Ep. 236: Summer Bootcamp, How to Turn a Slow Season Into Growth

Patient Care Marketing Pros (00:07.778)
What's up, Walkins? Welcome crowd. It is that time again. We did a webinar recently. We're going to be bringing it to the podcast for this week. And it's all about the summer slump boot camp. What does that mean? So you have a summer slump. You're currently in summer. Things are probably slow. We recognize that the urgent care space has a slow summer. But what does that mean? You can either just enjoy the slow, take make less money, go on longer vacations, worry about things.

And then come back and it everything explodes, right? Because everything comes back from schools and then people get sick and then you're busy again. Or you can take your summer slump and turn it into a boot camp in terms of let's get some things done. And inside this webinar, we we have spend 45, 50 minutes just on what are the things inside your clinic that you could improve over the summer that'll make you prepared for the busy season that's coming soon. So I hope you guys enjoyed the webinar. I know it was one of those webinars where it's kind of a working session. So

As you're listening, you may find yourself wanting to make some notes. So just either you can have a way to make notes, just make middle notes or whatever. But the reality is there's some o great opportunities there. It's like, hey, you I could probably do that. Maybe we should do that. Let me go talk to the team when I get out of this car. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy. I guess I need to do the EMR trans transition, get to that new software. I don't want to do it, but this will be a good time. Here's one clean your office on a deep, clean level, which sounds funny, but I think I've been to enough clinics that

I can see that they mop the floor and they wipe down the counters and maybe they vacuum, but I don't see anything. Do this. Look in the corner of your office. Yeah, look at your ceiling tiles. Look at the top corner of your office and see if you got cobwebs right there. Yeah, look at your ceiling tiles. My wife can spot them like it's her job. Yeah. Look for dust, things like that. Like this isn't like that's a super easy one to look around. So I guess I should do that. Right. it look at your office laid out in front of a

patient flow standpoint, hey, is this the time to kind of clean some stuff up? Because I don't want people to like they're walking forever or they get confused. Same from a digital standpoint. Is the flow really good still? Like have some have somebody do a secret shop your clinic and tell them what you think. So we're gonna say this always, this may be a chance to dial in your marketing message because that's a real thing where you may be like, I'm not sure what who we are, what we are. Well this is a chance to kind of go through that. And then finally, like this is a big one. This is probably the most difficult one.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (02:32.378)
Is is it time to expand, improve, add or remove a service? Like you have all these services, you have the core urgent care services, but then you have maybe some extra services. Is it time to get rid of some because they're wasting money and time and effort? Or like, hey, actually that one was working pretty well. I wonder if we can make it better. So that's what you need to think about right now. So let's go through that. So cart, thinking put your brain on for that. But let's decide on the three areas. So you have, well, there's There you go.

So physical location, that's what we talked about. Operations, which could be your EMR. It could be maybe you need to hire another person or train up on something, or it's time to like just increase the level of professionalism, whatever it is. Yeah. or outreach, like, hey, is my marketing doing what it's supposed to? I my team my like we will say this like honestly, we reach out to our clients. Sometimes they don't come back to us.

And you may have a bunch of emails or reports right now in your email and you're like, mm, I've yet to reach back out to them. I should probably get a meeting with get a meeting with your marketing team. There you go. Like you have the time. Talk about what's going on. Like just kind of peel back down you. But anyway, so I location, operations, and outreach. Those are the three things. and it sounds like a lot. And you may say, I really can only tackle one. That's fine. Because our goal right now is just to prevent you from just going into, like you said, autopilot and then

nine, ten weeks go by and you're busy and you're say you say, I never got around to that. You go look in the corners, you see the cobwebs, or you see where a patient's walking the wrong way. And I say, where am I supposed to check out again? Right. Like you have all these layers going on. So it's just one of those you have to like kind of think through it. but you do recognize like it is it's gonna take a little effort. And the best part is you don't have to be doing all the work. You can tag people, tap people to do this, but you have to decide like which which route am I going to go.

