In this opening episode of a four‑part series, Matt Gallogly of the Practice Profit System tackles the common clinician belief that patients won’t pay cash for medical services. He explains that the real issue is the doctor’s belief, not patient willingness, and demonstrates that even a small fraction of cash‑paying patients can generate substantial revenue. Gallogly shares examples of patients already spending out‑of‑pocket on copays, imaging, and treatments, arguing that pain and need drive cash payments across income levels. He provides a simple revenue math model (e.g., 5% of 500 patients paying $3,000 each yields $75,000) and outlines a concrete action step: secure 5‑10 cash sales from an existing list to create experience and shift beliefs. The episode also promotes an upcoming 12‑week Business Mastery Fellowship designed to help doctors transition to or scale a cash‑based practice, and ends with a call to listen to the next episodes on rising insurance rates and decreasing reimbursements.
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Welcome to the Practice Profit System podcast. Do you own a cash-based practice? Are you looking to start one? Tired of working endless hours and still not making enough money? Want to fire your insurance company? Then you're gonna love our podcast. Each episode is full of insights and proven strategies to grow your practice to 7 figures and more, allowing you to take more time off, make more money, and no longer have to take insurance reimbursements. Plus, get a free copy of my book, The Anatomy of a 7-Figure Medical Medical Practice, where I detail my entire journey to creating my own 7-figure practice. Just go to www.srpmedicalmarketing.com/book. You just pay $7.95 in shipping and handling, and you'll also get over $1,197 in free bonuses. That's www.srpmedicalmarketing.com/book. Now on to our show.
Hey everybody, it is Matt Collogli with the Practice Profit System, and today we're gonna begin a 4-part series about being insurance-free. Yeah, that is what we're gonna be focusing in on. So over the next 4 podcasts, you're gonna hear different topics about how to become insurance-free. And in our first episode today, we're gonna be talking about the big— I've got 4 big questions, and the first one is, will my patients Pay cash. Yeah, probably heard that one. Is you probably have this belief that maybe my patients will not pay cash. Well, we're gonna unpack that today. I'm gonna walk you through the problems that you're gonna face. I'm gonna give you a couple of solutions, and I'm gonna give you some action steps. So let's go ahead and dive right in. Now, a couple of things that I want you to know before we get started is this is part of a bigger series, like I said, of how to become insurance-free. And this is based on all my conversations with my clients that come in and do consult days with me to build a plan for becoming insurance-free, or me working with them one-on-one. I will let you know that we are going to be starting a new Business Mastery Fellowship in the fall. It is our 12-week signature course, and it is designed specifically to help you accomplish this— become insurance-free or scale up your existing practice if you're kind of stuck at that plateau. So this is really geared towards people that are getting started, or if they are really having a hard time breaking through. There'll be more information that comes along on that. All right, let's go ahead and dive in. So the issue that a lot of people face right off the bat is, will patients pay cash? Specifically, will your patients pay cash? And the issue is not really will they pay cash, the issue is, is do you believe they will pay cash? And if you believe they will pay cash, the other question then is, how much will they pay? So I hear this really all the time, and I've heard this from clients of mine that are in Manhattan, Billings, Montana, South Atlanta. I've heard this from people that deal with wealthy. I heard this from people that deal with the poor. I hear this with people from all over the United States who work with me, and they all believe that somebody else's patient group may be willing to pay cash, but theirs will not. And the reality is, is that it's really frankly not true. And so I'm going to walk you through a couple of the big problems. So the first big problem is that people face is not only will my patients pay cash, but will patients who are used to getting Insurance to cover procedures, will they pay cash? That generally goes something like this. Even though the person may be wealthy who is coming in to meet with the doctor, or they are well off, a lot of times the doctor will think, well, gosh, they've been getting everything paid for by insurance. And so they're unwilling to really make the investment that they're going to want to go find somebody or figure out a way to get it covered by insurance. And the reality is, is that's just not true. If people have a really high pain level or a big issue level, They will find a way to pay cash, which I'll talk more about in the solutions in just a moment. So this problem of, will my patients who are used to getting insurance to cover their procedures, will they pay cash? The reality is, is that if people are in enough pain, again, they will pay for it. Yeah, this even goes for people who are middle income or lower middle income. I have plenty of doctors who work with this type of client base, and they have 10 to 15% of their patient base that are willing to go ahead and pay cash. Because the reality is, is if you're seeing 500 to 1,000 patients a month, like many insurance practices are, all we need is 5% of those 500 people to pay cash. That's 25 people. And if you're charging $3,000 for— on average for a procedure, that's $75,000. I'll dive into that more as we go along. The second problem Or second hurdle that doctors face, or what they believe in, is that my patients don't want to spend any money. Well, that's just not true because they are spending money. So if you think about— I'm going to give you an example. I have really good health insurance through my fiancée, soon-to-be wife. By the time you hear this, we'll have been married and been on our vacation, or honeymoon I should say, down in Cabo. But that's for another story, for another time. But people always go, well, my patients don't want to spend money. But the reality is, is that they are already spending money. So, let me give me as an