Can you transition pain patients into wellness clients?
Are you a ‘pain practice’, i.e. are you mostly seeing patients that are in acute or chronic pain? How many of your patients are coming back for maintenance, prevention or wellness treatments? Less than 50%? Or even less than 10%? Wouldn’t you have more peace of mind if you knew your patients would come back on a regular basis and not just because they are experiencing pain? Wouldn’t it be great to know that you have appointments booked weeks in advance?
Here are some ideas that might help you venture out into fitness, wellness or performance offerings:
1. Offer injury prevention packages for your largest patient populations
Are you treating a lot of runners? Educate them about the benefits of regular active and passive care treatment while they are still seeing you for the current injuries and offer them a maintenance / prevention package consisting of in-office care and home programs such as strengthening exercises, stretches or myofascial release techniques according to their specific needs.
2. Offer sport specific performance packages
Help patients improve a specific activity, for example improving a patient’s golf swing will not only allow them to enjoy their favorite activity more but create a source of referrals as well. This will position you as the “expert” in your community allowing you to offer packages from in-office treatments to performance improvement.
3. Offer wellness / fall prevention programs for your geriatric patients
Bundle in-office treatments, workshops and home exercise programs to help your elderly patients stay active and injury free. Inviting them to a series of in-office workshops will also allow them to bring friends, i.e. potential new wellness patients.
These are just some ideas, but whatever you offer take these points into consideration:
1. Create programs that are in line with your patients’ demographics. Consider doing a survey before starting anything to find out what types of offerings your patients would value the most. You might also get additional ideas when asking patients for feedback while creating awareness for your new services before even starting them.
2. Try to offer something that is in line with your own interests and get educated on the subject as best as you can. There is a high likelihood that patients will sign up for programs because they already trust you. So, make sure you deliver the programs at the value they expect from you; or hire somebody that you trust, that is an expert in the area, and that shares your values.
3. Your patients’ want to learn how to live healthier lives! But there is a lot of information available, and oftentimes it’s hard to understand the context or to differentiate between what’s valid and what’s just the next fad exercise or nutrition program. Helping your patients connect the dots will make them appreciate your practice even more and allow you to become their go-to resource for the topics you chose to be an expert on.
We hope this gave you some inspiration to grow your practice and help your patients! Please email us feedback or comments to rikeaprea@webexercises.com
About the author: Friederike is the VP of Business Development and Marketing Strategy at WebExercises. She previously worked for Reebok, BMW, and the Adidas Group in the US and Asia and is an ACE certified personal trainer and NASM Corrective Exercise Specialist.