So, all right, with that in mind, think about the areas and we're gonna put the poll out there. Which one do you want to focus on? Which one do you think needs the most attention? Which one popped in your head when when I mentioned these ideas? Need to clean up my office. We're doing this now. Updating some furniture. Yeah, we just swapped in new conference room chairs. Dialing in our operations. There's areas of our business that we need to improve on internally. Like we need to clean up our billing process and and payers.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (04:57.752)
We need to clean up our EMR. We need to clean up these things. Or or it could be an outreach. Hey, we need to do a better job on doing these things and execution. So So operations and outreach was the top one. Good. Good. That makes sense. Like marketing side, how do I approve my operations overall? Like that software, that

SOP that I've been willing to write down, but I just have it yet, you know, those type of things. That'll make me want to blow through the next one then. So that that would that way now I know what you want. It helps me it helps me do this webinar for you better. Yeah. if you're focusing on your location, I'm just gonna say check your signage, clean, accurate, interiors of furniture, paint on the walls, cleanliness, patient flow, we talked about exam rooms. Exam rooms. This is where people are spending the vast majority of their time. It ought to not just look good, it ought to feel good.

Right. So spend some time in your exam room. Sit in there. Hit I want to challenge you. if you're a provider, when you're slow, go go in your exam room and shut the door and stay there by yourself for 15 minutes. Cause that's how long y'all are gonna leave me in there. I I mean this though. You will notice things in fifteen minutes about your exam room that you've never noticed before that you're you that your patients see every single time they're there. Yeah, because they're there.

I even think about 'cause you also hear things. Yeah. which is funny because I remember I was What kind of chatter is happening over at the desk? Yeah, right. because I remember I was a chatter's crazy. Exactly. You don't want that. But I remember one time I was in a doctor's office in the wall like this was an old office. It was probably like seventies, sixties, 'cause the wallpaper and stuff suggested that. And I could hear the whole conversation with the patient right beside me. Like it felt like they were in the room, but they weren't.

And I was like, she has she apparently she's a diabetic and they can't do this. And like I was like listening to all of it, which is interesting. But no, like like you said, sit down, evaluate, just kind of let it sit there, marinate for a second. So what do I need to change here? Also, too, I know some of y'all mentioned outreach. Outreach can happen inside the exam room where you have a you have captive audience for 10, 10, 15 minutes. Do you have a screen in there or something that could be

Patient Care Marketing Pros (07:02.36)
promoting some new special you may have and stuff like that. So think about that. Like think about that whole process because I've seen it. I've been in a clinic recently and they had a screen and talked about sports physicals coming up and stuff like that. It's like it's kind of good because I'm just sitting there waiting. I'm like, well yeah, maybe I do need to go and get that figured out. or what or you're offering some deal on a flu shot or whatever it is. so like think through that 'cause that that's a good opportunity. Anytime you have somebody sitting there waiting on purpose, how can you entertain them with something about your clinic? Right.

So put a video up. Exactly. So operations-wise, we talked about a little bit of this, but so EMR, that's always a big one. front desk training. So I'm a big front desk trainer. I we train a lot of our clients because we see the importance of front desk because a front desk should be able to convert a call in into a patient into an appointment. that's a big deal because that can make a huge impact if you can make that adjustment. cost analysis and improvement. Have you sat down and looked at your books? Which

Have you sat down with your CPA and talked to them about your books? Have you like said, why are we still spending money on this? Well I thought we did better on that, you know, things like like just that constant like question your books. And if you're not sure like how do I want to question them, the best thing you can do is pull like a year over year and then kind of see where your expenses are going or increasing or decreasing in comparison to your revenue that's coming in.

And then like make an analysis off of that super quick. After due year every year, then do month to month and see if it's consistent or if it explodes one month for some reason or whatever. So this is your chance to kind of sit down and say, maybe I should make some improvements and cut some cost, or maybe increase the cost that will help something else. And finally, too, on the operational insurance contracts, we talk about this all the time. Chances are if it's been two or three years since you've negotiated that contract, it's time to go back and re-evaluate and take a look at that because that contract.

