Your new office: less cost, better results

In our last post, we left off with the question of how, in this day and age, with the level of competition that exists for new patients, how can I possibly keep the cost of construction and equipment under $500,000 - $600,000?  

Here, we discuss some methodologies for you to accomplish just that task. Now, by no means do we intend to suggest that you somehow cut corners or have an office that is less than acceptable.  Nor are we suggesting that you have some bleak, stark office that resembles the inside of an asylum.  

Keep in mind that if you start 20 patients per month in a more expensive location, your return on investment and ability to repay is substantially lower than if you spent 40% less on the facility and started 18 patients per month.

Here are some things we’ve seen over the years that help to keep cost under control while allowing to create a professional, inviting environment for patients.

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New office construction: When does "nice" become too nice?

One obvious observation: you want your office to look nice.  Patients want to spend their appointment time in a comfortable, inviting environment.  Not only does this enhance the patient experience, but it also encourages patients to want to come back and refer their friends for appointments.  On top of that, you and your staff spend a lot of your waking hours in that office and for purposes of morale and energy level, you don’t want to walk into a dump every day.  

The overriding question is what constitutes “nice.”  For some that means Herman Miller chairs, fountains and chandeliers in the waiting room and Italian marble wherever you can put it.  For others, that means clean carpets and a minimum of fingerprints on the walls.  The best solution usually lies somewhere in between those two.

A number of practices operate under the notion that “if you build it, they will come.”  That only works in the movies and only if you build a baseball diamond that people can visit for free.  An uber-fancy office does not necessarily mean that patients will flow in.  This is because patients need a reason to come to the office BEFORE they see the fine interior.  It’s not like a retail store where some great signage and buzz is going to generate walk-in traffic.  For most practices outside of malls, walk-in traffic does not exist.

For some evidence of what I am discussing, a story:

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Getting your new patients to show up

As we mentioned in our last post, one key to getting a patient to show up for his or her new patient appointment is to limit the time between the call for the appointment and the actual appointment date.  After 7 days, potential patients begin to get antsy and look elsewhere for a provider of services.  

Sure, in a perfect world, it would be nice to tell every potential new patient, “Hey come on in today.  We’ll see you whenever you get here.”  And if you happen to have a nonpatient hole in your schedule, you should certainly try to get that space filled with an interested consult.  Of course, the world is not perfect and the reality is that you have days that are full of patients eager to see you.  Simply fitting in an appointment as vital and time consuming as a consult just isn’t always doable. 

So what to do.  Here are some potential methods to ease that backlog:

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