Ep. 171: The Secret to Patient Retention

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Hey, what's going on everybody. Welcome back to another episode of walk-ins. Welcome. Michael has finally come into the frame. Sorry. Door was not fully closed. Still isn't fully closed. Do you need to go do that? All right, Michael, we'll be back in just a second. There it is. That's the, that's the wonderful sound. It's a sound thing more than anything else. And when one door closes, another door opens. So welcome to walk-ins. Welcome the podcast all about helping urgent carers get more patients, repeat visits.

deliver better care and scale their clinics. There's a little bit out of order there, but if you want to see it, where does this kind of where in a weird order right now? So normal spot, we technically it's the same room, just the other side. We just did a webinar this morning, literally an hour and a half ago. And this is our setup for webinar. It's kind of cool just the way we've done this room now at this point. But it's a standing setup because we're having more interaction because it's on a zoom call so we can talk to people and all the things.

So it's a little more, uh, stand up and interact. Also, Nick hurt his back. no, no sitting in uncomfy chairs. we're not doing that this time. Uh, I wish y'all could see the podcast space where we go over there and sit down. It looks like we're about to slide out of the chairs when sometimes, we have these little stools that we put our feet up on just so that we can hold the balance. Anyway, that's not what we're here about today. Um, you know, it's funny, we, have a team member and I'm going to be very generic as to not bust any kind of HIPAA issues.

Okay, but we had a team member that had a surgery and that team member got a post surgery. Thank you card. You want to show that? Yes, exactly. So I guess can't hide the name of the company, but this is the postcard that she got and it came up a couple of days after her actual surgery, which was cool. And it's kind of neat. And it just talks about how our goals is to make sure you're safe, comfortable. Here's the team that was that was working with you.

and just like, please contact us. So it was a physical card that was physically mailed to her type of thing post-op and it brought up a conversation. There's a lot of things that healthcare does right, but follow-up isn't usually one of those. We want to talk about that today because it can make a big difference. Yeah. So from my perspective, fortune is in the follow-up. did an episode a while back called Always Book a Meeting from a Meeting or Always Book an Appointment from an Appointment.

And there's an aspect to that, but this follow up is a little bit more personal. This is somebody that's now come in, they're a patient, they've had an issue. And one of the best things that you can do is let them know after they've had an experience with you that you're still thinking about them. Yes. And it's the personal side of it is important because when you send out just purely genetic, not genetic, generic things,

it loses some of its value. when we say personal, it can be, and we'll talk about this in a minute, but it can be a simple signature from the actual team that was helping that person. It can be that simple, because it makes a difference. think in our world today, we get so, and physical, like I saying, physical mail, our world today, we get so little physical mail that's personal. It's usually just spam and then bills, and that's about it. And then email, we're so,

like blind to email when it comes to like things coming through like, Oh, is this just another thing that was automated? So like, it loses some of his luster essentially. You know, one of the things that we went through a while back is this, uh, it's unreasonable hospitality. think it's the name of it. yeah. Um, what an amazing book. And you know, it's funny, the guy that wrote that book was up on another podcast not too long ago, the Ken Coleman show. Oh, cool. And, I don't listen to Ken Coleman a whole lot, but I'm not.

against him is just not really what I can say. Not in your rotation. But I wound up going and absorbing all is called like front row with Ken Coleman. So anyway, I'm not trying to like pitch his podcast other than to say the guy that wrote that book, Unreasonable Hospitality was on there and and he was talking about the experience of people feeling, seeing, being heard, seen, whatever it is. Right.

