Patient Scheduling and Minimizing No Shows – Phone Consultation Part 2

Hello, everyone. Welcome to our second episode of the Business of Aesthetics podcast show. This is Naren, your co-host. Today, I'm excited to be joined by my dear friend, Jeff Richman, who is our other co-host. In the last episode, Jeff talked about the phone consultation. In today's episode, we have something very exciting for you. Today's topic is how to optimize patient scheduling and how to minimize no-shows. How to optimize patient scheduling and how to minimize no-shows. But before we jump into that, I want Jeff to kind of recap for the benefit of those who haven't listened to the last episode, kind of the key points he made during our last episode when we talked about the phone consultation. Jeff, welcome. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Naren. The segue is really perfect today because the last podcast we spoke about really before the phone was picked up, you know, the aesthetic patient and the receptionist, as we often call that, this really key person in our office, this first line of the customer experience, however we want to call that person, but their role and how important it is.

And then we ended with asking some of the questions about, you know, how do we close this person? How do we get them on our schedule? And how do we get them into the office? So today, we want to talk about actually addressing that once we've done the process. But we spent time on specifically how you're speaking to a patient and how important that is rather than what you say. Being able to be an ambassador to the treatment, address their questions, understanding their need, how important that is, being able to brand and credential the physicians and providers in the office, being able to address pain and safety, and not necessarily the specifics, but having answers to cost and some of the other key hesitations or obstacles that come up with patients.

So that was more or less what we looked at last week. Now, today, I think it's a matter of, okay, I'm ready. Or as the person on the telephone, you've provided information, you understand the patient need. What's the next step now? How do we actually get them into the office? And then once we get them on the books, what kinds of specific policies do we use to book a patient? Because I know a lot of us do, do things differently. So we thought to discuss that a little bit. Absolutely, Jeff. So let's jump in. So throughout the call, I remember, in our last conversation, you talked about, you know, some people are ready to book. So one of the first questions you ask is, you know, you know, just that, you know, some people are ready to book. So one of the first questions you ask is, you know, you know, just that, you know, how long have you been thinking about this? Are you ready to, you know, schedule an appointment? Or do you want to book the next available appointment, things like that, for those who are ready to book, then you also talked about there are some people who are not just ready to book, they may have concerns, they may have concerns with price. They may have concerns about safety, pain, et cetera, et cetera.

So you kind of go through that process of educating them while being an ambassador for the practice. So within a few minutes, their confidence in the practice grows and those who are not ready to book are ready to book. So I know you talked about trying a few times to close, meaning getting that booking. Can you talk about that a little bit, please? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, throughout the process, it's and we discussed this last week as well. But we have to remember our role as that frontline person. And it is to do those things you said, be an ambassador of the procedure, it is to do those things you said, be an ambassador of the procedure, to answer that phone with a smile and start that customer experience in a terrific way, letting that patient know that we care about them, we're happy that they called, that we have technology and solutions and and solutions and trustworthy and credentialed providers to treat them. Those are the things that matter.

If we remember, though, the idea is we're not doing a clinical consultation. We're reassuring a patient. And we're reassuring that patient to get them on the schedule. So throughout the call, we need to continue to attempt in a soft way, but to get them on that schedule. So some of the things that we may do is, just as you said, if a patient identifies that they know about the procedure, their friend got it done, and they're really excited, then we may say, great, how quickly are you looking to get this done and get them on the books? If they say, my friend got it done, but I was worried about the price of it, so I'm not ready to book it because she didn't tell me how much it costed and blah, blah, blah. In that specific case, although we addressed quoting prices in the last podcast, in that specific case, if she knows what her friend got done, because we obviously can't tell her that for HIPAA reasons, but if she knows and says, what would three treatments of XYZ cost, we could deliver that. But what we would normally do is quote a range in that point, X amount, Dr. Jones will be happy to address that in your initial consultation.

