With all the work that it takes to run a practice, it’s easy to forget that business is not all about you – it’s about your clients. There are a thousand little things that make up the client experience, but making things easy – simple, fast, pleasant – tends to keep patients returning and referring. [...]
Many CAM practitioners bemoan the lack of insurance/health plan coverage for holistic and alternative health care services. “If only it was covered by more health care plans, my practice would really take off,” is a common refrain. While coverage is on the rise in many areas, I’d like to suggest there might be more drawbacks [...]
In the end, you’?re only as good as the quality of the products and services you provide. Great marketing, financing and hard work will only take you so far unless what you offer is of sufficient quality. What defines a quality experience in an alternative health practice? Many consumers will equate quality with value. That [...]
There is a natural progression to starting an alternative health practice. After opening your doors, the first order of business is, of course, to get as many new patients as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, a natural second step in this process is to forget all about these patients once they leave the office. The file [...]
Few alternative health care practitioners start out as business people. If you poll the ranks of the chiropractic, naturopathic, acupuncture and TCM colleges, to name a few, you’ll find a myriad of reasons for attending, but few of them would be, “I wanted to start my own business.” You’ll find a genuine interest in helping [...]
As many of you know, I’m big on growing from practice to ‘business’. For many practitioners, though, the question of “why bother?” remains. Here are a few good reasons: You Can Have a Life Increasingly, surveys show people in all industries working longer hours. And although some manage to put the brakes on or set [...]
Almost as long as there have been businesses, there’s been a phenomenon of customers migrating towards the busiest places. It’s even a mantra when traveling: “Eat at the busy spots. The food must be safe.” In fact, the success of franchising is based in part on the idea that people like to go where other [...]
Read Part 1 Here The litmus test for determining whether you have a practice or a business is to ask yourself, “Does my practice make money when I’m not there.” If you only generate revenue when you’re working and generating billable time, then you’ve got a practice. Until you have a system that generates revenue [...]
The early life cycle of a CAM practice is usually dedicated to generating a client base, and figuring out how to manage the process of getting them to your office, helping them, and accepting their money. Not a bad model, and one that’s been in use almost as long as commerce has. After a few [...]
“I have some clients who miss appointments without calling. It’s very frustrating. Should I be charging them a fee?” This one has no clear answer. Ask around, and you’ll get different opinions. Compared with more mainstream medicine, my guess is CAM professionals are less likely to charge for no shows, simply because lack of insurance [...]
As the demand for complementary and alternative medicine grows, there’s a corresponding increase in practitioners offering CAM services. Or maybe it’s the other way around…at any rate, if you’ve enjoyed the freedom of limited competition in your geographic fiefdom, there’s a good chance it won’t last. Fear not. A little competition can be great for [...]
As a follow up to yesterday’s Putting the “Alternative” in Alternative Medicine, I thought it would be interesting to look at the term complementary from a business strategy perspective. There are some deeply entrenched camps on this issue. There are many who view the term complementary as subservient to the allopathic medical community. It’s the [...]
The phrase alternative health care is often interpreted in the context of the modality used by the CAM practitioner. For example, instead of pharmaceuticals, a patient might choose the alternative of supplementation. While that’s technically true, there’s great value in expanding your concept of alternative to include the way you offer your services, and present [...]
The Mackinac Centre for Public Policy has an interesting piece on the “myth” that free public health care empowers the poor. I’m not here to debate the public versus private issue (not today, at least) but it does raise some interesting questions. They claim that paying for health care is more empowering, since it forces [...]
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