Ep. 124: Profit Injections - Part 2: Implementing Occupational Medicine Into Your Practice

Patient Care Marketing Pros (00:00)
Hey, what's going on everybody? So, um, a little under the weather coming into this podcast, Michael, but I'm going to, I'm going to give it my all. I blame the, I blame the weather that we're having. It's what it is. Cause like we're in Birmingham, Alabama. I don't know about the rest of you, all people out there, but we have some serious pollen that shows up. I mean, I was like, I need to just go out in my driveway and just do pollen angels out the park. It makes me laugh because, um,

Like when your car gets coated in pollen, it turns yellow, but when it rains, it looks really shiny because pollen is a gritty. So it polishes your car for like a day. Yeah. I think we need to like the kids want to go out there and like pull it up into a ball and throw pollen balls at each other. I mean, it's just so obnoxious out there, but what it's done is it's given me a little bit of a headfunk. And so even though mentally my energy is real high, like it doesn't sound like it right now. So.

And you're going on vacation. So that's coming up. And I'm trying not to check out, but there's so much to do, Mike. I mean, you see me, I've been building ads all day and I'm having a good time doing it. Don't get me wrong. Makes me want to cause I've been listening to the buy back your time thing. Yes. Yes. As you say that I'm like, but there's a better way. There is a better way. There is a different way and a better way measure outcomes, not inputs. Right? Yeah. All right. So should we do a proper intro? No, enough chit chat. Yeah. Let's roll into this part two.

of our profit injection series. Yes. And so our first, uh, our first episode was all about weight loss, you know, losing weight to increase your profits. And I've lost exactly 1 .2 pounds. Okay. I think it's the medication. And yeah, about me. It may just killed your appetite, right? That's what it is. Anyway. So last episode regarding in this series about weight loss, we went through all that the pros and cons. Um, and the reason why we brought that one up.

because we see our urgent cares taking that on and having success and challenges with it. Same thing with today. We're going to talk about OccMed, Occupational Medicine. And basically where your urgent care, this is what I will say, and this is just like the last episode regarding it. We're making an assumption that your urgent care is well established. Things are turning quite well. You're making money and you really don't want to...

add another location or your current location can grow some more, but you're maxing out on your patient load on the urgent care side. Well, I mean, we've established to grow an urgent care once you've peaked at your at your client capacity, you can add another doctor. If your space allows it, you can add another location or you can add more services. Yep. So opportunities to upsell that same potential patient or bring in a different style of patient that could.

worth more money to you. turn a $200 client into a $1 patient. Yeah, exactly. Because I think one of the biggest challenges that urgent cares have is that repeat patient because I go when I'm and also predictability of that patient coming in. So like on the weight loss, we talked about how you can have that patient come back every single week, opportunities with Ocmid today or occupational health, all the things. This is a different style of health care because while you are

is technically performing very, very, very similar procedures and exams and things like that as you normally would. Your customer is completely different. And we're going to talk about that. So when it comes, when you think of me, you think, oh, OK, that's like this is what is related to the employer. So what employee drug screening, testing, making sure you're checking out for a job. Right. Right. So the key thing with Ahmed is your pay while you have a patient coming in your door, they're not paying the bill.

the employer is paying the bill. So that's a completely different mindset and what we've learned. So we've had a lot of, um, urgent cares take on this process. And what we've seen is like, it's literally a separate business inside of their urgent care, right? Where they have a different check in area. They have different staff involved, all the things. Almost like with one of our clients in Louisiana, it's a different entrance, different entrance. Like it's a completely different, like,

If you're an urgent care customer, go this way. If you're occupational, go this way. Yeah, exactly. So they say for like employee. Yeah, for employee screenings or for anyway. So but here's the thing. That's great and wonderful. But the problem, the challenge is, and this is where I think our own personal experiences can come up in the play is a B2B sale. You're not selling to a customer. You're to normal consumer. You're selling to the business owner or the

person who's in charge of getting this assigned somewhere. So you have to think through that whole process. And I think that's one of the challenges that I know that we'll see with urgent care is taking this on or attempting this. It's not, let me just go and tell you right now, I'm sorry, but one email or one phone call won't get you an employer inside your urgent care with all their hundreds of employees. Just won't happen. It takes time. You got to massage them a little.

