Marketing for solo/ new practice in town

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inspire004

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How did you guys started promoting your practice, did you have a web site, pamphlets, meeting doctors,how much budget, repeated reinforcements to public and docs in the area, free luncheons/ dinners with docs, industry sponsored or simple PowerPoint luncheons with no industry sponsor

Why should some one refer you pts,Instead of the other pain clinics.

What is the message you want to send out to community.

What are the best forms of credible marketing for pain practice, not to mention just billboards, commercial on TV , radio, Internet, word of mouth.

How affective are these options and what kind of impact do they have on docs and pts



Appreciate your insights
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Forget paying for advertising - it doesn't work. Unless you are running a pill mill, then it works great.

Put together a folder to educate referring providers about what you do. It should tell them what you do, what kind of patients you want them to send you and show them how professional and organized you are. Have examples of patient reports or procedure reports or similar.

Make an appointment to come see them in their office. The best times are 15 min before their clinic starts, noon, and after their clinic ends. Bring them a small gift/token of appreciation for taking the time to meet with you - I almost always bring a bottle of wine in a gift bag. I go for fancy-looking labels, but also look at the ratings. I shoot for the $20/bottle range. A local grocery store here has the best wine rack in the area.

Shake their hands. Smile. Thank them for taking the time to see you. be short and precise in why you are there - to let them know you are new in town, what you do and how you can help their patients and make their life easier.

If you have a lot of competition, you are going to have a hard time getting them to change their referral pattern. Ask them to consider sending their next pain patient to you. They we then send you their worst patient - Medicaid, long Hx opioids with abuse, 13 bodily areas that all hurt separately with CHF, CRF, DMII and 3 ppd smoking.

No matter what they send you, do a stellar job. Treat the patient like you would your parents. Do what is right for the patient. Call the referring doc back, thanking them for the referral and letting them know your plan. Send a progress note right away. CC them on all reports.

Send a thank-you note a few days later for meeting with you.

Every few months, send a reminder letter that you exist, thanking them for past referrals, and include something relevant to their practice - national or local news item, industry news, something you've accomplished.

At first, the public is not your customer, the referring docs are. Give them what they want - quick, excellent patient care. As your patients do well and like you, they will refer their family and friends.

This should get you through the first year.
 
Disagree with paying for advertising. I pay for google ads in targeted markets and it works great. Has been well worth it. I am certainly not running a pill mill.
 
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Ligament said:
Disagree with paying for advertising. I pay for google ads in targeted markets and it works great. Has been well worth it. I am certainly not running a pill mill.
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Please tell us more, I've never tried using Google. In the old days of the internet (10 + years ago) I did some advertising with a local company, but it produced very little.
 
Ligament said:
Disagree with paying for advertising. I pay for google ads in targeted markets and it works great. Has been well worth it. I am certainly not running a pill mill.
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It may work with more educated patients (such as Seattle)

You have to be very careful who it targets and how you're described, to avoid attracting the crazies, narc seekers, and fibros.
 
Ligament said:
Disagree with paying for advertising. I pay for google ads in targeted markets and it works great. Has been well worth it. I am certainly not running a pill mill.
Click to expand...


yeah sure you arent...:smuggrin: are we gonna see you on the news next hahah
 
My partner and I use google adwords pretty extensively for a side business that we operate. Google is actually really helpful with providing suggestions and ideas once you are started. The only issue is that you need to really come up with targeted advertising and have a clientele that will search for you in this manner. Otherwise, your entire budget can get eaten up rather quickly by clicks that you have no interest in. Also, Google adwords has awesome analytics tools, but they take a lot of time to examine and are only really useful once you have a substantial amount of data. Overall, I think that its probably the most robust and targeted advertising system on the planet.

If you do try this...remember selecting negative keywords is as important as selecting those that will display your ads.
 
profdentist said:
There are lots of web hosting who offer no contract, no set up fee and the first 60 days free and they also offer marketing strategy to your site. So it hassle free. like


Good luck!
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Please don't spam us here. We come here to get away from you.
 
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I agree that a hand shake and 5 minutes of face to face is the most helpful. The adds are fine but nothing beats getting in the car and going from doctor's office to doctor's office. The first few weeks any dead time in the schedule needs to be filled by you running to doctors offices self advertising. If they can tell the patient "he was in here last week, he seemed like a great guy" they'll be more comfortable than going by an add and picture in the paper, no matter how well done.

Be patient. Every happy patient will be a walking advertisement for you once things are rolling. Stick to your guns. Build your practice the right way and don't prescribe unless you feel comfortable that it's the right thing to do. When I'm not comfortable, my favorite prescription is: "please feel free to go get a second opinion" That Rx works wonders.
 
