The Boston Globe Magazine recently covered a story about an interesting link between doctors who admit they have made a mistake, and patients who are likely to sue the practitioner or practice.  While many doctors are conditioned to be suspicious of malpractice claims, openly apologizing to the patient may be a step in a positive direction. According to the article, physicians who express some type of remorse or formally apologize for their mistake may end up with slightly more satisfied patients – and patients who are least likely to sue them.

As a medical provider or doctor, it is your responsibility to ensure that you are providing satisfactory services and addressing any concerns your patient may have. However, you may run into situations where you or one of your staff members makes a mistake and this mistake affects the outcome of a procedure or treatment. Even something as simple as neglecting to return a patient’s phone call or email can cause a high level of dissatisfaction that needs to be addressed.

A program at the University of Michigan encourages physicians to reveal their mistakes as early as possible and even offer compensation to patients who might have been harmed in some way. According to experts, revealing the mistake and addressing it swiftly can protect a doctor’s reputation and may even prevent a malpractice lawsuit.

A few ways to apologize for a mistake or error may include:

• Following up with a patient immediately after he or she has expressed their dissatisfaction, either via email or by phone
• Taking the time to understand what the patient is concerned about and why they are unhappy with the situation
• Correcting the issue with compensation or a discount on a corrective treatment or service
• Asking the patient to collaborate on a resolution
• Doing the work necessary to reach a mutual agreement with the patient

Need more tips or ideas for managing your practice? Talk to a PracticeDock online marketing specialist today.

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• Best Practices for Capturing New Patient Leads
• Need Help Marketing Your Practice Online?
• A Look at the Facebook Power User Infographic
• Case Study: How a Doctor Leverages Online Marketing Tools to Attract More Patients
• Use Videos in News Releases for Better SEO

You work hard to ensure you’re putting together creative marketing campaigns each quarter and training your staff to handle your patient leads. But do you have an accurate idea of how much it actually costs to acquire a patient? Even though reviewing financial statements regularly will give you an idea of how much revenue your practice is generating, those numbers don’t give you any idea what your return on investment is for various marketing endeavors.

You need a formula that calculates how much it actually costs to acquire each patient based on how much you spend to attract the patient.

Here are some was to determine your actual cost per patient:

Step 1: Track all expenses related to advertising and marketing. You want to have a solid idea of how much it costs to bring in new patients. You can do this by determining total costs of every single marketing and advertising campaign. Remember to include the cost of salaries you pay to people managing these campaigns, as well as any materials you purchase or investments you make to implement and execute the campaign.

Step 2: Track the number of patients acquired with each campaign. This can be tricky when you are running billboard ads or sending out direct mail pieces, but you can include a special phone number within these marketing campaigns so that you can track response rates. If you are executing an online marketing campaign, you’ll need to track the number of leads generated from the campaign and calculate how many of those leads turned into patients. Don’t be afraid to ask patients how they found out about your practice or a special offer.

Step 3: Divide the total cost of a campaign by the total number of patient acquisitions. This is the basic formula for determining how much it cost to acquire a patient with a specific campaign. For example, if you spent $2,500 on newspaper and magazine advertising and acquired 100 patients from these campaigns, your cost per patient is $250.

After you have a good idea of what your average cost per patient is, you can determine how profitable a patient is by reviewing typical patient purchase history and considering how much a patient might spend with you over their lifetime. The most profitable patients will, of course, be your returning patients because you have only spent that initial amount to attract them to your practice. After that initial ‘investment’, you can look to that patient to book more procedures or make more purchases. This will give you a lifetime value of a patient (LTV).

Need help with your patient acquisition strategy? Talk to a PracticeDock online marketing specialist today!

More content you may be interested in:

• Best Practices for Capturing New Patient Leads
• Need Help Marketing Your Practice Online?
• A Look at the Facebook Power User Infographic
• Case Study: How a Doctor Leverages Online Marketing Tools to Attract More Patients
• Use Videos in News Releases for Better SEO