Podcast episode (Pelby biz) with Dr. Kelly Alhooie (recorded Mar 30, 2024) offering concrete strategies to reduce patient cancellations in brick-and-mortar and virtual pelvic-health practices. Key advice: set expectations during the initial evaluation (including that multiple visits may be telehealth), explain and sell telehealth clearly as use-of-environment video PT, sell treatment packages to increase commitment, give admins clear rescheduling options (switch to telehealth, move later that week, or move to the end of plan of care), use email nurturing campaigns for dropped patients, and maintain an active follow-up calendar to recapture patients.
Welcome to Pelby biz podcast. I'm Dr. Kelly Alhui. I have grown and established brick and mortar practice in Northern Virginia called Ortho Pelvic Physical Therapy and also founded Pelvibiz, which is an online business consulting company that helps healthcare providers make more money and be healthy while doing it, especially in the pelvic health realm. And let's get into today's episode.
Today I'm going to talk about how to prevent cancellations in the clinic and online. I think this is a massive topic most people want to know about. They are always dming me, Kelly, I'm getting so many cancellations. What do I do about those cancellations? So let's talk about it. Let's go over some tips and tricks that are really going to help you thrive and keep the numbers up without you getting frustrated thinking, why does everyone want to cancel? I don't know what to do. So let's get right into it. All right, so number one, what I do is I help my therapist be able to frame things differently at the initial evaluation. So what I mean by that is someone comes into my clinic and they're a new patient. And what we do is we talk about how to set expectations on initial evaluation. So, Sally, just so you know, we gotta complete our three step method. And with that comes that at least two of these sessions will be a telehealth visit. So we're already setting the expectation that there's gonna be two video physical therapy sessions that are going to be needed during that timeframe. So number two, you have to set expectations. So if you are sick, let's just say you're sick, you don't have childcare, you're out of town, you got a flat tire, whatever it may be, okay, you don't have a car, Sally, oh my God, I'm so sorry that's happening to you. But what we can do is switch that to a telehealth visit. Remember our initial evaluation, I was talking about how we do video physical therapy and we teach you and use your environment. So whether or not you're traveling or whether or not you're at your house or whether or not you have a sick kid, we're going to be able to continue to make progress whether or not you're here or at home. And again, setting that expectation up ahead of time is massively important. Because if it's the first time they hear that over the phone, they're going to be like, what the heck is video physical therapy or video occupational therapy? Like, what is that they're gonna think that we're crazy and they're gonna say, hell, no, because A, they have to pay money for it. Would you pay money for something that you don't even know is, like, legit? No. So you're only gonna pay money if you feel that that thing is gonna help you. So if we set the expectations ahead of time, then the people are gonna be like, oh, yeah, okay. Yeah, you did say that. I remember. Yeah. I want to try it. You know, that sounds cool. It's going to save me time. Yeah, it's going to save you time. You don't have to leave your house. Okay, cool. That's amazing. Great. I'll definitely pay for that then. You know, people want to pay for that. Number three, you must describe what telehealth is. People do not know the telehealth. What's telehealth? So what we say is telehealth is a video physical therapy session. So what we do, we use your environment so that we're able to get you the progress that you need. Not in the staged environment here at the clinic, the one that's at your house, so that we can actually solve the problems. And you're going to use your kitchen, you're going to use your basement floor, you're going to use all these different things that you use on the daily to actually get your problem solved, because something in your daily life right now is causing that issue. So actually, this is perfect because we can go through your whole routine that you do, and I can watch and observe to see where that back pain is coming from. Also, this is going to save you time because you're not having to drive to us and you're not having to drive home, and you don't even have to get a babysitter, because we're actually going to use your baby in this demo that we're going to be doing because I want to see everything you do with her. And then we go over, how is she breastfeeding, how is she sitting on the couch, how is she lifting her child, how is she doing certain tasks? All those things are going to be very, very important that I'm going to go through with her. So telehealth is very powerful. I think we as providers have to believe that, and if we don't believe it, then how the patient's going to believe it. But I really think it's an impactful tool to really impact people's life and livelihood around us. Number four, let's see. You have to make sure, you're selling packages. The reason why packages are important because if you do get a cancellation, they've already committed, you know that they're going to come back in and commit back at some point. Hopefully that's next week and you know, and they're not dropping off for two weeks or whatever else. But with packages, that shows that they are committed to getting the outcome that they want. That's the biggest thing with packages. So if they cancel, it's not that big a deal because we know we can recapture them. But if someone just cancels to cancel, the likelihood that if they don't complete the method, we see this all the time at Orthopelvic, they don't complete the method at Orthopelvic, then we know that the outcomes that they want are not going to be achieved. If they stop at like visit 8, I just can tell you that from years and years and years and years and years, years of experience of doing this and if they skip a week, two, the likelihood of that outcome goes down significantly. And I think there's many stats on this. I just heard my mastermind group, someone threw out a stat that someone actually studied this weekly sessions versus like every other week. And like the likelihood of the outcomes they get. It's. I'm telling you it's significant. There are stats on it that you have to be every single week consistent so that we can check in, we can see our progress is going and that if we just complete the method, the likelihood that those dreams that they have is like 95% will come true and their issues will be like completely resolved. It's crazy, but I just need them to be consistent. So I think that's really important. And then I have number five, make sure admins have options. So admins cannot just be like, okay, cool, just move it to like two weeks from now. No, that's not what we need the admins to do. So number one, tell my admins please switch it to a telehealth. They cannot switch it to a telehealth. Then please move it later on that week. If they can't do that, then I say let's move that visit to the end of their full plan of care. That might be three months from now, but that's okay. We're going to move it to the end because that's what we've come up with that it takes for us to get this issue completely resolved. Also, I think this is a very important statement that we say because of our pts, book the patients out, we Say your doctor has come up with a very specific treatment plan for you to get you the results that you're looking for. So we must stick with that to continue to make progress. So what we're going to do is move this later on in the week and or we'll move this to the end of your plan of care. What day and time works best for you and then we see what day and time works best for them and then we get them to come in. Also number six I have is having an online nurturing series email. So let's just say they want to cancel. That was like their last appointment that they had scheduled. Well how then are you going to get them to come back in and finish up their plan of care? It's very hard to like get ahold of them once they're off the schedule. So do you have a back end campaign email campaign that you are sending out to these people that is saying hey, if you haven't got your problem yet, we can really solve it. Here are some testimonials so that we can help solve your problem. I think that's very important. And then number seven I have is we have a calendar that we put patients in and we just will put this person on a calendar. If they went, let's just say they dropped off. We'll put them on the calendar and be like hey, let's follow up with Sally today and see if she still has leakage. We'll call her. Sally may be like yeah, I saw some leakage. Okay Sally, well let's go ahead and get you in because we have to solve that. Like that's what you said when you came, you wanted to solve it. Well, I'm kind of busy. Can get that you're busy. But we're going to make this so easy. Would you like to bring this to a telehealth so you don't even have to leave your house and we'll cut down on time. Okay, that sounds kind of good I guess, right? And so we have a calendar that we move patients on to keep calling them and we're not bothering them when we call them. We are really actually trying to truly solve their problem because they contacted us and they had a problem. So we are just trying to solve that problem that they have come in with. I think that's very important is that you're not bothering them. So keep calling them and making sure that admin have a consistent that they're calling, calling, calling. I think that's super, super important. So for those of you that are really wanting to prevent cancellations. This is literally how we do works really well and it's very effective. So give this a try. Leave me a comment below. If you've tried this, please let me know. And if you have any questions too, I'd be happy to answer them. Bye guys.
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