How to make your medical spa impossible to compete with.

The world is changing rapidly — you might have heard to all of the A.I. tools like ChatGPT, Bard and the rest… and what used to work for cosmetic clinics and providers in the past is no longer enough to compete in today's market.

There’s been a 63x increase in telemedicine since 2020 (Yep. Covid.) [1]. Additionally, a whopping 71% of all in-person clinical visits can now be done remotely [1]. Patient expectations have shifted too. The result is that 81% of existing patients are open to switching providers at any time[1]. Patient churn, redundant and inefficient practices, and lost revenue opportunities are killing your growth, and your practice.

With increased competition, evolving patient expectations, and the need for a unique value proposition, it's crucial to find you unfair advantage and put it to work — you need to be impossible for others to compete with.

Just because you’re unaware of the losses doesn’t make them any less real. Remember this; you can’t just be good — you have to be better than everyone else. Patients have access to everyone and all the information they need, and they will move to whomever they feel best fits them.

Finding Your Unfair Advantage

In this new healthcare landscape, there will inevitably be winners and losers. To ensure that your clinic is among the winners, you need to find your unfair advantage and learn to compete in ways that other’s can’t simply copy, and they’re working hard too. Think of it as ‘asymmetrical competition’ — the ability to redefine the playing field and the rules of the game.

Hint: It’s not going to be your IPL or laser or the lemon water or any of the bullshit that you hear from the sales reps about how they’re going to put you on their vendor website.

But you have a real problem…. you’re not actually much different.

If you’re like most providers, you’re kidding yourself. A massive 84% of clinicians believe they deliver superior patient care and experience, but only 8% of their patients agree.

While it’s most likely that your current patient care and experiences are lockstep with what they can get down the street. Your staff is similar, your offerings are largely the same, and your pricing too. The fact that you’ve got a different RF device or were the first to perform ‘whatever-treatment-you-want-to-insert-here’ for longer than your competitors is irrelevant.

Guess what; nobody cares. That’s just more marketing b.s. and you should not delude yourself based on hopeful thinking.

What does a real competitive advantage look like?

Success in this new world isn’t easy. It requires a combination of factors; exceptional patient experiences, streamlined operations, and new business models. All of these are massive opportunities for those who are smart enough to adapt and use them — especially since most clinics will be too slow to make the needed changes.

There are new technologies that provide a clear path to market dominance.

• Patient experience: Creating and automating exceptional and personalized patient experiences that go far beyond current tools to build strong patient relationships, and real loyalty.

• Productivity: Automating redundant tasks, personalize patient experiences, and build strong relationships with their patients.

• New business models: Creating new ‘hybrid’ business models that provide recurring revenue and subscriptions as well as your current services model.

There are technologies you can use do do all of these things.

Imagine your clinic where your staffs productivity is increased by 4x, and you’re increasing high-touch patient interactions by 260% (without any additional time)[3], and you’re generating recurring revenue from subscriptions (since we’re now in a subscription economy).

In this future, your clinic is more efficient, patient-focused, and ultimately, more successful.

You can’t just work harder, or do this by yourself.

Several obstacles stand in the way of achieving this vision of success for your clinic. In the past, you’ve just worked longer hours and hired more bodies, but those strategies have had diminishing returns for a while. It’s no longer a workable solutions, especially in competitive markets. This focus on manual work and care delivery forces multiple problems into your clinic:

• Time-consuming, manual tasks that prevent healthcare providers from focusing on patient care.

• Difficulty in personalizing patient experiences and building strong relationships.

• Inefficient workflows and processes that hinder overall clinic productivity.

To overcome these obstacles, you need tools that offer:

• Intelligent automation to streamline administrative tasks and optimize workflows.

• Personalization capabilities to create tailored patient experiences and foster trust.

• Advanced technology solutions, such as behavioral AI, to automate patient interactions and improve care.

Here’s what market domination actually looks like.

The reality is that dominating a market requires that you’re doing things that others can’t match. If you have unlimited funds you can simply outspend the competition and suck up all the oxygen. (When I was running clinics my average spend per clinic was $40,000 per month.)

The better way is to build a much better patient experience, but you can’t do that with your current tools or by adding aromatherapy or whatever. You actually have to deliver value that no one else can match.

Fortunately, the newest healthcare technologies that have been developed for the enterprise and clinical trials that are now available.

The best of these is Storyline.

Clinics that have adopted Storyline have experienced a 4x increase in team productivity, a 260% increase in patient interactions without additional provider burden, and a 17% increase in total revenue [3]. And 96% of patients would recommend Storyline to their primary care physician, and give it 4.9 stars.