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emd123 said:
I agree that a hand shake and 5 minutes of face to face is the most helpful. The adds are fine but nothing beats getting in the car and going from doctor's office to doctor's office. The first few weeks any dead time in the schedule needs to be filled by you running to doctors offices self advertising. If they can tell the patient "he was in here last week, he seemed like a great guy" they'll be more comfortable than going by an add and picture in the paper, no matter how well done.

Be patient. Every happy patient will be a walking advertisement for you once things are rolling. Stick to your guns. Build your practice the right way and don't prescribe unless you feel comfortable that it's the right thing to do. When I'm not comfortable, my favorite prescription is: "please feel free to go get a second opinion" That Rx works wonders.
Click to expand...

i usually prescribe:

Warm glass of shut the fock up
Take as directed
#7
Refills 12
 
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Any one using practice fusion? How are they managing billing and practice management side of pain and procedures
 
We use practice fusion at 3 pain clinics. It is not perfect, but its free and reasonably simple. We only use it to meet requirements and keep track of notes. Billing is still done through the old billing company(it is faster). We also use a workflow tool to keep track of scheduling and preauthorizations. This tool has also given use the ability to keep track of procedure data and generate procedure notes. No commercial EMR system would be capable of doing these tasks in a simple manner.

Practice fusion does not have extensive practice management tools and I think this is a good thing. Most practices have very different workflow needs and most EMR systems are too complicated to adapt to this. Rather than having very complicated and rigid structures, a few simple tools are really all an outpatient clinic needs.
 
embolize said:
We use practice fusion at 3 pain clinics. It is not perfect, but its free and reasonably simple. We only use it to meet requirements and keep track of notes. Billing is still done through the old billing company(it is faster). We also use a workflow tool to keep track of scheduling and preauthorizations. This tool has also given use the ability to keep track of procedure data and generate procedure notes. No commercial EMR system would be capable of doing these tasks in a simple manner.

Practice fusion does not have extensive practice management tools and I think this is a good thing. Most practices have very different workflow needs and most EMR systems are too complicated to adapt to this. Rather than having very complicated and rigid structures, a few simple tools are really all an outpatient clinic needs.
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I use PF also and am reasonably happy with it. Don't use it for billing either. What's a workflow tool and which one do you use?
 
So with PF, has anyone used kaero as biller. Also let us know how much do you pay for biller, is it % of net collection. With PF do you port data to biller and he will take it from there.
 
inspire004 said:
How did you guys started promoting your practice...

Appreciate your insights
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Consider contacting the chiros in your area. We can be good referral sources, particularly for injections of various sorts. Chiros will usually be impressed by a personal visit to the office since nobody from the medical world ever comes to visit us! So a 3 minute face-to-face could spark a good relationship (and good cookies never hurt either ;)).
 
A workflow tool is a generic term. We dont really need an EMR, but I do think we need software to help with the office work. Previously we would have a paper order that went to our preauthorization person, then the scheduling person would get that paper, etc. We would also use this paper to document that the patient was off anticoagulation, etc.

We now have an electronic list for each employee, when the order is placed it goes to the first person's list and when they are done with their job the order automatically shows up on the next person's list and so on. It really decreases clutter and makes it really easy to keep track of orders and make sure we aren't missing anything. Our "lost procedures" have decreased by a bit more than 80%. The software also keeps a preop checklist, intraop vitals, and generates the procedure note. We have a lot less paper around and are saving a ton on transcription costs. The software paid for itself in a few months.

We were a beta-test site for the software (we still paid for it), I think the commercial version should be published shortly. The company was started by a private practice doc. I can PM the contact info if you would like.
 
facetguy said:
Consider contacting the chiros in your area. We can be good referral sources, particularly for injections of various sorts. Chiros will usually be impressed by a personal visit to the office since nobody from the medical world ever comes to visit us! So a 3 minute face-to-face could spark a good relationship (and good cookies never hurt either ;)).
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i just vomitted in my mouth....:thumbdown:
 
embolize said:
I can PM the contact info if you would like.
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Sure thing, thanks. I don't think I really need it at this point as I'm not having the problems that you've mentioned above but I'd like to check it out anyway.
 
Starting out with PF, planing to make templates, I was going to add voice dictations into my existing framework of templates. Saves a lot of time. How are people putting data into PF, not a lot of pain docs with PF
 
Templates are decent once you have them set up. We have been using dictations and having the staff scan the documents in. Honestly, PF has a very poor document uploading interface and we try to just save things on dropbox. We put the essentials in PF ("meaningful use") and just leave it at that.
 