You got to give them some confidence. And I'll be honest, some of them are going to expect you to change some of your process to meet their processes. And so I'm kind of like setting the table here. If you don't have somebody dedicated on your team that can go out, knock on these doors, make some phone calls, go have some lunch meetings, maybe take somebody out for dinner, whatever, like go through the process. Because here, Nick and I, we're very experienced in the B2B sales world. That's all we do.

We're doing it right now. We're doing it right this moment. We're building trust with you so you can buy from us later. Like we understand. Buy our stuff. Yes. But we also learn like relationships matter. Making sure that you're professional throughout your entire process and communication and your speed of communication. And then making sure the product and service you're offering actually matches up to their needs.

And so like, and I know you're thinking, well, I'm like, it's an urgent care can do the same thing as the Ok Med stuff. True. But does it fit the customer's process? Does it fit what they're actually needing? So developing relationships in the business community, in the school systems, in the business community, like all these places that require drug screenings and also random drug screenings, the police force, the fire department. Yep.

I know that sounds crazy. Nick, I'm not set up to do that kind of stuff. Well, that's why it's an add -on service. You're going to make more money this way. Yeah. Well, and that's the thing, too. So that's why we say having your urgent care pretty well established, because if you're already well known in the community, it makes these conversations a whole lot easier. And then it's just a matter of setting up. One of the best examples I've actually had experience with a customer. Gosh, that was probably.

12 years ago, yeah, about 12 years ago, he was an optometrist. And so you would think optometry, right? Like people come in there and they get to check their glasses and all that, vision, all things. He actually struck a deal with a Honda manufacturer. And the way he did it was, I'll come to them. So he took his, a trailer essentially, converted it into an exam room for vision and

parks that joker right in front of the Honda Manufacture Facility and does it like once a week or X amount, like certain days of the month. And then they just line up and he'll say, he said he'll process through like a hundred, 150 patients in a day.

just him going through and they're all to the parking near the bathrooms. Yeah, exactly. But, but anyway, it's like, first of all, you're going to step into the portal it over here. And then when you're done, just set the cup through the portal, trailer window. Exactly. But the thing about it, right? So what did he do? He made it super easy for Honda to say, yeah, we'll pay for that. I got a funny story. I knew it was, I knew it would show up, but

Before we hop into story land, but just just think about that that so he what probably happened is that he made a conversation with Honda and they had a need and he was able to fill it and he said look I'll make it super easy for you if you sign this contract with me I'll have a trailer out there and your your downtime will be reduced. No cuz that's the other thing you have to think about when a employee is coming to you for Achmed Health, you know, like they're coming in they you have a contract they're on the clock.

they're being paid to show up at your door to get examined or to make feel better or whatever. They're on the clock. And so if you can reduce that from a two hour out of the office to like an hour or 30 minutes, or in his world, he was processing people at 10 minutes at a time. So in Honda, like in the manufacturing world, that's money. That's a lot of money that's being saved from that situation. So kind of think through that, right? Like it...

And then we'll go into physical location and stuff like that in a second. But, but what was your, your story? Oh, well, it made me think of like passing the urinal cup through the portal it over to like, you know, the food truck. So I don't know if you remember this or not, cause it's been a while now, but when I had to get the first time I got my third class medical for my pilot's license, I went over to this like really, really, really old pilot's house. Like,

He was a doctor and a pilot and all that. And he did. And it was, it was a true like home visit. It was a house. Yeah, bro. It was a house. Right. And I walk in and the house is old. It smells old. It smells like grandpa's house. You know what I'm saying? Just picture that. Anyway, over to the right, he had converted his dining room into an office, like not an office, but like a medical. And when I say old man, do you remember if you could picture the old nurse's office with the green metal furniture? Yeah. That's what I like the Chrome accent. Yes.

And it even, he had the old doctor's bag, the leather one that's at least a hundred years old. And you're like, so is this a movie set? I'm over here going like, I can take this dude. He's that old, right? So I'm not real worried about it, but he may have needles. I don't know. But anyway, that's not the part. The part that was funny is when I had to do my urine test. He goes, yeah, my bathroom is right over there. And I, and I look at him and I go, well, Dr. Foci, where do you, where do you want me to put the sample? He goes, I'll just set it by the toothbrushes. Oh my God.