And I remember just going back, I've probably told the story a dozen times on this podcast. So I apologize, but if you're new, you'll get to hear it for the first time. during COVID I got COVID and went to one of our local urgent cares. I don't mind saying their name. It was Med Help. And when I went to them, the doctor like himself, I think it seemed sure seemed that way. It gave the appearance. He texted me and said, Nick, how you feeling? You were looking pretty rough.

want to make sure that you got your meds and got everything that you needed. That was a text message that I was sent by that doctor. It had to have by the doctor. And so think about the power of that. You're still talking about it three, four years later. mean, and I've gone back. And I've gone back, right? So the fortune follow up, not only have you gone back, you've talked about you're on a podcast that people not from this area hear about it. so and it was one personal.

message. That's it. It was just one text message. This right here, this card that Michael just picked up. That is just a thank you for coming and doing your procedure. Thanks for choosing us. Right. That's the mindset. We do this. OK, I'm going to hold this up to the camera. It just says you're awesome. You are awesome. And on the backside, it's blank. It is your birthday. Yeah, and it's your birthday. You are awesome. So this is our little mascot, Docbot. Right. By the marketer, Docbot. Talk about the other side of that.

Yeah, so and how we systemize this. Yeah, and and we're not like trying to make it crazy like complicated system. It's very straight to the point. So front size. You're awesome. Backside is blank on purpose. So on the backside, we literally write a personal note to a client. Now, granted, we have the advantage. We don't have thousands of clients. So there's some advantages there. Now, you could obviously scale this up and make it happen. But for us, we look for an opportunity to.

say, we already talk to our clients regularly, but we're like, hey, we want to remind them that they're awesome people. We want to remind them, like, maybe they did something that was really cool that we were part of, or maybe they sent us some link to something that they did in the community, whatever it is, we want to send them a quick message. And when I say quick message is, hey, client name, insert two sentences, you know, and then insert everybody's signature around that, the actual backside of this. And that's it. And we pop it in the mail.

And of course, three to four days later, they get it and they look at it and we get feedback. Some of them we never hear from, totally fine. You have to expect that. You're not going to always get that. then today, we're doing sincerely too. Like we're not just doing like, I hope they like this. More like they need to be reminded they're awesome people because sometimes we forget when we're just bombarded with all this negative and we need that little positive reinforcement. Well, I mean, when I write one personally, I typically I'll say something along the lines of, hey, Dr. So-and-so.

I just want to let you know that the work that you're doing in your computer, your community matters. Yeah. Some people like you clinic, y'all, y'all need to know that. Like what you do matters. And sometimes we just have to send out a general reminder that what you do matters. And in all fairness, like I'll send these, even though this isn't even a follow-up, I'll send these to clinics that I think are doing good work. Just let them know how you're doing good work. Yeah. Great. If they do business with us and even better, I say even better, but great. If they don't, because

The intent isn't always to just get a new client. The intent is to let them know that we care about what they're doing. Absolutely. But to fortune in the follow up. Yeah. So and there's something to think about. So look at your clinic. We talk about how important the front desk is and so forth. They're not saying add another lawyer to your front desk. I am saying, is there a way that you can have someone in your team goes to the list of patients that day and write out simple notes?

and have them mailed out the next day. And it may not get to all of them. You may have 50, 100 patients that day. That's not practical. But maybe you take pinpoints and just mark it in your EMR saying, this person really needs some encouragement or whatever. Or like, man, they're really rough. Well, I hope they're OK. And it may not be a, maybe it's not mail. Maybe it's a personal phone call just to check up on. Because a phone call is faster, right? And you could have somebody go through that phone call list pretty quick each day.

where it's just like you get your list of patients from the previous day, you give them all a call, check in on them, make sure they're okay. Because one of the things that you don't know is that once you send them on their way, you hope they make it to the pharmacy, you hope they get the right prescription and you hope they took it and you hope they had a good reaction to it. And so, but a phone call can help verify a lot of that. So fortune tends to mean like a financial situation, right? So I want you to think about it. Like you're probably thinking while you're listening to this,

It is not practical for me to have my front desk or somebody on the the staff call every single person that comes in two days later. All right. OK. I hear you. But it's called fortune in the follow up. So just imagine for a second that you have 100 patients that come through in a five day period. That's 20 patients per day. Right. That should be pretty low. If you aren't seeing that call us. And if you're seeing more than that good for you. Point I'm trying to make is imagine

that every two days or two days after everyone's visit, like it's systemized. Hey, so and so I wanted to make sure that you're feeling better. Oh, you're not. Well, I'll tell you what. Dr. So and so said that if you weren't feeling better, he wanted to see you again. Can I book you on this day or this day to come back into the clinic? Oh my God. Or like there's another lab test we wanted to run, but we want to make sure that this was we're going to confirm some things first. I need a little more time. Right. And then all of sudden that you come back.

