Tara and I had the honor earlier this year of becoming founding contributors of Integrative Practitioner, an amazing online community for practitioners of integrative medicine:
The Community already has more than 2,400 qualified members, including physicians, chiropractors, acupuncturists, naturopaths, herbalists, nurses, traditional healers, dieticians and massage therapists. In all, they represent more than 30 disciplines and come from 15 countries and all 50 states.
We’re thrilled with our new clinic. We’ve been able to offer better (and more) services because of the extra space, and the goldfish effect really seems to be kicking in.
One of the small drawbacks, though, is that our patients have to pay for parking - ouch. It was one of those little things that didn’t sit well with me, and it didn’t seem to fit our vision for the clinic.
A couple of years ago we noticed that although we’d had a great year as far as new patients were concerned, our return visits seemed to have flattened out. Patients seemed pleased with the service, success rates were high, but it still felt like we were gaining new patients but not growing.
The problem, of course, was in the scheduling.
We’ve discussed scheduling problems in the past, pointing you to a few resources here and there, but we’ve never really provided a comprehensive approach for those scheduled appointments that go off the rails due to patients canceling, rescheduling, or simply not showing up at all.
Here are the exact strategies we’ve put in place over the last few years. If you’ve got something that works in your practice, leave a comment and share it with us.
The Online Nursing Degree Directory listed us in their Top 50 Alternative Medicine Blogs. Thanks to the ONDD!
The list is worth a gander from a practitioner perspective. It’s well categorized, with a few good sites I’d never seen. Head over and take a look.
A few weeks ago we talked about how to increase professional referrals to your practice. Developing this referral source is essentially a networking exercise, but the point of the post was to provide a framework in which to do it without feeling weird, creepy, or uncomfortable.
I know there are a lot of alternative and complementary practitioners who are involved with networking groups like BNI. While I don’t generally promote those groups a great deal, I read a fantastic tidbit from Ivan Misener, the founder and CEO of BNI, in a piece on Entrepreneur.com: Read More
Here are our favorite acupuncture-specific online resources for practice growth and management, in no particular order. Have we missed any? Let us know in the comments.
I was recently interviewed about our book Escape 101 by Mark Hayward of MyTropicalEscape.com, who’s a consummate escape artist himself.
You can check out the interview here, but what I really want to draw your attention to is his interview with Scott Rigsby, who became the first double amputee in the world to finish an Ironman distance triathlon. Read More
We had our first day of business in the new clinic last week - January was a hectic month!
The space is about three times as big as the old clinic - a significant increase. It seems like a lot, but as I moved the last items out of the old office, I remembered how big it seemed at one time. Now I can’t imagine how we ever fit in there.
The last move - five years ago - seemed like a leap of faith at the time, but shortly after we settled into the larger space, business took off. It was like we were goldfish, and all we needed was a bigger bowl in order to grow more. Now it’s happening again.
In support of our post last week on giving as the key to professional networking and referrals come two things. The first is scientific research revealing a link between charity and wealth. The second is a fantastic new book, The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea
The Go-Giver is the story of Joe, an ambitious young man who yearns for success. Joe’s trouble, however, is that the harder he works, the further away his goals seem. That all changes when Joe meets an enigmatic man named Pindar who teaches him that changing his focus from getting to giving—putting others’ interests first and continually adding value to their lives —ultimately leads to unexpected returns.
