What's on YOUR walls?
Those Mediterranean motives painted in fake impressionistic style usually sold to mass tourists on side walks, now available at your trusted Wal-Mart? That style of "art" that seems obligatory in medical offices if you believe your local decorator? You know, those pictures of Portofino, Lago di Garda, Lago di Como...
Try the following low cost – high style alternatives:Nicholas Nixon “The Brown Sisters”. Shows 4 Massachusetts sisters as photographed yearly by one of their husbands over a time frame of 27 or 28 years now, one photo each year. A wonderful series – very suitable for an Ob/Gyn office. Buy 2 books for $39, tear out the pages and frame them. Or pay 100 K for a signed original 25-image-series available in a NYC gallery.
Take a look at the following artist websites (and remember that taste is subjective):Photographies by Emerson Matabele http://www.emersonimages.com/
One great photographer, whom I happen to know in person, and whose art I have bought without regretting it one second is Martin Berinstein. Take a look at his photographies at http://www.berinstein.com/.
Dry pigment paintings by Diane French who has studios in La Crosse, WI and St. Augustine Beach, FL http://www.statestreetgallery.com/ and http://www.canvascompany.com/
Ansel Adams never hurts either.
Should you have an Ikea nearby, they have very affordable framed and unframed art…
For nature images of the Everglades and Florida wetlands look up Clyde Butcher, a photographer who for me comes close to Ansel Adams. He photographs South Florida and its beaches, the Everglades, and the Big Cypress Swamp. On his website http://www.clydebutcher.com/ take a look at the “posters” section - for $40 you get excellent images…
I have the privilege to live in Boston (a privilege for which I pay dearly with lower income and higher malpractice rates) and we have a fabulous thing called "open studios". These are events, usually weekends, where many or most or all artists in particular areas of the city open their studios to the public. They even offer wine, mineral water, crackers, sometimes music and always conversation. Truly a wonderful thing, I love it. I consider it one of the best sides of Boston. If you are anywhere near the city look in the Boston Globe or on the Boston Globe website or google the term "Open Studios Boston" and visit...
Put some real art, and even if it is only a copy or print, in your office. Be different!
And, of course, you could send me your ideas about this, but you won't anyway, I know that.
Showing posts with label market your practice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label market your practice. Show all posts
Monday, July 23, 2007
Marketing Your Practice - on the Web
Top 10 reasons to see an ObGyn in 2005
based on nationwide survey of about 198 ObGyns, done by Verispan
Supervision of normal 2nd or later pregnancy 16.6 %
Gynecological exam 13.6 %
Contraceptive counseling 5.7 %
Symptomatic menopausal state 4.6 %
Surgery follow up 3.4 %
Vaginitis 3.1 %
Contraceptive surveillance 2.7 %
Routine postpartum follow up 1.9%
UTI 1.7 %
Osteoporosis 1.7%
A few thoughts on this:
1. These numbers can be a good guide for your marketing, and for the way you present your practice on the web. You may consider declaring yourself a specialist in the most common reasons for people to see an ObGyn. You post this on your website in exactly the order of frequency, and a maximum number of potential patients may be attracted to your office.
2. Where is the dysfunctional uterine bleeding in this list? DUB has the potential to be the biggest money maker in any gyn practice. DUB means ultrasound, saline-infusion sonography, in-office hysteroscopy, EMB - which may be billed as D&C if you do it right, in-office ablation (HerOption, Novasure), myomectomy, hysterectomy. Given these issues it makes sense to become and advertise yourself as THE expert in dysfunctional uterine bleeding. We all may be experts, but your website says YOU are THE expert.