Yes, we're saying you have an opportunity to get another co-pay. Yes, you get an opportunity for lab tests and the fees that go with it. I understand the business side, but the other, but the, but the human side of it is you're helping them get better because we have a, employee right now. She went to an urgent care, was sick, Mark diagnosed, started to feel better, started to feel worse again. And now she's looking to maybe call them back, say, do I need to come back in or not? So, but if you, if they were on the proactive side, they would say, how are you feeling two days later?

And oh, you're not better. Cool. Can we go and prescribe this to you or whatever? At the end of the day, you're taking care of the human, right? And then if you get some benefit from it, fine, from a business standpoint. So I'm going to go pure business on that. Yeah. Right? Just imagine 20 patients that were not going to be seeing you are coming back in to see you again. Yeah. Or half of that. Well, I said 20%, right? So 20 % of those 100 people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? So that's just all I was thinking of. 100 phone calls, 20 people booked back in.

And that's the pure business. I understand the health care from the doctor's perspective, but from the clinic manager perspective, you're running a business. Yeah, because returning patients is one of the most difficult things that urgent care has to deal with. What does that say right there? Yeah, repeat visits. Right? Repeat That's part of our goal to help you get repeat visits. Yeah, because at the end of the day, it's a whole lot cheaper to have a repeat visitor than a brand new one. That's just marketing 101. It may cost us $10 to get that first patient in, it's

probably only cost you a dollar to get them to come back, right? If they do come back. So that's a reminder. And this is part of that process because if you make it, you make them feel like a million bucks, they're going to come back or you feel like they're being heard or seen. Like you were saying, I think Ritz Carlton is a great example of how they take it to an extreme level, right? But if you're ever curious about true customer service and taking care of people beyond what they would ever expect, go look at Ritz Carlton and the whole case study behind them.

It's an amazing process that goes through. Yes, for sure. OK, so all right. I don't want to have anybody pick up the phone and call 100 people a week or 20 a day. really how that breaks down to you because you're doing 20 from late two days again. Which means you're only calling like four people an hour. That's right. It's really not that big of a deal. Most of those people aren't going to answer the phone anyway. I mean, just like again, you're looking to connect with those people in a human way.

Sometimes you just may not have the capacity, bandwidth or care or desire to do that. right. Well, most of y'all are using a system like e-clinical works or you're using Athena or some type of a platform EMR that's managing all of those systems have communication built into them. You can literally like, okay, I know my doctor's name. Her name is Carolee. Like I know her.

And when I get into Athena Health, I say, Carolee, I'm dealing with this. Yeah. Right. Well, here's the deal. Occasionally, I get a notification on my phone from Athena saying, Carolee's put a message in there for you. Yep. Right. And it's simply, Nick, hadn't heard from you, checking in on you. How you doing?

Hello. guess what? may have been automated. I don't know. I don't care. It came from her. It came from her notification. Yeah, right. It came from her. But the point I'm trying to make, though, is like, if you don't have the physical capability to do that, you can set up in your system, in your EMR, to send out a notification at X amount of time interval just to check in and write four or five different ones to automate. Yeah. I especially because when you're utilizing it,

like the different EMRs where the patient has a portal they can log in to or an app. They have an app. Like Adina. Yeah, so they have an app. There's a huge advantage because of the notification site, where not only has an email got sent to them saying, hey, you have a new message, probably popped up on their phone as a notification itself. Right, a push. Yeah, some type of push notification, which is huge in our world, in the marketing world. But yeah, so kind of thinking through that, you like the idea that message came to you, right? Yeah. And then.