What is happening right now where I'm in the Twilight Zone anyway? Y 'all medical aviation is totally different than general medical. I'm just gonna say that it's just totally different I mean, I remember doing the eye chart and he goes close enough and I'm like I'm gonna be in an airplane man Close enough doesn't count here Anyway, keep going. I'm sorry. I just thought that was funny. All right. Well going from the occupational hazard Yeah going from the urinal sample by the toothbrushes

talking about locations of things. So we'll talk about physical location real quick. So physical location, think about where your office is now. What, open up your Google Maps, look at where your location is and what's within 10 minutes of you. Do you have any large manufacturing facilities nearby? Do you have airports? Do you have large municipalities?

things that check the box of like large employer account. When I say large employer account, generally speaking, you probably want something that has more than 50 employees, generally. And that's your starting point because if you're conveniently located, you automatically have a one leg up compared to the next person that's trying to win that bid. So kind of think through that. This would be one of the few times that I recommend direct mail in this case, because direct mail does a really good job of pulling businesses.

of whatever size you're looking for. Yeah. And you could literally drop information, automate that over to them through snail mail. And they're actually likely to open it if it's well done. Yeah. Right now, because people get a million emails, but they get like one package with their name on it. Yeah. You know, so they can pull in your, in your radius, you have five, seven, 10, whatever miles you could pull it that way through snail mail. Yep. Yeah. Oh yeah. You can definitely do that. And so once you like,

established. Okay, look, there's like 10, 15 large employers within a five to 10 mile radius of me. I need to go after them. So from our B2B experiences, you have to dig, right? Very rarely, there's a phone number to call that does get you right to the right person. Sometimes you have to go to LinkedIn, dig around a little bit. I can't tell you the exact title you're looking for. It could be a director of something director operations. It could be manager level, whatever. Probably going to be HR.

maybe HR related, most likely, because they're sending people. HR is going to order all that. Yeah, so HR directors, things like that. So now that you established the locations, you're going to go after the potential titles you're going after. Then you got to go after the process they have. For some, they're going to have a bidding process. And they may have a bid out there right now. We don't know, right? You got to look. Some, they may not.

You have to go out to them and directly. So that can be a phone call, an email, a message on LinkedIn, all the things. And this is what we've learned. Be straightforward with them. You beat around the bush. You're like, this feels like a hokey sales tactic of some sort. So be straightforward with them. You guys just say like, this, I am so and so owner of the urgent care. It's about five miles from you guys. We're opening up an occupational health division inside our urgent care. We're looking to add on new employers.

And you guys seem to fit what we're able to do for you. Is there a time that we could chat about this? And then you just kind of roll it from there and see what happens. But I can go and tell you, it takes multiple touches to convert somebody. It can't be not one message and hope it works. Because traditionally, we know this, an urgent care patient world, one touch is enough for somebody to go to an urgent care. It's nearby. I clicked on the ad. And I have a scheduled appointment. One touch, like that's all it took. We understand that.

But in this world, it's completely different. So you got to think through some of that. All right, moving on to building and clinical systems. Yeah, yeah. So here's the thing. We talked about this at the very beginning of the episode. It is a business within a business. Like, your urgent care, while it may have the same staff, your processes have to adjust. And to make sure you're efficient and you don't slow down the employer and aggravate them because why did my?

employee will get a drug test and they took them all day. I can't afford that. I need them to come back. Right. So thinking through that process, like and sometimes your employer made the man certain billing requirements. Hey, for this to work, you know, you have to build this way. So you have to streamline a very specific process, which really, really what it looks like is you take your existing process and you take what their requirements are and you adopt it. And sometimes that adoption is physically adding a separate entrance that we talked about.

