Hi, Don here, welcome to Podiatry Practice Mastery, where
we're helping you get your practice to the $1,000,000 mark
and beyond. My most valuable patient of the
day here. This was a recording for a
Friday. It was patient.
He was #3 out of four for Shockwave, he had a second met
fracture due to a hiking injury and he's been doing those every
72 hours. So this is a, this is a patient,
as I was talking to a little bit more kind of an entrepreneurial
guy. He used to run a lot of re/max
offices. These are type of patients that
tend to want to pay for speed. And I think there's a really an
added benefit for us when we're treating patients to offer them
speed at a price and they're, and they're willing to do that.
So he's wanting to get back like he's barely a week and a half
and he's not like wanting to know if we can go back hiking.
I'm like, it's going to speed it up a little bit, but it's not
going to speed it up that that, that that quick.
But he is starting to feel better.
So for like some stress fracture or stress fractures or fractures
that patients want to get better and back to their activity
quicker, I think offering Shockwave can be a benefit to
them. So that was really the MVP
patient. The rest of the day was not that
exciting. And as I'm looking at it some,
I'm going to talk about actually some negative things that
happened for me. I had a matrix follow up.
So I'm intending to do matrix follow-ups in my 10 minute
slots. So what happens is when patients
come in for a matrix, I do a three-week follow up.
I know some doctors don't do any follow-ups.
I used to do a two week and a four week.
Now I do one at 3 weeks. But the problem is it filled up
that 10 minute slot and there was another 20 minute slot that
was there, but but that one didn't get filled.
So to me it, it seemed kind of like a, a, a waste.
You know, that more be of a patient scheduling problem.
Another problem of the day was they scheduled some nail care
patients as well during that time.
I don't know how they got in there.
They're usually done on on on Friday mornings.
That's kind of how we restrict things.
But there was a nail care and there was another nail care one
came in for. I did like a partial nail
evulsion, a 78 year old and one's a 92 year old for nail
care. I think maybe the staff were
just nice or they didn't know the protocol, but most of them
should know the protocol. But somehow they somehow they
sneak in. So I'm just kind of sharing like
these are like these could have been better valuable patients,
but this one wasn't. And there was another routine as
well. And these, they may have some
other things like this one of these routines they had like a
hematoma under the hallux and they're concerned about fungus
and and things like that. Another patient was a right
bunion that came in. She had pain.
And we talked about shoes, anatomic shoes.
I spent a lot of time talking about shoes.
I tend to recommend ultras topos and then we sell lems in our
office. I am not the, the great at
selling the Lems. My my partner's a little bit
better. Not exactly sure why.
I, I think a lot of times we get busy, I'm worried about
overbearing the staff. But I, I wear lems all day long
and I think lems work well. And I think another thing is we
don't have a huge selection. I think we have like just a
couple of colors and not a huge amount of sizes.
And it's not the most convenient to buy them for the patients,
but when they when they do get them, it's it's an OK revenue
producer. But I did do an injection as
well because of her pain that she was having in there.
And I looked at X-rays with her. Another patient that came in for
a second met fracture feeling better.
I'm going to see them back in one month because they're not
totally better. And I talked about kind of doing
an MRI if it continues to be painful.
And then the other patient was a posterior tibial tendon pain.
This patient I've seen a few find a few Times Now.
This is an interesting patient. I we have quite a few patients
here that have Medicare and they have mass health.
So mass health is like the Medicaid and we don't take
Medicaid here in our office. So what happens with these
patients is they will pay the 20% out of pocket.
So for a lot of patients that we see, they value us enough to
want to be seen and pay the 20%. And so this is something I think
you have to be aware of if you have a good product, patients a
lot of times will pay for speed. So for example, the CS they we
can get them in within the week or a lot of the other doctors
that might take their insurance might take two or three months
to see them. So I think one benefit of having
a system to get people in fast can be can be that this patient,
they had bilateral X-rays, they had bilateral ultrasounds as
well to look at the posterior tibial tendon.
And I talked to them about doing shockwave.
So this patient, they had a cortisone injection last time in
that region. And another thing about like
patients that for a couple didn't want the shockwave, like
what's the other option? I, you know, the other option is
to make them an AFO. So I talked about making an AFO
through hanger and then I also talked about doing Shockwave,
but Shockwave was a little too expensive for this patient.