Can be renew renegotiated. We I have had multiple conversations now with companies that's all they do is go to the insurance companies on behalf of you and say, we want to renegotiate, make this a better deal. because now you're actually putting out better value and than you were maybe start up because your startup rate is gonna be quite a bit different that you've been five years into it and you have proven track record of what you're doing. So just take a look at all that and kind of think through it.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (09:22.112)
Next is outreach. So outreach, you know, we always joke about Achmed because it's one of those like big hairy animals. Right. we actually have had somebody on the podcast where we talked about like there's a training program and it's multiple weeks. It's not quick either. so like thinking through Achmed, like it's not a I'm gonna do it today. And then no, but you can put a plan in action today that'll be ready to execute during peak season. Yeah.

So that could be that. It could then we talk about seasonal ads running. Hey, it is seasonal time. So like there are things you could be running. Like we do recognize like sports physicals is starting to come back up already because about to go into the fall. if you are a vacation type clinic where maybe you're a destination place, maybe have some deals for for beachgoers or whatever. things like that. And then if we have something pop up where we say, like, okay, we're gonna make a discount for you to do just an annual.

type of thing. We're gonna come in, we'll do a basic annual review for you, an annual physical discounted rate on that, 'cause we know that can generate other patient visits later. So that's something you need to consider. If you're

Patient Care Marketing Pros (10:30.882)
Hey, Michael here. I want to talk real quick. So patient care marketing pros, we are here to help get more patients in your door because the reality is visibility matters. The first clinic they see online is usually the first clinic you're going to talk to, which means they're going to become a patient to that clinic. We're there to help you along the way to get more patients in your door and get that visibility up so you can see those patients coming in and decide, am I going to increase the growth here or add another location and we can help you along the way?

If got questions or want to talk to us, have you do it? PatriotCareMarketPros.com, take a visit and we'll see you on the other side.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (11:10.936)
That's something you need to consider. If you're a beach clinic, y'all need to be handing out a branded sunscreen at the beach. Yeah. I'm just saying, like, you need to do that. Got burned, we can help. Yep. Exactly. And then of course, this is that chance, like, should I update some my image, my imagery of my company? Not just the logo, but like just overall fill where somebody walked into your clinic or saw your website and said, they feel pretty modern, feel pretty new, not nineteen ninety nine or early two thousands. Because that's that's a thing, because sometimes you

We realize you guys buy a or rent into a a location with like a twenty year contract, twenty year leads. And so maybe you haven't touched it in twenty years. Well here's your here's your chance to do so. So all right. So we always want to hop into a question. And reason why I'm asking this 'cause I wanna know are you tracking the goals and things for your pr improvement projects? Do you have a way of tracking any of this stuff? Do you track do you have KPIs for things or do you

A project come up. we finished it. That's the checkbox. Yeah. So, like what how do you track big project changes? Is it just assign it to somebody and then they tell you when it's done? Who knows? And you know, if that's happening, that's okay. It's an opportunity to make an improvement. I will say this is an area just personal in business that we don't always do the best job at tracking. We try. we we do it through our rocks, right? Yeah. I I love it. Yes, consistently I love that. And then one is not really.

yeah, but yeah. Almost to drop in chat. Yeah, how are you tracking? That would be a great way to know if if you are are comfortable, drop in chat. How are you tracking your projects? That'd be that'd be cool for everybody on the call to see how you're doing that. Let's keep going. Yep. I don't know why that doesn't work for me, but it works for you. All right. So that's week one is evaluate. This is your I ideation time, right? So you've

Maybe you've kind of picked out what you wanted and you're like, okay, I think we're gonna commit to this. Makes you a little s it makes you itch a little bit. But you know, I think this will be a great thing. So we're gonna do some baseline goal setting. What is and this is something that we've learned ourselves, like determining the good, the bad, and acceptable. So is this I I I like to say this a little different and this is start stop key. Yeah, start stop key. What is what is what is something that we're not doing that we need to start doing?

Patient Care Marketing Pros (13:27.554)
What is something that we're doing that we really need to stop doing? And what are the things that are working for us that we just need to keep doing it at an excellent level? That's the start, stop, keep thought process. Yeah. And then the mindset is like, what's that? Like, hey, if we get here, that's pretty good. If it goes backwards, that's bad. Right. And like, we made a little bit of improvement. That's maybe acceptable. And then you need to make up a case, make the case as to why you've chosen this because chances are you're not gonna be doing it all by yourself. You're gonna have to bring in some people to help get it done. And you need like a pitch, essentially. Right.