It may also be adding a separate billing person. That's all they do. It depends on the volume, right? But in essence, this occupational medicine stuff will not interrupt your current urgent care because you've separated enough where you can process both at the same time and not have slowdowns. Yeah. Real quick thought on, on, on how to process this mentally as an urgent care, your patient is your customer. Yep. As an occupational,

Urgent care, occupational medicine within that urgent care, your patient is your consumer. The business is your customer, right? So business is paying the bill. That's right. So Coca -Cola, they own the patent and the drink Coca -Cola. And then the manufacturer sells to the convenience store. So their customer is the convenience store, not me, the person who's drinking the Coke. We're the consumer. And the reason I bring that delineation up is because,

you're there to take care of the consumer on behalf of your customer, the business, the government entity, whatever it is. So you'll have to completely separate out a billing process and a program for that person, for that company on behalf of that person that you're serving. So it is a different, it is a different, it's more like a third party resource than it is direct to consumer. Yeah, cause even like, cause you may have a, somebody come in as Ochmed and they're, and they're upset.

they're upset because they're having to get a drug test. They're not upset with you. They're just upset with the whole thing. They're mad at everybody and then they're mad that they're about to fail it. Yeah. And the employer is happy to pay the bill. Right. So you just hooked them up. Yeah, exactly. So you had to think about that as well. Like they're like, there's just different. And I've had to do this before, man. I got to tell you, like when I've had to do this before, it's exactly what you just said. They could not care less about me because they weren't, I'm not their customer. I'm the consumer. It's already been paid for.

I ain't got to please you. I've got to please them. Yeah. At this point, you're pleasing your employer who pays who pays your payroll, right? Yep. And then the urgent care is pleasing the employer who pays their bill. So let's bridge the gap a little bit. If you treat that Ocmid patient well, in addition to the employer well, they'll become an urgent care patient later. Yeah. Because now they've been in your building, they're familiar with your staff. Correct. Why would they not come back to you? Exactly.

Yeah, exactly. All right, patient flow and wait times. Michael, this is what we clued in on just a hair. Yeah, when we talked about in and out down in in in Florida, down in Louisiana, that took the Mexican restaurant, which I love this, they took a Mexican restaurant and they converted it into an urgent care. But in this particular when they have Ahmed, which is a separate entrance, yeah, there's a different flow. Yeah. So like in their world, they have a like, if you if you stared at their new building, there's a big main entrance.

And then there's a small single door entrance on the left -hand side when you're staring and to go. Yeah. It literally was like the delivery to go to the entrance for the Mexican restaurant or they became, it was some form of that. And, uh, or honestly, it's probably just the entrance for the kitchen back in the day. Now, instead of taking shots, they give shots. Oh, wait, we have a button for that somewhere. He's trying. I don't know which one that was.

Well, whatever. You just blew somebody's car. That's probably that's what you wanted. Sorry. I hit those buttons in a while. All right. Face your flow and wait times. Keep going. So yeah, so we touched on this a little bit, but just think about that. So in their scenario there, they did a build out, right? They built a brand new location and it was really cool because here's the cool part. When you're going through that, when they were gutting the building and they were

we were down there and they were walking us through the building and it was got it was studs only right in their world because they planned for it upfront. The separate Ahmed area was probably a two grand worth of studs put up like super low cost. It was additional, you know, examination rooms. Addition, it was at a different front desk, different flow, completely different setup.

you could tell it and it was not like lobby focused at all. Like there was like a conveyor belt that was like when urinal. Yeah. Blood work out. Yeah. Like there, there was no like waiting area per se, like, cause they know what's going to anyway. It was, it was a conveyor belt. It was a manufacturing facility where it was just a step one, step two, step three, you're done. And they did that because how attractive is that? Right? When the employer is like, Oh, you are set up. Cause I have 500 employees and I know I'm going to be sending you at least 10, 10 to 20 a day.

to do whatever. And now it's smooth because the drug test screening and all that stuff, that's not a one time thing. That's like a weekly thing or a monthly thing, depending on the company. So just think through that process because if you can make it as smooth and friction free as possible, you're going to win every time. Because step into the shoes of the employer of the big manufacturing facility. If they're looking at you versus another urgent.

care. That's just an urgent care, right? Right. I don't want my people interacting with these sick people, right? These people in out back to work. It almost reminds me of if some of you are having some trouble visualizing, think about the pediatric care where the kids in this sick kids and wellness kids and the other side, right. And they do that because one, you know, try to separate germs. But really, it's over here, we have a dedication to like, they're just doing check ins.