3. Where is the incontinence treatment in this list? A TVT pays as much in MA as 9 months of prenatal care including delivery - talk about fairness!? I ask all my patients during annual exams about incontinence in a gentle way "do you sometimes loose urine? Do you leak urine when you cough or laugh? That leads to some further testing and some procedures, but the majority of patients still come through PCPs as referrals. Incontinence treatment is another service you should advertise on your website. A urologist in my community recently told me that he used to do about 50 slings a year and now, "thanks to the ObGYns" he does only 2 or 3.
based on nationwide survey of about 198 ObGyns, done by Verispan
Supervision of normal 2nd or later pregnancy 16.6 %
Gynecological exam 13.6 %
Contraceptive counseling 5.7 %
Symptomatic menopausal state 4.6 %
Surgery follow up 3.4 %
Vaginitis 3.1 %
Contraceptive surveillance 2.7 %
Routine postpartum follow up 1.9%
UTI 1.7 %
Osteoporosis 1.7%
A few thoughts on this:
1. These numbers can be a good guide for your marketing, and for the way you present your practice on the web. You may consider declaring yourself a specialist in the most common reasons for people to see an ObGyn. You post this on your website in exactly the order of frequency, and a maximum number of potential patients may be attracted to your office.
2. Where is the dysfunctional uterine bleeding in this list? DUB has the potential to be the biggest money maker in any gyn practice. DUB means ultrasound, saline-infusion sonography, in-office hysteroscopy, EMB - which may be billed as D&C if you do it right, in-office ablation (HerOption, Novasure), myomectomy, hysterectomy. Given these issues it makes sense to become and advertise yourself as THE expert in dysfunctional uterine bleeding. We all may be experts, but your website says YOU are THE expert.
3. Where is the incontinence treatment in this list? A TVT pays as much in MA as 9 months of prenatal care including delivery - talk about fairness!? I ask all my patients during annual exams about incontinence in a gentle way "do you sometimes loose urine? Do you leak urine when you cough or laugh? That leads to some further testing and some procedures, but the majority of patients still come through PCPs as referrals. Incontinence treatment is another service you should advertise on your website. A urologist in my community recently told me that he used to do about 50 slings a year and now, "thanks to the ObGYns" he does only 2 or 3.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Put your Practice on the Web - Practice tips 6
Have a web presence by setting up a practice website. It is your business card on the web. It allows your patients to get a view of your practice and a chance to evaluate your practice beforehand. This gives them a chance to build trust and gain confidence in you before they see you for the first time. It also saves phonecalls if you publish often needed information such as your prenatal information leaflet or package. Patients have access to it around the clock. Your leflet can answer the question if it is OK to e.g. take a certain medication during pregnancy. You can post office hours, telephone numbers, procedures you do, areas of specialisation, directions etc on your website.
Websites from MEDEM are reasonably priced, but look a little stodgy and dry. Medem is a corporation that unites many medical societies on the web. Their biggest plus are the great links that you can place on your website. For example, you can post links to numerous ACOG leaflets for free! Given the price of $18 for 50 leaflets that alone is worth the subscription for the website. ACOG’s “Physician finder” leads patients who are looking for a physician to your website. You have limited, but reasonable choices for customization.
The people from "Healthcare Success Strategies" will write and design your website in a very bice and possibly very succesful fashion - for about $7000. The websites from Healthcare Success Strategies that I have seen look excellent and are very well written. They also do write in the correct keywords that give you higher ratings right from the start. It seems expensive, but might be worth it.
My impression on ratings in the following: Content is key. If you have good content, you are better off. Skip the flash introductions, the spiders cannot read it and it slows down the loading of the site. Keywords are very important. When planning a website you should go to Yahoo and another website that shows you which words / keywords are searched the most. This could be prenatal care, baby, pregnancy, the name of your town etc. Use those words often and repetitively in everything you write.
I would be careful with "search engine optimization services" and possibly stick with those affiliated with and recommended by the web hosting service.
There are a number of services that offer ready-to-go websites for very affordable monthly fees. The least expensive and quite good one is: 1&1 web hosting. It gives you the biggest bang for the buck. It has numerous templates of good quality, although the better looking ones cost extra, and it gives you great control over your website.
Other similar services are : Yahoo, which has recently improved their templates, GoDaddy, and then the infinite number of smaller service providers.
1and1 webhosting, Google and GoDaddy have links to webdesigners that can customize your site.
Google has a service, which is in beta right now (12 06) called page creator, which allows you to publish your pages. This may turn into a full fledged website software (conveniently free, like most Google services).
