To increase visits from patients who have fallen out of care, perform a systematic review of new patients once per week

It has been researched, written about, and verified that there are two ways to build a practice: Obtain lots of new patients, or take care of the ones you have. The recruitment of new patients to help build a practice is essential, but the price to obtain each new patient may be high.

If you have a phone-book ad that costs $1,000 per month, and you received 24 new patients from the ad in a year, your acquisition cost per new patient is $500. Let’s say that those 24 new patients generated $24,000 in collections, or $1,000 per patient. Your return on your investment is 2:1.

It is with this knowledge that you may want to consider keeping the ad or possibly investing those marketing dollars elsewhere.

With a new patient, you are taking a chance, depending on how you acquired the patient. If he was a direct referral from an existing patient, the chances are higher that he will convert from a new patient to an established patient. With acquisitions from yellow pages, insurance books, or screenings, the conversion rate goes down in general. Of course, your office presentation, your staff’s communication, your location, and your fees, for example, all play a role, but in general, patients directly referred have a higher conversion rate.

Patients Referring Themselves
There is a way to capitalize on that direct-referral statistic, and that is to reconnect with former patients of your office. It is like a personal referral, only they are referring themselves. With this group, you have a population that has been to your office, experienced your care, and most likely had positive results. Reaching out to reconnect with that population can be rewarding and is essential in building your practice.

Reconnecting with patients can be easy and fun, or it can be time-consuming and boring. With today’s electronic media, keeping in touch with your patient base is easy.

Hopefully, a place for email address is provided as part of your patient-intake sheet. Collecting your patients’ email addresses and communicating with them this way is easy and cost-efficient. Of course, you would not want to rely solely on this method of communication, so having the ability to communicate with them is not as important as why you want to connect.

The reasons to reconnect can vary from confirming upcoming appointments to finding out why they have not been in your office. Email, phone calls, letters, newsletters, cards, and announcements are all ways to communicate with patients.

Connecting with your entire patient base regularly is a great way to keep in touch. Monthly or quarterly newsletters put you in front of your patients and let them know about upcoming events. Newsletters offer research information that affects patients and their health, and give you a chance to let patients remember you. The cost of printing and mailing them to your patient base can vary depending on the quality of the newsletter, the number of people to contact, and the time to put it all together. With electronic media, you can send an email newsletter to everyone whose email address you have. This is very inexpensive and efficient. However, it is advisable that patients also receive something from you that they can hold and read. Piggybacking newsletters with bills or other patient correspondence makes it more cost-efficient.

A Systematic Review
A way to keep in touch with patients who have sought care from you in the past year is to perform a systematic review of new patients once per week. Review your new patients from 1 week ago, 4 weeks ago, 8 weeks ago, 12 weeks ago, 6 months ago, and 1 year ago. This can be assigned or done as a group.

Review the new patients from 1 week ago so you can make sure that everything was done right. Review whether you gave a report of findings; verified their insurance or put them on a payment plan, requested x-rays or records from previous providers, and sent a welcome letter or a referral thank-you card. Did they accept care, or did they even come back? The 4-week patients should be ready for their re-exam. Are they still treating? Have they referred anyone? Are they scheduled for a progress exam? The 8-week patients should be out of their acute and subacute phases and transitioning to supportive/corrective care or better. Are they still under care? The 12-week group should be into supportive or wellness care. The 6- and 12-month group should be under wellness care. This group will most likely be your best targets with which to reconnect.

I should point out that most people stop coming in because you did a great job, they feel better, and they are back to their normal activities. Some will choose to come in for regular checkups. Some will come in at the first sign of trouble, or for flare-ups that they cannot resolve themselves. Your job is to keep in contact with them to remind them to care for their health.

The 6- and 12-month group should receive phone calls. This gives you a chance to check in on them, say hello, and remind them that you are there to serve them. These calls are good opportunities to confirm their home and email addresses to send them information about upcoming events—with their permission, of course.

Special Events
One way to reconnect and reactivate patients is through events such as food drives at Thanksgiving, toy drives for Christmas, blood drives right before summer or at Halloween, health fairs at the end of January, and scoliosis and backpack checks in September. With these programs, the patient makes a donation and receives treatment. This way, you can connect with former patients and inspire them to come in for a checkup and a tuneup. It gives you the chance to update their file and remind them of the benefits of your office. It also provides a great way to thank your community and serve others in need.

When you review your patient files, certain situations will come up. Patients may have dropped from care prematurely. Financial burdens may have stopped them from continuing care. You may discover issues with staff that you did not know about previously. The treatment you provided did not help, or not enough time had gone by for the treatment to help. Their goals and your goals were not in line. It is good to find out why patients stopped coming in. Most people felt better and got on with their lives. A call to them to check on them is usually appreciated, and they are excited to tell you how you helped them. If you have their file in front of you when you contact them, and you see they have multiple levels of degeneration, they have episodes of back pain two to three times a year, or the last time they came in was for another flareup, this gives you the background to initiate a conversation with them about trying another path of prevention that can save them time and money.

A fun game for you and your staff is to remember patients you enjoyed having in your office that you haven’t seen in a while. Write down a list of these people you can remember, and contact them. You will be surprised how many will call on their own and schedule. It is as if a cosmic paging system is activated.

Companies are out there that sell letters that you can send to your patients for every occasion. These letters welcome new patients, improve collections, and increase reactivations, among other things.

Standard patient-communication techniques include birthday cards, congratulatory cards, and sympathy cards. Having a supply of these types of cards will allow you to recognize your patients for the events in their lives. If a patient purchases a new car, gets a new job, buys a house, gets married, has a child, or loses a family member or pet, you and your staff can acknowledge it. This will set you apart from other businesses and show how much you care. I always liked to make birthday phone calls instead of sending birthday cards. It is less costly and more effective. I like to call them at work, usually during lunch. More than likely, they will not be there. I like to leave a message with a secretary or coworker, who can convey my birthday wishes to them.

“Mary, your chiropractor called while you were at lunch to wish you a happy birthday!” They usually do this in front of more than just your patient. “Your chiropractor called you to say happy birthday? My doctor never did that. What’s his or her name?” The effect can be amazing. If you are really brave and you get them on the phone, sing to them!

The bottom line is, you need to be on the lookout for ways to regularly communicate with patients. Opportunities pop up all around you daily. Being aware of them gives you the chance to remain connected. Many fine products and tools are available to make your communication valuable.

Your whole staff must be committed to building the practice and reconnecting with patients. You know the value of regular chiropractic care and the chiropractic lifestyle. Make sure you and your staff are examples of this philosophy, and the effects on your practice and your enjoyment will be substantial. CP

Dennis Buckley, DC, practices in Pasadena, Calif, at the University Health Center, a satellite clinic of Southern California University of Health Sciences (LACC) in Whittier, Calif. He is past president of the California Chiropractic Association. He writes and teaches DCs about marketing techniques. Contact him at TriDocD@aol.com or (626) 991-8877.