The multi-specialty practice: the marketing

One of the main considerations when building a multi-specialty practice is effectively marketing to let potential patients know that you offer different specialties.  This is especially challenging if you have established a reputation as a practice with one particular specialty and now need to recreate that brand to encompass broader offerings.  It’s not totally unlike James Gandolfini attempting to show the world that he’s more than just Tony Soprano.

In addition to that, an oft overlooked part of switch to a multi-specialty practice is what happens during consultations themselves.  Here’s a very typical scenario: A patient needs an implant and schedules a consultation with the implant doctor working in your office.  This patient also happens to need orthodontic treatment.  Will the implantologist notice that the patient needs orthodontic treatment?  If so, will that doctor have the presence and incentive to refer that patient to the orthodontist in the office?

Here, we’ll address both of those topics.  First to the practice marketing side:

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Practice marketing

In quite a number of cases, a practice adds specialties and then markets itself as the “one-stop shop for all of your dental-related needs.”  Great.  First, what does that do to differentiate yourself from the 20 other multispecialty practices in your market.  And exactly what am I getting in a one-stop shop?  What do you do exactly?  Here is what you should do to distinguish yourself from the pack:

• Stick to your strengths – If you had a single specialty practice that attracted patients via price promotions, apply that to all of the specialties in your practice.  If the message revolved around convenience or experience, make sure that applies across all of your specialties.  You are not trying to be a patient factory.  You stand for something and have a particular attraction to a certain type of patient.  That should continue.

• Lose the limiting terms – If your practice name is Kardashian Orthodontics, you will have a difficult time properly promoting your endodontist under that name.  You might want to consider a name change to something like Kardashian Orthodontic and Dental Group or something like that to include a reference to the original name, but also reflecting the inclusion of new services.  Yes, there may be some issues due to the rebranding, but long term, it will produce greater benefits and less confusion.

• Selectively promote specifics – If you have yourself, plus 5 other specialties to promote, trying to include everything you want to say with every specialty will be quite a mouthful.  If you run price promotions, trying to offer a deal on every procedure in every ad will be way too cluttered and meaningless.  Here, you should tailor various ads to hit specific areas.  For this period, we may be pitching orthodontics for $99 per month and crown and bridge for 20% off.  Next period, we may want to talk about what we can do for implant patients and so forth.  Each period can be a couple of weeks to a month depending on how strongly you want to promote.  This is where a strong social media strategy comes into play.  The flexibility and low cost nature of the field enables you to send different messages at different times.  Some practice owners have said, “Just get them to the website and we’ll lay out all the specifics there.”  Nice, but if you can’t get patients to the website in the first place with a specific eye-catcher, they’ll never get to the website in the first place.

During the consultation

Note the scenario at the beginning of this section.  Again, we’re not talking about trying to upsell the patient to add treatment that he or she may not necessarily need.  We’re talking about having your practice be the one to treat the patients IF that patient needs treatment.  Why let them walk out the door.

How should you ensure that your practice becomes the one and only practice for a particular patient when he or she needs treatment other than the original treatment sought?  Here are some strategies:

• Funnel through the experienced owner – We have one practice with a very experienced, highly skilled orthodontist.  ALL consultation patients for the practice see him first.  If the patient called about a potential perio case, they see that orthodontist first.  Dental extraction case? See the orthodontist.  This doctor will do a thorough consultation and if a patient needs service from different specialties – and is agreeable to the treatment – he will direct his team to make appointments with the appropriate specialists.  Of course, he will handle the actual orthodontic treatment, but other treatment is handled by the specialists.  Here, there is one doctor with an interest in the overall success of the practice trying to ensure that necessary treatment of all kinds is handled within the practice.  This has proven to be very effective both because patients get a clear view of their full dental situation during a single consultation and because the specialists, who are tied only to their own procedures financially, can focus just on performing their own tasks.  In any event, if the specialist determines that the patient does not need the prescribed treatment, he or she is free to adjust as necessary.

• Review cases after the consultation – In this situation, the patient first sees the particular specialist relating to the case the patient originally noted.  The doctor notes potential conditions in the software system.  When the other specialists receive notification, they can elect to see the patient that day or set up a visit at a later date.

• Note the synergy of all the doctors in the practice – In a number of cases, the issues boil down to direct incentives.  The pediatric dentist is compensated based on the procedures he performs.  In a lot of cases, that dentist doesn’t make an additional dime if that patient also sees an orthodontist for treatment.  So, the direct financial incentive to potentially refer to the orthodontist isn’t there.  A lot state rules prevent direct compensation of specialists for referrals and we all want to keep things legal.  As such, the best path is to note that if Doctor A refers to Doctor B, he increases his potential to get referrals back from Doctor B.  Otherwise, Doctor B may simply ignore Doctor A, even though everyone is in the same office.  Nothing obligates the patient to stay with you for all of his or her treatments so you want the doctors to help you create an environment that encourages proper referrals and creating a pleasant environment for patients.

• Use quality information – Not surprisingly, good data lies at the heart of all of this.  If your information shows that your endodontist has referred 17 patients to your periodontist while your periodontist has referred 0 patients in the other direction, you may have an issue.  Maybe it is all perfectly explainable by the needs of the particular patients, but results like that bear further investigation.

Of course, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to let us know.  We are more than happy to discuss this concept with you in depth and help you get your multi-specialty practice up and running.  As usual, the cost to discuss in depth and get some guidance through the process has a cost ranging from free to $0.