You also can publish your information, your patient instructions, thoughts and links on "Blogger", which is probably the least expensive web presence you can get. You can set up the "favorites" as your index or as links to the most read info leaflets, and you can use the "profile" to direct your patients how to use your Blog as your patient information system. Insert many links and your patients will find what they are looking for.
Be careful with web designers and hosting services that "specialize on doctors", since they tend to charge more than others. After all doctors are rich, right?. Correspondingly they usually target colleagues with higher incomes such as dentists, orthodontists and plastic surgeons.
Should you be a bit more computer savvy, you could set up your website yourself or with some help. You could also hire someone form a nearby college to set it up for you or you could post your website project as a job on Guru.com. Guru.com is site that posts jobs for programmers and software people in general. You post the job, assign a payment and the programmers email you and offer their services. No obligation. Very helpful. take a look at it.
You could also ask your hospital IT department to give you recommendations about local software people that might help you set up and or maintain your website.
Should you want to do a good part of your website building yourself, you will find good website templates go to Allwebco.com. I especially like the "Graphix" series of templates - very cool! Also take a look at templatemonster.com. Templatemonster is a company that constantly develops and designs new website templates, from simple to fancy. You should know that they have a large number of resellers, so you may find their website templates on numerous websites under different names.
Learn about Google. Google is not only the gateway to the Internet, the way to find whatever you are looking for, the new phonebook and the closest thing to the "answer man". Google has a number of nifty and free tools: Gmail, "Docs and Spreadsheets", Blogger, Pagecreator (a web publishing tool) and Google Analytics. Docs and Spreadsheets is interesting and I use it daily. It is the equivalent of having Word and Excel online. It is especially useful if you routinely work on many computers (home, travel, office, hospital) and work on a project. With Google Docs and Spreadsheets you can continue writing on your text wherever you are. You can also allow others to collaborate on your projects, which is great when you have to write policies or consensus papers.
Also get to know Google hacks, learn ways to speed up your search and learn how to better find what you are looking for.
Don't forget to list your office on "Local Business" of Google and, if you want, on its equivalent on Yahoo. Go to their websites and follow the links.
Websites from MEDEM are reasonably priced, but look a little stodgy and dry. Medem is a corporation that unites many medical societies on the web. Their biggest plus are the great links that you can place on your website. For example, you can post links to numerous ACOG leaflets for free! Given the price of $18 for 50 leaflets that alone is worth the subscription for the website. ACOG’s “Physician finder” leads patients who are looking for a physician to your website. You have limited, but reasonable choices for customization.
The people from "Healthcare Success Strategies" will write and design your website in a very bice and possibly very succesful fashion - for about $7000. The websites from Healthcare Success Strategies that I have seen look excellent and are very well written. They also do write in the correct keywords that give you higher ratings right from the start. It seems expensive, but might be worth it.
My impression on ratings in the following: Content is key. If you have good content, you are better off. Skip the flash introductions, the spiders cannot read it and it slows down the loading of the site. Keywords are very important. When planning a website you should go to Yahoo and another website that shows you which words / keywords are searched the most. This could be prenatal care, baby, pregnancy, the name of your town etc. Use those words often and repetitively in everything you write.
I would be careful with "search engine optimization services" and possibly stick with those affiliated with and recommended by the web hosting service.
There are a number of services that offer ready-to-go websites for very affordable monthly fees. The least expensive and quite good one is: 1&1 web hosting. It gives you the biggest bang for the buck. It has numerous templates of good quality, although the better looking ones cost extra, and it gives you great control over your website.
Other similar services are : Yahoo, which has recently improved their templates, GoDaddy, and then the infinite number of smaller service providers.
1and1 webhosting, Google and GoDaddy have links to webdesigners that can customize your site.
Google has a service, which is in beta right now (12 06) called page creator, which allows you to publish your pages. This may turn into a full fledged website software (conveniently free, like most Google services).
You also can publish your information, your patient instructions, thoughts and links on "Blogger", which is probably the least expensive web presence you can get. You can set up the "favorites" as your index or as links to the most read info leaflets, and you can use the "profile" to direct your patients how to use your Blog as your patient information system. Insert many links and your patients will find what they are looking for.
