The stakes for private practice success have never been higher than they are today. You’re competing with twenty-four-hour urgent care clinics, the increasing corporatization of medicine, and a whole host of other private practices offering the same services. You’re also competing with the rise of telemedicine and never-ending disruption from new technology.

These factors lead many private practices to fail. That isn’t going to be you, though, because we’re here to tell you the secrets of how to turn these challenges into opportunities. We’re here to tell you how to create lifelong patients.

Keep reading to learn how to create a recurring stream of patients and don’t forget to sign up for one of our webinars on effortlessly attracting new clients or patients.

Find Your Niche & Excel in It

This advice applies to business owners of all stripes, not just medical professionals. Finding your niche and becoming the best in it is the fastest way to long-term success. Now this is easier said than done, especially in 2018, but it’s incredibly important nevertheless.

If you’re a chiropractor, what is your specialty? Are you more of an internist? An orthopedist? A forensic chiropractor? Within these specialties, where do you excel? Do you work best with children, adolescents, adults, or seniors? Do you enjoy working with people athletes?

Answering these questions will help guide you to your niche. From there, you can begin to create an individualized marketing strategy to help bring in new patients. Of course, this is only half the battle. Once you have your niche and a marketing plan, it’s time to turn new patients into lifelong patients.

This is where you have to excel. You have to be the best possible specialist you can. This means constant learning. This means many hours of continuing education. This means attending conferences and mastering new trends. This means reading and publishing in medical journals. It means all these and so much more.

Focus on Patient Service

The easiest way to succeed where other practices have failed is to make patient service your number one priority. This means focusing on your medical and clinical care above marketing, sales, insurance reimbursement, technology, and all else.

This is a no-brainer, right? Not for everyone. You’d be surprised by the number of medical professionals we’ve worked with who haven’t put patient service first. They’re more interested in getting the latest machines and marketing them to prospective patients. While this may bring new patients in the door (emphasis on may), it isn’t going to create lifelong patients.

You need to create a connection with your patients. This means having a dedicated and friendly staff who remember patients’ names and information. It means having an answering service you can trust. It means promptly returning calls the next day. It means taking the extra five minutes to chat with your patients.

Make sure to do these and you’ll be well on your way to creating lifelong patients.

Stay Up to Date on Technology

This may seem counterintuitive after what we just mentioned above, but you do need to stay up to date on the latest technology. You better believe that your competitors are. If you want to stay ahead of them, if you want to give your patients the best experience possible, it’s incredibly important to learn about your specialty’s newest tech.

Now this doesn’t mean you have to master each and every new machine that comes to market. It doesn’t mean you need to aggressively advertise that you have the latest version of such and such product or offer such and such new procedure.

Staying up to date on technology simply means that you know what’s new. Most of this, you’re not going to want to bring into the office. Some you will. Use your discretion, but be sure you can answer any patient questions about technology.  

Never Stop Learning

Last, but certainly not least, you can create lifelong patients by becoming a better and better medical professional. This means you need to never stop learning.

We mentioned CEs and attending conferences above and they’re worth mentioning again here. These aren’t just hoops you have to jump through to maintain your license. They’re opportunities for you to become more skilled, more specialized, and a better practitioner.

Follow these steps if you want to create lifelong patients. Contact us today for a complimentary consultation if you need that extra bit of help. We’ve helped hundreds and we can help you too.