you know, just wellness checks, uh, any type of immunizations, all the things versus like this kid feels like garbage and they're staying on this side. Um, they're separating it now. The only difference is that there's typically not like a nice solid separate, like they all go through the same doors. They go through the same doors. They always make me laugh, but they're all reaching for that same door knob. Yeah. And, and then their backs are they're back to back on the couches and all the things, but, but that's the kind of the idea behind it, right? That like having the actual separation of some sort. But the nice thing is you can,

your staff, you can have the same doctors. You just may have to add an extra front desk staff type person or whatnot. And then maybe it's separate billing. But after that, as long as it's smooth and fast, because the reality is it should be way faster. You should have next to zero wait time for these people. Because if you have wait times, you messed up, generally speaking. Well, I think that brings us over here to just understanding it as a clinical practice. Like you're going to treat an urgent care patient differently than you're going to treat an occupational care patient. Yep.

It's just a whole different animal. Like on the urgent care side, they search for you, they found you on the internet, they were sick, they don't feel good, whatever it is, they're coming in, they're getting service and they're going. On the clinical practice, or I'm sorry, on the occupational side of things, like that is a whole business unit. Stands on its own, it's separate, and you're gonna make a lot of money in this area of your practice if you do it well and you're efficient at it. Here's the biggest, the biggest.

thank you, I know as a business that I give as a referral. Yeah. Right. And you're going to grow your business that way because other businesses will now be referred to you. We've seen clinics that have swapped from an urgent care to an OCC just because it's less drama. It's less billing. It's less coding. And it's just, it's more predictable. Predictable income. You know, you're going to get it. So anyway, I just wanted to make that quick delineation that you have to understand these are two different areas of service. It's not the same thing.

Is this some other things too? Like there's a because you're not dealing with a random accident that somebody got into a car wreck or jumped off a trampoline or whatever. Like these people, they're at their facility and they got hurt maybe. And so like there's you got to document things properly. Like there's a lot of requirements that come out of the employer they have to be willing to do so they are happy to pay you because then you're dealing with workers comp and all the things like that because it's just if it's like work, you know.

hurt on site type stuff, like there's layers to that. Like it's not just a blue cross, blue shield type of things. Like there's layers to it. So anyway, all that being said, so we kind of built up to that, right? And so we touched on the sales and marketing a little bit, but let's talk a little bit more because in our world, we're in digital marketing, there are some challenges if you were going to hire an agency just to do OCHMED, to bring in those type of people, there are challenges around that. Honestly, not necessarily the 100 % best fit, honestly.

think? Oh, your thoughts on that? On whether or not it's a best fit in terms of digital marketing for an Okmed? No, that's that's not where I'm investing dollars here. No, exactly. Good news is here. This isn't anything that we would sell. Exactly. What it is, though, is it's a way for you to grow your clinic. But there's a way to do this. This is very personal, very face to face, very, I would almost say like a commission salesperson would be really good at something like this. Yeah. Because they're going to go into these.

cash pay like almost always.

what I mean. Like, you're going to bill them. I saw, you know, 400 of your employees over the past six months. Here's a bill. You may get into the net 30. Anyway, all of that. I'm getting off track a little bit just to say like, it's a completely different relationship when you're dealing with a business. And businesses care about efficiency. They care about price. They care about value. They're going to listen to feedback from their employees. So you might want to treat them right. Like it's a business.

Yep. Right. So B2B marketing is not the same thing as business to consumer or business to patient marketing. It's just not the same thing. No. Let me say it this way. It's a lot easier for me to help your urgent care get new patients than it is to get patient care marketing and present new urgent care to be able to do business with us. Yeah, exactly. So I mean, yes. So in our world right now, you know, you're you're listening to this podcast. So that means we're saying something that may be of interest to you.

So what is that? What was our goal with that? Right? One, we do want to educate you, right? But we want to build trust with you. Right. And the ultimate goal, full transparency, is that you contact us and then either we're able to help you or you're able to become a client to us. And that process is not so quick. We have quite a few clients from this podcast that when we reach out, when they reach out to us, I've been listening for months and we know we don't know. And then like, but I'm ready to talk to you.

