VISIONOMICS

Recalling Profit

The price of not maximizing your recall system

Visionomics^®, a series of COPE- and ABO-approved business-building courses, will be held at this year’s International Vision West show. The courses focus on strategies for assessing and maximizing practice profitability. In this series of articles, Eyecare Business—the official trade media partner for Visionomics—will feature some of the program’s speakers. This month, Michael Karlsrud, M.Ed., discusses his course, “Recall the Hidden Cost of Growth.” Karlsrud is the owner Karlsrud Consultancy Services in Minneapolis and recall service K-Calls. What follows is just a small portion of the information he will be sharing.

Michael Karlsrud, M.Ed.

how effective is your recall system? If your practice is like the majority, the true answer would be “I don’t know.” Even if your recall system is attempting to reach every patient, less than 50% of them respond to recall efforts.

Automated recall systems are an important component of an effective strategy. They are not the whole solution. Your practice reach is directly related to how well you have collected email and cell phone information, and how much effort you have made to keep the data up-to-date. The greatest danger to any recall system is that you “set it and forget it.”

The true hidden cost of recall is in lost opportunity of future care. If you lose a patient at age 40 for life, you essentially have lost all future exam, optical sales, and surgical care income that patient could have brought to your practice.

That means a potential loss of about $15,000 to $20,000 over the patient’s lifetime (assuming one exam visit per year). And that’s just one patient. How many patients are not returning to your doors?

Many more than you think.

For more info on Visionomics, go to: visionexpowest.com/Continuing-Education/Highlights/

WHAT’S NOT WORKING

• NO CONSISTENCY. The biggest challenge optometric offices have is that they don’t have a strategy that works. Staff fits recalls into their day when they can, and often don’t make it a priority.

• NO TRACKING. If you don’t know if or how well your system is working, you also don’t know that it’s NOT working.

• MARKETING LOST. A recall system should be looked at as a marketing function, not just an appointment function.

• PATIENTS MISSED. Sometimes patients slip past reception on their way out and aren’t pre-appointed. Or, busy staff may neglect to enter all patients into the system for future recall.

• YOU OPT OUT. In most systems, if the patient has not responded in two years, you opt them out of your system. You give up on them prematurely.

• MISCOMMUNICATION. Not every patient is going to respond to the same recall strategy. For example, seniors typically do not like texts or email messages, but prefer phone calls.

THE FIX

The best system is a combination of human interaction inviting the patient back into the chair and automated systems for reminders. After two years has elapsed without an appointment, there should be a human connection.

If the staff is not up to a full recall commitment (and most do not have the time to do it right), there are plenty of recall services available, mine included. Choose the one that will capture all the areas of your patient base, and deliver numbers that will add to your revenue. Here’s a business-builder fact: it costs a practice five to six times as much to bring in a new patient to the practice as it does to retain an existing one.

Finally, remember that this shouldn’t be all about getting the appointment. It’s about telling your story to your patient and reminding them that they are important to your practice. It’s a long-term investment in the future of your business.

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