Increase Your Revenue With... Nutritional Supplements

In 2003, I opened my sports injury, or as I describe it, an "active lifestyle" practice. Things were going well and I certainly did not have many complaints. But in 2007, when I reviewed the business plan I had originally written and the goals I'd hoped to attain by my fifth year, I realized I was going to fall short in one very important category: annual gross collections.

I realized that the ultimate answer to meeting my goals was not the number of patients I was able to see but rather in the amount of revenue I was able to generate per visit.

One option would have been to perform additional services during each patient visit. The problem was that I could not justify the medical necessity for more services. I concluded that I needed to focus on ancillary services and retail sales in order to increase my collections per patient visit.

Consider Your Patients' Needs (Not Your Own)

I considered what else I could provide to my patients that would:

1. Aid in the resolution of their condition(s).
2. Aid in the management of their condition(s).
3. Help reduce the chance of reoccurrence while promoting overall well-being.

The last was crucial in maintaining long-term relationships with my patients as opposed to being viewed as just a "triage" center for acute injury. Like most docs out there, I have a very high standard with regards to what I am going to bring into my practice and recommend to my patients. It could not be viewed as "gimmicky" or merely a "moneymaker". I did not want the desire to increase revenue to tarnish my reputation. I also knew that whatever I decided on had to meet some very specific criteria. So, I took a good look at my patients, their needs, and the treatments I performed.

Who was I treating? My "typical patients" are active individuals.

What was I treating? Musculoskeletal conditions (exclusively).

What were patients asking me about vs. not asking me about? Mainly pain relief, joint health and osteoporosis.

How could I address their needs and provide better care? By providing high-quality, research-backed supports, exercise equipment and supplements that would enhance my treatments, speed recovery and prevent future occurrences while promoting overall well-being.

Since I was already dispensing exercise balls and bands, I decided my new initiative would be to enchance sales of nutritional supplements. I was selling a few supplements at the time: protein powders, protein bars and multivitamins but was never overly serious about it. This time had to be different.

Research and Decisions

I began by doing research on various nutritional supplements in order to figure out which would fit best into my practice and which had the best research to support their use and demonstrate efficacy.

I was pleased to find that many of the supplements that were best supported by quality research were those that addressed musculoskeletal health.

I then began to research nutritional supplements focused on the treatment of acute conditions, nutrients that would help with inflammation and pain control.

After my research, I decided on a product loaded with information right out of top notch, peer-reviewed journals.

I found that the product maker's approach to nutrition fit perfectly into my approach to treating patients.

That was crucial as I had decided earlier that I would not introduce something into my current practice that was "extra" or different than everything else.

Integration Tactics

The next step was to smoothly integrate nutritional supplements into my existing "office flow". There were very specific questions that needed to be answered. How would I make patients aware of these products? When/how would I discuss the specifics with patients? How would the supplements be dispensed? How would we keep track of who bought what and when. How would I and my staff be involved in the process?

I decided the smart thing to do was to make as much of this process "automated" as possible so as to limit the amount of time and effort it would require during each patient visit.

I created a questionnaire to figure out who was interested in learning more about certain supplements and had patients fill it out along with their initial intake paperwork. It included basic questions on their interest in utilizing supplements and whether they were already doing so. It broke it down very simply by asking if they were interested in pain control, joint health, or overall well-being and gave me a topic to start a conversation.

Rather than bringing up nutritional supplements "out of the blue", I would merely follow up with information they had already expressed interest in.