Medical Spa MD: Physician community of skin clinics, laser centers, plastic surgeons, dermatologists and aesthetic doctors practicing nonsurgical cosmetic medicine.
Tru-Skin Dermatology, formerly known as Austin Skin, is building a nationwide network based on the "Business Concept Franchise Model".
Name: Dr. Daniel J. Ladd, Jr. Clinic: Tru-Skin Dermatology Location: Austin, TX Website:tru-skin.com
Dr. Ladd is a man of action, an energetic person with various interests and enjoys telling jokes. Aside from founding The Shade Project, Dr. Ladd is a Board Certified Dermatologist and Mohs Surgeon who has seen far too much skin cancer. Committed to help prevent it, he has started a local sun safety dialogue with the Dr. Dan Radio Show.
The show welcomes guests from all areas of medicine and the non-profit world alike. Listeners can become informed on the many aspects of wellness, healthy skin, skin cancer prevention, and current events on a local, regional and national basis.
Is there anything that is unconventional or uncommon from the average clinic in any way? How do you separate yourself from your competition?
Tru-Skin Dermatology is an industry leading, board certified, state of the art fully integrated dermatology practice; surgical, medical and cosmetic, composed of skin cancer experts and MOHS surgery specialists. Our brand offers patients a dependable, predictable patient centered experience in a clean modern office facility where they will receive expert care. Our affiliation with The Shade Project sets us apart from other clinics. A portion of every service, patient visit and product purchase at Tru-Skin Dermatology is donated to The Shade Project to help skin cancer prevention efforts. The Shade Project is a non-profit organization dedicated to preventing skin cancer through education, community outreach and building shade structures where children and families play.
You’re using video in your waiting room to market to your patients. How effective is that?
We've begun a concerted effort to promote cosmetic services available at our practice through internal marketing. We're using a customized waiting room video from Frontdesk that has proved effective for awareness of additional services available. Having the videos in our waiting room has allowed patients to feel comfortable bringing up a procedure they saw on the video with the provider during their appointment. The folks at Frontdesk were very easy to work with and responsive to our questions and needs for customization unique to the Tru-Skin Dermatology brand...
Video marketing to patients in your waiting room the single most effective way to educate your patients about your entire offering and drive more sales.
Waiting room video marketing educates and informs patients that are already inside of your clinic about all of your treatments in a way that generates interest and sales without pushy hard sales tactics. In fact, its the best ROI marketing I know of since it's usually a one-time flat fee to get set up and running.
If you're not already using video in your waiting room you're missing the easiest and most effective way to increase every business metric you should care about; patient satisfaction, referrals, and revenue. Educational marketing in to your existing patient base has been proven time and again to be one of the very best ways to increase referrals (new patient traffic) and create additional and add-on sales (revenue per patient).
Take a look at this demo video from Frontdesk (one of our Select Partners) that demonstrates how waiting room video marketing works and imagine just how effective it could be for your clinic.
There are all kinds of industrys that are already using video marketing in their waiting areas since they've been proven across all verticals to increase sales and customer satisfaction with wait times. Videos are being used in waiting areas to sell home equitly loans in banks, run real estate tours for brokers, upsell wiper blades at tire and oil change shops and educate patients about porcelain veneers in dentist offices. In fact, waiting room video marketing is so effective AutonetTV launched an entire TV channel just to broadcast into automotive center waiting rooms. So where are you?
In the most recent Medical Spa MD Physician Report, physicians running cosmetic clinics were asked what kind of marketing is most important in generating sales and if they're already marketing to patients in their waiting room. Here's what they told us.
What do you consider to be most important to generate revenue/sales for your practice?
How are you currently marketing in your waiting room?
(To be honest I think the the numbers here are a little off and that both of these questions should have and even more direct link to internal patient marketing and waiting room marketing.)
What's really interesting about this is that patients that are sitting in your waiting room are actually looking to be sold to, but you're probably doing a pretty poor job communicating to this captive audience. Most clinics have some brochures that are provided by technology providers or injectable reps, and you might have a flyer or two, but video marketing moves your marketing to an entirely new level. Look at that second chart; 25% of responding physicians indicated that they're using video marketing in their waiting room and that they're 'killing it'.