Because you're kind of selling this to your clinic, to your employees, to your staff, saying, We need to do this and here's why. You need that 45 second, 60 second pitch of saying this is why I want to do it. Because you may get a little bit of eye rolling and groaning and like, I've we don't have time for this. Like, yes, we do. I've seen the patient numbers. We have some time. and then finally, like, show them what success looks like when it does happen. And like, hey, when this gets done, when you have that

Better EMR, this whole patient flow is better, or hey, we have a cleaner office and now you feel more proud walking in and maybe you get better Google reviews because how clean the office was. Like these things start to make a difference. I know this sounds crazy and I know that you're not a truck stop, but they advertise clean bathrooms. yeah. I mean that's an advertisement. Imagine a clean clinic. Yeah, exactly. But think about a gas station's gas, but they put more advertising into the food.

In a clean bathroom. Yeah. Because the experience they care about. They've already know they're going to deliver you fuel. Like everybody anybody can do that and keep a relatively clean fuel pump. But like I swear the only improvement in gas that they've made over the years is Apple Pay. Yeah, right. Like whatever the wire can just tap. Yeah. That now that's been an amazing improvement. But that's the only real improvement they've made in pumping gas. Well, and then everybody does that, right? So how do you separate like you go to a Bucky's, you don't really go to Bucky's for gas. Totally random. One time.

No, I know. this is on improvement or or the start stop keepers. I actually got a chance one time to go to a full service gas station. They came out, they checked my oil, they cleaned my windows, they pumped the gas, they took my credit card, they asked me if I wanted anything on the inside. It's the only time I've one time in my entire life, this used to be the standard. Yeah. Just imagine that for a second. Yeah, we're not when we were driving through New Jersey last year, I had to stop at a gas station. They had and they and I I totally I've never done this before.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (15:48.546)
Fantastic. And it and it was kind of funny because I just sat there. I didn't even turn the car off. And I was like, that's kind of cool. But anyway, so yeah, so you make sure you kind of build that little sales pitch essentially, like this is what's gonna happen. This is why we're gonna because you're gonna have pushback and you're gonna have an answer for it. And you got if you get them excited about it, you'll probably get it done quicker. Right. Because if you have something that like I don't really want to do this, it it may take longer than you want to. All right. So you've gone through that. Now you gotta put together the game.

So we're still in week two, right? So you've determined in week one like what you're gonna do. Week two, now you've kind of put now you're starting to put it all together. So identify those key people. Can't just be you. Like I said, you you're the owner should not be the point person all the projects. Maybe you are one project, but you shouldn't be the point person if you have two or three projects you want to accomplish. You shouldn't be that. Now you may be the cheerleader for it to get it helping get done, but maybe you're not the one that's actually make calling all the shots at how to get it done. Right. Anyway, so think through that, identify those key people.

And then maybe just one or two people for each one, you know, who knows? Then you need to write it down and and walk through this weekly schedule how to get it done. Because any like we always say, you can't eat an elephant one big bite, you gotta take chunks at a time. Right. And so it's the same concept here. Like some of these projects seem super overwhelming. But if you break it up over the next six weeks, maybe this won't be so bad. And then you have like little part of that, like little check-ins and stuff. And we'll talk about that. But yeah, so this is your chance to write it down and get it put together.

Get your plan together, get your people together, give a nice pitch on it and get the ball moving. And now you're in week two. So if you started it this week, this is like the right before July fourth, you have everything ready to go and you're about to move forward. So

So now we're gonna talk about the actual implementation. Yeah, let's put let's let's put it into practice here. So I'll try and make this quick and be respectful of your time. All right. First of all, we want to talk about the implementation of how to make all this work. Time to put the practice in. We talked about the off season getting ready for for for game time season, right? So you got to create the milestones and the checkpoints along the way. You can't just say, hey, we're gonna go do this thing. You kind of have to have a bit of a blueprint for it. And you wanna make sure that people understand.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (17:56.674)
What has to happen along the way to get things executed? If you want to add occupational medicine, you need to first say, okay, well, are we, are we in a position to be able to take that type of clients? Because at that point you have two. You have the patient and you have the actual client that you're billing for all this. Are you capable of billing another business? Are you in a B2B situation? Well, you got to prep for all of that. That's just one example of many, right? you have to set up.