Thats correct. We actually use a similar service that our consultant provides. I didn't remember the name off hand and we all call it "dropbox".
 
Looking to integrate a billing and practice management software to practice fusion. What are you guys doing as emr practice fusion users
 
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How do you "Do a good job?" I am also trying to start up a practice and one of my patients (my only patient of the day) was just looking for norco/soma/xanax. The PCP started him on it for his back pain and referred him to me. Of course no workup was done, pt did not want a workup or any injections. Only to stay on meds, on disability (He is less than 40 years old and more muscular than me)

How the hell am I going to do a good job with that?! I did my best and the pt declined and said he is going back to his PCP to get his refill there :thumbdown:

Maybe I don't want any referrals from that guy but I still need patients
 
SpineBound said:
How do you "Do a good job?" I am also trying to start up a practice and one of my patients (my only patient of the day) was just looking for norco/soma/xanax. The PCP started him on it for his back pain and referred him to me. Of course no workup was done, pt did not want a workup or any injections. Only to stay on meds, on disability (He is less than 40 years old and more muscular than me)

How the hell am I going to do a good job with that?! I did my best and the pt declined and said he is going back to his PCP to get his refill there :thumbdown:

Maybe I don't want any referrals from that guy but I still need patients
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1- you don't need patients like that and need to screen them. Even if you are starting up a practice, you don't need patients that can't be helped. BTW, are you starting a practice by yourself in California? That must be rough.

2-The one useful thing you can do if someone like that makes it through your screening is to state in clear language that this patient is not a candidate for controlled substances, as this helps out their PCP. "If the pain specialist feels you aren't a candidate for narcotics, then I'll taper you off them"
 
bedrock said:
1- you don't need patients like that and need to screen them. Even if you are starting up a practice, you don't need patients that can't be helped. BTW, are you starting a practice by yourself in California? That must be rough.

2-The one useful thing you can do if someone like that makes it through your screening is to state in clear language that this patient is not a candidate for controlled substances, as this helps out their PCP. "If the pain specialist feels you aren't a candidate for narcotics, then I'll taper you off them"
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Sorry to hijack this thread. What reasons do you give that they are not a good candidate? I work at a VA. I get a lot of patients that were seen by private providers on huge doses of opioids and now the patient wants to switch all their care to the VA :(

1) Too young
2) Non specific MRI ( lot of patients rather than describing the pain say its at L4-5 or I have bulges (sometimes herniations) everywhere.
3) Development of tolerance, hyperalgesia
4) Side effects of opioids
 
New patients or do you do the right thing, wait a bit take them over and tapering which is an uphill battle. Anyone using practice fusion and what do you use for billing. Athena seems lot better and less head ache.
 
Louisville04 said:
Sorry to hijack this thread. What reasons do you give that they are not a good candidate? I work at a VA. I get a lot of patients that were seen by private providers on huge doses of opioids and now the patient wants to switch all their care to the VA :(

1) Too young
2) Non specific MRI ( lot of patients rather than describing the pain say its at L4-5 or I have bulges (sometimes herniations) everywhere.
3) Development of tolerance, hyperalgesia
4) Side effects of opioids
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5. No (or poor) evidence of pain relief.

6. No (or scant) evidence of improved functionality.

7. Scant improvement in overall quality of life.

8. High risk for future misuse, outweighing potential benefit.

9. High risk for diversion

10. significant social issues - i avoid them in patients with family members who are addicts, especially kids.

11. Evidence of current misuse.
 
inspire004 said:
New patients or do you do the right thing, wait a bit take them over and tapering which is an uphill battle. Anyone using practice fusion and what do you use for billing. Athena seems lot better and less head ache.
Click to expand...


I dont have personal experience with Practice Fusion but my billing company uses Collaborative MD which I understand integrates directly with it. In fact starting 2 months ago Collaborative MD named Practice Fusion as its preferred EMR. It does carry a monthly fee in the neighborhood of $100 or so per month per provider.
 
Thanks Mille as usual very precise. I was wondering if Athena is better than PF + collaborativeMD
 
inspire004 said:
Thanks Mille as usual very precise. I was wondering if Athena is better than PF + collaborativeMD
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Not sure for PF....Athena has a good reputation but is very pricey. The key question is does your data automatically go into the billing software or does it require data entry.
 