(Note: I don't believe that 25% of all cosmetic clinics are already using waiting room videos. I think that our responding physicians are skewed towards a much more proactive and business savvy group than the average and that accounts for the seeminly high percentage.)
Effective waiting room video marketing does 3 critical things immediately:
Reduces perceived wait times for patients. (Increased patient satisfaction)
Educates patients about additional treatments, services, or offers. (Increased referrals)
Generates questsions about other treatmens and services. (Increased revenue per patient)
Reduce perceived wait time for your patients.
Have you ever actually had to sit in a waiting room with nothing to do but contemplate your navel? (If you're a physician you probably haven't had to sit in another doctors waiting room but imagine yourself at the DMV.)
Putting a great video in your waiting room gives your patients something to watch and minimizes the perceived wait, making for happier patients even before they get into the consultation or treatment room.
Educate your patients while they wait.
All of your patients are stuck in your waiting room for at least a little while if only to fill out paperwork. You're missing an opportunity if you're not educating them about all of your services and treatments while they're at their most receptive.
Patients who know what your entire offering is are more likely to ask questions about additional treatments and think of friends and family that might benefit from them, increasing your referral rate.
Increases revenue per patient immediately.
Unlike most forms of advertising, great waiting room vidoes can boost your revenue immediately without any additional activity or cost by generating questions about additional treatments that your staff can answer without any hard-sell tactics, making both your staff and your patients more comfortable. You're moving the conversation from one that's initiated by you or your staff and that raises your patients buying barriers, to a conversation that your patient initiates. It makes up-selling and cross-selling easy.
Patients don't want to be sold, but they do want to buy. Treating them to a beautifully crafted and entertaining marketing message while they're already inside your business helps them do just that.
If you're interested in increaseing your revenue per patient right now or you just want to learn more, you can take a look at some more waiting room DVDs and videos here.
Does a relaxing waiting room actually generate revenue for your clinic?
Retailers have known for a long time that happy, relaxed customers leave feeling more satisfied, but new research from Columbia Business School concludes that relaxation does more than just make for a satisfied client. It also produces a client who is willing to pay more.
According to the report, "Relaxed consumers think products are worth more than less-relaxed consumers because relaxed individuals tend to think about the value of products at a more abstract level. For example, when bidding for the camera, relaxed participants focused more on what the camera would enable them to do (e.g., collect memories) and how desirable and advantageous it was to own it, whereas the less-relaxed participants focused more on the concrete features of the camera itself (e.g., the number of megapixels it had, the shutter speed)."
All this being said, you may want to make sure that you're creating a relaxing and comfortable enviroment in your clinic even before the treatment.
Here's one example of how you can use video to create a relaxing atmosphere while also sending a powerful marketing message and communicating about your other offerings.
Frontdesk is launching truly awesome waiting room video marketing DVDs for doctors, dentists, chiropractors, medical spas, laser clinics and pretty much every other small business with a waiting room or lobby...
Putting a jaw-dropping, attention grabbing video in your waiting room or lobby is the perfect way to add additional sales and profits to your clinics bottom line.
The benefits are obvious. You're marketing directly to a captive audience that's already in your business with information about your products and services. Your clients will be entertained at the same time that you're educating and informing them of the scope of your services. Special offers? New services? Packages or gift certificates? Video marketing will 'soft-sell' your clients and get conversations started that result in increased sales!
If you're a dentist, physician, medical spa, clinic, chiroprator or any other small business that has a waiting room, you'd be a fool to pass up learning how you can increase your profitibility and drive extra sales just by engaging and communicating the right message to your existing clients or patients. It's truly a no-brainer.
This system has been proven in countless businesses that understand that communicating the right message, in the right way, adds to the bottom line.
They're booked solid right now but you can get on their waiting list and be notified when space becomes available.
Note: All images, videos, headlines and copy are copyrighted...