there are systems that help automate some of this stuff to a certain degree. But at the end of the day, if you don't have them set up or well thought out, it doesn't really help you. Because in our world, so like in the marketing world, we know it takes like what, eight to 20 touches? Numbers are getting kind of wild now. From like a B2B standpoint, how many touches it takes for somebody to interact with you. So we used to be like seven touches. That used to be the gold number probably 15, 20 years ago. If I get

in front of you seven times where you're interacting with me to some degree, you're probably going to become a customer of mine or you're completely done with me. So it takes that much effort. Nowadays, we're pushing 12 to 20 times because people are just bombarded with stuff. So it's just like you have to be consistent because some of you may think, well, I don't want to bother them. You're not bothering them. They'll let you know if you're actually going to bother them. Most don't don't care because

They like, OK, cool. Or then they forget about it. Or they say, I'm so glad they talked to me. And they're ready to say, leave me alone. If they do, they'll say stop. They'll tell you to shut up if they want to talk to you. Yeah, exactly. Typically in the form of an all caps STOP. Yeah, big old stop. Michael's looking at me like I'm crazy because I just pulled something up on my screen here. So I have an automation that goes out through LinkedIn. And I wanted to show you this, or at least let you hear it, because there's this thing called a voicemail drop. Some of you have heard of it. Some of you have it. But you can do a voicemail drop.

in such a way that sounds like you're talking to the one person knowing that you're talking to 10,000 people. Yeah. Right. So let me play it for you. And I'm really hoping this will come through. I hope it should. It should. So I'll do a little closer here. Let me play it.

Okay, I'm gonna get out of the sales pitch real quick. That's really, that's the last line of a sequence that goes out on LinkedIn. Here's the reason I wanna play that. I hope when you heard that, it sounded like a voicemail that I left on your phone. I didn't mention a name, I didn't mention a company, I didn't mention any of that. But if they had an interaction with me, let's just assume for a second that I was a doctor and that was a voicemail that I recorded that goes out.

three days after every single time I see somebody that's automated in a system and it sounds something like this, Hey, Nick here. I know we just got a chance to meet at the clinic and I wanted to make sure that you're feeling okay. Let me know how you're doing. Give me a call back at the clinic or Texas number or Texas. Yeah. Anything like that. But like I can pre-record that 30 or second message. It sounds is one. It's generic enough.

But two, sounds connected enough to that individual that it sounds like I just left it on their phone. I don't have to mention their name. Well, because like, so the personal side becomes like, you're, you make sure you're using the voice of the person that's actually seeing the patients, because that might get a little awkward. Oh yeah, that's my voice. Right. You just have, you can record it right on your iPhone. Yeah. So just keep that in mind. Like you don't want a professional voice to send out those recordings. Yeah.

Just checking on you. And that's not the goal here. The goal is to be authentic as much as you can. For sure. But playing the game of it's a volume thing, and you've got to be careful there that you don't burn too much time. So yeah, the idea is whoever your doctor is. And you may have to figure out if you have three or four doctors in one clinic, you have to kind of balance that out and make sure you're going to the right people. But yeah, keeping it generic enough, but specific where it sounds very real, not just made up, is an extra step. It's an extra piece of the puzzle that could help.

build those visits to come back to you and also get better reviews and just overall just a better experience for the patient. Just a quick note, that voice drop that I just played for you has now hit 445 inboxes. Yeah. Right. That's just an example. Right. Like I recorded it one time. It sounds like I'm talking to that one person. I'm just saying you have tools available to you that you can automate that make it human. And here's what I really want to say is like make it authentic and human as much as possible.

That's I got so excited when that when that capability that voicemail drop capability and I already knew how to do it because I had done it with previous previous company. But I was like, hey, that's a cool feature. And I know how that worked. Like that's a that's a very human connection. You know, it's funny about that. Even the ones that are telling me no, when they get that, they just at that point assumed that I took the time to do that. And they at least tell me, hey, you know, I'm not really that interested. Yeah. It forces a conversation. But that one voicemail drop caused an action to happen.

