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4 Tips to Keep Your Practice Busy this Summer

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4 Tips for Keeping Your Cosmetic Practice Busy During the Summer Months 

Nearly every plastic surgery practice and medspa experiences downtime in the summer. As travel restrictions from Covid-19 continue to lift, people are getting back to making summer travel plans and spending more time outdoors with friends and family. Cosmetic practices are sure to notice changes to their appointment books and possibly a much lighter schedule from June to mid-August. While that can be an unsettling thought for small businesses, we encourage you to make a detailed evaluation of the steps you may or may not be taking to keep your appointment books full and implement these 5 tips to keep your business busy during the summer months.  

You've probably heard the 80/20 rule: 80% of your business will come from 20% of your existing patients. Are you incentivizing your patients to continue to be loyal to you?  

Start A Patient Loyalty Program

You’ve probably heard the 80/20 rule: 80% of your business will come from 20% of your existing patients. Are you incentivizing your patients to continue to be loyal to you?  
What’s keeping your current customers from trying another practice or medspa down the street that’s offering a slightly better Botox deal on Instagram? 
Here’s the good news: We are living in the age of digital. Before HIPPA-compliant digital charting software and encrypted text messaging, starting a patient loyalty program meant excel spreadsheets or buy 5, get 1 free card (you remember these from Subway and Blockbuster?) Technology now exists that enables you to incentivize your patients to keep coming back to you. 
Studies on customer satisfaction report that 54% of consumers say that they would consider doing more business with a company for loyalty rewards.

  • Your electronic medical records and point of sale system keep records of patient treatments and transactions and provide the foundations for what can become a robust patient rewards program. Symplast EMR software includes a Point-of-Sale system to eliminate the headache and integration issues for a seamless experience for plastic surgery and medspa businesses.

Follow Up with Those One-Time Treatment Patients 

Do you have a lengthy list of patients who visited your business one time, only never to return? What is your practice strategy for follow-ups on initial appointments and cosmetic procedures? 
Consider 1-to-1 text and video messaging follow-ups as a standard protocol for new and existing patients. Ask them meaningful questions that show that you’re invested in giving them the best results and experience: 

  • courtesy check and follow up on specific concerns with pics and video 
  • digital copies of post-care and recovery tips
  • product recommendations with links to online POS 
  • gentle appointment and cancellation policy reminders

Utilize your EHR to create custom reports for your one-time patients and their treatment history and prepare a customized offer to woo them back into your cosmetic practice for additional therapies.  
Symplast technology helps you build a relationship with your patients over a secure digital platform.  We do this by providing your team with a HIPAA-compliant video and text messaging capability so that your team can craft unique messaging for individual patients. 

Launch A Patient Referral Program

Bringing in new customers can cost up to 16 times as much as retaining existing customers, but if your existing patients are happy, why not ask for referrals? Word-of-mouth referrals are the strongest type of marketing that an organization can have.  
Give your happy patients a reason to tell others just how wonderful you are and give them an effortless way to do it.

Educate Your Patients 

Providing value for your patients is a win-win. It gives your new and existing customers much-needed education to feel empowered about the products and services you offer while credentialing you as a helpful expert. Drive education about the therapy, address cosmetic trends and debunk myths about plastic surgery procedures.

  • Use email marketing to create educational content. Symplast to pull a report on your services with low revenue generation and procedure inquiries might indicate that your audience needs more information. 
  • Evaluate your low-cost services and offer a compelling monthly special for single and multi-service treatments directly to your patients through Symplast’s Patient App. 
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Getting started with these tips will help you and your team think outside of the box on how to use your practice data and technology to attract, interest, convert and delight new and existing patients. 

4 Tips for Preventing Burnout in Your Practice

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4 Tips for Preventing Workplace Burnout

Burnout is a condition that occurs when you feel emotionally exhausted and disconnected from your job. You’re unable to perform your job well, and finding the energy to complete even your most daily, repetitive tasks can drain what little energy reserves remain. But what are the causes and signs you can look for to stop workplace burnout before it starts? We’re reviewing the signs of workplace burnout and sharing 4 tips for preventing burnout in your practice.