a check in process. You need to do this on pace. I think a weekly basis is the best pace to do this. And that's just simply either in a in a team meeting or a huddle or something like that. Hey, where are we on this key result area? Where are we on this? and and you either either it's on track or it's off track or in the worst case it's just not even started. And that and that's real. And that's the whole thing that's a weekly check is so important. That's right. 'Cause I'm sorry I got away from me. it's been busy this week.

Well, great. Well, we need to make a step forward. That's right. Yeah. So on track, off track, not started, that that's it. Those are the three checks. It's either on track or off track. And if they're off track, the best question you can simply say is, hey, where are you stuck? Yeah. Right. and if people are falling behind, determine the reasons why and then make adjustments, right? It could be that you have to move it back a week or you have to put a different person for an assist there. Right. But but make changes, reasonable and meaningful changes to move the ball down the field. All right. Signage.

Determine signage, this to make this quick too. signage around your office, determine signage requirements. Is it starting to change color? We what we were I can't remember where we are, Michael, but we were walked into a clinic and that building looked like it was straight out of nineteen eighty-eight. Yeah. I mean, it just it was yet dingy yellow. Yeah. Right. And the signage was starting to change color for how old it was. Yeah, from the sun hitting it. Yep. And just determine what you need. If if if you have a common area where people don't this is the this is the most

most common thing at the dentist office is people don't know how to leave. Well put some signage up saying exit this way. How crazy is that? Right. Yeah. I I know some somebody will typically say it's down the hall and to the right. They're not going to get it. Put put a hall put it at the end of the hall and point an arrow to the right. Yeah. Well I even think about like we're we're now five years since COVID. Right. And you probably still have police stand six feet from away from each other signage on the floor.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (20:17.934)
'Cause I actually I've seen some of that. Yeah, like I I was walking through Dollar like yes, I'm from Birmingham, Alabama. I was walking through Dollar General because they're everywhere here. And looking down at the floor, there's like a fully ripped up please stand six feet apart. Yeah. And then all you can see is like the six at this point. but that's real. Like, hey, it might be and guess what? They probably mop the floor, but nobody's gonna get down there but a razor and like try to get that off. Well, it'd be really cool if somebody would just take care of some of the ugly things in there, like old signage, right? Yeah, exactly. standards are are a big thing.

I and I'm specifically talking to our multi location. doing the same thing across multiple multiple locations, that is going to breed trust with your patients. predictable, stable, consistent, profitable, all of these different kinds of things. Well, your branding needs to be all of those things in order to to be a scalable clinic, right? To be a multi location clinic, you have to put standards in place.

And then begin working and critiquing the designs before you send it over to print or send it over to the sign company. Okay. All right. Let's keep going. Interior exam rooms. like I said, first of all, sit in there for 15 minutes. Pay attention. If you were not tempted to walk over to the little jar with the little q-tips, every time I sit in one of those things, I just want to go play with stuff, right? So if there's things that don't need to be played with, keep in mind there's people who want to play with those things. And I know I sound dumb right now, but I'm also being serious. Sit in there for 15 minutes. Do you need to overhaul it?

Do you need to deep clean it? Do you need to update it? Can you improve the flow? Can you allow that doctor to have some insights on what needs to change in the exam room? This is where the people are spending the vast majority of their time. How can you make it easier for the doctor to walk in and be present? Yeah. Right? These are the kind of things that I think you should should ask. It'll reduce the patient friction and it'll reduce the wait time. All right. EMR. All right. So

We we have some great relationships with EMRs out there. I'm not going to use this time to promote, but if you're thinking about switching to one that's gonna better serve you, the best time to do that is when you are slow. Yeah. All right. It is gonna disrupt your business the least when you do that. So right now is the best time to switch to an to an EMR that's gonna work for you because it's gonna take three to six weeks, right? So that's right within this nine week time frame that we're talking about.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (22:36.032)
reach out to us. Hello at Patient Care Marketing Pros. We would be happy to make some recommendations. There's two specific ones that we love to work with on the marketing side. And they tend to be really, really good for our clients. So happy to make those introductions if you want them. And usually the pros outweigh the cons for making a switch whenever you do this. It's gonna hurt. I don't even want to lie. there's no putting band-aids on this, right? But this goes back to that pitching part. That's right. Making sure you're doing a really good pitch up front because there are gonna be a lot of groaning on that one.