And that's what I really want is somebody to take action, right? And that's what you want from your patient. Either, hey, I feel better, thank you, leave me a review. Or, hey, I need to schedule another appointment, let me come back in. You know, I don't even know if talking about putting things out and hoping for a response, I don't know if Spotify still does this or not, but they used to do the voice response thing, like I could leave a voice message almost type of thing. I don't know that's even an option anymore. Used to be in Anchor for sure.

You can do voice questions to podcasters. That's cool. Yeah. I don't know if it's a Spotify thing anymore, but all that being said, like that's that part where it's so important to hear the feedback, right? Cause you know, if we're sending out hundreds of messages and nothing's coming back, that's always discouraging. That's right. Let's play real for a second. Cause like, is this working or not? But it takes time. You can't just do one hope and you know, one pitch out there and say, I hope it sticks. And then, it didn't stick two weeks later. I'm not going to do anymore. You got to this for a while. You got to kind of fine tune your message a little bit.

So don't just expect it to work immediately and don't expect it to be perfect right out of the gate. Right. So, hey, I'm going to do something weird real quick and just say, hey, while we're in the middle of this podcast, let me do a call to action. Please go leave us a review. Yeah. Please subscribe to our channel. I'll get back to the content in just a second. But the best way that you can help share this content and impact other clinics in a positive way is to share this content or subscribe to it or leave us a review. It helps the algorithm. It means the world to us. We can't thank you enough when you do that.

Back to the episode, let's talk about training your team for success. That was a good call to action all together. And look, it's generic enough. We could insert that in lots of places. There you go. All right. On the fly. Yeah. So this is only as good as you have a plan for it, right? Yep. Right. And that could be training your staff or making sure that everything is done. So I put three little bullet points here. One, assign roles like your front desk or your nurses to handle these follow ups. It doesn't take long. And look, I get it. People are scared of the phone.

Yeah, I don't really know why I don't get it. I don't love the phone, but I'm not afraid of the phone. Right. But if they're already somebody that's done business with you, this should be just seamless. Hey, you were just in here on Tuesday, wanted to make sure that you got everything that you needed. Oh, you're still not feeling good. And you've been on this medication for two days. Yeah. Let's get you back in here. Yeah. Because that those phone calls, I'm not here to convince you that you should come see us. I'm here to talk to you and make sure you did see us. How are you doing?

Pre-written scripts. And this is the key ingredient to take the edge off of your team if you're going to have them doing phone calls or even text messages. Like just pre-write it. Copy and paste it if you're sending a text message or pre-write that script. And I'll just, the proverbial piece of paper. Hey, Sarah, this is Nick at Dr. So-and-so's office. Just wanted to check on you, make sure you're doing OK. OK, great. Well, let's get you back in here. Or awesome.

Well, I'm glad to hear that you're feeling better. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. Whatever. Right? let's just, again, human. Yep. All right. Cool. Yeah. then it goes, so we have the training. I will say on the training and staff, the tracking of it's important to make sure it's actually being done. Because if you're not having some type of KPI or something on them to say, how many did you call today? I know it sounds like I'm forcing something on somebody. But if you don't put some

No one on this planet is perfect in the sense of, if you tell me to do something one time, I'm going to do it perfectly every time after that. Doesn't happen. You have to repeat yourself. You have to put some accountability, because they make it busy, right? And then they don't prioritize calling old patients. They prioritize the patients coming in the door right now. And then all of sudden, that thing that you wanted me to do two weeks ago, I'm not doing it anymore. And it's not even a negative thing. just simply, it fell off my priority list really quick.

because I don't see the value in it. Because that's the other part too. You sometimes on your staff, you have to convince the why. Like, what is the why behind us? Why are we doing this? Why are we spending the gold with them? Yeah. What's in it for me? Yeah, exactly. So maybe you do have to incentivize some of this and make it kind of a fun piece of the puzzle to like how you're actually interacting with your patients beyond just treating them. But just that reminder, like if you just set up and train one time, it's not going to work. You got to repeat yourself a few times and keep accountability in place.

