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Hey guys, Don here, welcome to 
Podiatry Practice Mastery where 

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I'm helping you sharing what's 
kind of working for me to get my

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practice to the $1,000,000 mark 
and beyond. 

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Hopefully some of these tips 
will will help you in your 

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practice. 
So I'm going to go over a 

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Friday. 
So the first Friday in our 

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office each month we have an 
office meeting in the afternoon 

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so we only see patients in the 
morning. 

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And Fridays for me are the days 
where we just do routine care. 

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So each doctor has their own day
that all they do is nail care. 

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We found that in our experience,
this is the best way to be most 

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efficient with nail care versus 
interspersing them with all the 

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other patients in the practice. 
In the past, we used to have 

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like regular patients and the 
nail care patients and a lot of 

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times we were running behind on 
for a certain patient and then 

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all of a sudden the nail 
patients wait like 30 or 40 

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minutes. 
Also these nail care patients 

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don't take a lot, a lot of time 
unless we're doing like an exam 

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or newer exam for them. 
And so we could put a lot of 

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them double booked. 
And then we also have a nail 

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tech Marjorie that's helping me.
So it was a, it was a busy day. 

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There were, I think there were a
couple of new patients. 

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So I did office visits for some 
of these new patients and that 

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was the most kind of the most 
important thing as, as you know,

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we are switching from medical 
records. 

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And since we're switching to the
switch in this new record, I 

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asked Murali, my scribe, if, if 
I could start doing my, you 

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know, yearly diabetic foot exams
or yearly, you know, the 

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vascular studies. 
The, the challenge with doing 

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them isn't so much scheduling. 
The problem is there are so many

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things to look at when we're 
swapping things over. 

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So what what I've decided is I'm
going to try to push all of that

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stuff back about three months. 
And the reason for that is I'm 

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having to transfer everything 
from Athena over to mod met all 

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these patients and each patient 
is basically new, a new patient 

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in there. 
And then on top of that to look,

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you know, when their last 
diabetic foot exam was or when 

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their last ABI was, it just adds
additional time when there's so 

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many patients. 
I think if we had less patients 

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or if we could go through it 
like before to figure that out, 

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I think that would be more 
efficient. 

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But you don't, I don't have that
privilege there for someone that

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can kind of do that. 
So I'm waiting to get past the 

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three month line, meaning where 
all the routines starting to 

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come back and then I can start 
getting more, more thorough kind

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of with the patients. 
I want to talk about a couple of

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fun things here. 
There was a patient that came in

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and she gave me a little 
nickname. 

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She called me Doctor Wonderful 
and I and I just thought that 

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was so funny. 
Doctor wonderful. 

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It seems like I don't know 
something you would see 

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somewhere else than than in in a
doctor's office, but that was 

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kind of a fun thing. 
One thing I was I was learning 

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about, I was I still like 
listening to Alex Harmozi. 

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He's like my favorite podcast 
and he talked about something 

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that might be beneficial to us. 
It's it's something that's 

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charging for speed. 
So if patients want things done 

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faster and that's something we 
can charge extra for, we 

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shouldn't always think of it as 
a burden. 

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So what are some things that 
patients want quicker? 

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So they might want their 
orthotics quicker So we can add 

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a fee to that we can charge, we 
can charge for that. 

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If patients want, you know, 
their records quicker, you know 

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they can, they can, you can 
charge a fee for that. 

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Something filled out right now 
versus in a couple of days, you 

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can charge for that. 
If they want to maybe moved up 

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in the surgical schedule, you 
could also charge for that. 

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I, I find that the speed of, of 
implementation and the speed of 

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getting going for patients tends
to give them a better experience

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in general. 
And a lot of times they're 

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willing to pay for that. 
So for example, when patients 

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come in for, for heel pain, a 
lot, a lot of times what I used 

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to do in the past, I used to do 
it step wise, like everyone had 

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to have anti inflammatories and 
icing and then come back in 

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three weeks and see if that 
worked. 

