4 Ways to Deliver a World-Class Experience to Your Members
Why do travelers choose to stay at Ritz-Carlton hotels instead of Motel 6 when they vacation?
Either way, they get a room for the night and access to the sights. So why would they shell out for such an expensive stay?
The answer is in the experience.
At Ritz-Carlton hotels, travelers get luxurious rooms, supercharged amenities, and world-class service. They get the chance to enjoy not just the sightseeing but every aspect of their stay — from when they wake up in the morning to when their head hits the pillow after a long day.
Now, I’m not advertising for the Ritz. But I want to point out that they’re a wildly successful, multinational company whose hotels people choose for a reason.
Hotels aren’t exactly a new product; the industry has been around forever. But Ritz-Carlton did something new, something different with their facilities. And every year millions of people decide to pay a premium to stay in these hotels.
Similarly, even in the long-established medical industry, concierge and DPC medical practices can offer something new and revolutionary to patients who are tired of the “Motel 6 experience” offered in traditional health care.
Different Is Better
Concierge and DPC practices offer patients something different from what they’re used to receiving in traditional health care — an excellent patient experience.
Our world exists at the intersection of consumerism and health care. This is the place where patients are voting with their pocketbooks rather than with insurance dollars they never feel leaving their bank accounts. So they have to feel like they’re getting their money’s worth.
Consumers want better — better service, better attention to detail, better overall care — but they also want different. Traditional practices have operated in the same way for so long that any whiff of that system (including industrial cleaning smells) will send many patients packing. They don’t want traditional service dressed up with a nicer lobby. They want something different, because they know the traditional experience is broken.
Patients are willing to pay membership fees for physicians who are willing to get to know them, to take time with them, and to really care about their concerns. Concierge physicians may end up prescribing patients the exact same medication as a traditional provider would, but they know this particular patient has trouble swallowing pills, or can’t take their diuretic at work. They treat patients like people first and build relationships with them.
This is what sets concierge and DPC practices apart from traditional health care. They go the extra mile, and it shows consumers that they’re well worth the expense.
How To Differentiate Your Practice From Traditional Health Care
Successful private physicians — including those in the ROAMD network — realize the need to show patients that their practices are truly different, that they genuinely care for and want to build real relationships with their patients.
Practices are unique, so these differences manifest in unique ways. Broadly, though, the biggest differences from traditional health care fall into four main categories: communication, privacy, understanding, and anticipation. Together, they add up to the reason why patients choose concierge medicine over traditional practices: world-class service.
Communication
One huge area in which private physicians can differentiate themselves from traditional medicine and provide world-class service is communication.
Time is one of the most important assets anyone has. Straightforward, clear, timely communication shows a respect for the patient’s time not often seen in medicine.
In the traditional model, practices typically ask a patient to sit in a waiting room for at least half an hour to come in for a 20-minute visit that took three months to get on the calendar. This is not valuing a patient’s time.
In light of what they’re used to, any attention to the value of a patient’s time will speak volumes about your level of investment in them.
A way to do this through communication is to make sure you’re giving patients just the information they need… in the way they prefer to consume it… and at the time it’s most important to them.
In other words, your communication with patients is customized to their individual needs and preferences. It’s bespoke. Rather than forcing them to conform to your style of communication, you adapt to theirs.
For example, after a patient comes in for their annual exam, how do you follow up with them to communicate their laboratory and diagnostic results? In a traditional practice, every patient gets the same thing. Maybe they have to schedule another appointment to hear their results, or maybe they have to download an app where they can see a list of abbreviations and values they don’t understand. Whatever the approach, it won’t meet every patient’s need.
In concierge medicine, however, you have the freedom and ability to get to know your patients and find out what methods of communication work best for them.
Maybe one patient prefers a simple, one-page summary of results emailed to them after their exam. Another patient might need their results rolled out to them in a stepwise fashion accompanied by specific recommendations over the next four weeks.
Attention to their preferences, the value of their time, and what meets their needs as individuals will foster strong relationships with your members and show them the worth of your services.
Privacy
Privacy can be another huge area of difference between concierge and traditional medicine. When you’re strategic and intentional about protecting your patients’ privacy, they recognize and appreciate your respect for them.
The good news is that going the extra mile in this area doesn’t mean blacking out windows or installing soundproof walls. All it requires is a little extra attention to your scheduling.
For example, many patients lead very public lives, and they prefer to keep their personal lives — especially as relates to their health — as private as possible. To honor those boundaries, you can consider how to construct your day and your processes to show your patients the ultimate respect.
To avoid patient overlap, you could build 15-minute windows into your schedule after appointments. That way any high-profile patient has time to leave both your office and the parking area before the next patient arrives.
