Customer Service For Your Practice

This is not another pandemic story, but when will it all be over?  The reality is, one can only take an educated guess on when things would go back to normal.  As millions of people were furloughed or lost jobs, others like myself who had to make rapid adjustments to working from home.  At first, what seemed like a struggle, became a lot easier as more people started to embrace the challenge as offices closed. 

 You asked what I see in the future on work from home to office ratio? I estimate a good 70% of the people are working from home, and around, 30% are doing essential office work. 

I was asked by several organizations to give workshops, that are now a bit overused, but will be necessary in the future. 

I do not know if it was by word of mouth, but somehow, they learnt that I’m a rare find. 

One day I was asked to give the keynote to a new organization, that has just come into existence. I was asked to give a workshop on a different subject to my main expertise and was asked to give it in the afternoon.

 Anyone who knows me would tell you that it would be extremely rare for me to turn down a good challenge…

The main reason for doing these workshops was to help people in their own practice, if you are new to the practice, these workshops may help you.  One did a workshop and will only work with new patients. 

I did a workshop on office automation. About 5 years ago, I have a video recording where I mentioned in the session, that in the next five years the number of people that will work from home will double and that if you are in the business of selling, you will have to learn an entirely new market.

I did a second workshop on Medical Marketing. I mentioned that if the trends continue, it will be necessary for all medical practice to have an online presence. This was done as you cannot just have a website for an emerging market. The day before the conference, the conference organizer rang me. 

She said her name is Rachel, and that she’s very pleased that I’m here for the conference.   It was at that point that I recognized her voice, ahhh, the Spanish Russian hottie, that I met down in the cafeteria yesterday.  But I didn’t know she was the organizer… I mean she has the “trunk in the junk!”  If you know what I mean.  So I said “so you’ve heard of my work?” She said, “open the door, and I’ll let you know how!”

The conference had gone really well and the organization had done an amazing job.

To recap on lessons…

If training and you only do in-house, you may be doing yourself and your practice a disservice. Take the lessons you have learned from your own training and pass them on. Make sure that there are members of your practice that can benefit from your experiences. Create your own opportunities for them to get good feedback and to learn from yours. This will also keep you in the loop and you will be surprised just how useful your own training can be to other practitioners.

One of my first jobs was as a PA to a GP who specialized in ear, nose and throat (ENT). The ENT practice was a small, rural practice run by a doctor who specialized in ENT. He had discovered that by doing some of his training in-house and doing very little marketing, he had been able to increase his practice by more than 250% in a year and a half. He told me that every time he started a new patient, he would go through 15 years of records and review all of the tests they had. Most patients would have had 4-6 visits. By doing his training in-house, he was able to do one visit each year. Some patients did not know they had a history of allergies and would not ask for a repeat history. Other patients were allergic to every medicine he prescribed. The other day I went to see the GP and there were 4 patients with histories of allergies. The last patient he checked had a history of allergies to 18 different medicines.

In order to do that training in-house, he would have had to take down notes from each patient at each visit and then merge them into one long note for each prescription for the next year. That is about 4-5 notebooks full of notes for each patient! That would have been impossible. Plus, who has time to do that kind of training in the office? This GP had to do it in his large office overlooking his gardens, which he kept spotlessly clean.

However, you can do this in your practice if you take the time to teach your patients and send them notes after each visit. I like to write a short note to the patient each time. Sometimes, the patient will ask for a form to send you a note in. That can be accomplished in a few minutes with some software. You will be amazed at the results.

This also saves you from the time and money you would have spent on post-visit eye tests. This is particularly true if you have more than one eye doctor.

In summary, your patients will love you for this strategy, you will not be accused of doctor shopping and you will save time and money.