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Now in, in my experience, very 
few patients ever got better 

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with those initial treatments. 
And so a lot of times and the 

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same thing with nail fungus. 
A lot of times I would do a nail

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sample and then have them come 
back three weeks later and I'd 

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go for the nail sample, but it 
didn't really affect my 

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treatment. 
So I offered to patients, I'm 

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like, well, if you want to speed
things up here, we can just skip

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the nail sample and you won't be
billed that by your insurance 

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that that nail sample. 
And you know, if it's, if it's 

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not working, then we can do a 
sample or then we can just 

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switch to something else else. 
If I'm really unsure if it's 

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like maybe a traumatic nail, 
then I'll do it. 

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Same thing with with plantar 
fasciitis patients. 

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I'll say, you know, we could 
start the icing an 

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anti-inflammatory, but very few 
patients do I find that ever get

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rid of their pain with that. 
Or we could just jump right to 

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the ultrasound and then to the 
actual treatments that work. 

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And I find my patients 
appreciate that, that we we jump

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into it for treatment and you 
get them better faster or at 

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least you start the treatment. 
So their perception of getting 

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treatment or getting better 
faster is speed speeded up even 

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even many times I'll say, hey, I
can check if we have time to do 

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the shockwave this first day, 
unless they've been on an 

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anti-inflammatory, but in which 
case we could just kind of start

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the shockwave. 
So I think paying for speed or 

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even having that increase the 
value of what you offer to 

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patients can be better. 
And, and I find the best way, 

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the best patients I find that 
want to speed things up are 

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really the ones that have 
consumed a lot of my educational

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information online, like my 
YouTube videos or they've gone 

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to the site, our website, and 
they've watched the videos and 

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everything else that's related 
to their condition. 

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So I feel like a more educated 
patient, they know kind of 

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what's next and they know what 
to expect. 

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And like, ideally, if I could 
get all of my patients before 

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they come in to watch or to look
at one blog post based on that 

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condition, then they would be 
all set up because they know 

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what to expect. 
I haven't figured out how to do 

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that. 
I've thought about using Clara, 

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our, our new like patient 
communication tool. 

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If you could somehow say, OK, we
could do it based on a diagnosis

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and then based on that 
diagnosis, they would get 

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something to look at. 
And I know not everyone's going 

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to look at it, but those in my 
experience that tend to be the 

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patients that are most motivated
and they're the most willing to 

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accept the, the treatment 
recommendation. 

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So that was the first thing is, 
is charging for speed. 

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The 2nd update is I'm going to 
tell you about our nail tech. 

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She is doing really well. 
It has been, I think she's been 

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six months now. 
She's been with us and now she's

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I'm very confident with her 
doing toenails on her own. 

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She's starting to do some 
callous. 

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She's not as confident with 
that. 

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We still tend to help her. 
She has her own schedule that 

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she works with us as the doctors
and she is starting and we are 

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OK with this. 
She's starting to kind of like 

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steal patients, meaning she has 
her own little nail salon and 

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some of the patients are going 
to see her in the nail salon. 

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We we are OK with that. 
She's also opening it up to do 

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some home visits. 
So she's, I think she's charging

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like $75.00 for the home visit 
plus whatever travel time that 

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she does. 
So these these things, I think 

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they're both good for her 
because she feels valued, but 

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it's a really win, win for our 
practice because there was 

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really no one doing home visits 
here. 

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Now, she doesn't normally do 
calluses, which is I think it's 

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out of her scope a little bit, 
but under under our scope, we 

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are, we're working with her. 
So just wanted to give you guys 

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the update of, of things that 
are going on in the practice. 

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Once again, if you want to learn
more, I have a lot of other 

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patient information on Podiatry 
practice mastery.com, go there. 

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There's a free course on there 
to kind of, I want to give out 

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kind of my road map of 
everything that I would do and 

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what I did in practice to help 
get to the $1,000,000 mark and 

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beyond. 
Hope you guys enjoy this. 

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I'm Don Pelto once again, Thanks
for thanks for listening.