First things first. Accepting credit cards in your holistic practice is a must - you can read more on that here.
That being said, there can be significant barriers to actually doing it. Assuming you can get a merchant account, setup fees can be several hundred dollars, then there’s a monthly fee to have the terminal in your office, plus the per-transaction cost.
NDUnion is a new website for Naturopathic students and alumni, with a mission to provide “open and secure communciation within the Naturopathic community.”
If you’re a grad or current student of a four-year graduate level Naturopathic medical school, you can post ads and events, network with other ND’s, and even get a free one page personal website from NDAccess. Registration is free.
Although it’s by no means the only method to promote your CAM practice, email marketing is one of the easiest and cheapest. Add to that the fact that a growing proportion of your patient base is going to prefer email as a means of communication, and it’s worth considering.
Daryl Kulak of The Simplicity Institute has made his ebook “Health Insurance Off the Grid” available as a free download. You can also buy the print copy. The book covers “a complete healthcare system for a person or a family that removes many of the hassles of HMOs, denied coverage and Western medicine as the only option.”
In the end, you’?re only as good as the quality of the products and services you provide. Great marketing, financing and hard work will only take you so far unless what you offer is of sufficient quality.
What defines a quality experience in an alternative health practice? Many consumers will equate quality with value. That is, they’?ll compare the complete experience they’?ve had in your practice against the dollar price they paid, and using an abstract formula unique to them, calculate the value. Was it worth it? Did they get more than they paid for? Less?
There is a natural progression to starting an alternative health practice. After opening your doors, the first order of business is, of course, to get as many new patients as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, a natural second step in this process is to forget all about these patients once they leave the office. The file goes safely in the cabinet, and the next time it comes out is when the patient takes the initiative to call for an appointment.
Getting your holistic patients to return with regular frequency iswhere you start to reap the rewards of the hard work and expense of attracting new patients to your practice in the first place. It’s where you begin to turn your focus from the external world of prospective patients, to the internal world of the existing patients in your practice.
Homeopathic remedies in the UK will now be allowed to specify what ailments they can be used for.
BBC NEWS | Health | Fears over homeopathy regulation
While this may level the playing field with pharmaceuticals, most homeopathics are available without a prescription, leading to more self diagnosis/treatment. That means less business for homeopaths, naturopaths and other CAM practitioners, and more risk for the end user.
Although most of these podcasts are MD-related, there’s some great anatomy review material, and a number of links the news section to alternative medicine articles.