The landscape has changed, and clinics must adapt to compete effectively. By finding your unfair advantage - which is probably going to be tech - you can build a market dominating clinic.

References

Telemedicine's growth and potential:
"Telehealth: A Quarter-Trillion-Dollar Post-COVID-19 Reality?”
Description: This article discusses the rapid growth of telemedicine and its potential to become a significant part of healthcare services post-COVID-19.
URL: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/telehealth-a-quarter-trillion-dollar-post-covid-19-reality

The changing landscape of patient expectations:
"The Healthcare Consumer of the Future: How Patient Expectations Are Changing"Description: This article outlines the evolving expectations of healthcare consumers and the factors driving these changes.URL: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeshealth/2021/06/29/the-healthcare-consumer-of-the-future-how-patient-expectations-are-changing/?sh=1d4e40d07351

The importance of patient-centered care and relationships"The Importance of the Patient-Provider Relationship in the Digital Age"Description: This article highlights the significance of patient-provider relationships in delivering high-quality care and the role technology can play in strengthening these connections.
URL: https://catalyst.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/CAT.17.0556

Clinician workload and the impact on patient care:
"Physician Burnout, Interrupted"
Description: This paper discusses the issue of physician burnout, its consequences on patient care, and potential solutions to address the problem.
URL: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2003149

5 Critical Areas Of Staff Training We've Learned From 17 Years Building Clinics

If you're not continuously training your staff and yourself, you're losing patients, profits, and devaluaing your business.

A while back we sent a survey to 472 physicians asking about efficiency and productivity in their clinic or practice. You may be able to fit your own clinic into these responses:

• Over 9/10 of physicians said that their clinic operated at less than 80% efficiency, and 4 out of 10 said that their clinic efficiency was below 60%!
• Physicians reported this "productivity gap" costs their clinic between $5k and $40k in lost revenue every month.
• When I asked them what doesn't work, the most common responses: "lack of systems" (44%), "wasted time and effort" (50%), and "micro-management" (40%).

Yep.

The most common reason that physicians give for not doing anything? They don't know what to do...

And, if you are doing anything it's usually something like "Hey everyone... <insert-patient-name-here> told me that she didn't know that we're now offering _____ and that she had to wait 40 minutes today. From now on everyone should tell every patient about ______ and don't keep patients waiting without asking me."

I may have not got it exactly but every clinic member recognizes this type of direction.

You've also seen the results; piss-poor execution, patients slipping through the gaps, poor morale and feckless leadership... and worst of all; shooting your own business in the foot.

There's a better way, but it's not as simple as spouting a 'directive'. It involves some effort.

Where should you begin? 

I'd suggest that you begin with the Ultimate Clinic Operations Blueprint, our course on implementing systems in your clinic, but here are some general rules to get you started. (Also, watch the video all the way through at the top of the post for a better understanding of this.)

The 5 critical areas of staff training:

1. Patient interactions
2. Sales
3. Safety and compliance
4. Accountability
5. Decision-making

A blog post is too thin a medium to detail everything needed in these areas (which is why we built the operations course), but here's a little preliminary guidance.

Employer Rule No. 1: Give employees ownership of real deliverables. In a clinic this often needs some preliminary work to implement measurements. I'm guessing that you don't know your average wait times or how many word-of-mouth patient referrals you're receiving each month.

 Depending on the kind of manager you are, you’ll either shy away from this because: a) you can do it better, or b) you don’t want to overload your direct reports. Either is a mistake. In my experience, most complaints I’ve had with any of my past employers have related to having too little to do, rather than insufficient salary/title/etc. Give your employees meaningful work, and they will rise to the challenge.

Insist on personal accountability. Yes, it’s scary to have people counting on you. It’s much easier to coast along behind the scenes. But admit it: it’s not very satisfying. Sloth never is. It’s much better to be king of an infinitesimal pond than a nobody in a massive ocean. Go for the responsibility, not the title. (I’ve made this mistake on several occasions, and each time I’ve regretted it.)

Employer Rule No. 2: Less is more. You really don’t need 10 people for two jobs. You need one. I’ve become a big believer in slow, organic growth in organizations. It’s much better to hire one person and stretch them thin than it is to hire 10 people and have them struggling to find sufficient work to keep them occupied.

 More is less. You don’t need more. You just need to work with what you have. The less you have, the more resourceful you’ll become — this makes us think like a real customer, who has to stretch a budget. Speaking of which….

Employer Rule No. 3: Every employee should be revenue-additive. This is the most important of them all. Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL, once told me that he thinks business development is something every employee should do, all of the time. I didn’t believe him then, but I do now. Every employee should understand how she contributes to the company’s top and bottom lines, and should be held accountable for how she measures up. Everyone should be selling, developing product, marketing it, etc. No exceptions.