With collaborativeMD do you need a separate biller or you just can pool data directly from emr
 
emd123 said:
I agree that a hand shake and 5 minutes of face to face is the most helpful. The adds are fine but nothing beats getting in the car and going from doctor's office to doctor's office. The first few weeks any dead time in the schedule needs to be filled by you running to doctors offices self advertising. If they can tell the patient "he was in here last week, he seemed like a great guy" they'll be more comfortable than going by an add and picture in the paper, no matter how well done.

Be patient. Every happy patient will be a walking advertisement for you once things are rolling. Stick to your guns. Build your practice the right way and don't prescribe unless you feel comfortable that it's the right thing to do. When I'm not comfortable, my favorite prescription is: "please feel free to go get a second opinion" That Rx works wonders.
Click to expand...

What time of day is most successful to visit docs? When are they most receptive to being interrupted to meet you? Cold calling docs is daunting as I don't want to piss someone off by hitting them at a bad time. What strategies have been most effective?
 
There is no set time. Noon lunch time seems to be working with me. Network as much as you can professionally. Please look into my thread about billing any feed back would help
 
Here's what you can do. Have your SCS rep set up lunches for your referring docs so you can meet them. That's what I did and it worked. PCP like and are used to having lunches sponsored.

Most referring docs don't want to keep their pts on high dose opioid, that's why they're referring to you. They're just stuck. I set up a collaborative team environment with my referrers so there's pretty much an understanding that the goal is to get people off of pain meds.

I agree to take over if the pt agrees to taper off. The PCPs like this as they can wash their hands of the pt. Sometimes, if the dose is too high, I won't take it over but will give recs. I don't typically take over high dose opioids and my limit may be oxycodone 60 mg total per day, if that, to agree to take over and taper. If it's above, I usually won't assume it. I won't and don't write for Soma or BZD. I'll admit that I lose a lot of patients because of this.

I've also rented out restaurant spaces (also compliments of the SCS companies) and have taken docs to dinner and given them a presentation I've created. I discuss my approach to the chronic pain pt and my reasons, cited with articles, for not wanting to prescribe opioids and why they shouldn't either. .

I feel like I've helped make my county become a dry one and pretty much no one here, other than me and the orthopods, prescribes opioid at this time. I've recently loosened up a bit on my scheduled prescribing but I run a very strict program, one strike and your arse is out, I'm no Bill Clinton. The pt also has to give me a good reason to receive opioid, such as continuing or returning to work in most circumstances.
 
Did you start marketing before start open date or after. Kind of still doing the nuts and bolts stage of start up. Still havnt signed the lease. I think you went with a hospital help to start up support. Are you independent now
 
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I negotiated an income guarantee and loan forgiveness with the local hospital. They essentially paid all of my overhead and guaranteed me a salary so I didn't require a loan from a bank. They acted as the bank. I in turn pay this back with my time. I was in positive territory by month 2 and ended their support after 10 months as I broke through their income guarantee and didn't require it anymore. I'm not really sure why the hospital to agreed to this as I'm not sure what benefit they receive from me, other than hopefully improving quality of care for the community. That's all they can legally ask for but of course it's the bottom line they're interested in. They do get MRIs from me.

Start marketing before so you can be full on day 1. Start maybe 2 weeks beforehand so pts don't have to wait longer or you'll lose them.
 
Pain Applicant1 said:
Here's what you can do. Have your SCS rep set up lunches for your referring docs so you can meet them. That's what I did and it worked. PCP like and are used to having lunches sponsored.

Most referring docs don't want to keep their pts on high dose opioid, that's why they're referring to you. They're just stuck. I set up a collaborative team environment with my referrers so there's pretty much an understanding that the goal is to get people off of pain meds.

I agree to take over if the pt agrees to taper off. The PCPs like this as they can wash their hands of the pt. Sometimes, if the dose is too high, I won't take it over but will give recs. I don't typically take over high dose opioids and my limit may be oxycodone 60 mg total per day, if that, to agree to take over and taper. If it's above, I usually won't assume it. I won't and don't write for Soma or BZD. I'll admit that I lose a lot of patients because of this.

I've also rented out restaurant spaces (also compliments of the SCS companies) and have taken docs to dinner and given them a presentation I've created. I discuss my approach to the chronic pain pt and my reasons, cited with articles, for not wanting to prescribe opioids and why they shouldn't either. .

I feel like I've helped make my county become a dry one and pretty much no one here, other than me and the orthopods, prescribes opioid at this time. I've recently loosened up a bit on my scheduled prescribing but I run a very strict program, one strike and your arse is out, I'm no Bill Clinton. The pt also has to give me a good reason to receive opioid, such as continuing or returning to work in most circumstances.
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Do you insist everyone weans off opioids or do you have some you continue on low to moderate dose opioids?
 
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