A Step-by-Step Guide in Transitioning to Cash Practice
18 May 2024 · 11 min
Matthew Gallogly outlines two paths to a cash-only practice: starting lean by subletting clinic space and building patient demand first, or converting existing insurance practices by raising prices and switching to high-margin treatments like PRP injections and regenerative therapies. Doctors like Dr. Nabati and Dr. Santa Anna added $50k–$80k monthly in cash revenue within weeks using these tactics.
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Hey everybody, it is Matt. And today on the Practice Profit System, we're gonna discuss how to transition to a cash practice. Yep. We're gonna finally dig into that for you here on the Practice Profit System. So buckle in folks, you're in for a wild ride. Let's get rolling. Okay, let's talk about transitioning to a cash practice. Now, there's 2 types of transitions to a cash practice, and frankly, it's not as difficult as you would think it is. And so we're going to dive into these 2 types of transitions. The first is the existing insurance practice into the cash practice. It is by far the easiest one to do. The second one is the brand new startup to a cash practice. So let's talk about that second one first. So here's the question I get asked. I get this a lot. Matt, I want to start a cash practice. I'm working for a large hospital group. I'm working in a large practice. I'm fed up even though I'm well compensated and I want to go ahead and start a cash practice. How do I do it? Well, the first thing to understand is try to figure out a way to do it as inexpensively as possible. A lot of my clients will go out and do this and they'll sublet space from somebody else. One of the bigger mistakes I see people make is they go out and they do a whole build out and they spend a lot of money on the build out. They take out a big loan, they buy a bunch of equipment, and they spend all of their money trying to get this place open and they don't have money to do the thing that's most important. That is bring patients into the door. So I encourage you to do the reverse. What I want you to do is I want you to bring patients into the door before you have a door to bring them into. Let me explain. How do you do it? Well, the first one is, is that subletting space from like a chiropractor, a med spa, things like that. This is what Tom Nabati did. Dr. Nabati and Dr. Santa Anna did in Michigan. That's how they grew it. They worked part-time. They still went part-time at their pain management practice that they were working at, and they did this 1 to 2 days a week. They did it on like Fridays and Saturdays. Figure out a way to just get it started. Do a little side hustle before you do the whole damn thing. The second thing is, well, Matt, I'm not gonna have a list. Well, what you can do is you can open up your cell phone and on there you have a list of contacts, you have an email list, you have social media. We have a process that we take people through about reaching out to your contact list to let them know that you're making this transition and to enlist their support in bringing people to you. It's a little bit more involved than that. I don't have time to go into all of that, but that's one of the ways that you can do it. Okay, you basically are asking them, do you know anybody who is looking to fix XX issue? You don't tell them that you've opened a location and you're wondering if they want to come in or anything like that. You just let the world know, do you know anybody that's looking to fix this knee issue or this hormone issue or this weight issue? So then the next thing I would do is I would do a ton of content. Now, most people have it backwards with regards to marketing. So we have a client that is getting ready to actually open up a second location in Naples, Florida, and he's really worried about opening because he doesn't want to be out the cash from openings, buildouts. In this case, he, he's gonna do a minor buildout and he goes, I really wanna open and make sure that I have patients in the door. Okay, great. So what he's doing is I told him, I said, you need to start producing a ton of content 3 months prior and targeting it in Naples, videos, podcasts, things like that. He's targeting in Sarasota right now, so we want to target into Naples. In his case, the other thing he can do is he does have a little bit of money to invest. He's in the longevity market. He treats men that are 55 plus. He's going to advertise on some of the local conservative talk radio stuff. Great market for him. Okay, so, but biggest thing is post a ton of videos and content starting 3 months before opening. Why 3 months? Why not wait till I'm open? Well, it takes 3 months for it to gain traction. Okay, finally, like I said, keep it simple. Like I said, set up shop in a med spa, chiro office— these are good ones— and just continue to connect with your existing patient base. A lot of my clients— Dr. Demers, she was working part-time in doing the orthopedic stuff, and she would tell people, you know what, you might not want to consider this corticosteroid shot. Here, give this number a call, they have another way to do it. She couldn't say that was her clinic, but she had somebody on staff that would answer the call, and then they would go see her. So you can reach out, you can talk to your existing client base while you're seeing them. Okay, those are all options. All right, so let's talk about the more important part. Let's talk about marketing your existing practice. And how do I convert an existing insurance practice to a cash practice? This is very, very easy to do. And the examples that I'm going to give with you are actual examples from clients of mine that have done this exact same thing. In fact, this is what we teach people to do. So how do we make the transition? First, you have to understand that your pricing, your concept of pricing is wrong. You most likely are not charging enough for your procedures. If you want to do, I did a whole deep dive on that in a prior podcast about what should you charge. Check it out. You know, it's on our list. In fact, it was probably just released a couple weeks prior to this one. And so what I want you to do is understand that one, you're not charging enough. I don't care what you're charging. If you just raise your prices, you're not charging enough. Okay? So you can charge way more than you think you can when it comes to your existing client list. So how do we do this? Well, if I'm a pain management