The rest of the morning, the morning patients were by were by
Friday morning. And I want to say I've been,
we've been having this nail tech for about 6 months now.
It was a long ramp up, but she was a really big win for the
office. Her name is Marjorie.
She has her own nail clinic and then but she doesn't really see
many clients in the morning. So she helps us out three days.
One of my colleagues doesn't really utilize for that well, he
just because he doesn't really see much routine care.
So it just kind of she's like hanging out there.
My other buddy he, he uses her pretty well.
And then but I use legs for the most basically because I have
patients every 10 minutes. And then she also has her own
schedule of like 6 or 7 patients.
So when, when she's working with me, she's like doing all the
nails now she can do even the real thick ones.
She also is getting more comfortable with calluses.
Now the calluses, I am monitoring her.
I am, you know, observing. I'm teaching her about like
what's a, what's a pre ulcerative callus?
What's, what's the anatomy going on here?
So she feels more comfortable and also more comfortable
because I'm there. But I, I, I feel like after six
months now she's getting a little bit better with calluses.
It took her, it took her a long time.
It took her to especially do the real thick toenails.
She still struggles a little bit with getting those down, but I
really feel like this was a big win for our practice to do the
do this type of of and it was a big addition to our practice.
And I and I think that possibly the same like OK, the same
confidence. Now we haven't heard doing the
nails. Could we also find someone that
could do the shock waves Like I think we we could.
And I think it's going to take training.
I think it's going to take time them shadowing us.
But I think in the same way, let's say I schedule 6 shock
waves and I do the first and I do the 6th, but the other four
in between, if I'm there, I can stop in, say hi, answer any
questions and then they can do the shockwave.
I think if we have the, the amount of space to do that, I
think that would be the kind of the next logical, logical step
that would then free up more time for more slots.
Right now we're not doing that because there's not a super
amount of demand. So right now the focus is on
building up that demand for our for our practice.
One, I want to share two things. One is the urgent care.
We have an urgent care web page. So if you want to go to our
website, you can take a look at central mass podiatry.com.
There's an urgent care thing. You can kind of see how we're
kind of focusing on urgent care. And then we're also doing some
blog posts. If you look at the blogs, you
can look at the blog post posting back to the urgent care.
And we've been having many more patients come in for the urgent
care because when, when we're trying to attract patients, I'm
really not interested in patients that want a discount.
I'm wanting patients that want quick appointments.
Most people around might get in in two or three weeks.
We're able to get in within the week because of our, our new
Doctor. So the, the focus is on getting
them in with that urgent care. The next step is to kind of, OK,
how can we now push ads to that urgent care or how can we then
talk about that urgent care to other centers of influence so
they can get patients in, in the past, my, my focus has been on
like getting one diagnosis like plantar fasciitis or, or or
ingrown toenails. But I, I think maybe a more
elegant method would be like, OK, urgent care, whatever your
urgent need is, we can get you. And it just, it's a little bit
better and it's a way to fill up this, this other doctor's
schedule. That's my main focus right now
is like, how can I do this one? One idea I have gotten from one
of my favorite guys that I follow online, Alex Harmozzi.
Just so you know, he also has a ChatGPT.
So if you guys use ChatGPT, you can look up.
There's like chats from different people.
He has one and it's just really good questions.
If you want to talk about marketing, if you want to put in
developing your your dream offer for patients, things like that.
That's the, the ChatGPT focus like you can, it's on your
little ChatGPT thing like it's, it's low, a low expense to do
that. But he kind of guides you on, on
how to make these irresistible offers.
And so one would be, you know, doing that and then next would
be OK, how can I send ads to that page to get people, more
people there? Because we've, we've kind of
getting as many as we can organically and we still have a
lot of spots available for this new Doctor.
So my thought would be, and what he recommends is OK, you do
these YouTube shorts, you take the best YouTube shorts and then
you turn them and you put a call to action like Hey, if you have
urgent care need, come visit our office.
So that's kind of what I'm focusing on right now.
If you want to work on getting your practice to the $1,000,000
mark and be out, I put some resources on our on my website,
podiatrypracticemastery.com. There is like a master class
there where I kind of give it all the way.
It's in a structured format. Just put your e-mail in there.
You get all the videos like it's called my $1,000,000 blueprint,
something I put together. Do that, reach out to me, let me
know how you like it, how it's kind of helping your practice.
I'd love to hear back from you. OK, thanks.