Employee Corollary No. 3: If you’re not making money for your employer, you’re a waste of money. If you don’t understand how you fit into the Circle of Life for your employer, find out. Or figure it out. But don’t just collect a paycheck. You owe it to your employer and to yourself to help defray the cost of your paycheck, as well as that of others’. The more revenue-driven we become, the more effective and the better our chances of improved future employment.

There is a better way that can pull you out of the micro-managing, hair-on-fire, unproductive daily grind and put you in a position where you're working ON your business, not IN your business. Take a look at the Ultimate Clinic Operations Blueprint.

As with any business, staff and personnel may have to undergo training to further enhance their skills and to give them an opportunity to learn new ones in the process. Medical practices should also partake in training, as it also helps grow your medical spa.

Customer Service

One of the best training you can provide to your staff is customer service. In many reviews given by patients, it seems that patients notice the service provided by the staff particularly rude behavior. Customer service training is also vital as this is one of the first things patients write about in reviews. 

Learn how to use patient reviews to grow your profitability.

Sometimes the case is untrue, but still, it would be best to train your staff with telephoning, emailing, dealing with patients as well. Your non-medical staff, especially front desk and reception personnel are your first line of defense, and the way they transact with your patients is a reflection or representation of your medical spa. You could be losing patients if your staff is untrained, so give them better training in that area.

Procedures

Every procedure in your clinic needs to be standardized. Patients compare every interaction and if there's an identifiable difference between treatment sessions or interactions then patients will tag one as "worse" than the other and make the patient feel that you're less reliable. The result is greater patient churn, less income, more resistance to buying and less revenue.

Marketing and Reputation Management

Marketing is not just going on social media and promoting your medical spa. There are several aspects of marketing you must remember for healthcare. There have been instances where medical staff and providers forget to abide by HIPAA regulations, and that could put your medical spa at risk. In that light, you will need to learn how to strategize marketing around HIPAA or Health Information Regulations.

Social media is your best bet in marketing your medical spa especially it gives you exposure. You could invest in SEO for your medical spa, as part of your marketing strategy as well. Reputation management could be considered a branch of marketing as it deals with your reputation online and social media as well. Make sure that you have the right software to manage your reputation.

Operations and Management

This is mostly applicable for medical owners and physician owners of the medical spa. Managing your team should be a priority, by delegating tasks, setting meetings, overseeing without micromanaging, aside from seeing patients. It could become taxing, but it is doable with training. You will need to enhance your skills in operating your medical spa or aesthetic practice smoothly.

Not only would training make them more engaged but your staff can be more productive in work. You can motivate your employees with training, and it will most certainly help them become more engaged in your medical spa.

You can find some of our training courses on our website.

Learn from The Past - Prevent Embezzlement in Your Medical Spa

Embezzlement and theft news for medical practices often happen, so why is it rampant?

Whether or not your practice has been affected by a previous embezzlement or theft case, you need to be wary about the security of your finances and data.

These are some simple measures you can prevent embezzlement in your medical spa. To learn more about other cases of embezzlement and not become a victim of it, you can sign up for this free course in our Training Academy.

5 Lessons We've Learned About Building A Successful Cosmetic Practice

John D. Rockefeller's quote of "I would rather earn 1% of 100 people's efforts than 100% of my own" is exactly right. So how do you get your patients to help you out just 1% and turn your dribble of patient referrals into a torrent?

The smartest clinic owners know that getting your patients to work for you just that 1% is the path to easy, repeated sales, makes life difficult for your competitors, and isn't forcing you to work 80 hours a week to keep your head above water. Savvy clinicians intuitively work towards each of these goals, but they often don't think of them as part of a whole. In this series of posts we're going to pull these topics apart and detail why and how they all fit together to build a machine that perpetuates and grows your clinic's income. 

I'm going to break down 5 critical areas that you need to spend effort on improving if you're going to move past the average medical practice income and reputation and get into the VIP section of top performers. Leave any one of these out and you're hamstringing your business. 

1. Mastering patient consultations
2. Replacing yourself with systems
3. Delivering the remarkable
4. Aligning your staff's perceived best-interests
5. Waging asymmetrical warfare against the competition

Note what's NOT on the list - anything about patient outcomes. (We'll take it for granted that you're not burning patients with your IPL or they're getting ptosis from your Botox.) Outcomes are really what patients "perceive", not the actual clinical result. Improving these 5 areas will readily increase patients perception of the value you're delivering, and their outcomes. What else is not on the list? Price. (More about this below.)

