Your PT Referral Machine membership includes complete management of all 6 physical therapy marketing essentials. Watch our preview video to learn more about the 6 Essentials.
Why do you need a service like PT Referral Machine to run a marketing system for you? Because the days of simple relationship building with doctors are over!
Marketing Physical Therapy In The New Age of Healthcare Consumerism
The consumer-driven mindset is a difficult transition for most physical therapists, but once you experience success, there’s no looking back…
If you roll back the clock thirty or forty years, you will see a referral-driven market for physical therapy services almost completely controlled by physician gatekeepers. This means that all of us grew up in an age where physical therapy was something you did only when your doctor told you to do it. But today is different.
Today, consumers are the gatekeepers, frequently using information technology to self-diagnose, drill down on a professional’s recommendation, or find and select a therapist on their own. In addition, as healthcare costs continue to shift to consumers, they have a growing financial incentive to delay or seek out more conservative treatment options. This all means that the successful physical therapy marketer needs to let go of the traditional emphasis on physicians and shift considerable focus to educating consumers about physical therapy diagnosis and treatment options.
Unlike physician marketing where you can pinpoint and identify a manageable list of target prospects you want to communicate with, consumer marketing requires a different set of skills and expertise. Consumer marketing demands that you go beyond the one-on-one relationship building or “referral” driven strategies that are still emphasized by traditional physical therapy “marketing” training programs.
– No more expensive practice builder or survival strategy training programs that get you no measurable solutions.
– Eliminate multiple marketing vendors (including website and SEO companies) with your PTRM membership.
The New Frontier In Practice Management For Physical Therapists et al
A while back I read an article written by the Senior Editor of Medical Economics, Gail Garfinkel Weiss, titled The New Doctor-Patient Paradigm (June 2008). The article describes how information technology and insurance has fundamentally changed the doctor-patient relationship. She begins,
The Norman Rockwell image of the doctor-patient bond, typified by an all-knowing, paternalistic doctor focusing on an admiring patient, has evolved into something very different. Now it’s a relationship in which patients, empowered by Internet-acquired information and buffeted by frequent changes in insurance coverage, have few qualms about challenging medical advice or moving on to the next physician.
Her article clearly describes a new frontier, a paradigm shift, to consumer-driven healthcare. The problem is that the consumer’s demand for the type of information she refers to is ahead of the industry’s ability to provide it. Hence, her article describes frustrated physicians dealing with information and mis-information brought into the exam room by information-starved patients trying to make good healthcare decisions.
