Course: Practice Management 2 Date: August 24, 2009 Class #: 3
Kathy Kerr
Don’t wait to get your name out there…do it 2 years before you graduate! Pick a name and register it in the county in which you plan to start business. The catch is that it’s per county…do it in the surrounding areas too!!! It’s cheap – $20-25 per county and lasts about 10 years Join the chamber of commerce (about $200/yr) and as many networking groups as you can. All of these people are prospective clients! Educate the client base all you can – health fares, demos, gift certs, helping at different org functions so ppl can count on you, know you, trust you. Ask for the sale. Whip out your schedule and write it down. Give ‘em a free consult and see them. Get them in the door If you aren’t licensed, get a cert you can use and get them in the door that way (reiki, LMT cert, etc.) Take your student clinic pts with you when you go…the ones who book you over and over. Let ‘em know you are leaving and where you are going. You could treat them at student clinic prices because they will still bring you full price patients! Be clear about this with them. Hook up with a local dude – chiro, etc – who is acu friendly and who will ppl to you when they don’t wanna take the time! Sometimes you can rent from a chiro who will do this with you. Kathy did this for the 1st year – cheap and no overhead. She outgrew it in about 6 months. Now she has 2 treatment rooms, kitchenette, etc. 10th and Rock Street in Georgetown. Knowing established dudes keeps you Pepper people with your business cards. Get a shirt with your name and logo – it’s a conversation starter. People will ask. Hand out your cards! Get your website up and running NOW. Especially if you have that cert you can use. Put a lot of info on it about what acupuncture is and how it works. Make sure you emphasize pain!!! Lots of people come for pain. Put your specialty in here too. AOBTA credentials help here. Make sure you have a good listing source for your website. They charge to do this, but buy the keywords that come up in searches for oriental/natural med/ alternative med, etc. Try to track where things are coming from. Add in a “contact us” so you can see where your rsvp’s are coming from. Start getting stuff together for your business WAY before you graduate. Even if it isn’t great, it’ll get you going. o Ikea – cheap sheets!!! Pillow cases are actually more expensive than the sheets. Go to www.towelwholesaler.com for cheaper. Have a good business banker. Open a business account, get a CC and use it for purchases for your business separate from other purchases. Intuit quickbooks online is $9.95 per month. That’s what Kathy uses. Also log how they paid. If computer crashes it’s still there. Generates profit/loss reports, etc. Don’t go it alone. Hook up – you need someone to bounce stuff off of. The teachers here are a good resource.
Practice Mgmt 2 – Summer 2009 www.CatsTCMNotes.com Page 1 of 3 There are also yahoo groups you can use for questions and answers. Good ideas out there from that resource. Practice good time mgmt. When you get out every hour needs to be profitable during your business day, whatever those hours are. You want a comfortable amt of time per patient. ½ hour of free consult, 1 hour to treat. Get ‘em up 5-10 minutes before the hour is over and get ‘em out. Bell on the door to alert you about patients coming in the door. When you have down time, call the patients who haven’t been in for a while, those you met at healthfaires, etc. ALWAYS ASK FOR THE SALE AGAIN!!
What I wish I had known Get your temporary license – don’t wait til the real deal comes through. Takes too long. Sharps containers. What do you do with them? Get them through an online mailorder in a prepaid box. You fill, you ship it back. Takes her about 2 months to fill 2 gallon size. Hers come from Lhasa OMS - $40-45. Cottonballs – get ‘em through Lhasa and they are smaller (medium size) and don’t fill up the sharps as fast if they are bloody. Acupuncture Media Works. Have about every kind of flier in the world out there. Also has a good power point presentation. Always have fliers available at venues. At healthfaires, etc. postcards seem to go faster than business cards. Vistaprint. Use manila files with the end tabs for your charts. Easier than the top tabs. You must maintain these in a secure area indefinitely. And it must be secured/locked. Eventually these will all be electronic, but no consensus as to what that’s going to look like. There’s no standardization yet. Intake forms and followup forms: Pick one out, customize it and go with that. Buying needles and herbs AOMA doesn’t mark ‘em up much at all. Online might be a little cheaper, but then there’s shipping. Buying herbs is cheaper online, but you gotta pay shipping again. Order lots at a time to make it worth it. Powders have an expire date….you don’t really want to carry inventory!! That’s a pain in the ass. AT least at the first few years. Keep good records – you’ll need them for taxes which are ruthless. The individual counties will tax you on what’s in your office! WTF? Crap, man. Get a laptop and do your accounting at work. If you can, keep home and office separate. Women make the majority of healthcare decisions for the family. Join professional women’s org’s. Men run in groups – bowling, running, etc. – and will recommend you if they get good results. You gotta be good on the phone – you have about 3 minutes to hook ‘em. But don’t let them tell you their life’s history – do that in the intake. Get the phone number and call them back if they are late/miss. Missed appointments is income lost – CHARGE THEM. Stick to this. Post this all over the place and put this in the consent. Use appointment cards too so you have a written notification. Call them and remind them a day or so before.
Practice Mgmt 2 – Summer 2009 www.CatsTCMNotes.com Page 2 of 3 Links: Malpractice/liability insurance http://www.acupuncturecouncil.com Sample insurance superbills http://www.medical- forms.com/acupuncture/acupuncture-s23.htm Cheap pillowcases http://www.towelwholesaler.com http://www.unitedtextilesupply.com Handy ICD-9 codes http://icd9cm.chrisendres.com Small business association site http://web.sba.gov/sbtn/sbat/index.cfm?Tool=4 Board Exam Site http://www.nccaom.org Study resource site, esp for pt loc http://www.acuxo.com Practice tests – free q of the day and http://tcmtests.com 1st Tues of each month is free all day Cool study aids, games, etc. http://www.studystack.com/acupuncture Flyers, brochures, powerpoints oriented to http://www.acupuncturemediaworks.com acupuncture Free business cards, postcards, car magnet http://www.vistaprint.com ads, etc. Online and/or downloadable Quickbooks www.intuit.com
Yahoo Groups Chinese herb discussions Chineseherbacademy Trade ideas with other acu’s worldwide – Traditional_chinese_medicine great resource AOMA Student population AOMAstudents
Michelle’s talk – NCCAM is a good resource for acupuncturists – this is an offshoot of the National Institute of Health which is seen as a reputable source of information to most of the US world.
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