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Michel Perusich: Hi everybody. I'm Mike Perusich, David Kats, Patrick Hammond, with Kats Consultants. Hey guys, what's the one thing you could do with your practice tomorrow to increase your revenue?

David Kats: You go ahead, Pat.

Patrick Hammond: Okay. Well, the one thing I do is, I really talk about and I take a few moments to think about the other services that I have in my office and sometimes I get too busy that I get away from. I don't think anybody else ever has that problem. Sometimes you just get so caught up in seeing patients, so you go, "Oh my gosh, I have a laser, I sell pillows, I have supplements." So a lot of times you have to slow down for a moment, think about what this patient could really benefit from the use of. Usually, it always ties in, and once that happens, it just takes off.

David: Yes. Many years ago, I wrote a book that you had referred to, what it said, "101 things that work so well, I had to quit doing them."

Michel:  That book is...

Michael Perusich: Hi, everybody, Mike Perusich and Patrick Hammond with Kats Consultants. Patrick, I want to talk about the law of buy-in today. As doctors, we wear multiple hats. We're a doctor, we're a business owner, we're a leader in our community, we're a leader to our staff, we're a leader to our patient, but how do people and why do people follow leaders? It's because they buy in to the leader's vision. This is really what we do when we build doctor authority is we create a sense of a vision for people that they want to buy in to and they want to follow it.

A great example is with our patients, we teach them that their pain is going to be manageable by our treatment plan, and we impose upon them the idea that we're there to help them and we have the tools to help them, so we get them to buy in through that process. That whole law of buy-in works with our staff as well. If you want staff to stay with you for a long time, you have to teach them how to buy in to your vision.

Dr....

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Mike: Hi, everybody. I'm Mike Perusich and Dave Kats with Kats Consultants. Dave, I thought we'd talk about proxy consultations a little bit today. I think that's something that's near and dear to both of us.

Dave: Absolutely. I'm excited. I was sitting one day in my office and said, "There's going to be a way to get patients to send me other patients." I couldn't think of the way. I walked into the treatment room and there was a lady named Darlene there. I said, "How are you doing?" She said, "I'm doing pretty good today. I probably should've stayed home and sent my son in." I said, "Why is that?" She said, "He has headaches." I thought here's a time to do what we later called a proxy consultation or even a proxy case history. They're still saying, "Yes, you should do that someday."

I sat down on the pelvic bench that I have in the room. She was on high low sitting down. I did a case history on her son through here. I did it by proxy. At the end, I said these three things,...

Join us May 2 for our next Virtual Seminar.

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Mike Perusich: Hi, everybody. Mike Perusich, David Kats, Patrick Hammond with Kats Consultants. You know, guys, I have a funny one for you today. I was talking to a doctor the other day. He's actually not a client, but I was talking to a doctor the other day. He said, "I'm really having trouble getting patients to stay on their treatment plans." He said, "In fact, I do a great exam and then I do a report of findings and then they never come back." I said, "Well, what do you see to be in the report findings?" He said, "Well, I go through and tell them, 'Here's your back pain and I understand what's going on with your back pain and here's why you're having it. Here's what we can do for it.' And then I turned to him and I say, 'How many times do you want to come in?'

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They go to the front desk and they never come back." You know, we've all learned this, but we have to be very directive with our patients because when they come in, they're looking at us as the...

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Speaker 1: Hi everybody. Mike Perusich David Kats. Patrick Hammond with Kats Consultants thanks for joining us today. We've talked about reputation management before but what happens if you get a bad review? What do you do?

Speaker 2: The first thing I would suggest you do is not panic. We have clients that call us and they'd get total panicked because they got 15 positive reviews and now they got one negative review and there's this statement I like to use. It's not the most positive statement. It says nothing is ever as good as you think it's going to be and nothing is ever as bad as you think it's going to be. One bad review or two bad reviews is not going to put you on the skids. You'll be fine.

Speaker 1: That's absolutely right. An important thing to do is to answer the review. You have an opportunity to basically rebuke the review. You can put out there how maybe if somebody who didn't like your charges, how you collect money in your office and you can write a...

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Mike Perusich: Hi, everybody, Mike Perusich and Patrick Hammond with Kats Consultants. Patrick, one of the things that I think builds doctor authority is having calm determination. Let's talk about that a little bit today.

Patrick Hammond: Yes, you just can't become too reactive to good, and bad, and everything in the middle. If a patient states that they're feeling better, you don't go, "Wow, that's great," or if they feel a little worse, you go, "Oh, boy."

Mike: "Don't know why that happened."

Patrick: Right. You got to have that calm determination. You got to understand where they're coming from, but also be prepared for different things that can happen throughout your day.

Mike: That's right. There's lots of things that can happen. When you're dealing with the public and you're in a healthcare situation, you can have all kinds of emergencies, for example. I can give you a great example that happened in my office one time. I had an elderly...

From the Desk of Dr. Michael Perusich

The Luck of the Irish

Happy St. Patrick’s day!  The annual day of green not only brings about ideas of good cheer and fun, but it also makes me think about finances, and the “green” of success.

This is a great time of year to really be thinking about the success path that you are on with your practice and your personal life. Being the end of the first quarter, this is a good time to reflect on your goals that you set at the beginning of the year. Analyze whether you are on track or need to make some first quarter adjustments.  

It’s also a great time to analyze your cash flow.  By now, you should have a good idea as to how insurance is paying you this year.  How does it compare to last year? On which services have they decided to cut your fees?  How much of your care recommendations will patients be paying out of pocket in 2019? These are important questions that can tremendously affect your...