. There's many platforms that do it, but we'll record consults using Heidi at this stage, generate the notes, generate the letters, but then you can take that a step further and extract that transcript to analyze how that consult went and then get feedback on how could I have tweaked that treatment protocol? What research didn't I access? How could I have restructured that consult to help the patient get an optimal outcome?

What are the most critical systems and processes in private healthcare practices? That's what we're going to be talking about today. I'm joined by Troy Parsons. He's the managing director of Optimize Health, which is a world class allied healthcare center in Queensland. He's also the founder of the Hive, which is a coaching and training company for healthcare practices. And what's best is that Troy still runs the healthcare practice and so that is like the perfect client of the Hive, which is the coaching and training. So he very much eats his own dog food, for lack of a better metaphor. And so I thought he'd be perfect for this. Today we're going to work through the critical client flow, identify some best practice and best in class systems and processes for allied healthcare and where a lot of practices go wrong. So maybe first things first. Welcome to the call, Troy.

Thanks, David. How you doing?

Yeah, good, good, good. Been looking forward to this. Maybe just to start, if you can tell us, because I, I think, I mean, maybe tell us a little bit about the relationship between the Hive and Optimize Health and then we can narrow into Optimized health, because I feel like that's a great example that everybody can kind of follow along and think about their own practice and how their business would match up.

Yeah, sure, mate. So a long story, very, very short. Started off as a podiatrist back in 2000, got the opportunity to move to Toowoomba at a practice called Toowoomba Foot Care Centre. And the carrot that got me there was the opportunity to buy the practice within about three or four years. I was raised by business people, so business was particularly appealing to me. So I packed up everything I own, moved to Toowoomba, started working, realizing even though I'd spent four years learning to be a podiatrist, I knew just enough to be dangerous and so worked as a pod, then finally bought the business. My grandmother loaned me the money to do it when every bank said no more than once. And Bear bought the practice and realized that I spent four years learning to be a pod. Still didn't know what I was doing. And I was arrogant enough to think I could just buy a business and figure it out very, very quickly that I had no idea about a systems but finances or people or recruitment, marketing, sales, anything. And so it was a baptism by fire. And during that process, I made so many mistakes, so many it's hard, hard to list. But I did realize I needed help. And I was introduced to a business coach through a mate who had been through a similar process in a slightly different industry. At that stage, it wasn't really any healthcare coaching around. So the coach I had, this was new for him, it was new for me, but he helped me slowly but surely understand all the things I didn't know about business. So that progressed into, you know, foot care center, becoming the podiatrist. And then as we grew and evolved, we became optimized health. And along that way, I met someone on a rugby trip over in New Zealand who was a coach, and he said, you know, what would you really love to do? And I said, well, I love working with my team, I love optimized health, but I'd really love to help other people avoid all the problems that I've been through because it's not fun and it's extremely common. And that's when the hive was born. And so I've got this position now where we coach clients across Australia, New Zealand, also the uk. And I just love the fact that I still have optimized health because I'm still working with people and growing and evolving and doing all the things that I then can help clients with moving forward. And I think that's a pretty unique position to be in and I'm very grateful to be in it.

Yeah, love it. And it really tells that story between being the technician who knows how to do the work like you are a pod and you can do that work, and then realizing, hang on, the skills required to grow a business and run a business that delivers that work, they're very different skills. And it's kind of like that evolution where a lot of business owners get stuck, they just can't seem to make that next step. So I think if we started off with, you know, focusing in on optimized health and I'm going to bring up the iPad, I'd love to go through with you and just identify where you see the most critical systems and where a lot of healthcare practitioners will go wrong. So I'm just going to move a few things around on my screen here and maybe if we just start off I know there's a lot of different clients that you work with in optimized health, but if we were to pick.

One primary client just for this exercise, where do you want to start? In sort of physio or podiatry and maybe if you can tell us a little bit about that, you know the, the ideal client that comes in to optimize health.

Yes. So might as well just pick podiatry. It's at my core.

So.

You want the ideal podiatry client for.

Yeah, yep.

It would vary across practitioners, but I think the vast majority would say they love just helping the everyday person in pain.