Doctor experiencing burnout sitting at desk showing stress with their hands on their face

Practices with engaged employees are 78% more profitable and 40% more productive. With support from management and collaboration with your team, your practice can resolve stressors leading to burnout.  

Causes & Signs of Burnout

We live in a society where the lines have blurred between the work day and personal time, and keeping dedicated time to unplug from work is becoming more of a challenge with each passing year. In fact, the most common causes of workplace burnout are work overload, pressure, lack of feedback and support from management, and more. Burnout can lead to emotional and physical withdrawl from work and may manifest in some of the following ways:

• having a negative and critical attitude at work
•  dreading going into work, and wanting to leave once you’re there
• trouble sleeping
• being absent from work
• feelings of mental exhaustion and depression & anxiety
• signs physical exhaustion and frequent illness
• losing your cool with your boss, coworkers, and patients

Prevent Workplace Burnout Before It Starts 

When symptoms of job burnout start to occur, most people bandaid their problems rather than creating strategies to prevent and alleviate the symptoms associated with burnout. We want you to move beyond surviving work to thriving at work. These 4 tips will help you reduce your risk of emotional exhaustion and burnout 

Review Your Job Role and Responsibilities 

Work overload day in and day out can feel as though you’re climbing uphill with no end in sight. Performing a job analysis will help you clarify your role and job responsibilities, so that you can identify tasks and projects that need to be removed from your to-do list and delegated to others. 
Schedule a meeting with your boss or team to review your workload. Bring solutions for shifting certain tasks to other employees, and simplifying practice processes by creating workflows. Together, you can troubleshoot ways to prevent burnout. It might be that you need to hire more help in the office to handle day-to-day tasks.

Create An Organized Work Culture

Creating an organized work culture is probably the most important step that will enable you to leave work at work at the end of the day. Whether at home or in the office, create a familiar and inviting workspace where you can focus on work without any interruptions. Keeping a calendar and other online productivity tools can help you allocate time to focus on deadlines so you don’t get overwhelmed and can pick up where you left off next business day.

Orange background with Symplast EHR technology for plastic surgeons and medical spas. Call to action stating: Take a look at how Symplast can help you beat workplace burnout!

Leverage Technology To Do The Work For You 

In some cases, having the right technology in place can help your team work and communicate more efficiently, and prevent you from having to hire more hands, especially when money and resources are tight. Intuitive technology can eliminate the frustration that comes with missing patient charts, prescriptions, and endless “tag, you’re it” communication with patients. Don’t be afraid to ask questions like, “could a patient app eliminate patient miscommunication, treatment errors, and streamline scheduling so that I can focus on other projects?” Rather than running revenue pivot tables in Excel for your boss, consider creating dashboards that show high-level data on Revenue, Profit, and ROI.

Make Time To Have A Fulfilling Personal Life 

With all that you’re responsible for it can be hard to do, but holding yourself accountable for implementing work life balance is essential to avoiding burnout. We recommend you pick a consistent end time to your business day so that you avoid working nights or weekends. Silence your email and text notifications from work, and limit your daily intake of news and social media altogether. When getting started, have a loved one help you keep you unplugged from work and focused on resting and living life by your own design. 

Bring Balance Back to Your Work and Personal Life

Practices with engaged employees are 78% more profitable and 40% more productive. With support from management and collaboration with your tram, your practice can resolve stressors leading to burnout. 

Let Us Help You Beat Burnout 

Tune in as Christy Perry, our Senior Customer Success Liaison with over 30 years in medical aesthetics, reviews her strategies for beating burnout and how Symplast EHR technology helped Dr. Jennifer Walden optimize her practice needs. 

Avoiding Burnout

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