Medical Office Staff Training: The Essential Ingredient for Marketing Success
We can train your team to maximize your marketing return-on-investment.
We recognize that it is highly unusual for a marketing firm to offer healthcare staff training as part of their healthcare marketing plan. Yet, our experience with hospitals and practices proves that training is vital to optimizing your marketing success. For example, what good is it for a marketing campaign to generate droves of inquiries if the staff is unable to convert callers to first appointments?
We offer our clients four customized onsite medical office staff training programs.
1. Convert Phone Inquiries into New Patients.
Our experience shows that up to half of new patient inquiries result in no revenue because incoming calls are not properly handled. Even assuming a modest case size of $1,000 per patient, just one lost caller per day would cost about $250,000 a year in missed opportunity. At a busy practice or hospital, the opportunity cost of untrained, unmotivated front desk or call center personnel can easily add up to many millions of dollars each year in lost revenue.
We’ll begin your consultation and staff training before your trainer’s visit. She’ll interview your leadership team, confirm priorities, make recommendation, and then “mystery shop” your office(s). Your trainer will provide written, graded reports, along with call recordings.
A picture will quickly emerge. Do you have friendly, helpful and well-intended people on your team who merely need training and guidance? Or are some members of your staff really better suited for something else? Or are your existing systems and processes setting your team up to fail?
Your trainer will complete her assessment during the onsite visit, and then she’ll begin them medical office staff training in earnest. Training sessions are always customized based upon the situation, but they typically include interactive lectures, coaching, role playing, script building and objection handling. Your trainer will also provide your management team with written observations and recommendations immediately following the visit.
To find out how our training program might help you, start by requesting a mystery call. One of our representatives will follow up with you to find to more about your requirements, provide some options, and then (if appropriate) schedule a follow up call to review the results of your mystery call with our trainer.
2. Physician Liaison Training Program.
The secret to growing doctor referrals and increasing hospital admissions often comes down to one surprising word: relationships. Quality among providers is presumed… and often difficult to differentiate. Therefore, in the real world people refer to people they know, like and trust.
Skilled Physician Liaisons grow doctor referrals through a series of repeated, positive contacts. Once the sole domain of hospitals, Physician Liaisons have proven themselves so effective that private practices now often employ them, as well.
We can train your physician liaison and, if necessary, can even help you identify and hire the right candidate. Visit our Physician Liaison training page for more details.
3. Patient Experience and Customer Service.
The trend toward improved patient experience and satisfaction is transforming healthcare. Today’s patients expect — and deserve — to be treated fairly and respectfully. Simply “getting them better” is no longer enough.
Of course, those providers who deliver superior patient experiences can also benefit from increased reimbursements, patient referrals and competitive advantages.
At Healthcare Success, we are passionate about patient experience, and we write and speak about the topic regularly. Our trainer will work with you to identify customer service and patient experience problem areas and then create a custom medical office staff training program to help you solve them.
4. Case Acceptance.
Let’s face it. Some procedures — such as IVF, bariatric surgery, LASIK, orthodontics, dental implants, aesthetic surgery, hair replacement and even joint replacements — are contemplated, “high-involvement” decisions. Patients must weigh the likely benefits of the given procedure versus its medical risks and out-of-pocket costs. While some patients feel comfortable making these kinds of decisions quickly, many can delay the decision for years, or never commit at all.
Our trainer can help you ethically and dramatically increase the number of patients who say “yes” to your treatment plans. She’ll start by examining your current sales process, from phone inquiry to first visit to follow-up. Then she’ll help you determine the right level of doctor involvement. Next, she’ll give you specific recommendations on process, scripting and objection handling. She’ll also make specific recommendations about how to solve thorny payment issues. In addition, she can help you determine which team members are best suited to deal directly with patients and which ones would be better suited for “behind-the-scenes” work. Finally, our trainer will make recommendations about how to handle and follow up with patients who are simply not ready to commit.
For more information on any or all of our staff training services, call (800) 656-0907.
