4- Your Patients

We do a lot in our practices to attract new patients, and to keep those we already have satisfied. The systems and tactics we use in this endeavor are based on what we assume our patients want. The fastest way to success in your practice is to first get to know your patients.

• Who are your patients?
• What do they expect of you?
• Where are they coming from?
• What do they like in your office, and what turns them off?
• Why are some of them upset or unhappy with you?

These questions and many others need to be answered in order to lead your practice toward improvement. The "Office Performance Test" in the Tests and Tools section is instrumental in answering a lot of these questions.

However, before getting to know your patients you need to recognize an important fact:

You may have your own business, but you still have bosses! Surprised? Don't be. Your bosses' names are in your chart room in the patients' records. Your patients are your bosses. Why? Because they pay your salary, they pay for your home, your car, your children's college fund and virtually everything else you have or want. So now that you know who your bosses are, treat them like it!

Knowing your patients and being able to see things through their eyes is a wonderful advantage that some doctors enjoy. This is the key in winning over patients' hearts.

If you could just put yourself in your patients’ shoes or if you could read their minds, wouldn't it be so much easier to give them what they want?

Let's try to answer some of these questions. Meanwhile, keep the following rule in mind.

How Do Our Patients Choose Us?

You have to know how patients choose their doctors and what is important to them in order to effectively focus your resources on these issues. There are a number of factors you may assume are what patients really care about, such as low fees, convenient appointment times, billing systems, or office location.

But when you ask your patients directly, or look at other healthcare professionals and studies on what people care about the most, you realize these are not the issues most important to your patients.

As I mentioned before, being aware of your patients’ concerns makes a huge difference. For example, when you know that people care more about their doctor's honesty than low fees, you will find it is better to advertise your honesty rather than your low fees!

Most of us probably spend a majority of our time and effort on the last column, unaware that it may not be the most significant or effective approach.

You may say, "If that's the case, why do patients ask about the issues in the last column more than anything else?" You are right; patients do inquire about your fees and hours much more often than they ask about your professionalism or your honesty... but do you know why this is?

When a customer wants to measure the quality of a service, price and hours of operation are probably the only tangible and measurable items he can ask about!

Of course patients they want to know if their doctor is honest, but how can they put this concern into a question without sounding offensive? You must provide these answers for them either before the questions are asked, or by redirecting their other questions to address their true concerns.

Our objective throughout the different sections of this software is to focus on improving your practice, as well as fulfilling all of your patients’ needs and expectations. A lot of us believe we have clean and nice offices or that we are professionals and do quality work, and most of the time it is true. But what we fail to consider is this:

"Do our patients think the same way?"

Unfortunately, there are often circumstances in which our patients’ perceptions of our practice differ from our own.