Be careful with web designers and hosting services that "specialize on doctors", since they tend to charge more than others. After all doctors are rich, right?. Correspondingly they usually target colleagues with higher incomes such as dentists, orthodontists and plastic surgeons.
Should you be a bit more computer savvy, you could set up your website yourself or with some help. You could also hire someone form a nearby college to set it up for you or you could post your website project as a job on Guru.com. Guru.com is site that posts jobs for programmers and software people in general. You post the job, assign a payment and the programmers email you and offer their services. No obligation. Very helpful. take a look at it.
You could also ask your hospital IT department to give you recommendations about local software people that might help you set up and or maintain your website.
Should you want to do a good part of your website building yourself, you will find good website templates go to Allwebco.com. I especially like the "Graphix" series of templates - very cool! Also take a look at templatemonster.com. Templatemonster is a company that constantly develops and designs new website templates, from simple to fancy. You should know that they have a large number of resellers, so you may find their website templates on numerous websites under different names.
Learn about Google. Google is not only the gateway to the Internet, the way to find whatever you are looking for, the new phonebook and the closest thing to the "answer man". Google has a number of nifty and free tools: Gmail, "Docs and Spreadsheets", Blogger, Pagecreator (a web publishing tool) and Google Analytics. Docs and Spreadsheets is interesting and I use it daily. It is the equivalent of having Word and Excel online. It is especially useful if you routinely work on many computers (home, travel, office, hospital) and work on a project. With Google Docs and Spreadsheets you can continue writing on your text wherever you are. You can also allow others to collaborate on your projects, which is great when you have to write policies or consensus papers.
Also get to know Google hacks, learn ways to speed up your search and learn how to better find what you are looking for.
Don't forget to list your office on "Local Business" of Google and, if you want, on its equivalent on Yahoo. Go to their websites and follow the links.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Market Your Practice - Practice Tips 5
You probably already have maxed out the cost saving measures in your practice. The better way to more income is to increase the number of patients that you see and to get more of the patients that you LIKE, and do more of the procedures that you like and that pay well.
For that, you should market yourself. It would be by far too much to go into details, but I would like to point you in the right direction for good information that is worth reading and does not waste your time.
You must buy and or read this book:
Marketing Your Clinical Practice: Ethically, Effectively, Economically (Hardcover) by Neil Baum, Gretchen Henkel
Neil Baum's book contains the sum of all other advice that I had ever heard before I bought it and I was surprised how much more it contains. No wonder nobody recommended it to me. Every resident should receive it as a graduation gift from her or his program director. It is an absolute must for planning a private practice or if you already are in private practice. Consultants are not going to tell you more than what you will read in this book. Read this book for $89 instead of attending $ 2000 weekend courses - where you mostly will be solicited for more consulting services. This is hands down the single most valuable book for marketing your own practice.
"Guerrilla Marketing" by Jay Conrad Levinson. A classic on marketing creatively. The title suggests that it is possible for the little guy to succeed against the competing big guys. Interesting and stimulating to read, you get a lot of ideas and inspiration while reading it. Take notes! It is paperback, cheap, about $15. Levinson he has written numerous books on the subject in all its facts: guerrilla marketing handbook, marketing for free, marketing on the Internet etc etc. All book stores have his books. You can browse through his titles and look inot some of his books on Amazon and you will find an idea which of his books are appropriate for you.
The Book "Marketing to Women, How to Understand, Reach, and Increase Your Share of the Largest Market Segment" written by Marti Barletta, a female marketer. This was especially enlightening for me as a male ObGyn. It lays out in great detail what makes women tick, what motivates women, what gets their attention. Essential for an ObGyn.
"Healthcare Success Strategies" is a marketing company that specializes on marketing private physician practices. Lonnie Hirsch and Stewart Gandolf, the two founding partners, left "Practice Builders", the biggest national company for practice management and marketing and started their own company. They seem to have a lot of experience and success.