Yep.

And that's the person who, you know, is on their feet and is reliant on being on their feet repeatedly to generate income for their family.

Yeah, perfect.

Is there any particular. Obviously there's things specific for this practice. Geography is going to be, you know, they obviously need to be in a accessible location. Are there any other things that you would think about, like if you wanted to then get in touch with this person? Where do you find these people? I. Or I suppose I know they seek you out, like, hey, I've got a problem with my feed or they get referred or those sorts of things. Are there any other characteristics to further define that target client than everyday person and on their feet? And I added the word breadwinner in there just because that probably describes a huge part of the Australian population.

Yeah. We provide a very high level of service where we are and so it's going to be people who do put a high value on healthcare.

Yeah.

We have a strong private school community around us and we have a very strong.

Tradie and kind of FIFO communities.

Love it.

And so they are probably targets for us. Yeah, very much so.

Love it. And if we think about that target person and maybe, I mean, the tradie could be a real great one to focus in on. We get a lot of people in our space who fit into that category and work with those type of clients as well.

Generally speaking, what is the first service or product that someone who would come into contact with optimized health? Like, where would they start? Is it just like a consultation or what is there a particular session or something that. That you call that first.

First discovery session or whatever it is?

Yeah, this would be. We basically split, if it's podiatry, split into two, two streams and you've kind of got nail skin problems and then you've got active and sedentary musculoskeletal problems. And that's what this Would be.

Yes.

Like active pain.

Yeah, perfect.

Let's. I'll just call it Active K. Active pain.

And that. Do you have a name for that? First thing that you sell them or that session, obviously they come in and then they're going to get potentially a series of treatments. Like is it just like a treatment plan or is it a call that.

The initial consultation.

Yep.

And then from there the practitioner will, you know, identify what's the issue, what caused it and then what's the plan to move forward?

Love it. Generally speaking, thinking about that target audience and that getting that initial consult, how do people become aware of optimized health? I'm assuming things like word of mouth and referrals are going to be quite high, but. Yeah, how would you get the attention of that person?

Okay, yeah, absolutely. Word of mouth through patient or professional referrer is significant. Then SEO.

Yep.

AdWords previously, but we've actually pulled back and really doubled down on SEO.

Yeah, yeah.

We put a large investment, time and money into community involvement. There's certainly a lot of things that we do on a weekly basis, but also annual basis where we really invest in, you know, the people around us and that would be the primary areas.

And with something like community, what sort of thing is that? Is that like sponsors of certain events or is that.

Well, there's, we have a, there's a run club that runs every week.

Yeah.

And there's two sessions associated with that and they can be anywhere between 50 to 100 people involved.

Yeah.

And then the big event that we do every year, there's a, it's a fun run essentially, but it's really all about getting people moving and compute and community involvement called Peak to Park. And we've been the major sponsor of that for four years. I think we're entering into our fifth year coming up and can have, you know, three to 4,000 runners and, and when I say runners, it's just people.

Progressing through the journey of 3km. All proceeds are donated to a, you know, a not for profit organization locally. So that's something that we put a lot of time and effort into and really enjoy.

Yeah, perfect. And once you get that attention generally how do the inquiries come in? Is that through the. Just people picking up the phone or they're visiting the website and booking a consult? Like what are the ways that. Yeah. That, that first step, after they're aware of you and I've got some active pain here, what do they do next?

A lot of people will call. Yep. And a lot of people will book online through the portal.

Yeah. And then.

We work obviously with different types of businesses and sometimes the sales process works differently. I mean, in health care, I don't even necessarily think you call it a sales process, but after that inquiry comes in.

I'm assuming the receptionist gets it. Like, I suppose there's no real sale point at that point. Like, I mean, they've, they're booking in or do you qualify them a little bit? Like what, what kind of happens in that step.

The conversion step. Because people can call and it. They'll often won't be sure if they're calling the right place.

Yes.

I'd even be sure about what question to ask. And so people either go, yep, I need to make an appointment. Or they may be going, you know, I need to make an appointment with a podiatrist.

You know, I might just ask the price.

Yes.