Here's why these 5 areas are of critical importance to your clinic, and what you can do to start improving them.

Mastering Patient Consultations 

Top performers know how to sell. Average performers hope you'll buy.

On a scale of 1 to 10, where would you rank your consultations? How good do you think you are? It's probably that you think that your consults are somewhere above average.  After all, you're getting patients and you're busy so what's the problem? Isn't being busy the goal?

Actually, no. Everyone is busy. That part's easy. Being successful and profitable is the goal. (Having a work/life balance and a 36 hour work week may be part of that too.) and if you're not delivering perfect consultations you're stepping on your own success. 

It's most likely that your consultations - like most - are completely average.

94% of college professors believe that their teaching skills are above average, a statistical impossibility, but there's nothing special in this regard about academics, clinicians also think they're above average in every self-assessment of skills.

We sent a survey to thousands of clinicians and asked them to rank their consults on a scale of 1 to 10. The results of that survey fit right in line with the college professors, every response rated their consultative skills between 5 and 9. So, if you answered the question above and ranked your consultations as a 7 or 8, you're right at the top of the bell curve and you can bet that your consultations are solidly average. Sorry.

Why is that important?

Poor consultations destroy your reputation and waste every dollar you spend on bringing new patients in to your clinic. Poor consults will put you out of business.

Average consultations generate some sales and leave you almost (but not quite) satisfied with your business - where you can't quite figure out what's missing and your clinic is just grinding along. 

Great consultations are the secret of incredibly profitable clinics. They almost print money. Great consultations fill your schedule and treatment rooms and create fanatically loyal patients and they boost your revenue faster and easier than anything else.  Best of all, mastering patient consultations is a skill set you can learn.

What to do: You need to improve your consultations. To that end, we're about to launch the 10X Consultation Playbook in the Training Academy in order to teach you and your entire staff how to master consultations. This masterclass teaches you everything you need to know to put your consultations at the very top of the heap. Oh, and it's 100% satisfaction guaranteed.

Replacing Yourself With Systems

Top performers use systems. Average performers don't.

 Stop working IN your clinic, and start working ON your clinic.

Systems are what every clinic uses in order to stop micro-managing, stop flailing, stop losing patients, and stop losing revenue. They're a way of replacing yourself. Systems help you pre-decide what’s important to you — ONCE — and then force you to stay focused. Instead of your clinic staff wondering what they should do… or making it up on the fly… you’ll have a clear system to follow that is both structured, and flexible, so you’re not constantly “trying harder” to “catch up.”

Once you integrate real systems into your clinic, you’ll feel the freedom of not being crushed by the necessity to be involved in everything (I'm talking to you, micro-manager) because you know that everything is getting done, and it's getting done right.

Think of the simplest system you use — where you put your keys. Maybe it’s by the door, or in the kitchen. Yet it’s become a habit and you never think about it. You don’t have to “try harder” to put the keys where they should be… it just works. It’s mindless. And it does what it needs to do.

You may be thinking that you already have systems. You have a manual, you have some "policies", everyone knows pretty much what to do and when.

Eh... I'm skeptical.

A few weeks ago, I sent a survey to 472 physicians asking about their clinic's efficiency and productivity. Perhaps you're not surprised by some of the results. You might even recognize your own clinic.

• Over 9/10 of physicians said that their clinic operated at less than 80% efficiency
• 4 out of 10 said that their clinic efficiency was below 60%!
• Physicians reported this "productivity gap" costs their clinic between $5k and $40k in lost revenue every month.
• When I asked them what doesn't work, the most common responses: "lack of systems" (44%), "wasted time and effort" (50%), and "micro-management" (40%).

There's a better way that can pull you out of the micro-managing, hair-on-fire, unproductive daily grind and put you in a position where you're working ON your business, not IN your business.

You're smart. You're tired of sloppy training, loose accountability, and variable patient care and you want some control of your business and your lifestyle. You're tired of putting out fires, answer the same questions, micro-managing everything, and running legal, clinical, and business risks.

Get real systems and put them to work for you.

Being Remarkable

Top performers are remarkable. Average performers are nondescript.

Please don't be beige.

Hard I know, but beige sucks. Beige is mediocre. Beige is completely forgettable. Unfortunately, most clinics aspire to beige... do what everyone else does. It's safe. They're thinking, "I should be able to make go of it... I can do what others are doing...  at least I won't make any costly mistakes that cost me."

Not so.

Working to be average is among the most costly mistakes clinics make, and the most common. Playing it safe leaves stillborn everything you might do that could cause a patient to 'remark' about your clinic. It leaves your patients in limbo and forces you to carry all the water yourself. 

