Please provide the following information
to download the Seven Key Indices Cosmetic Surgery Marketing with MediSpa1 by Greg Washington.
Abridged text from MediSpaexpo presentation on February
2, 2004*, Los Angeles
…a recent situation with a new recent
client who hired us after opening up a MediSpa only to discover that he was
losing big money promoting new MediSpa or medical spa venture. Before getting PUMC involved, this client
made a series of bad business and promotional management decisions leading up to the opening of his
MediSpa. He didn't have a marketing plan, he didn't have a strategy and he
opened the MediSpa because he was looking for a way to create supplemental
income for his cosmetic surgery practice and was caught by the buzz of the
MediSpa movement.
This
client reasoned that if he employed a combination of a day spa labor force
outside of his medical practice’s labor pool and some of the technology, like
massage through Endomology and a hair removal laser, that he would achieve his
money making expectations. He
quickly discovered that running and operating a day spa business was
significantly different than operating his cosmetic surgery practice.
This
client was on the right track in bringing in some of the most modern
technologies. However, he overlooked some of the essential operational issues.
The most important of which was he had entered a business that required
practical knowledge of merchandising, marketing and sales. He did not have a
correct orientation and did not understand that his competition wasn't another
cosmetic surgeon with the same equipment or even a day spa or medical spa down
the street. Instead, his real
competition was the automobile dealership, the Carpentaria, home computer sales,
home additions and other outlets competing for the same discretionary income
required for cosmetic surgery.
Let‘s
examine the amount of money that can be made when you are operating a true
MediSpa within a medical practice. Notice
that as much as one million dollars of income can be generated by a typical
cosmetic surgery specialist properly operating and promoting a MediSpa.
Obviously, physician extenders, in addition to the surgeon’s efforts,
are generating this income. In some parts of the country, physician extenders are not
allowed to operate lasers and light sources. Therefore, the doctor is required
to operate these devices and will work harder. However this effort still pays
significant dividends when the technology is selected carefully.
There is the opportunity to generate additional income through
merchandising all of medical based cosmetic surgery products that are dispensed
by the practice.
The
question is, "How much money do you want your practice to make?
Let's examine Index One of the Seven Indices. Index One is the volume of
consultations. It is really impossible to generate volumes of surgery or,
for that matter, highly priced medical procedures if you're not doing a
significant volume of consultations. Clearly,
you are not able to hit home runs if you are not "up to bat." If you
happen to be a non-surgeon, then the total number of consultations and
procedures that you perform is going to be greater than the number being
presented. You're going to be required to generate 40 plus consultations per
month and/or to generate that number of medical procedures to obtain the revenue
that has been presented to be in the $1.8 to $2.5 million range. An important
question has just been asked: “What’s the story on having a paid-for
consultation to increase your volume?” My
reaction based on PUMC’s experience is free consultations don't contribute to
increasing the volume of major procedures as they are actually ineffective
because free consultations fail to qualify a patient as a candidate for a
serious medical or surgical procedure. Keep
in mind that when the patient pays for consultation, he or she has pre-qualified
himself or herself as being interested in having more significant procedure (s).
However, if you are compelled to perform free consultations, you must
prepare to have a significantly higher volume of all consultations coming into
your front door to be handled correctly. Be
prepared to work yourself and your staff harder and to be disappointed when you
have not closed a satisfying rate of consultations into major procedures. The
amount of money presented and the number of procedures performed are based on
the patient paying for the consultation. The
important thing to note here is that the patient consultation volume presented
in the example is manageable within a reasonable floor space.
On
the other hand, one of the more creative and innovative ways of enhancing your
consultation volume is through creative use of managing the database that is
created from e-mail sent into your Web site from the practice and the medical
spa. Every e-mail that comes in through your Web site should be entered into a
database that can be added to your marketing information system. Here is where
your practice manager
gets busy! At any given
time during the year you could execute a patient approved and HIPAA approved
e-mailing or snail mailing to your patients. Bear in mind that people that
called in for consultations who are not your patients will not require a HIPAA
approval to communicate with. However,
those people who have communicated that are patients will require a HIPAA
approval. You can begin to see that
you need precision tools to manage patient information. Your computer system is
going to determine how successful you are at promoting and marketing to this population of
prospects.
Let’s
look at a chart that illustrates a natural situation for a MediSpa.
The predominant sources all of consultations for major procedures outside
of the practice are the spa and Internet and existing patients. Yet also notice
that the majority of overall new consults in this case come from existing
patients of record and this is consistent with our experience with most cosmetic
surgery practices that are generating $2-$3,000,000 a year. We know that Yellow
Pages is going to produce anywhere from 17 to 25%. The Yellow
Pages advisors and consultants working for the Yellow Pages and Yellow Books
will possibly present more robust numbers. The Internet will produce is anywhere from 12 to 22% of all the
patients coming to the practice. What is most interesting is that the Internet
is becoming the most productive promotional device for promoting cosmetic
surgery. We are projecting that in
2005 the Internet will out perform Yellow Pages in volume of new consultations
as well as on a cost-for-result basis. Electronic
and print media plans will
be required to be designed around an Internet strategy to be cost effective.
The
question has been asked, “How many patients should you expect to be referred
from the MediSpa?” This again is a great question. The answer is the referrals should be flowing both ways.
Patients should be referred to the MediSpa for services to maintain a
"club" relationship with them. At
the same time there should be measurable flow of new patients coming from the
MediSpa…
To
Listen to the complete recording of this presentation click MediSpa
Presentation audio Track
*Correction of a previously posted wrong date.
1 Also known as medical
spa, medical spas and medi spa including a franchise but not to be confused with
Day Spa
Copyright
PUMC 2004
