Marketing, sales are the keys to your future success
Complacency can be dangerous to your financial health
If you're worried about where your future reimbursement is coming from, you might take a tip from the chiropractor down the street and create such a demand for your products that people will be willing to pay out of their own pockets. The new wave of alternative medicine practitioners are thriving the same way the savvy giants of industry always have - by developing comprehensive marketing and sales plans to guide them in creating products and selling them to the public.
Although rehab services have proven cost-effective and have documented outcomes, people with back pain often choose acupuncture, chiropractic services, or massage therapy over physical therapy when they pay for it themselves. The reason is marketing, says Carol Stillman, MS, PT, president of Health Creations, a consulting firm in New York City specializing in training health care professionals to promote their products. "As a clinician, it's easy to find excuses not to sell your services. But complacency is dangerous because of the challenges we are facing such as cuts in reimbursement, less time with patients, and more documentation. In the future, excellent service by high quality clinicians simply won't be enough to survive," she says.
Ironically, people who will spend big bucks for chiropractic care, ergonomic equipment, or personal trainers won't pay out-of-pocket for rehab services, Stillman says. (For more on alternative medicine practitioners as your competition, see p. 60.) "That's why therapists need to change their outlook. This is your responsibility as a health care provider to sell these services. It's not a choice."
Think of large companies such as Proctor and Gamble, General Foods, and Chrysler and the work they do before bringing a product to market, suggests Nancy Beckley, MS, MBA, president of the Blooming dale Consulting Group in Valrico, FL. Those companies do tremendous market research before releasing new products into the marketplace. They base the prices of their products on what the market will bear. And they spend a lot of time and effort marketing and selling their products to consumers, Beckley points out. "Rehab has known medical value. We need to learn how to speak that value so people have the perception that it is a valuable service," Stillman says. (For tips on how to sell rehab services, see story, below right.)
Managed care is becoming a reality in all regions, bringing the discounted rates that force rehab providers to shave their costs to the bone. Medicare is moving to a prospective payment system, which means your reimbursement for those patients no longer will be based on your costs. This, too, could have a dire effect on your bottom line. That's why you have to change the way you're doing business if you're going to survive.
Rehab providers typically have followed the reimbursement trail and based the products they offer on what Medicare or insurers will pay for, Beckley says. But to survive today, you must repackage your products to operate in a totally different reimbursement environment, she adds.
With reduced reimbursement from Medicare and managed care, a key to survival will be to develop new markets that are fee-for-service and make consumers feel your services are valuable enough for them to pay for even when their insurance plans won't, Stillman says. For instance, your hospital might develop sports-specific therapy programs and market them directly to consumers. "There actually is more opportunity. When everything is based on passive business like health care used to be, you're not being the best that you can be. These days the business isn't hard, it's just different," she explains.
Most rehab providers have marketing plans, but they're not based on intensive market research, Beckley says. Instead, they're public relations, advertising, or communications plans. A full scale market research project looks at all levels of the marketplace. (For more marketing tips, see story, p. 59.) "You have to understand the business you are getting and why you are getting it, but more importantly, you have to understand the business you are not getting and why," she says.
Your marketing plan should include interviews or focus groups to find out what keeps people in your area from seeking rehab services. Rehab clinicians, as well as your marketing department should be involved because the clinicians are more apt to see how your services can meet community needs, Stillman says.
The bottom line is this: Are you reaching the people you should be reaching? she asks.
"People with back pain and carpal tunnel syndrome are not getting the help they deserve, and it's our fault because we haven't been out there to reach them," she says.
[Nancy Beckley may be reached at (813) 654-4130. To speak with Carol Stillman, call (212) 772-8360.]
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