Carefully managing your schedule is probably the easiest and least expensive way you can be intentional about protecting patient privacy. But if you have the flexibility, you can also consider offering private parking, designating a separate entrance and exit, or ensuring private office access (versus a shared building entrance). Some ROAMD physicians even offer house calls so the patient never has to come in at all.
Understanding
In traditional medicine, patients often feel viewed as a collection of symptoms rather than as a human being. When their doctor finally enters the room for the scheduled appointment, they already have their hand on the doorknob, ready to rush to the next patient.
“What’s the symptom? Take two of these. Don’t call me in the morning.”
This kind of hand-on-the-door medicine precludes getting to know patients as people, and it’s one of the biggest reasons patients flee traditional medical practices.
Concierge medicine, on the other hand, is relationship-based medicine. This stands out to patients like a lighthouse in a storm.
Concierge physicians aim to develop a deep understanding of patients as people on every possible level — personal, professional, spiritual, recreational, etc. While they have to strike a balance here between prying and getting the full picture, the time they take to really understand the full spectrum of what’s going on in a patient’s life pays off in a greater ability to accurately determine what the patient needs.
For example, say a man goes into a traditional practice with back pain. They don’t find anything obviously wrong, so they just prescribe him an opioid for the pain and send him on his way.
Now, say that same man goes into a concierge practice. Sure, the physician does some diagnostic work-up, but they also spend time getting to know the man. They find out that this man’s work life is terrible, his marriage is falling apart, and he’s not sleeping. Eventually, they determine that his back pain is psychosomatic and that — much more than an opioid — he needs marriage counseling and a recruiter to find him a new job.
By diving deep, you’re able to connect all the dots and identify many factors that could be contributing to a patient’s condition. Instead of approaching symptoms in isolation, you reach more accurate diagnoses by approaching the person as a whole.
Achieving a deep understanding of people is the foundation of the relationship private physicians aim to develop with their patients. Patients can’t get this kind of experience in occasional 15-minute visits at a traditional practice. So they seek out a physician who is willing to get to know them as a person to meet their health care needs.
Anticipation
Another way to provide a world-class patient experience is by anticipating patient needs.
When you really understand your patient, you can anticipate their upcoming needs and help them to proactively care for their health. For example, maybe you have a patient who has a stressful presentation coming up during a work trip, and needs a couple of good nights of sleep beforehand. You could provide them a sleep kit with earplugs, a sleep mask, and chamomile tea.
Or, maybe you have a patient who goes out of state to see family for the holidays and always has trouble with their allergies. You could prepare a med pack to send with them, including some Claritin or the medication you know they respond to best.
These patients aren’t likely to ask you about earplugs or Claritin ahead of time, but because you know them and their circumstances, you’re able to provide for a need they haven’t even thought of yet.
Some other ways to anticipate needs are more about taking forethought to show hospitality to patients while they’re in your office.
For example, if you have a patient coming in who you know will have to strip down for an exam, why not make sure the room is a little warmer than usual? You could even provide slippers so they don’t have to stand on the cold floor in their bare feet. And if you really want to make the patient feel like an honored guest (versus a heap of discomfort and nerves), you could dispense with the typical hospital gown and provide them with a branded, terry cloth robe instead.
Again, patients aren’t going to ask for these things. But you have the ability to anticipate what will make the difference between a mediocre experience and an exceptional one.
This means the world to patients, especially in situations that tend to be embarrassing or uncomfortable. It shows patients that you understand them at a deep level and that you’re there as an advocate for them in whatever they’ll face next.
Conclusion
Concierge physicians and more traditional provider all have access to roughly the same types of medications, tests, and specialists. The difference is in taking the time to get to know patients, to develop relationships with them, and then going the extra mile to get to the right answers for them. It’s in delivering care to patients in an environment and manner that feels like you actually value them.
Every successful private physician takes this seriously.
There’s not one successful private physician that doesn’t look at the relationship they have with their patients as absolutely paramount. All the aspects of a world-class patient experience we’ve discussed here are just the means and the product of building the relationship you have with your patients.
That is what keeps them coming back to you.
Dr. Scott Pope serves as the Chief Growth Officer at In Scope Ventures, a growth consulting firm focused on early stage healthcare companies. Scott is passionate about healthcare entrepreneurship and has been involved in various advocacy efforts to promote innovation in the industry.
Scott earned his PharmD from Ohio Northern University, where he participated in Habitat for Humanity, Phi Mu Delta, Order of Omega, and NCAA basketball. After graduating from ONU, Scott completed a pharmacy residency at Cone Health, followed by a specialty residency in infectious diseases, internal medicine, and academics at Campbell University and Duke University Medical Center.
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