Also, maybe you need, as the doctor or the owner, to showcase it. Say, give me a list of patients. I want to call them real quick to check on them. And let them see how it works. And let them see, wow, that was actually a really good conversation. you do need to come back. And all of a sudden, boom, we got another patient coming right back in. Because we've seen it all the time from not just the health care space, but all the industries we've worked in over the years. You get that owner or that whoever on the phone with a potential client or patient or whatever, they're getting converted.

Yeah, it's a way example one time years ago. This is non health care, but it was a daycare and the front desk same same problems front desk person would answer the phone say, do you have availability or schedule? Yeah, we do. Thanks. And it's just like that was it like there was no like conversation or conversion. Well, that person went on vacation or something. So the owner was like filling in. And when she picked up the phone, it was like 100 % conversion. The excitement on the phone, just the

Oh yeah, you some interest. Let me tell you about it. it kind of, sounds like she was just going through a full conversation. Like she'd known the person for years. And then boom, boom, boom. She had a lot more people coming in the door because she was excited about it and was enthusiastic and knew the why behind what she was doing. Quick story. So I am much younger than I am today because this is before the iPhone, right? this was in 2007, 08 or something. Well, 09 is when the iPhone came out. So 07, 08, something like that.

Singular wireless was still a thing. was the orange. That's right. Kind of like a cross looking thing. Like a bubble. Yeah. Like bubble person. And it is, it is right at five o'clock. It's at a mall on a Sunday and I needed something from singular wireless and I was doing my best to get there. I worked in retail at the time. So I was probably coming from Eddie Bauer trying to get over there before it closed. Right. But I needed something.

And I can't remember what it was, here's what I remember. Like it was singular, it was like, it was like somebody owned that store. It wasn't singular corporate. was singular. Franchise. Yes. Something like that. Anyway, it was four 55. That door was shut and the doors were locked and the people were back there. Yeah. Okay. So, I'm knocking on the glass. I'm like, it's not five o'clock yet and I need to get this done.

And I can't remember what it was. probably missed my bill, being honest, but I can't remember what it was. I'm trying to get this done. They're like, we're closed. No, you're not. Man, let me tell you what. If I were the owner of that store, I would be pissed, right? So the point I'm trying to make is what you were talking about. This isn't standard. This is in every case. But I will say a lot of the cases, the people answering your phone,

Unless they're trained properly with expectation and accountability, will never share your enthusiasm of getting that patient through the door. Arguably, almost any of your employees won't share the level of enthusiasm as the owner, main doctor of the place. Michael, you're probably the closest person in patient care marketing pros that would be like thinking about this company regularly and care about it at the level I do. But also, no, you probably don't carry that thought.

24 seven. Like, does that make sense? Yeah. Simply because like no matter what happens, yeah. At the end of the day, can't turn in your me. Yeah. You can't turn in your notice to yourself and say, I'm going to work somebody. Go look in the mirror. Dude, you're not cutting the mustard. You gotta go. I've had enough of this. I'm just going to turn my nose. You see what I mean there? Like at the end of the day, nobody in this office is, is ever going to do what I'm going to do to make sure that this business succeeds.

And I don't even think that's derogatory. Like it totally makes sense. at the end of the day, because you benefit the most and you also suffer the most. I have both both all of the reward and all of the risk, all the burden, all of the risk, all of the reward and all the risk. I say all the reward. But, you know, before I sound like a complete tool, I do I go very hard to make sure that my team is well taken. So I just want to make sure. But at end of the day, like, you know, if the company is very successful, you should

share any success like you're going to be successful with it. Be weird if you weren't right. But if the company is very unsuccessful, closes its doors, whatever, you have to take up all that. as an employee, we can walk away and go find somewhere else to work. That's not so easy. And that's the same for all origin care owners and doctors and so forth. They're not mixed. You're invested because you can't just walk away. So let me go ahead and do this real