To get your patients to tell others you need to do two things; first, you need to be worthy of being remarked upon and second, you need to make it easy.

Example of being remarkable: One of my clinics was located near a big U.S. Air Force base with about 20,000 military personnel and staff. When operation Iraqi Freedom was launched in 2002 many of those military members were about to be deployed to Turkey for a year. Just before this deployment were some politics going on in the UN and France vetoed a resolution which was unpopular at the base.

I took the opportunity to launch a tongue-in-cheek PR campaign to "Veto French Armpits" and we gave away free underarm laser hair removal treatments to every female military member as well as any wives or girlfriends of military personnel. It was open-ended and completely free series of 7 treatments, a complete package. We didn't tie it to other offers, and yes, we did get some patients who took advantage of it completely but that was what elevated it and made it remarkable. 

The result? We donated more than $40,000 in treatments which made us a lot of friends and brought in a massive surge of new patients, we got national media attention and a deluge of local coverage, and we took a massive chunk of the market that continues to this day. That investment in being remarkable produced about a million dollars in revenue over the years, dwarfing our investment.

If you're open to seizing opportunity, you can do remarkable work with just about any situation. We secured a massive patient population not by doing something that was simple, but by doing something that was remarkable.

Do something, anything, that makes you worth talking about.

Second; you need to make it easy for your patients to help you. If you don't,  you're missing out on all of the goodwill and positive thoughts you're generating.

How many times have you asked patients to share a Like on your Facebook page, or leave a review on Google, or just hoped that they would see how incredible you are and tell everyone?

Hope is not a strategy.

You need to make it easy for them, and that means facilitating the action you're asking them to take - Keep a stack of postcards at the front desk and give them $10 off if they'll write a friends address and a short note when they check out. Give a free package for local business owners or their spouse. Start a corporate program. 

The key is that you want to build these out as part of your standard processes and make it drop-dead easy.

Take a look at the special offer from Podium, the leader in patient review marketing. It's a paid application that allows you to capture reviews from you happy patients right at your front desk when your patients are most likely to take the time to help you out.

Aligning Your Staff's Best-Interests With Your Clinic's Needs

Top performers are leaders. Average performers just pay.

If you think that anyone works for you, well, news flash -  they don't. They all work for themselves, just like you do.

Your job, as a business owner, is to align what they perceive to be in their own best interest with your business goals. This will always include money, but there are other areas where you can have a drastic impact. Workload, environment, professional and personal satisfaction, advancement and training, reputation... your goal is to make your staff believe that making your clinic excel is the most closely aligned with their desired path forward. Do this, and you're going to have a motivated team.

If you can't do this, you're going to have constant turnover and you'll lose income. Your staff may comply with your demands, but they're working for a paycheck, and it only takes a single arched eyebrow or eye-roll to cost you a $4,500 package sale or destroy a reputation with a patient. Multiply that by every patient interaction and you'll see a significant problem.

What's the difference?

Leaders understand that everyone works for themselves. They understand that leadership is given by those willing to follow from the bottom up. Leaders have to live up to very high standards to be worthy of being followed, and they work at it constantly.

Average performers think that their staff works for them. They have 'authority' that flows from the top down, but they're not leaders because they're not worth following. People work simply for a paycheck and will leave as soon as something better comes along. 

What can you do?

• Work hard to be be someone that others are willing to follow. It's not easy and there are challenges. You'll occasionally be taken advantage of but much less so if you just take the authority route. 
• Implement systems in your clinic that get your head above the ground and allow you to focus on bigger picture goals.
• Constantly talk to all of your staff members. Be aware of changing attitudes that may signal a problem. Ask them how aligned they think they are with the clinic. Most people will be very open if they sense that you're interest is genuine.
• Empower them to make decisions, and use policies to make sure that everyone knows which types of decisions they can make.
• Get better at interviewing people and asking the right questions.
• Fire faster. Firing is difficult and most people wait until there's real damage being done.
• Make sure you understand common embezzlement and employee scams. Forewarned is forearmed

When you've aligned your team you'll feel like you're running downhill. Everything is just easier.

Destroying Competitors With Asymmetrical Competition

Top performers make it happen. Average performers hope, and hope is not a strategy.

Like it or not, cosmetic medicine is a business, and that means that it's going to be increasingly competitive as treatments and services become commoditized and prices drop leading to increased competition.

Asymmetrical Competition is finding and exploiting game-changing opportunities that your competitors can't easily match or compete against. 