And it's great because that trust is all built there. Now, every single build you a podcast. No, not necessarily. But what we are saying is that you need layers of information and touches put out there to encourage people. Because like I said earlier, a simple phone call, email or text doesn't always get the ball moving. It takes layers because they're busy. The people are trying to reach out to they don't have time for you. Well, I mean, if you think about it, we're responsible for tens of thousands of new patients to our clients. Yeah.

but that's through like a hundred clients, man. You know what I mean? Like tens of thousands of new opportunities, new patients, new leads, new whatever. But all the work that it took to get to those 10 ,000 was all the work that we've done beforehand. Why am I saying it this way? I'm not trying to promote us. What I'm trying to say is like, you'll be responsible for tens of thousands of new patients coming through your door based on the handful of relationships that you developed with a government entity, with a local business that has, you know, 500 employees with, you know,

fire department, right? Stuff like that. Follow. So that relationship that takes a long time to nurture yields insanely good results. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to get at. So so your market nobody's gonna find that on a Google search. No, they're not. And as I think too, so I'm a pretty big fan of the chamber world. It's not the end all be all but but you can see it from there. But that's funny. But

If you're like, where do I start? I'm afraid to call someone or I'm afraid to reach out. I don't believe in that or whatever. You have a chamber in your area. Go visit. Go because there are people there that could connect you somewhere. Right. It takes time. It's not a I'm not gonna lie. I've been chamber now for a decade and this is what I learned about chambers. January, brand new faces. February, those brand new faces went away. They gave up after one or two visits. It's not how that works.

But there are luncheons and breakfasts and special networking. Breakfasts. Breakfasts. After hours, all the fun things. You know what really works?

Absolutely. I've been to those before. Yeah, they love to come. They don't care. It's cool. And so like you have a big building chances are a big lobby or whatever. Host it. Do ribbon cuttings, all the things to engage in the community a little bit and chances. And then you just tell the chamber, I'm trying to get in front of XYZ. Do you have a connection? And they'll say, yeah, actually talk to so and so. And now you can connect the dots as being a chamber person. I love the thought of your network.

build your net worth. Yeah. Right. So you have to kind of buy into that a little bit. Man, this has been a good episode, Michael. So how can we take this and apply it to our existing urgent care? Let's just do a spitball approach real quick. One, your location makes a difference to the businesses around you. Absolutely. Location, location, location. That's right. And so the more convenient you are to the businesses around you, what I guess the point I'm saying is don't target businesses that are outside of your area to serve them. Don't target that manufacturer that's two hours away. All right. Number two.

It's a system. It's a different billing system. It's a different clinical system. You cannot treat them the same way. So you're going to have to take some time and you're going to have to develop out your processes, procedures, and billing for this. All right. Treat it like it's a completely different business. Again, I keep going back to this, but the way you do your patient flow and your wait times is going to be very different than your urgent care side. All right. So finding a way to take your existing setup and then split it into two different directions is going to be ideal.

Four is just kind of a repeat here. It's the clinical practice versus an urgent care. I'm not going to go through that again, but you're targeting on your sales and marketing is very different. It's very relationship. It's very handshake. Who do you know? Where can you visit? That's going to have these people that you want to meet. Where are business owners hanging out that have large businesses? Go find them. They're not knocking on your door. You're knocking on their door. Correct. Changes it up a little bit.

Michael, good episode, man. Michael took some time to put this one together for us and he does a lot of our episodes, but this one was 100 % on him. And I'm just grateful for you putting this together because it was a good one. I think this is a great way for you to grow your, uh, urgent care. Well, once I realized the like, Oh wait, this is true B2B as like I can talk about this. You got B2B down. So I tell you what, if you want to hop on a call with us, Michael's the one you really want to ask for because he's so chill and calm. And I like,

That's what happens when you get on a call with me. I'm your cheerleader. All right, Michael, take us out, man. All right. Thank you guys for taking time to listen to us again. If you got questions, hello at patientcaremarketingpros .com. Please send us questions. We sometimes turn the episodes. Always encourage that. Reach out to us. You just want to chat with us. We're always available. Check the show notes for any of that and we'll catch you on the next one. See ya.