What Do You Offer When A Patient Can't Afford Your Care?
As a health-care professional, your time is extremely valuable. The people who need you and your care will always supersede the time and energy you have available to serve. So how are you going to be able to help every ideal patient who walks through your doors if you don’t have enough hours in the day, or if they can’t afford your care?
The current one-on-one model is typically the foundation in most health-care practices and provides a level of care far superior to the conventional health-care system when utilizing lifestyle medicine. However, the scalability is flawed.
Not every patient will be able to invest in your services, but it’s likely agreed that they need your help. Having more than one offer available is a key to satisfying the varying and growing needs of your community. So, we’ll discuss the variety of ways you can make this happen.
Leverage Other Health-care Professionals
It might seem obvious, but expanding your team and bringing on other health-care professionals within your niche is one of the best routes you can take. It’s a great way to provide a lower-scale version of your one-on-one model, yet still be under your level of quality, knowledge, and expertise.
Bringing on additional health coaches to join your team who share the same values gives you the opportunity to utilize their time while using your approach to healing. You can offer smaller one-on-one programs run by these additional health coaches that best match your patient or hybrid programs where you can still initiate assessment and determine the treatment plan.
The follow-ups and nurturing (required for success) should be managed by the health coach. This way, while they aren’t necessarily working directly with you, your patients will know that these coaches are providing your model of care and the level of quality and service you offer because it is all within your own practice. They trust you, so they will trust your team.
This is also a great way overall to optimize productivity at your clinic. If you have more health-care professionals available, they can help address patient inquiries, which means you’ll be able to provide a better customer service experience. Therefore, you have a better chance for patient inquiries to become long-term patients who are provided care by you and/or your team.
DIY Virtual Programs
Another great offer is short DIY programs, which have become extremely popular during the last couple of years. More people have taken their health into their own hands and enjoy being more in control. They also love the ability to access care from home.
Offering DIY programs means a wider range of patients who will be able to access your care. This way, you are not limited by the confines of your local area. This also empowers individuals that may be self-starters or who don’t have the ability to pay higher-priced fees for one-on-one care at the time.
You could even have the health coaches and additional experts you’ve brought on to your team to help run your DIY programs or help your patients at certain touch points along their patient care program. The great thing about these offerings is that while it’s not going to be the same price or it’s not going to be exclusively working with you one-on-one, it’s still a fantastic way to give your patients a kick-start to your team’s care at a reasonable cost.
Your DIY clients will get a better understanding and a better sense of what it’s like to work with you and/or your practice and help them learn your methods of healing. Once undergoing a program, then they can decide if they want to invest in one-on-one care directly afterward. This is also going to add additional revenue streams to your practice. The more patients you can serve, the more income your business will gain, and the more overall impact you can make.
Apps
Similar to a DIY program, offering virtual access to your knowledge and methods of healing is an amazing way to bring in new patients. This can provide help to those who can’t afford to invest in one-on-one services with you, at least not yet.
You can also offer a subscription through an app where you charge a small monthly fee to give your patients access to monthly content. You can provide all sorts of knowledgeable information, such as articles on specific subjects, healthy recipes and health hacks, product and supplement recommendations, addressing health challenges, providing specific exercises, and more.
The great thing about having an app is the convenience it provides for your potential patients. They will be able to access this information 24/7, right at their fingertips.
The more convenient the methods are for subscribers to obtain information that you provide, the more patients you will gain signing up and being interested in what you have to offer. You can even connect your online store to your app, which will give your patients even more access to browse and shop your e-commerce store.
Group Model
Running a group-based program is another great way to offer variety in your practice. Affordable group programs offer weekly education and check-ins. These meetups are not new, but they are growing.
Note that when you conduct group programs getting completely booked, then you may have patients who are waiting to get in to see you. Be ready to market your group program to start on the same day by getting people to pre-register. Perhaps, start with a 12-week program that will walk people through general lifestyle modifications and leverage the power of community to help each other out along their journey.
Whether you decide on one or all previously mentioned methods for your patients, you need to remember that these are the same teachings you would provide one-on-one to your patients. This is simply a different format for providing access to your information.
These are all starting points for your patients to experience your care without charging the money they don’t have available yet. This can also provide these potential patients with a kickstart to their health journey with your care before deciding to invest in your help. This provides your potential patients who have inquiries with options; that way, they can feel in control of their health-care journey. What is better suited for them at the time when they can find you?
These methods offer a new approach to healing so you can be virtually everywhere at once without actually being everywhere. Remember, you are never discounting your services, you are finding methods of treatment to help heal as many of your ideal patients as you can.