When we began opening clinics in new locations we devastated the existing clinics run by clinicians who were taking their patient populations for granted. These physicians (mostly plastic surgeons and dermatologists at the time) expected that they would simply inherit all new cosmetic treatments as part of their current fiefdom of "aesthetics". 

They couldn't respond or adapt to the playing field we created.

Rather than position ourselves as competitors to existing practices we redefined the market and positioned ourselves as the experts in nonsurgical cosmetic technologies. We positioned the existing plastics and derm clinics as experts in surgery and dermatology, and we took everything else. The competition didn't have an easy answer since what we were doing was a fundamental change that they couldn't respond to or reproduce.

We focused with absolute madness on keeping appointments on time, on incredible patient services, and on giving power to our patients. We built systems that put our clinics on autopilot and allowed us to easily scale. We empowered our staff to make any decision, as long as they could explain that it was in the best interests of the clinic. We initiated corporate programs, free educational seminars and consults, incredible comfort and atmosphere, and we took all design and marketing seriously. We trained our staff to perform consultations based on sales and service that crushed our goals while turning our patients into raving zealots. We embraced social media and email. We answered questions and posted our pricing right on our website. In short, we did everything that they couldn't do. 

Of course they adapted and started trying to copy us, but they couldn't actually compete. They didn't have the systems, or the desire.

Asymmetrical Competition is available to you as well. You just need to look at what your capabilities are and match those to the market's need. Most clinics don't have the ability to change. They're essentially locked in place and that always presents you with opportunities to exploit areas that they can't adapt to.

As a Medical Spa MD Member you have assess to a wealth of information and know-how about building your clinic. Special offers from partners when you're buying your next laser or IPL, group-buy wholesale pricing on fillers and injectables, software deals, design & marketing services. 

Be smart and take advantage of it all.

Note What's Not On This List

The cosmetic medical market has matured in the last 15 years, but 5 areas above are not entirely tied to medicine, they're really business strategies. You won't find "improving patient outcomes" here because those are simply table stakes. 

Patient Outcomes - You can't build a business marketing better patient outcomes.

Outcomes are what the patient says they are. You can have a perfect outcome but if the patient expectations are unrealistic, the 'outcome' from the patients point of view can still be negative. Trying to build your clinic and reputation only through your technical prowess is essentially a dead end because it's beyond your control.

(Now I'm not saying that this is not a priority and shouldn't be your focus, but I am telling you that trying to convince your patient population that you're 'better' than the competition makes you seem small and petty and is only a part of what a successful strategy looks like.)

Technology - Not a determining factor in your success

There are successful clinics using every platform.

Choosing the right technology is important, and can save you money, but the lasers and IPLs that you put in your clinic are all producing the same light waves. There are differences; customer service, cost, consumables, and usability, but none of those will either put your clinic out of business, or make you more money on their own. It's reasonable to let laser companies help pay for some of your marketing, but don't make the mistake that they're going to really help you much. patients don't buy based on which IPL you're using, they buy from someone they know, like, and trust.

If you're looking to save money and find a reputable vendor of used devices, contact anyone in our used cosmetic lasers classifieds who is a member of our Certified Partners program and you'll get a great deal. (And if you have a complaint you can contact us directly as a Member and we'll intercede on your behalf.)

Price - The death spiral of lowest-pricing.

Do not hitch your wagon to being the low-cost provider unless you love being on the verge of bankruptcy at all times. There can only be one lowest price in any market, and everyone who will come to you because of price will leave you just as fast. If you can't justify higher pricing then put the work in to build a clinic that does. 

Conclusion

In future posts we're going to dive into these areas in detail and help you take actions to improve them.

Have some thoughts on this or anything to add? Leave a comment. I read them all.

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15. Enquist, M. & Leimar, O. J theor Biol 127, 187S205 (1987)

Daily Huddle Up! Self-Organizing Your Medical Spa Every Morning

I hate meetings. They're one of the most expensive things you do since every attendee is essentially unproductive for that amount of time, they tend to be too long, and they ramble. Painful. Here's how to do better.

Note: This is the first in a series of posts... or maybe a guide, on how to organize and manage your clinic for max productivity.

Meetings are inherently expensive. Depending upon your team size, an hour long meeting might cost you anywhere from a hundred to more than a thousand dollars in overhead costs and lost productivity. If you look at every 'meeting' as having that kind of cost, you'll probably look at your meetings differently, but we can take some lessons from the folks who focus the most on productivity: Silicon Valley startups. Those are the teams who developed productivity systems like scrums, sprints, and others techniques that are designed to maximize throughput across teams. These some practices that you can adopt to increase both your teams productivity and engagement, and minimize cost and downtime.