example. So, Katie, it's in her insurance. She works in the advertising industry. She works for a pretty decent-sized company. So, we have really good insurance. I'm very lucky. I don't have to deal with the self-employed insurance mess. But, you know, it's the typical, here's the copay, it's an 80/20 max, and then after that, there's a certain percentage. Well, recently, I just had a bunch of tests done just for, like, overall health. I did, like, a heart scan, all this fun stuff. We get a massive amount covered. But the reality is, is my out-of-pocket was still $2,000. Okay? Still $2,000 for my out-of-pocket expense. And if you look at what we spend out of pocket, in addition to the insurance premium that we spend each and every single year, that out-of-pocket expense for me will run $3,500 to $4,000 at a bare minimum. I'm not even talking about What I pay for, for my HRT protocols and peptides and all that other fun stuff. Okay, I'm talking about the pure doctor insurance stuff that I go to see that doctor for. So most people, if they've been struggling with pain for quite some time, they've probably done a couple of MRIs. My last MRI cost me $900. They've probably done out of my out-of-pocket all of these things. They're probably already spending this money anyway, and on things not just MRIs but pills, medications, all this stuff, and it's not fixing the problem. So you have to remember, they're paying out of pocket already. It's not like everything is covered. Problem number 3: my patients complain about a $20 copay, Matt. Yeah, I get it. There are some of your patients that complain about a $20 copay. I've got news for you: you don't need them anymore. You can get rid of them. The reality is, is all we're looking for is 20% of your current client base. If you have an insurance-based practice, we're just looking for 10 to 20% of that client base And you will have a great toehold or foothold or even a foundation for you to build a great cash practice. Even if you have small lists of like 150 people, think about it. That's 15 to 20 people who are willing to get started or pay you cash for a procedure, use non— do non-insurance procedures, and that gives you a foundation and money to go out and market and get more. So the solution that I want you to understand is that your beliefs Are created by your experiences. Now, I did a podcast on this a couple of weeks ago, recommend that you go back and listen to it. Our team will probably put the link in the show notes. But the reality is, is that your beliefs are created by your experiences. Your experience— your beliefs do not create your experiences. It's not the beliefs to experiences, it's experiences to beliefs. And the reality is, is you don't have any experiences for you to be able to grow a cash practice. You don't have any of the experiences really that your patients will pay out of pocket. So what do you do? You need to create an environment where you have 5 to 10 sales to your existing client base. If you get 5 to 10 sales, then you're going to see— and even though those sales are going to be low dollar amounts, traditionally lower than what I would want you to charge— the reality is, is that's going to start to broaden your experiences, which is going to change your belief systems. Again, go back and listen to the podcast I did a couple of weeks ago on that topic, and I think you'll find it pretty amazing. Okay, so What do you do? Well, there's a couple of things that I really want you to just work on from this. And first and foremost is you have to make a decision if this is what you really want, okay? And if you really want to break free from insurance-based care and no longer take it, or at least get rid of the Medicare and Medicaid people that are coming in and sucking up 70% of your time and making you $0, you've got to make a bold decision to go ahead and do it. Now, boldness really in the decision comes down to the action of doing it. Okay, that's really where the boldness comes in, and I'll talk more about that resistance factors as we go along. So one of the things I want you to keep an eye out for is that in the coming weeks, our team is going to be launching out our fall installment of Business Mastery Fellowship, and this is where we show you how to grow and build a cash practice, a non-insurance practice, or scale an existing one that you have. This is really geared towards people that are really below that million-dollar mark, you're stuck around that $250,000 to half-million-dollar marker, you're just starting and you want to get some traction. Our goal of Business Mastery Fellowship is to get you to at least 7 figures a month and we have lots of people are doing it. We'll go through all those details but I just want you to get 10 sales from your current list. 5 to 10 sales from your current list, that's going to change your experiences, it's going to expand your beliefs and you're going to be in a great place. So be on the lookout for this information on Business Mastery Fellowship. I don't have a link yet This will be launched coming up in the very near future. There'll be links and emails as we go along. I want you to ask this question: are you tired of insurance? If you are, join me for the next 3 episodes in this mini chunk that we're going to be doing in the podcast, because I want you to become insurance-free. That's my goal for you. I want you to treat your patients in the way that you want to treat them, and I want you to give the great care and also break free of those chains and most importantly make the money that you're worth. All right, that's it for this week. I'm Matthew Gallogly. This is the Practice Profit System. Thank you so much for all your kind comments and words. I appreciate it. Our team loves it. And we will come at you next time when our next episode is how you're gonna deal with rising insurance rate and decreasing reimbursement rate. Check that out. We'll talk to you soon.
Thank you so much for listening. If you liked this episode, take a moment and share it with your fellow medical professionals or post a positive comment and rate it on wherever you just listened. Now, don't forget, you can get a copy of my book, The Anatomy of a 7-Figure Medical Practice, for free. Just pay $7.95 in shipping and handling. Plus, you'll get over $1,197 in free bonus material. Simply go to srpmedicalmarketing.com/book. That's srpmedicalmarketing.com/book. Thank you so much, and we'll see you next week. Thank you.