Yeah, you're awesome. awesome. What you do matters. It's important to the community and I share in the understanding of the risks that you've taken. It makes me think about it. So one of our employees, he has a hat, called owner, he has an owner's club hat. I poke fun at him all the time about it. And, but it's fun to wear the hat and appeal. I have to say, there's a lot of people look at not him, but just in general, oh, you're a business owner. Well, you can do whatever you want. No, you would think so. So let's talk about

Yeah, there's a whole like therapy session around the idea like running a business. It's very hard. It has its fun parts, but my goodness, it's not all games. It doesn't happen often, but Heather will will sometimes go, but you own the business. You can do whatever you want. And I just kind of juggle. Yeah. Like that's not how she also gets it. Yeah. Like that's not because if you went and said, you know what? I'm going to just work one day a week. Y'all figure the rest out.

It's not going to end well. It's not going to go well. Plus, I don't want to. Yeah, right. That's not my goal. And so there's that reminder of all that. And then also, you have to look forward to things. Like you have to say, what's coming down the pipe? How are we going to adjust this? Because at the end of the day, you're also like part of the process maker. What's the expectations around those processes are and the results of all that. So like there's layers. So the business owners out there listening, we understand. It's not easy. So let's give you some action steps that you can put into practice. They're not crazy. They're not big, but...

Maybe you can implement this and get this going in your clinic. four little bullet points, not a huge thing here. The first one is just like start simple. These little postcards that I keep holding up to the camera. So go to YouTube and watch it and then subscribe and call it action. Yeah. Call it action. Send 10 out a week. Just start somewhere. It doesn't even have to be every single patient. Just like pick 10 patients a week, send out a card and just, Hey, I hope you're doing okay. Thanks for coming into the clinic.

Love you a long time. And don't tell me, I'll start next month. No, just start today. get them today. Go order some today. And you get thank you cards for next to nothing. Then get them branded. Right? Like you want your clinic name on there. This is marketing. It's a form of marketing. Second. Automate one thing. Just one. Just one thing. So a text message is probably the simplest and most achievable automation you could do. For sure. Because most of your EMRs can do it right now. It's probably just the checkbox and insert your message.

Here's the reason I want you to do the automate one thing, because if you can automate one thing, you can automate 100 things. And once you figure out how to automate the one thing, you're going to get addicted to it. And it's going to give you so much time back. And the return on your time is massive. And the return on your time for all your employees where they're not being burdened by something, now they can spend more time with it. Because that's something that there's a balance because people are like, you're going to automate my job out. No, we're going to allow you to do better work. And the automation will take care of the busy work.

That's it. Train your staff. This doesn't have to be an all day training session. This doesn't have to be out in bullet points and everything. You can spend if you have like a huddle or a get together or all staff or a team meeting or something once a day, once a week, whatever. Take five minutes and train your staff. Hey, staff today, we're going to try something new. Next time you have a meeting. Hey, how did it go? Which leads to the bullet point for Yeah, so finally, you've done all these things.

Now you need to just verify it, right? Measure and adjust. Are people getting responses? How are the responses look like? How often are you sending things? What days of the week are best for this? Should it be sent one day after, two days after the visit? And see what's happening. And then you have to, inside the tracking the results side of it, celebrate the wins. Hey, we just had 12 patients last month that came back to us because of this program.

I bet we can make it better, but it's amazing that we got 12 to come back to us because now they're bought into who we are as a company. Awesome. Well, that's it, man. I just want, uh, I want to give everybody an opportunity to get better. Every time you listen to this podcast, sometimes it's through, uh, bringing on guests this time it's through action items. Um, thank you for bringing this topic today. It was better than I thought it would be always, right? It's not that I thought it was going to be bad. It's just like, in all fairness, this is a terrible follow-up card, but you know what? It's better than nothing.

There you go. You'll have a great week.