One of the most effective uses of 'meeting' time is to hold a daily standup huddle every morning with the entire team (or multiple teams if you're big). It's effectively a coming together to ensure that everyone is focused on the targets for that day and a chance to have everyone state what their daily goals are (making everyone accountable).

Setting it up

Here are the rules. I've used the typical 'tech' standup as a guide but have adapted it to the clinic environment:

1. A pre-set time every day. Which time and place is up to the team to decide. It is a meeting in which the team plans their day.
2. Keep a time-box of 5 to ten minutes. The purpose of the standup is NOT to have a rambling discussion or airing of grievances or planning.
3. Standing up. It keeps the meeting short since no one likes standing in a meeting. You'll see that it takes up much less time but everyone (yes you doc) has to stand. (This is not required but is often useful, especially to start and set the tone and expecatations.)
4. Every member of the team “answers” three questions:

• What did I accomplish since the last meeting?
• What am I working on or until the next meeting?
• What getting in your way or keeping you from meeting my goals?

Note: If detailed discussions come up it is a good practice to take them offline immediately after the meeting.

How to do it:

The process I suggest is this:

1. One set daily meeting at the beginning of the day. 
2. Forced timeboxed duration. 10 minutes be fore you unlock the front door is a good time and forces compliance to the time limit. (15 minutes is usually too long unless you're a bigger team. See below.)
3. Everyone stands up (Some teams don't but I've found it useful when introducing new teams. You'll see that people speak faster and it moves right along.)
4. Speak in turns. (You can use an object to pass. Only the person with the object can speak.)
5. Keep updates in the form of: What I did, what I plan to do, what is blocking me.
6. Any follow-up conversations take place after the meeting.

Things to remember.

It's a collaborative effort.

One of the most common standup meeting mistakes is making it a turn-based 1:1 chat with the physician or clinic manager. This completely defeats the purpose of the stand-up and should be avoided at all costs. This is valuable time that should be treated as collaborative effort for the whole team.

 A good way to keep scrum meetings efficient is to establish a simple rule:

• Everything you say should be valuable to everyone in the room. Individual talks can happen at any time of the day aside from the stand up meeting.

Stick to a schedule and a routine

It would be easier if your huddles were done on a specific day and time. Always start your meeting at the set time. Those who miss it or who are late will feel guilty and try harder to make it to the next one.

Hiding work details

It's important that every team member is transparent in his or her work and gives accurate updates. Members need to disclose any issues so they can be resolved on time, without impacting the entire team's commitment to goals. The daily stand-up isn't just about answering the same three questions every day; it's a perfect forum for discussing any gaps in the team's commitment and understanding of requirements.

Additional Reading/Resources

• https://www.laserfiche.com/ecmblog/10-ways-to-make-stand-up-meetings-better-office-hack/
• http://www.pinnacleprojects.com/index.php/daily-stand-up-meeting/144-the-daily-stand-up-meeting-a-core-practice-for-self-organizingteams

Pfizer + Allergan Mega-merger?

In a move driven by Pfizer Inc's desire to slash its tax bills its meregr with allergan will make it one of the worlds biggest market caps.

In a deal is expected to close in second half of 2016 The Pfizer/Allergan merger is likley the largest merger in the health care sector.

As part of an effort to reduce its corporate tax rate from 40 percent to 12.5 percent, Pfizer is negotiating to buy Allergan Plc. in a $160 billion dollar deal.  Operating under the new name of Pfizer Plc Ian Read will remain Chief Executive Officer, while Allergan's CEO Brent Saunders remain in a senior role focused on operations and the integration. Current Pfizer shareholders will receive one share of the new company for each share they own.

Beyond the issue of tax rate reduction, Read also cites greater financial flexibility that will facilitate continued discovery and development of new drugs, direct return of capital to shareholders, and continued investment of about $9 billion dollars in the United States; all of which would make Pfizer more secure in an increasing competitive market.

It all sounds great, so why the discussions and debates?  The acquisition, shifts Pfizer's headquarters to Ireland, resulting in the largest relocation of a U.S. company re-locating production overseas. This relocation explains, in part, the expected tax benefit.

As you can imagine, in an election year, this has added fuel to a roaring fire. President Obama called the move unpatriotic while Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton vowed to push for measures to prevent such deals. The move was also slammed by Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, saying that such move was disgusting considering the potential job losses.

Job losses aren’t the only issue however; investors had hoped Pfizer would sell off the lower-margin business in 2017, a move now put off by the time required to integrate Allergan. However, after completion, Pfizer will be the fourth largest market cap company in the world. No wonder everyone’s talking.