Medical Spa MD
Physicians, plastic surgeons, and dermatologists practicing nonsurgical cosmetic medicine in medical spas, laser clinics and aesthetic practices.
This Embezzlement & Employee Theft Scams training course gives you a practical roadmap to protect your clinic, your patients, your reputation, and your bank account.
Taking cash payments in the treatment room, stealing Botox and fillers to inject their own patients, ordering fraud, trading extra services for large tips, or stealing your client database to sell or use... This new course on beating embezzlement and employee theft schemes uncovers the hidden tactics behind how these scams work, and how to discover them before they kill your clinic.
The insiders guide to buying used cosmetic lasers.
Take advantage of these insider secrets about buying (and selling) used cosmetic lases to make more informed buying decisions. Enter your name and best email below to make sure you don’t get burned.
Use this guide to narrow your search for the system that best suits your needs, allowing you to eliminate platforms and winnow the number of systems you’re looking at. Includes; Palomar, Syneron, Alma, Cutera, and Sciton.
Have you ever paid a commission for Botox and laser treatments? Although it’s very common ... it’s also very illegal.
During the past several years, a very troubling trend has developed in the medical spa industry. Nurses, nurse practitioners, physician assistants and laser technicians are being paid by commission in order to incentivize them to bring new business into the spa. This is very lucrative for both the spa and the individual, but unfortunately, in most states, it is illegal.
However, by accepting commissions for Botox treatments, she was engaging in illegal fee-splitting. Not only could she face significant monetary sanctions if she continued to do so, but both she and her supervising physician risked immediate suspension or revocation of their licenses if the state learned she was taking commissions.Fee-splitting refers to dividing or sharing fees from medical services between a physician and a nonphysician. In most states, all fees generated for medical treatments must be paid directly to a physician or physician-owned corporation. No one other than the physician—including nurses, physician assistants or any nonphysician medical practitioners—may receive any share of a medical fee.
Although the prohibition against fee-splitting has been on the books in most states for years, the practice of paying commissions has become quite prevalent in the medical spa community. This is probably because, in medical spas, most medical directors do not want to spend time firing lasers or injecting since other services can be more lucrative. As a result, injections and laser treatments are delegated to other medical professionals, who, in turn, develop a large client base. An easy way to compensate those professionals is to pay commission.But the consequences for fee-splitting are severe. In most states, the state licensing board has the power to revoke, suspend or refuse to renew licenses in response to fee-splitting allegations. Accordingly, regardless of the monetary incentives, it is always advised to avoid paying or receiving commissions. A safe alternative to fee-splitting is to use a pre-set bonus structure—the nonphysician can still be rewarded for performance, but the bonus is not related to the number of treatments performed.
Recently, a client called me with an urgent concern. This client, a registered nurse in Chicago, worked in a medical spa as an injector and laser technician. She was well-compensated: In addition to an hourly salary, she was also given a commission—a percentage of net revenue—for every Botox and laser treatment she performed. And boy did this nurse perform—during the past 12 months, she personally had generated more than $350,000 in revenue for the spa.
Her concern arose from a conference she had recently attended where she learned that most states have laws prohibiting fee-splitting. She was informed that taking commissions on Botox and laser treatments might land her in hot water with the state nursing board. She explained that this didn’t make sense, given that she had been receiving commissions for years, and that the physicians who paid her surely wouldn’t risk their licenses by doing something illegal.
It is imperative for any medical spa professional to seek legal counsel immediately if being paid a commission for medical treatments. The laws of each state vary and are often difficult to find, but as is often the case, ignorance of the law is never an excuse.
Thoughs on the Ideal silicone / saline breast implant.
The 2 main types of breast implants available for decades have been the saline filled an silicone gel filled breast implants. Each has its pros and cons.
Silicone gel implants have a more natural feel and look. Unlike silicone gel, implants containing only saline do not blend well with surrounding tissues at the edges of the implants. This is due to the chemical properties of salt water which is chemically charged as positive and negative charges that attract each other as opposed to silicone gel which does not carry a charge. Thus saline is more cohesive than silicone. What this means in clinical terms is that saline implant margins are more visible than silicone gel implant margins, especially when the soft tissue (breast gland and fat) between the outside world and the implant is thinner. Thus, in those patients with smaller breasts (less glandular tissue and/or fat) it is preferable to place saline implants under the chest muscle.