I recommend buying their 8 CD set on "Marketing your practice" from Advanstar, the publisher of Medical Economics. It gives you numerous insights, more if you listen to it more often. It also serves to subtly convince you that "marketing is more than a list of ideas" and that you should have "professionals handle it for you" - you know where this is going. They offer a reasonably priced (about $1000) two day seminar (with preparation and follow up home work) to come up with a comprehensive marketing plan tailored to your practice. I do not recommend it if you have the CD set, since it repeats verbatim what you heard on the CDs. Go to the seminar only if you think of actually hiring them to market your practice.
Take a look at their website, if you like it, buy their CD set for $200 and then decide if you want to go further. I think they are good and worth the money. They will soon publish the material of the CDs and their seminar in a book for about $100. It will come out the end of 2007 or early in 2008.
Otherwise follow the old rules:
The best marketing is word of mouth. Take good care of your patients and ask them to send their friends. Tell them that you are accepting new patients. Send them a nice thank you card when they refer someone. Inform your patients about what you do, they often do not know and will be surprised to find out.
Get to know the referring physicians. Fax them a short letter every time you see one of their patients. Ask them what you can best help them. Say good things about them to their patients - it will get back to the referring doctor.
Call patients that need more attention, call patients that you have operated, show that you care.
For that, you should market yourself. It would be by far too much to go into details, but I would like to point you in the right direction for good information that is worth reading and does not waste your time.
You must buy and or read this book:
Marketing Your Clinical Practice: Ethically, Effectively, Economically (Hardcover) by Neil Baum, Gretchen Henkel
Neil Baum's book contains the sum of all other advice that I had ever heard before I bought it and I was surprised how much more it contains. No wonder nobody recommended it to me. Every resident should receive it as a graduation gift from her or his program director. It is an absolute must for planning a private practice or if you already are in private practice. Consultants are not going to tell you more than what you will read in this book. Read this book for $89 instead of attending $ 2000 weekend courses - where you mostly will be solicited for more consulting services. This is hands down the single most valuable book for marketing your own practice.
"Guerrilla Marketing" by Jay Conrad Levinson. A classic on marketing creatively. The title suggests that it is possible for the little guy to succeed against the competing big guys. Interesting and stimulating to read, you get a lot of ideas and inspiration while reading it. Take notes! It is paperback, cheap, about $15. Levinson he has written numerous books on the subject in all its facts: guerrilla marketing handbook, marketing for free, marketing on the Internet etc etc. All book stores have his books. You can browse through his titles and look inot some of his books on Amazon and you will find an idea which of his books are appropriate for you.
The Book "Marketing to Women, How to Understand, Reach, and Increase Your Share of the Largest Market Segment" written by Marti Barletta, a female marketer. This was especially enlightening for me as a male ObGyn. It lays out in great detail what makes women tick, what motivates women, what gets their attention. Essential for an ObGyn.
"Healthcare Success Strategies" is a marketing company that specializes on marketing private physician practices. Lonnie Hirsch and Stewart Gandolf, the two founding partners, left "Practice Builders", the biggest national company for practice management and marketing and started their own company. They seem to have a lot of experience and success.
I recommend buying their 8 CD set on "Marketing your practice" from Advanstar, the publisher of Medical Economics. It gives you numerous insights, more if you listen to it more often. It also serves to subtly convince you that "marketing is more than a list of ideas" and that you should have "professionals handle it for you" - you know where this is going. They offer a reasonably priced (about $1000) two day seminar (with preparation and follow up home work) to come up with a comprehensive marketing plan tailored to your practice. I do not recommend it if you have the CD set, since it repeats verbatim what you heard on the CDs. Go to the seminar only if you think of actually hiring them to market your practice.
Take a look at their website, if you like it, buy their CD set for $200 and then decide if you want to go further. I think they are good and worth the money. They will soon publish the material of the CDs and their seminar in a book for about $100. It will come out the end of 2007 or early in 2008.
Otherwise follow the old rules:
The best marketing is word of mouth. Take good care of your patients and ask them to send their friends. Tell them that you are accepting new patients. Send them a nice thank you card when they refer someone. Inform your patients about what you do, they often do not know and will be surprised to find out.
Get to know the referring physicians. Fax them a short letter every time you see one of their patients. Ask them what you can best help them. Say good things about them to their patients - it will get back to the referring doctor.
Call patients that need more attention, call patients that you have operated, show that you care.
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