No, I know. It's it's it's gonna suck. There's no nice way to say it. But on the other side of that, it's gonna make you faster, leaner, more efficient. All of the pros of coming with an EMR that people actually want to use, that's huge. And then schedule ahead of time with a vendor. Okay. That's your EMR side of things. front desk training. I tell you what, this says Nick and Michael, but Michael, you've got a really cool thing that you're putting together. I know it's not time to launch it, but you can you can preview it if you want. Now's a good time.

Yeah, so to front desk training, so we're actually because I've I've worked with so many clinics now, I've determined like I can make a course out of this. So I'm we're right now Hannah and I are working together on developing a course that you guys can buy into and have your team utilize at their own leisure. But the idea here is like the implementation on front desk training. Just this is what I know. This is why I've been talking to clinics for a long for probably two years now on just front desk. when it comes to implementation and front desk training, you gotta first evaluate the calls.

Like this the things are we're gonna do front desk training improvement. Great. First step is to understand where you're at. And so inside the front desk stuff, you're gonna evaluate the calls. Well we don't record calls. Like, well, you probably should. making sure it's a HIPAA compliant s platform to do that with, but you should probably record calls. And then start determining the common issues. And then even when you think you got the common issues figured out, have somebody secret shop your clinic. So identify the three there's usually three to five issues that every clinic seems to deal with at

Front desk is either just really stumbling on or just wholly ignoring. Anyway, tell your secret shopper, hey, shop off of these three things and tell me what happens. And you go listen to the call, listen to what they said. Now you got that information. Like, okay, I got the problem. Now you can look at the training issue part. Like we're gonna put some scripts together. We're gonna talk about some training. And this is not a beat up session. This is like how I want you to improve. We can get more patients coming in this door, we're gonna grow, which is a good thing.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (24:55.586)
And someone says, Well, I don't want to grow because I I feel like I'm I like the summer. It's so slow, it's so nice. Right. Get a get a bit of a break. Yeah. So but you've trained. Now guess what? Now you get to go reevaluate the calls again. It's like a cycle. And you can come back to them and say, I don't know, well, this helped a little bit. This did not, and all the different things. But anyway, so but like so you reevaluate the calls and now you're seeing that

hey there's some improvement, or you may identify a key person because if you're multi-location, you have multiple front desk people. There may be a key person, like, wow, this person's fantastic. I need to promote them up, or I need to increase their pay. I want to keep them. So what'd you think? Did you are did you have some things going in your mind saying, all right, you know what? I think I could probably figure that out. I know for most the simplest one by far, clean it sounds terrible. Clean up that office, clean up that clinic.

Not just mop the floors and wipe down the counters. Do the whole thing. Get rid of those cobwebs as Nick was saying, get rid of the cobwebs out of the corners, clean up those ceiling tiles, whatever it makes sense, that maybe some fresh paint just to freshen that place up, to stand out from your competition and increase that experience because patient experience absolutely matters. Or maybe you're going super complicated. It's like, you know, I finally need to pull the trigger on the EMR. Let's go ahead and start doing that. That's a lot, but it's important.

And then or you're saying, you know what, I think it's time to relook at our insurance contracts and see if we have some better opportunities. It's been a few years. Hopefully they got your brain moving a little bit, saying, you know, these are a couple of things I could be doing instead of just taking it really slow, but taking advantage of the slowness and looking at items saying, All right, I think I can knock this out next couple of weeks before we get busy again. And it will make our clinic better. And that when we make it better, we can be more profitable and do all the right things. Hope you guys enjoyed, and we'll see you on the next one.