Read more at Reutershttp://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/24/us-allergan-m-a-pfizer-idUSKBN0TB0UT20151124#yS4ozV636BhWJ42T.99

Filler Injections: Achieving the Ideal Lip Shape

Our lips provide competence to the oral cavity when we chew our food. They may also affect sounds and facilitate facial expression which help us communicate what we feel. Lips also have their own aesthetic value.

Earlier this year, the Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge went viral on the internet. People who took the challenge sucked the air out of a glass to create fuller lips that is said to be more attractive. Of course, everything did not go well for others because many attempts ended in painful bruisings and trips to hospitals.

Sucking glass cyclinders did not make Kylie's lips look plump - it was cosmetic enhancement that did it. In an interview with Cosmopolitan magazine, she admitted using a filler and advised others who want a similar look to try a filler that lasts about two to four months, in case they change their mind and want to give it up.

For dermatologists and Medspa owners who work with patients desiring for plump lips, giving advice to patients during patient consultation may boost patient satisfaction rate.

A study in Germany was conducted "to clarify what it is that makes lips attractive - and whether there are gender-related differences of an attractive lip and lower third of the face".

After patients' lip and chin regions were photographed and evaluated by voluntary judges through a Likert scaling system, the results showed that there were certain parameters of the lips that add attractivity of both male and female individuals. Further, gender-related differences were manifested in the form and shape of an attractive lower third of the face.

• There is a significant higher ratio of upper vermillion height/mouth-nose distance in frontal-view images of attractive compared to unattractive female (p < 0.001) and male (p < 0.05) perioral regions.
• Furthermore, the ratio of upper vermillion height/chin-nose distance was significantly higher in attractive than in unattractive female (p < 0.005) and male (p < 0.05) lip and chin regions.
• The nasolabial angle was significantly sharper in attractive compared to unattractive female perioral regions (p < 0.001).
• Attractive female lip and chin regions showed a wider mentolabial angle compared to unattractive female lip and chin regions (p < 0.05).
•  Comparing men and women, we found that attractive female perioral regions showed a higher ratio of lower vermillion height/chin-mouth distance (p < 0.05) and lower vermillion height/chin-nose distance than attractive male perioral regions (p < 0.05).

Read more on: http://www.jprasurg.com/article/S1748-6815(15)00137-0/abstract

The Key to a Thriving Clinic Workplace

Help your organization flourish by building a strong foundation for success in the workplace. The first step? Conflict management. 

Differing perspectives, ideals, and aspirations are potential triggers for conflict in any workplace. It's important to be aware of this inevitability and to know how to tackle the problem. Conflict resolution is one of the keys to running a successful business organization.

Unresolved conflicts can directly impact your business by destroying the collaborative environment and creating hostility among employees. It might even lead to resignations in extreme cases.

But conflict resolution isn't always easy and must be approached carefully. There are several stages in a conflict and timing is crucial in achieving a resolution.

Cooperation is more likely to be achieved in the intial stages of conflict, so an earlier-- but unforced-- intervention tends to be most effective.

If left unresolved, conflict will, of course, negatively impact the workplace. Additionally, if there is too much pressure for the conflict to be resolved immediately, problems may not be carefully addressed and similar disagreements will arise again. 

Here are some tips for managing conflicts in the workplace:

Be proactive

According to Forbes.com, defining an acceptable behavior is a positive step in avoiding conflict. Effective communication is achieved when job descriptions are clearly defined and everyone is informed about what is expected of them. It is important to relay the message of what can and can't be tolerated in the workplace.

Listen and be impartial

Understand the nature of conflict, listen to both sides, and then start troubleshooting solutions. It is important to be impartial and maintain an unbiased and unprejudiced view about the matter at hand. Help those around you achieve their objectives. Know the underlying reason for their behaviors and actions. What they say and how they act may be different from how they actually feel.

Do not postpone conflict resolution

If a conflict does flair up, you will likely minimize its severity by dealing with it quickly. Otherwise, the situation could escalate and then eventually affect employee performance. Timing, again, is crucial.

It is also important to ensure that the situation is not addressed hastily without careful consideration. Your decision will directly affect the demeanor and performance of your staff and the outcome of such conflict resolution. Time spent identifying and understanding natural tensions will help to avoid unnecessary conflict.

Conflicts are opportunities

A disagreement can be an opportunity for growth, development, and learning. Divergent positions addressed properly can stimulate innovation and learning in ways that like-minds can’t even imagine. Smart leaders look for the upside in all differing opinions.

Read more on: http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemyatt/2012/02/22/5-keys-to-dealing-with-workplace-conflict/