What Our Clients Are Seeing
Traditionally ophthalmology practices see lower profit numbers in the summer months, especially in the elective surgery area. Why? Disposable income is allocated for outdoor activities and vacations for many people. Summer tends to be less structured than the rest of the year and many people tend to avoid things like routine medical visits or major events such as LASIK or Cataract Surgery.
Smart practices are planning ahead and preparing for these slower months by developing special promotions to get patients to alter their routines and take advantage of special incentives to correct their vision during the summer. Once the special promotions have been established, you must begin getting the word out sooner than later or you will find people have too many things already planned to take advantage of your special incentives.
Making sure the word gets out to everyone who has shown interest in your services in the past is the least expensive way to promote your ideas. One way to be sure the word gets out is with a systematic outbound phone campaign to promote the special incentives. Let us know if we can help with a campaign of this type.
An Internal Look
How Are You Recovering Inactive Patients?
Inactive patients are one of the most overlooked sources of new income for most ophthalmology practices. It takes a concentrated effort to pull the files on the patients that are inactive and mount a systematic follow up program to get them in but it is worth the effort when done well. OptiCall provides a service called Boomerang that has consistently exceeded client expectations in bringing in revenue that was just sitting there waiting to be contacted.
Following are three case studies that have utilized this service recently.
6 Months Data on 3 Sample Practices
Practice Number 1: Six month history through April 2012
- Reactivated 595 patients that have KEPT their appointments.
- Generated $83,300 in revenue.
- Average revenue $13,883 per month.
- Our average invoice is $2,279 per month
- A 609% ROI
- $166,600 + income generated per year
Practice Number 2: Six month history through April 2012
- Reactivated 430 patients that have KEPT their appointments.
- Generated $60,200 in revenue.
- Average revenue $10,033 per month
- Our average invoice is running about $1,683 per month.
- A 596% ROI
- $120,400 + income generated per year
Practice Number 3: Six month history through April 2012
- Reactivated 385 patients that have KEPT their appointments.
- Generated $53,900 in revenue.
- Average revenue $8,983 per month.
- Our average invoice is running about $1,607 per month.
- A 559% ROI
- $107,800 + income generated per year
In-House Tip
Encouraging Yearly Eye Exams
Annual eye exams are usually only scheduled by either the very cautious patient or the patient who knows they have a high probability of a vision problem. One way successful practices are getting more patients to schedule annual eye exams is to communicate with their patient base with informative information that explains the risks of not having one\’s eyes checked each year. Also, if you can send reminder notices a month prior to their last visit anniversary date, you\’ll find many more people will call in to schedule their exam. The best way to accomplish this is to make follow up phone calls, advising them that “Dr. Smith wanted me to call to remind you that it has been a year since your last exam and he would like to see you within the next month.”
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