Up to the admin team to actually find out what's the problem and then they might be able to guide them on that. People often ask price because I don't know what else to ask.

Yes. Yeah. And then from there, if they are the right fit, they get booked in for a session and then they come in and meet so often.

Just the other part of that. So that would be absolutely. If following the phone pathway, if it's online, obviously they're already in the diary.

Yep.

Any online booking though, we get our admin team to call and again qualify to make sure that they've booked the right sort of appointment with the right sort of clinician to get the outcome.

Oh, hey, I know you're tuned in right now, so keep this super quick, but you like awesome YouTube videos, don't you? Well, there's not really that many YouTube channels that create great content about how to systemize your small business. So I want to make sure that you catch every video that I publish. So if you haven't already, firstly give this video the thumbs up and then go ahead and subscribe to my channel. You can even hit the bell notification to make sure that you're the first to know when I publish anything. So go ahead, do it right now, I'll wait a sec and then I'll transfer you back to the video.

Yeah, perfect. And then you guys are a little bit different in compared to some industries, like money doesn't really change hands or anything.

Up front, does it? It normally happens at the end of the consultation, so someone would book in, then there's. Is there anything that happens after they're booked in that goes on behind the scenes from the admin person? Obviously they're checking to make sure that they've booked in for the right consultation. I don't know if client profiles are set up and you've got some software or what if there's some sort of like onboarding or something that's going on in the background.

Yeah. So there will be where we have email, sms, they'll be sent a new patient form.

Yeah.

Complete. If that's something that can't be done, the time the admin will call and qualify that.

Yeah.

There's then a qualifier, a confirmation process that's initiated as well.

Awesome. And then as part of that there's, you know, the reminders and things like that to make sure that they show up and then they arrive at the practice and.

Perhaps you can tell us a little bit about that process there. You know, there's probably an admin person who welcomes them and I don't know if there's any other things that happen before they actually go into the session. Yeah.

So they'll just present to the front counter. They'll have, hopefully they'll confirm that they've filled out the new patient form. If not, we'll get them to do that then and there.

Yep.

And yeah, they grab a seat and wait for the clinician to come grab them.

Yeah.

Easy assistant. Depending on who they're seeing.

Yeah. And then there's actually having the console itself. And this one, I'm imagining as well, this. There's probably a lot of variation in here because it really depends on what the problem is. I mean, there might be some high level milestones or steps that you go through to uncover, but then what happens after that and what do we recommend? And all that would depend on the, the patient's pain. I don't know if you can tell us a little bit about how you think about the actual consult itself.

Well, generally it's, you know, it's patients coming in and they want certainty and clarity. They want certainty that first of all they're in the right place because they're quite often unsure, particularly with podiatry. And so you establish that where relevant and then they want clarity around what is it, what caused it and what do we need to do. And so it's then the clinician's job to build that likability and trust and map out the game plan of how to move forward and engage the patient in that. And so they'll say, well, again, this is what's wrong, this will cause it. These are the steps we need to get you back at this time. For this service and this is what it's going to look like moving forward. Or maybe they need to. Maybe it's just we don't need to see you. Or maybe they're referring elsewhere. Yeah. They generally direct what happens next. With some of the more complex appointments that can be a little bit harder, might take a little bit longer and might be more kind of high valued. The clinician may actually book those themselves in the room. Otherwise we have a customer.

Platform that they complete in the room, which then informs admin around what are the steps to move forward? And then they take the patient out for the next step of the process.

Perfect. So that happens in that first consult. We're thinking about what happens next and then.

Together they come up with the plan and potentially even start booking those next sessions in. Yeah, yeah. So it's almost like that repeat bill is built right in. And I know healthcare is a little bit different because the relationship's different.

Oftentimes they're going and seeking the expert who's then going to guide them. Hey, this is what's right for you. And it's less of a sales process. This is. Well, I'm the expert. You've come to me for my expertise and this is what I'm recommending.

We see a lot of variation in that.

Yep.

I think. And what I see a lot of. Particularly if I put on, you know, my horse hat working with other clients, you know, a frustration can be where people can go, look, here's all the options. What do you want to do? Or do you want to this and.

See how you go?

