Believe it or not, 2009 is nearly over. Before you know it, the challenges of keeping a full schedule around Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays will be here. Instead of looking toward the end of the year and a potentially sluggish schedule with dread, be proactive and make this the best end of your year ever!
Obviously, for many of our chiropractic patients, the economy has taken its toll. Even patients who routinely come in for maintenance care in the past may have put off their regularly scheduled visits or other chiropractic care that they perceived wasn’t absolutely necessary.
Say what you will about the economic forecast, your patients are still very focused on spending needs rather than spending wants. That puts you in an excellent position to remind these patients, who may have put off needed chiropractic care, that in just a couple of months they will lose any unused insurance benefits for 2009. In other words, they may as well flush all those premium payments down the toilet!
It’s no secret that insurance companies make millions billions on patients who do not realize that their plans provide chiropractic coverage up to a certain dollar amount or visit limit annually. But insurance companies certainly aren’t going to remind patients about this, and most patients are too busy to sift through their policies to determine what might remain on them.
Being the smarter than the average bear chiropractor that you are (after all, you are reading my article!), seize this opportunity to send patients a letter notifying them of their unused benefits! The first of October is nearly here and this is the ideal time to begin contacting patients about benefits that will expire at the end of the year. It gives both the patients and your practice plenty of time to get the appointment scheduled and any necessary follow-up treatment taken care of before the busy holiday rush kicks in.
To supercharge your efforts, follow up with emails, text messages and/or voice broadcasting to alert the patient that the practice is sending information about their chiropractic insurance coverage and to please watch their mailbox, inbox or voicemail for details. Or, if you would like to save on postage, send the letter via email and alert patients with a text message.
Incidentally, if your office is not using email, text or voice broadcasting services, you are wasting a lot of time and money doing things the old fashioned way. Consider using a bulk emailing service (if you have hundreds of emails, use iContact; thousands, Contstant Contact may be a better deal) for sending email newsletters. Or look to your EMR system (many of which offer voice or message broadcasting).
No matter how you slice it, Patients appreciate the fact that their chiropractic office would take the time to inform them of their unused benefit. They don’t like wasting money any more than you do, so help them out and help out your own bottom line as well!
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