Saline implants may look very good when lying flat on a table. However, when upright the upper portion of the implant collapses (wrinkles or ripples) as the cohesive saline falls
There is an element of a gamble inherent in the medical tourism industry as it currently exists.
An interesting thing happened to me at work the other day. It was Friday afternoon, and I received a call from a primary care doctor. The phone call began with, “I’m really sorry about this, but I have a surgeon’s nightmare in my office.”
This is not a good way to begin a conversation.
He began to tell me about the patient. This particular woman had a Lap Band placed several years ago. For one reason or another, she decided that she would like this converted to a different procedure. She drove by my hospital to get to the airport, hopped on a plane and flew over hundreds of other well-qualified bariatric surgeons in order to reach a surgeon in Mexico where she had her Lap Band removed. She then returned 6 months later and had a sleeve gastrectomy. This is where things go bad.
While hesitant to try yet another Social Media platform, I have left thousands of Facebook fans behind for Google + (and so should you...)!
Guest post by Craig Koniver MD
I know, I know, another social media platform is about all you need to read about these days. From Facebook to Twitter to Pinterest to Instagram to Foursquare, it always seems as if there is another "latest" and "greatest" social media platform to pay attention to. But, trust me when I say this, I think Google + is THE one to pay attention to. And here are some reasons why...
In this post, I'd like to spend a little time introducing you to the idea of "lifestyle design," something that has become a bit of a buzz-phrase in the business world but as far as I can tell hasn't penetrated the world of medicine just yet (for a lot of reasons).
I'll begin with a personal story...
When I jumped off the academic track in 2006, I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do as a career but I knew I wanted something unique. My idea was to design a career that was flexible, fun, adventurous, and meaningful, all the while paying my bills and being a responsible spouse and parent. Simple, huh?
I spent months thinking about how to do this as a physician. I searched websites and blogs. I spoke with mentors and colleagues. I read the literature, all to no avail. There seemed to be no conversation about a career like this in medicine. I mean, there were a few articles about volunteer opportunities or non-traditional careers, but nothing really like what I was trying to create.
With the spreading of social media into nearly every aspects of our lives, it is worth pausing and reflecting upon their value.
Are you tweeting yet? Posting to your Facebook wall? How about connecting through LinkedIn? How big is your cirlce in Google+? With the onslaught of social media, there is mounting pressure to join each network, manage conections and monetize these various social media outlets. It seems as if social media has become the dominant measuring stick for how well you are doing as a business and how well you are connecting with others.
And while I think social media is something to be embraced, I do not think every outlet is for every person. Nor do I believe that social media serves as any type of barometer in your life (professional and personal). In fact, I think the more you are selective about where you garnish your social media energy and attention, the better you can use social media to your advantage.
Before I get to the specifics of the most popular social media outlets, I want you to come away from this article with one main point: social media presence does NOT equate to success. There is a lot of advice coming at us telling us to join all of the social media networks, trying to convince us that the only way to grow our business and connect with people is by creating these various outposts/hubs to connect with others.
The truth remains, however, that most of the time you can spend a lot of time and energy creating and maintaining these various social media outlets without actually realizing much results. And so while we embrace social media in medicine and beyond, we need to be cognizant as to the actual role of each social media outlet is providing for us. I think a better perspective is "what can I do for social media" not "what can social media do for me".
Let's review the major social media outlets. For each I will give you my personal experience and opinion:
Protect your clinic and profits in 24 hours.
This Embezzlement & Employee Theft Scams training course gives you a practical roadmap to protect your clinic, your patients, your reputation, and your bank account.
Taking cash payments in the treatment room, stealing Botox and fillers to inject their own patients, ordering fraud, trading extra services for large tips, or stealing your client database to sell or use... This new course on beating embezzlement and employee theft schemes uncovers the hidden tactics behind how these scams work, and how to discover them before they kill your clinic.
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