MARKETING

Lead patients to your door

Attracting new patients and retaining established ones takes planning and imagination. At least one of the ideas detailed here could be right for you.

By Gail Garfinkel Weiss
Senior Editor

Several years ago, Denver internist Judy Paley wrote a letter to "Dear Abby." She was responding to advice the columnist had given to a woman who said she couldn't make or keep friends because she was a crashingly dull conversationalist.

"Abby recommended that Miss Boring take classes to develop some interests so she'd have something to say," Paley remembers. "I suggested to Abby that Ms. B. might be depressed, and once she was successfully treated, she'd be more outgoing and fun to be with. I used my own name and city. After the letter ran, I got calls from 'conversationally challenged' patients all over the US and wound up seeing a number of them. That experience proved to me that every time you get your name in the newspaper, patients will flock to your door."

It also represents thinking outside the box in the tricky milieu of practice building. Self-promotion is something that many physicians find distasteful, but you're probably already doing some basic marketing—sponsoring a Little League team, say, or building a referral network by taking colleagues to dinner. So why not go a step further and look for other ways to help patients find you?

You may not want to go as far as Ira M. Rutkow and Alan W. Robbins, general surgeons in Freehold, NJ. They started The Hernia Center in 1984 with a saturation promotional campaign that included billboards, television ads, and an easy-to-recall phone number, 1-800-HERNIAS. But even little touches can go a long way toward attracting patients. At internist Eugene Ogrod's large group practice in Sacramento, the doctors appear at health fairs, one of the internists gives medical advice on a local TV station, and an orthopedist counsels cycling teams.

Even that old standby, Yellow Pages advertising, has lesser-known options you can use to your advantage. Judy Paley bought an ad in the Gay & Lesbian Yellow Pages. That ad, she says, "identified us as accessible and nonjudgmental to a community that's very careful in picking health care providers."