How to Increase Same-Day Consultation-to-Surgery Conversion
If you're looking to increase same-day consultation-to-surgery conversion, one of the best ways to start is by creating an efficient and organized process. Here are a few tips to help you get started:
Pre-Qualify Leads
When a potential patient is looking to schedule a surgery consultation, your patient care coordinator's job starts immediately. Before a consult is scheduled, your coordinator should have introduced themselves, explained their role in the practice, learned the goals and timeline for surgery, explained the consultation process. They should also have given a realistic price range, with the explanation that this is an estimate based on their conversation and could change based on the surgical plan discussed during the consultation.
A mistake many practices make is not putting the effort ahead of the consultation to help increase same-day consultation-to-surgery conversion.
Increase Interest
Your practice may be booked out for a week or even a few months in advance, but your patient care coordinator's job does not stop once the consultation is scheduled.
As part of the pre-qualifying process, your coordinator should be prepared to credential the practice, you, the surgeon and the procedure. Your coordinator should be able to speak to a few highlights about your background and experience, your specialized consult or surgical approach and have something to send to keep patients interested before coming in for a consultation.
Make sure your coordinator has informational emails or videos to send before the consultation appointment to reinforce your background, approach and financing options to increase interest before the consultation.
Prepare for the Consult
A pre-consultation call should be slightly different than the typical pre-appointment call or reminder. When scheduling a consult, a patient care coordinator should review the entire consultation process with the patient, discuss next steps, answer any questions and communicate that someone will contact them again before the consult.
During the pre-consultation call, your coordinator should make sure nothing has changed since their first conversation and confirm no other information has come up (for example, some patients leave out that they are currently breastfeeding).
Your coordinator should refer back to their notes on the patient's ideal timeline for surgery and let them know how far out surgeries are booked. Remind the patient to bring their calendar with them, so they can work together to secure the best date for surgery.
Be Clear and Direct
A fear of being upfront and direct can prevent some coordinators from meeting their full potential. And ambiguity does not comfort patients or help the surgical booking process.
Suppose a patient says they want a specific day for their surgery, but that day is unavailable. In that case, your coordinator should not wait until after the consultation to let the patient know that day is not available. Before the consultation, there should be open and honest conversations about what dates are and are not available.
Scheduling surgeries and filling your schedules can sometimes be like playing Tetris. Remind your coordinator that your door is always open if they are having trouble finding a date for a specific surgery, so it's your decision on how flexible you want to be and if you're OK with losing potential revenue based on scheduling conflicts.
Looking for extra guidance?
With the PS2 General Consulting package, you can secure dedicated one-on-one time for your Patient Care Coordinator to work with Amanda, our Consulting Manager. They will meet weekly and dig into things like lead tracking, lead follow-up, best practices and help build their sales toolbox to increase same-day consult to surgery conversions.
One-on-one collaboration and training are more likely to positively impact your practice than pre-recorded online trainings with no follow-up or accountability when trying to update your coordinator's daily routine.