Dr. Vince Leone argues that chiropractors, not front-desk staff, must own new-patient marketing by designing and running campaigns daily. Staff should focus on delivering great in-office experiences that generate referrals, not on marketing itself. He also emphasizes structured missed-appointment protocols and care-plan scheduling to keep patients coming back.
Hey everyone, Dr. Vince Leone here with Dr. Vince Presents, and I wanted to talk today quickly about a post that I saw recently on Facebook about a doctor wondering how he can motivate his new front desk CA and his staff to increase new patients and increase Visit volume. And so those are 2 things, 2 different things, right? New patients and then increased visits. And so let's talk about the new patients. So in my opinion, it's not the staff's responsibility to generate new patients. Like, their job is delivering excellent patient care, right? So that they have an excellent experience. And now if referrals come from that, great. But, you know, in 10 years in practice, people are— they either refer or they don't, okay? We can certainly do things to increase referrals, and that's a whole other video, but patients, they're either referrers or they're not. There can be patients that get the most phenomenal results in the world, and they don't send in anybody for whatever reason. Who knows why? Point being is, New patient generation is the doctor's responsibility. That's why I always promote really mastering marketing from the doctor's perspective so that they can generate new patients on demand, that they are running their campaigns, they're evaluating their campaigns, they're determining the ROI on each campaign. This is like the old working on the business versus in the business. And, you know, you just need to carve out a half hour or an hour per day dedicate to your marketing efforts, either putting them in place, evaluating them, changing them, refining them, etc. If you have a staff member who is just super business-oriented, hyper-motivated, and money-focused, you can then provide bonuses, For them, for each new patient that they bring into the office, but it's not— that's typically pretty few and far in between. And so you're kind of setting yourself up for frustration if you're thinking that you can, you know, set out goals. We want 40 new patients a month, you know, what are we gonna do to get there? They're not they're not marketing experts. They're not sales experts. Most likely they're not any type of expert. They are fairly low in terms of skill level. I'm just saying typically speaking. They may have an undergraduate— maybe have an undergraduate degree, but typically they don't have any real strong marketing and sales sales skills that would give them the background to figure out how to generate new patients. So, and then, so if they're answering the phone, scheduling, calling insurances, working with patients, and then you're gonna add in, but I want you to generate new patients for the office too, it becomes to be a little bit much, right? It's, again, in my opinion, it's the It's the doctor's responsibility to generate new patients. It's the staff's responsibility to create an excellent experience within the office so that you can lay the groundwork for referrals. But, you know, again, you're asking a little bit too much if you're gonna say, how can I get my staff to generate new patients? And you're kinda setting yourself up for failure and frustration. Now, in terms of the visits, the doctor had mentioned Mm-hmm. You know, that they weren't scheduling properly. And so, and I don't know if he does care plans or not. So if he doesn't do care plans, of course, you know, if the patient's walking out without scheduling their next visit, then there's obviously a breakdown in communication and systems of why isn't that patient being scheduled. If the patient is on a care plan, then it's just a quick, Hey, okay Joe, I'll see you on Thursday at 10 o'clock. That's your next appointment. Great. You know, just a quick reminder there. If the patient is missing appointments, that's another issue, right? And we have a little protocol for that. You know, we want to certainly call them within 15 minutes on the first missed appointment. On the second missed appointment, the doctor calls at the end of the day. If they have 3 missed appointments, they get put in the consultation room for the doctor. They're going to the principal's office What is going on? What do we need to change your schedule? Do we need to change the time that you come in? Like, why are you missing appointments? Because we put together this care plan for you for a reason. And so, you know, based on our evaluation and imaging and all that type of stuff, so what's the problem here? So you need to really get kind of just get knee to knee with the patient at that point and figure out why are they missing appointments. And unfortunately, some of this will Uh, come back to the report of findings. Like, the patient just didn't fully understand either the extent of the injury or the extent of why they needed the number of visits that they do, all that type of stuff. So sometimes that can come back to there. Um, and so, uh, the bottom line is you are responsible for the new patient generation. The staff is responsible for the patient experience, and they have a ton on their plate, so try not to put too much more. But in terms of the appointments, they should absolutely be working with the patient to keep those appointments, make up missed appointments, all that type of stuff. So, hey, I hope that was helpful for you. I know that's not maybe the best news in the world that you want to hear as a doctor. You know, you would— look, it would be great. As a doctor, if we could just come in and treat and, you know, the staff would generate new patients and take care of the patients and all that type of stuff. It's just not the reality of the situation. We need to take ownership of new patient generation, and that's really becoming an expert in marketing. And you say, well, that doesn't seem real fair. I went to school to be a doctor, not a marketer. Life isn't always fair, right? We have to do And play the cards that we are dealt. And in a solo practice, the doctor has to wear a lot of hats. And then as you grow, you can start to bring in people underneath you to fill in those roles. But the number one skill outside of patient evaluation and treatment that a doctor can have in practice, in a solo practitioner office is learning marketing so you can generate new patients on demand. I'm Dr. Vince Leone. I hope this was helpful, and, you know, leave a comment, question, and look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Take care.