Which I don't know if you've ever had a health concern when. But I know certainly when I've had my issues over time, I go there for certainty.

Yes.

Someone to help tell me what to do, because they are the expert in the room and I believe that's what patients expect from us. And, you know, I use the example like, if my mum's coming to see you, what would you tell her? Knowing it's my mum.

Yes. Yes.

I want you to care that much that I think sometimes people can be too nice around this and not actually take control of consult. Which is exactly what the patient wants.

Yes. I kind of feel like. And I'll color that one red because that's obviously that delivery, which will give someone that certainty around what those next steps are, is probably where a lot of practice owners and allied health care professionals go wrong. Are there other areas, like in the. With the clients that you coach, looking at the critical client flow Here where you're like, there are quite commonly problems here or here. Like what's, what are some of the other real problem areas you see in other allied healthcare businesses?

I think if you just start at attention, I think people can be very lazy here. Like, I think it's really important that you invest in. And again, it's probably something we can add on there. It probably feeds the word of mouth and also the SEO, but the social media involved, I think it's really important to build that awareness and through that awareness you can build trust. And I think too many people kind of just hide behind the SEO and AdWords and they grow. Okay. I think that we continually look to grow and develop relationships.

Yes.

Important that, you know, you invest in social media and, you know, and commit to.

Sharing the humanity of what you do.

Yeah.

Now I think we actually have an obligation as healthcare practitioners to get rid of our fears and our.

Fears essentially around putting ourselves out there because there's a whole bunch of people out there walking around in pain and they don't know where to go. I think everyone has a responsibility to communicate that, hey, I can actually help. Secondly, I think.

The phone and online is done. Well, I think phone training is essential so that it isn't just someone rings up, how much is a consult, they're saying, oh, it's a hundred bucks and okay, thanks. You find out what is actually going on, what do they actually really need and then you can help direct them accordingly. So I think it's important that there's training around that.

Confirmation process. This is something that I think.

There'S a lot of holes in the bucket there. And so, you know, metrics that we will look at is, you know, they do did not attend, but also the patients who cancel and don't rebook. And so, you know, we had examples. Again, this way, having optimized health is great. Like we had a farming family coming from three or four hours out west, coming in, using four hours of the diary for a couple of complex appointments. Anyway, they didn't show up. So it was quite frustrated. And yeah, yeah, I want to charge them and just carry it on because of the waste of the time and the money. And I said, well, hang on, someone could be lying under a tractor somewhere, we don't know. I said, were they confirmed? They say, yes, they were. So, okay, what was the process? They said, well, we sent an email and we sent a text. I said, well, what did they say? They didn't respond. I said, oh. So we attempted to confirm twice.

So by the Way open your email. How many unopened emails do you have?

Yeah.

And so again, we go, look, you know, email is an appropriate way to confirm. And so that's where we could tweak that process. And I think that's something that we see a lot of. And when people actually, you know, quantify, you know, and I've done this recently on a couple of coaching calls and we looked at they did not attend rates and their cancellation rates, where they've put no real oversight over how they can reduce those. When we actually took the average dollar sale multiplied by that number, it was significant.

Yes. Yeah.

Game changing significant. And I mean, this is probably something I should look at. I said, yeah, absolutely. And we can really look at it just to make sure that a little hole in the bucket hasn't happened.

I think moving forward, when you get into the consult, something that a metric will track is cancellation. No, rebook. Someone's booked an appointment.

At some point, wanted to come back. If they've canceled, not rebooked, you go, why is that? So, first of all, we want to find out why. And that's the admin's job. And so we can start to monitor that. But also something that we've noticed with clinicians, like, if they don't give clear direction on why that next appointment's important.

Patients can, might something might come up, they cancel it and they go, I don't really know what it's for anyway, I'm going, fine, and I might cancel it. Whereas if I've done, you know, if I'm a dentist, I've done, you know, half of your root canal and, you know, you're going to come back in next Tuesday, you're coming in because, you know, there's a real reason for that, even if you get busy. So I think that is something that we, you know, going to make sure that we're relevant, that we're giving people certainty around why that next step's important and that, you know, again, in our podiatry and physio world, pain always isn't the best indicator. We might have done certain things and they're feeling better, so they might cancel it when, you know, pain may have reduced, but the functional capacity hasn't come back up yet. So there are things that we can look at through that process to make sure we're plugging the gaps where appropriate.

