Running a private medical practice is challenging. While the primary goal is to provide the best possible care to all patients, it's equally important to have a thriving and successful business. For many physicians, this is delicate to balance. The truth is, it doesn’t have to be. Physicians can strategically see more of the patients they love treating while strategically creating growth for their practice.
How?
By identifying their ideal patient.
What Is an Ideal Patient?
Your ideal patient is the type of individual who aligns perfectly with your medical expertise and the services your practice offers. They are the patients you enjoy treating the most and who typically require high-margin, high-profit treatments. These patients appreciate your expertise, follow your recommendations, and become advocates for your practice because of their great results.
The business side of your practice benefits greatly as does your patient.
The Advantages of Identifying Your Ideal Patient
1. Optimizing Your Time
When you identify your ideal patient, you can choose to optimize your schedule specifically for that patient. This may mean blocking weekly time to accommodate for new ideal patient appointments so that appointments do not get booked too far out, risking no-shows and cancellations.
2. Enhanced Patient Satisfaction
Ideal patients are typically in need of treatment that you are confident in completing and love providing great outcomes for. Naturally, seeing more of these ideal patients leads to better reviews and an increase in word-of-mouth referrals.
3. Increased Revenue and Profitability
When identifying your ideal patient, revenue opportunity and patient care should align. Being able to specifically go after that patient type through advertising or strengthening referral lines allows you to increase the revenue and profitability of your business while treating more patients you love to treat.
4. Control Over Your Patient Base
Without a clear understanding of your ideal patient, you may rely primarily on random referrals or general marketing strategies that attract a broad range of patients. By identifying your ideal patient, you can proactively target and attract more of these individuals through targeted advertising and marketing efforts.
How to Identify Your Ideal Patient
1. Review Your Current Patients: When identifying your ideal patient, start by analyzing your day. What patients do you provide the best outcomes for? Which patients say things to you like, “I wish I would have done this sooner,” after you treat them? What patient do you love treating?
2. Review Your Data: Now that you have narrowed down some of those ideal patient types, how does the reimbursement for their most common treatment look? Is it in the top 10% of revenue-generating treatments in your organization?
Targeting Your Ideal Patient
Once you've identified your ideal patient, you can tailor your advertising, marketing, and patient outreach efforts to attract more of them. This can include creating content that speaks directly to their needs, advertising in specific channels they frequent, and offering tailored services that cater to their unique requirements.
Attracting your ideal patient can be done through strategic messaging that is rooted in neuroscience and behavior change. If you understand their pains, frustrations, hopes, and fears you can use those levers as an opportunity for behavior change with that potential patient population.
By recognizing and targeting your ideal patient, you can create a thriving and successful private medical practice that not only provides superior care but also maximizes growth and revenue. It's a strategy that not only benefits your bottom line but also ensures that you get to spend more of your time doing what you love - helping the patients who benefit the most from your expertise.
