1. Offer Saturday morning clinics year-round for young athletes. While many practices already have sports Saturday sports injury clinics open during the fall sports and football seasons, Angie Van Utrecht, director of operations at Orthopedic Specialists in Davenport, Iowa, says successful sports medicine practices should offer these clinics to athletes all year. The Saturday morning clinics can be helpful to athletes beyond football players, such as basketball players and weekend warriors. If these individuals know the clinic is available, they are likely to utilize its services when an injury occurs. As Ms. Van Utrecht points out, “soccer, basketball and volleyball (which are fall sports) have the highest rate of ACL tears.” Cheerleaders and track athletes are also likely to incur injuries during the winter and spring seasons.
2. Create a website and online presence that attracts potential patients. The website should include surgeon profiles stating their credentials and professional affiliations so the patients know their surgeon’s qualifications. If the surgeon has a professional website or Facebook page, the website should link to those locations as well. “We want to link up the site with the doctor’s sites and other key sites so patients can find them easily,” says ill Rabourn, founder and managing principal of Medical Consulting Group. The number of surgeons with personal websites or connected to Facebook has been growing in recent years and patients often seek out these pages to become comfortable with their surgeon before the procedure. “Facebook pages are something that’s relatively new, but we really encourage the physicians to use it,” Mr. Rabourn says. “They don’t have to be the ones who manage their Facebook page, but it’s an important business tool.”
3. Form a relationship with workers’ compensation programs. Practice physicians should be aware of the workers’ compensation programs in their state to best work with employers and case managers to return patients as quickly as possible to work. Physicians and employers can work together to create a return-to-work program for the employee, which keeps the workers’ compensation premium cost down, says Jacksonville (Fla.) Orthopaedic Institute. Having low premiums in workers comp cases is an attractive statistic for payors.
4. Have onsite ancillary services to complete the patient experience. Orthopedic practices should include rehabilitative services in their practice by hiring trained specialists. “Rehab in our practice is a very integral part of the service we deliver,” says Rich Battista, MD, president and physician with OAA Orthopaedic Specialists in Allentown, Pa. “It gives us the competitive advantage in the market place to provide exceptional care in terms of the comprehensive non-operative as well as operative and postoperative care. All the rehabilitation specialists are our employees, which gives them ownership over success in the organization.” Offering ancillary services can also increase practice revenue, says Dr. Battista.
