When you start your holistic practice, it seems like any patient is a great patient – money’s tight and every face that comes through the door is another chance to pay the rent.

Over time, though, it becomes critical to cherry-pick the best of the best. Here are a few characteristics of great patients for any alternative health practice:

Compliance
A patient that can’t or won’t follow your treatment is not likely to find success with your modality. This leads to the bad patient spiral : no success = no return = no payment = no referral = negative publicity = less growth. It’s hard at first, but you may find your life gets a lot easier, and your practice busier, if you warn patients up front of the time, effort and cost of a particular course of treatment.

Wealth
Obvious? Perhaps, but clients that don’t pay not only leave you cashless, but they tend to get poorer results, leading to the same compliance problems listed above. (See pro-bono work and discounts for more on the relationship between payment and health.)

Referrals
In most practices, the bulk of your new patients over time are going to come from referrals from existing patients. Patients that don’t refer don’t build your practice.

Success/The Right Health Problem
If you’ve been in practice for any length of time, you’ve no doubt realized that there are some conditions you’re more likely to have success with. This success breeds more success in the form of positive word-of-mouth and referrals. Learning when to say, “I don’t think I can help you.” is critical to growing a great patient base.

It may be tempting to grab every patient you can, but remember that your success over time is going to be through finding the best clients for your particular talent.