Yeah, I love that. Like, I can see the real clear customer journey and bits that commonly go wrong. And I could see different practice managers watching this, probably thinking about, oh, yeah, my Lead flow's not quite right. And. Okay, well, that's because I haven't got some of these processes in place. And at each one of these you've gone the step beyond just, well, I know what the process is to now we're also tracking this metric and, and starting to do some analysis of, well, where are things falling off? Which then means, okay, well, we can go to work on the system now because we know the bit that's not performing and now let's look to improve the process. So, yeah, absolutely love this.

In the tail end. Like, I think. I don't know if there's any other points. I've been thinking about this more and more, but I'd love your take on it. If you're yet starting to see AI creep in and impact and change the way that some of these processes are working for you guys in the practice. And, and if so, what are some of those opportunities for optimization where you're like, hey, AI kind of helps with this bit or that bit. Are you seeing that yet?

Yeah, absolutely. I think there's only two sorts of businesses, you know, AI first and those who are slowly dying.

Yes.

You know, this next generation coming through, they're AI first and how they think. And I think we need to look at how that overlays over healthcare for us. We started with.

Using AI in the consult room. You know, there's many platforms that do it, but we'll record consults using Heidi at this stage. We can then that'll generate the notes, generate the letters, but then you can take that a step further and extract that transcript to analyze how that consult went and then get feedback on, you know, how could I have tweaked that treatment protocol? What research didn't I access? How could I have restructured that consult to help the patient get an optimal outcome? And so that's pretty amazing because Normally you're saying 20 people a day, you do that five days a week for 10 years. Like, you might just have a whole bunch of experience being really lousy what you do, other than what patients tell you, but the ability to get that feedback every single consult, to tweak what you're doing, I think is incredible. And then also when you have, again, we're doing this with our team, again with clients where you've got your senior and GUN clinicians, you can actually map what do they do consistently and model that. So then you can use that to teach the next generation coming through. And so I think that's, that's the first part, second part that whole process can have little touches of AI the whole way along, right up to top of funnel with the marketing looking at who are the perfect avatars and then using AI to create basically messaging in the appropriate channels in the appropriate ways, appropriate time to get more and more of those. So I think every step of that journey, AI will play a part and it'll be things like, you know, you might book in for a, an ingrained turnout concern that can then automatically trigger.

Material that will help enhance that journey for you. So when you show up, you go, oh, these guys really get me.

Yes.

Once you've had the consult, it can then filter out from there. So I think it's incredibly exciting. Yeah, that again, used in a way that it enhances the experience. I don't think it's going to displace us anytime soon. I think it can really, really enhance the experience. And we talk more and more around that, you know, because some clinicians go, oh, look, you know, I'm not going to worry about that. Like you kind of should, because this isn't about knowledge anymore, you know, and if the knowledge is there, you need to access it, but it's more about harnessing it so that you can actually engage more appropriately with your patients and help their experience because they can find the answers. They just need that human connection to help guide them on the way.

Absolutely love it because I could imagine, like you said, seeing however many patients every day over X number of years, it could almost blur into one. You'd start to have different patients that. Whereas if you've got an AI and you're feeding all that information in to do with that particular client, you, you're getting hyper focused and getting them the best outcome and it would speed things up. I absolutely love that. And I'm imagining, I don't know if it's Heidi, but having a, a package that has all of that client information that the AI can keep tapping into, so when they come in next time, it knows the last 10 consultations that you've had with them and where you're up to. Like, it's incredible what AI is doing to some industries. Yeah.

Technology is undefeated, so best to embrace it and run with it. And this is really exciting for our space.

Yeah, awesome. Well, I'll pop a link obviously over to optimize health because I think that's great for people just to see best practice and then a link over to the hive also for practice managers that want to, and practice owners that want to go that step further to kind of really start to polish up their practices. So, yeah. Thank you so much for your time today, Troy.

Pleasure, David. Thanks.