Are your patients finally coming back?
In a survey we sent to physical therapy clinics in March 2021, 72.9% of respondents said they were seeing their patient volume increase.
That’s great, but here’s the hard truth: temporary relief does not mean recovery. What you are seeing now is a backlog of patients. If you want the same volume of patients coming to your practice in 6 months, you need to plan and control your recovery.
Here are the five most dangerous decisions a clinic can make when recovery begins:
1. Take your foot off the gas.
Imagine one of your star patients, Sara. Sara’s been doing her exercises every day and coming to all her appointments on time, but as soon as she sees some recovery from her torn ACL…she stops doing her exercises!
As a good PT, you’d tell Sara that if she wants to get back to playing soccer, she needs to stay the course and not take her foot off the gas!
The same is true for you and your marketing. Effective marketing requires consistency. What you do today will produce results 3-6 months from now. So don’t assume you can stop marketing just because recovery has begun.
2. Assume everything is working.
Do you know why patients are coming back? Or are you guessing?
As a business owner, you have too much at stake to assume things are fine. To do effective marketing, you have to track which marketing initiatives bring the most new patients in the door.
If you don’t know what’s working, you will waste money and cripple your practice’s growth. That’s why at Practice Promotions, we provide all of our clients with a dashboard that tracks all of their website metrics.
3. Stop good planning habits because you’re overwhelmed.
We get it. When you’re feeling overwhelmed by treating patients, you feel like you don’t have time to plan your marketing. But if you don’t plan your marketing now, you will pay for it later. You cannot afford to stop planning. At Practice Promotions, we believe that planning your marketing doesn’t have to be difficult.
That’s why we created an Annual Physical Therapy Marketing Calendar for PTs like you.
4. Turn off what was working.
Remember Sara, your patient who stopped doing her ACL exercises at the first sign of recovery? If she turns off what’s working, she will never fully recover. In the same way, if you turn off what worked during COVID, you may seriously injure your practice’s recovery.
For example, if past patients returned after you send them a newsletter…keep sending that patient newsletter!
- Learn more: View our PT Newsletter Portfolio & Results
5. Scale back until you’re fully staffed.
We know that many PT owners are struggling to hire (or rehire) enough staff to meet the current patient volume. You may want to scale back your marketing until you get the PTs you need.
But what if you hire and it takes 3 months to scale marketing results back up?
What if the PTs you interview are turned off by your outdated website?
Scaling back your marketing may actually make it harder to find the talent you need. Plus, remember that marketing is a long game. Investing in your website, digital, and print marketing now means you will reap the reward in new patients 3-6 months from now.
The Bottom Line: Recovery is Dangerous
The beginning of recovery is an incredibly dangerous phase, but it’s also an opportunity.
The best thing you can do is have a plan in place ahead of time of how to handle uptrends so you aren’t left with tough decisions when the moment comes.