orthopedic, one of my favorite things to do is convert corticosteroid patients into PRP. Easier than you would ever believe. You see, on the patient side of things, we don't know that the steroid shot is actually weakening the ligament. and making things worse over the long term. What we do know is the steroid shot hurts like a son of a buck, and it doesn't last very long. So we're looking for other things to do. And for a lot of patients, you know, they have a pretty sizable deductible. The average family has a $12,500 out-of-pocket deductible. If you have a quality plan in the United States, which is 60% of the people in America, Their average out-of-pocket expense a year, not counting insurance premiums, $12,500. So if they've got to pay $100 for a corticosteroid shot that doesn't work, or they've got to pay $1,100— or I'm sorry, $2,100 for a PRP shot that's going to last 5 years, they'll do the math pretty quickly. They'll figure it out. And they just want it fixed. You have to remember, patients don't like coming in to see you. They want to get it fixed and they want to move on with their life. They don't like coming back in. Okay? Most of them have jobs, kids, all of that fun stuff. So if you're pain management, orthopedic, you can convert your steroid injections. If you're orthopedic, many of your joint replacement candidates will have much better results and delay surgery with orthobiologics and regenerative. You know, if you have a patient that's in there and they need hip replacement and they're 45 years old, what's that revision going to be like at 60? People are living a lot longer. Maybe the joints are lasting longer, but I talked to my orthopedic surgeons and they're like, yeah, we have no idea what we're going to do with these revisions. Right? I mean, you know, it's not as easy as it sounds. It's kind of a messy thing. So if you can delay that with regenerative therapies, which many times you can, and delay that surgery for another 5 years and wait for, see what happens with the advancements with regards to hip replacement or knee replacement or shoulder replacement, then guess what? That's the best thing for the patient. And your patient doesn't want to go through all of that. Even if your patients are 55 or 60 and you can delay that, all that rehab and all of that. You're in a much better place. Another one, uh, OB-GYNs. Target women who are 42+ and host a seminar on perimenopause. I mean, you delivered the babies. Don't you think that they would want you to talk to them about the next phase of their life as they go through perimenopause and menopause? Okay, so OB-GYNs, if you are listening, you are sitting on a gold mine. We just got to get you out of delivering babies. Okay. Family medicine, same kind of thing. You're already referring people out to to orthopedics or you're referring people out to hormone replacement therapy, family medicine is great. The next thing you can do is you can run an email campaign to your list. We call it a 5130. Again, you don't have time to go into this. We have talked about this in other shows, but again, you can reach out to one of our ambassadors and they can talk to you about that or what that would look like, and we can do that for you. So you, you'll find a link where you can schedule a call with one of our ambassadors. You can host a webinar, you can host a live event. Here's the thing. If you have an existing client base and you just start talking to them about these things, you're going to get great results. One of my favorite things to do is our clients will actually take an iPad and when before the doctor comes in, they'll have the patient watch a 6 to 7 minute video that discusses the new procedure. And in this new procedure, they might say like in the orthopedic space, you know, we're doing this work with PRP and stem cell therapy, you know, BMAC and things like that. Here are the results that we're getting, blah, blah, blah. And the patient will actually ask you about that when you walk in. Pre-educate your patient. Don't be afraid to do that. Don't be afraid to talk to them. Talk to everybody about this. This is what Ash Goyal has done. He talks to everyone now. He's moved his— he now spends 20 minutes with each patient. He talks to them about regenerative therapies, and he's booked out 6 weeks in advance for procedures. He's doing over $80,000 a month, up from $20,000 a month in the last 4 months. Completely transforming his business, completely transforming the way he treats his patients. His patients are thrilled, and his patients are Medicare and Medicaid. So don't think that your patients aren't going to pay for it. I just ask you to trust me. Move forward. Yeah, just getting to know me. It might take a little bit of time. That's fine. Okay, but just watch the case studies of the folks that we talk to. Okay, so our average client is doing $50,000. Yeah, we'll add $50,000 in 60 days just from following these simple steps. You have in your pocket a treasure trove of potential clients. Market to them. Use this money to then go out and grow your market. Build more content, build more awareness, market more in your marketplace, because the transition is a lot more simple and a lot more easy. One of the great joys that we have is when a doctor fires an insurance provider. It's really one of the happiest days here at Mavericks. We love it. We love seeing you get free. Our mission is simple, to free 100,000 doctors worldwide by the end of 2024. 33 from the tyranny of medically based medical insurance. We want you to treat your patients as you see fit, and we're hoping that you'll be one of the 100,000. If you wanna find out more, check out my book, The Anatomy of a 7-Figure Medical Practice. You'll see the link right below. You can see it right behind me right there. And it is the Bible, the seminal book for how to grow a cash practice based on real live examples of what I did in mine, and we still do today. Everything that we share with you is based on real-life case studies. None of it is theory. It's all been tested at the local level. So check it out. We'll send it to you for free. We'll send you the book. You don't have to pay for the book. Just pay $7.95 shipping and handling. Plus we'll give you lots of bonuses. So there you go. Have a great day, everybody. This is the Practice Profit System. I'm Matthew Gallogly. I'm your host. Have a great day. We look forward to seeing you along the journey. If you see us at an event, stop by and say hello. Have a great day. Bye.