Is that, are you ready to book now or did you have other questions too? Did you want to book that consultation or did you have other questions too? Oh, no, I have other questions too. So again, but each step of the way we're working. So it is not uncommon. And that's why you've heard me say it, that it would take one to four attempts to reassure a patient and re-ask them if they're ready to go ahead and book the procedure or book the appointment. Makes total sense. Let's kind of talk a little bit more about, you know, the reassuring advisor. So you want the patient to trust you as someone who knows what's going on as an expert, but also you want to make them feel that they're making the right decision, that this is the right next move for them. So give us some examples. I know you've had lots and lots of experience, you know, where people were not really sure yet for all kinds of reasons. Someone's still hesitant. Yeah. Yeah. Totally, totally common. So the first part, if they're a little more hesitant, that's when we do the listen and learn, ask a couple of questions,, and determine whether we can identify their concerns over the phone. And if there's some of the things that we commonly hear, you know, again, the physician, prices, pain, downtime, in a global way, we should be able to address these things. But some people really just need to come in and meet face to face or now post COVID. I think one thing we've all got is patients are really tolerant and willing to

do consultations with physicians over the internet, do a, you know, a digital consultation. So, but they may need that direct contact with the physician. So at that point, we would really need to stop providing information and let that patient know, you know, this is, wow, we've answered a lot of great stuff. You have some terrific questions that we would be able to answer for you directly. How about I get you in and arrange for you some time? Now, let's say in the rare cases, so in our practice, we strive for 70% closure of inquiries to consults or a booked appointment, either way. In most practices, I think 50% is an acceptable number. But again, when we look at the potential of $10,000 per patient, and if it's, I don't know, say you're only getting 20 phone calls a day with new inquiries, or even 10 a day, phone calls a day with new inquiries or even 10 a day, that's still two a day that between 50 and 70%, which is potentially 100,000 hours a week over the course of a patient. So, you know, all of a sudden this adds up really quickly. But what happens if we've done what we've needed and we're probably, I'm going to say somewhere between five, maybe seven or eight minutes at the max.

If you're going over that in terms of time and assuming you have multiple roles in the practice, that you're not just a patient care coordinator, but you are reception, you are doing other things. You're not just a patient care coordinator, but you are reception. You are doing other things. Now you're ignoring some of the other responsibilities in the office, and you've provided too much information in the consultation. Because that's not in the telephone consult, because it's not a clinical consultation. But at that point, if we're unsuccessful with the close then we may offer to send information out via mail to the patient. If we have an upcoming program or there's a webinar either provided by the manufacturer or something that we're doing about the procedure that we know we have scheduled, we would ask if we can get them on that schedule or if we were doing an open house or an online open house or online event, then we would also ask that person if they wanted to participate in that. Throughout the next week or two, we would also re-engage them via telephone and assuming they left us a number or an email two, we would also re-engage them via telephone.

And assuming they left us a number or an email address, we'd reach back out and say, hey, Jenny, it's been two weeks since we've heard from you. Do you have any questions? And then after that, they would fall into our digital engagement. So they would likely get our newsletter and specials monthly. likely get our newsletter and specials monthly. We would continue to, we would check back one more time at the end of the quarter with a live either phone call or email correspondence again. But yeah, then they would just be left in our digital. If we had no engagement from that patient after a year, then they would fall off. Makes sense. You talked about what happens when the patient is not a successful close, right? They didn't close. You mentioned engaging them by inviting them for a program you might have, whether it's in person or online. You talked about, you know, giving them phone calls or maybe even texting them and the digital engagement methodology you use with newsletters and so forth. Now, I do have a question about scheduling. I know you've used three words that kind of stood out for me, choice, scarcity, urgency. Can you talk a little bit about that, Jeff? What's the rationale behind those three words and why it's important in your scheduling process? Absolutely. So choice is doing it our way, you know, is how would we most prefer to schedule an appointment? Well, we'd most prefer to schedule an appointment when it fits in our schedule the right way. So

in our practice, a doctor has separate slots, usually in half day increments, sometimes on the full day. I haven't looked, so I don't know the exact schedule of late, but I know that there's days that are more scrub days and there's days that are more tie days. And the tie days are more of the heavy consultation days and the scrub days are more procedure days. So obviously, you know, our first thing is to just book the patient. Hey, we have next Tuesday at 11 a.m. available. Would that work for you? And it may work for them. Or you can give them a choice, right? Tuesday at 11 or Thursday at 4. Absolutely. Or we give them a choice where we say, and we call it like an alternate close because we, this way, instead of saying, yes, I'm ready to book an appointment, we can say, would you prefer afternoons or mornings? And if they say mornings, they're already saying yes. And now I'll look for a morning time. A pet peeve of mine though, is when would you like to come in and see us? When would you like to come in and see us says my schedule is wide open. We don't have any patients at all because we're not such a special place and let me know when it's convenient for you and you so instead we we oftentimes will then use with someone that still has need a scarcity clothes and I don't mean to be too salesy with this. I'm just trying to give strategy for someone that's hesitant to get them over the edge.