Lecture 5.5 - Follow-up

Imagine having a standardized system that includes post-injection calls, interval follow-ups, and clinic visits at strategic time points. This isn't just about addressing issues promptly; it's about collecting valuable data!
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Transcript

Intro
Hey, I'm Dr. Ariana DeMers. I'm an orthopedic sports medicine surgeon, and I have successfully integrated orthobiologics into my busy practice so that I can provide a continuum of care and treat patients who are in the gap. The gap is this gray area in orthopedics where standard conservative treatments have not been effective, but surgery may not be warranted. And we usually tell our patients, come back when it's worse. What? These are your patients coming to you for help. Orthobiologics is that solution that can fill the gap and help you treat your patients who are in your office looking to you for help. Orthobiologics can also be an excellent treatment for frustrating problems without good surgical outcomes. This podcast will help you create the orthobiologics business that will make you love your job again. We will focus on value of orthobiologics, patient selection, how to talk to your patients about money, office setup, and other logistics. If this is something you've always wanted but don't know where to start, join me in "The Business of Orthobiologics" podcast.

Dr. Ariana
Welcome to our final lecture on our orthobiologics implementation series. Today, we'll be focusing on post-procedure follow-up and data collection, which is essential for evaluating the success of orthobiologics procedures and improving your practice. Now that you've successfully integrated orthobiologics into practice, it's time to explore the possibilities for growth and scaling. Let's start by discussing the importance of post-procedure follow-up. I want to make sure that you develop a standardized follow-up protocol to monitor your patient's progress and recovery. I'm going to recommend that you continue to follow your patients post-injection and have them follow up for interval follow-ups. My recommendation and what we do in our practice is we call them the day after the procedure as well as the week after the procedure. And then we see them in clinic at the eight-week mark, at the four-month mark, and at the six-month mark. Really just making sure that this is allowing for promptly addressing any issues or complications that might arise, as well as just tracking. This also helps to collect data. We have a data collection tool that is electronic and this collects data, both patient-reported outcomes as well as physical exam outcomes at select data collection points such as six-week, three-month, six-month, one-year, two-year, and five-year. And this helps us follow our outcomes and make changes in our protocols. If you develop a data collection system and schedule the patient-reported outcomes as well as physical exams, this will help you to identify areas of improvement as well as areas where you are doing well. This data-driven insight can help guide practice improvement, and you can identify areas of enhancement and adjust based on the data that you collect. This will also help you be really clear and have a lot of confidence in talking to your patients based on your data and what you can provide for your patients. It's really important in the field of orthobiologics that we cultivate a culture of continuous improvement both in your practice but in the field at large. We really need to continue to collect patient data to improve what we know and also guide our knowledge in the field. I'm going to recommend establishing a post-procedure follow-up protocol and consistently adhering to it. Implement a data collection system, whether it's a commercial data collection system, a pen and paper, or just an Excel spreadsheet. Make sure you schedule data collection and gather relevant patient-reported outcomes. Then schedule a time to analyze your data collection to drive your practice improvement. I'm going to recommend that you evaluate your outcomes every quarter to drive your practice improvement and continue to get better over time. So we know when we've gone over these data collection and post-procedure follow-up templates in Module 4. You can also look at the website "databiologics.com", which is a commercial data collection agency specifically for orthobiologic procedures. So the other thing that I want to talk about is ongoing practice optimization. Obviously, we're going to collect data and analyze patient data, not only procedures, but we also want to identify trends and insights for practice improvement as to who comes to our practice, and who says yes to our offers, and then we can adapt based on these results. We also want to evaluate patient experience and satisfaction. Maintaining high levels of patient satisfaction is really important for having continued recommendations and gathering these patient testimonials and referrals. Patient testimonials are so important or a social proof that this is an effective treatment and happy patients will happily refer friends and family to you. This helps with expanding the orthobiologics patient base and helping more patients get better without surgery, without pain medications, and improving this really important technique. Next, I'm going to recommend community engagement. Engaging with the local community to build your trust and recognition, hosting educational seminars or events, and contributing to the orthobiologics field with research and education are going to be really important for optimizing your ongoing practice and really helping the field expand and move forward as a whole. If you are ready to scale your orthobiologic practice, you want to explore those opportunities for growth, including adding new treatment options such as cellular therapy and bone marrow concentrate or adipose. You may want to expand additional locations to help spread the word and allow an additional population to have access to these treatments. You can collaborate with other health care providers for broader service offerings such as a functional medicine physician or hormone replacement therapy. Bio-identical hormone replacement therapy may be another opportunity to help enhance your patient's well-being and health. I'm going to recommend Action Items: Continue data collection and analysis, focus on your patient experience, and satisfaction, explore community engagement opportunities, and develop a growth strategy and growth mindset. Growth and scale, key points. We really do want to evaluate the success of your orthobiologics implementation and assess the impact on patient care and practice revenue. Why did we add this in the first place? We want happier patients, happier doctors, and we want to improve our revenue. You know, our reimbursement is not going up, and this can help to increase your patient satisfaction, well-being, and health. So if you want to explore opportunities for expansion, that would be super helpful, collaboration and networking. There are a lot of benefits of collaboration with other healthcare providers such as chiropractors, health coaches, and nutrition coaches, that you can enhance both your practice as well as their practice. And this is a nice symbiosis and collaboration that helps patients get better. This is one of those strategies for building referral networks and partnerships within the medical community. A rising tide raises all boats. So, using community engagement and education will help with recognition. Then develop an effective marketing strategy to expand your orthobiologic procedures and services, and it'll also enhance your online reputation and presence. So, you can then leverage your patient testimonials and success stories for credibility. Lastly, we're going to emphasize the importance of ongoing education and skill development. This is not a one-and-done. This is a very quickly evolving field, and I'm going to recommend that you try really hard to stay up on the newest, latest, greatest findings because we are growing by leaps and bounds. This field is so exciting and so interesting. It really is one of these fields that we're out in front of right now. Make sure that you stay up to date in the field of orthobiologics. Because you're out in front, I'm going to encourage you to become recognized experts in the field. Your items for action are to evaluate the success of your integration in your practice and determine the readiness for expansion. Some indications of needing to expand is if you are consistently achieving 100K per month in cash sales. That is an indication that you have the systems and infrastructure to be able to expand. Another indication that you may need to add employees or practitioners is if you are too busy or full or booked out with orthobiologic cash-based patients. Now, this could also be an indication that you should consider raising your prices or both. Make sure to explore your opportunities for growth and development, develop a growth and scaling plan, and then continuously invest in learning and skill development to stay at the forefront of this very exciting field. For resources, for marketing and guidance to build referral networks and collaboration, please refer to Module 4. For continued education and skill enhancement, I would consider the Interventional Orthobiologics Foundation, Orthosono, The Business of Orthobiologics Live, as well as Maverick's Profit System. I hope you have enjoyed this implementation of orthobiologics. Please don't stop here. I am so happy to be able to help you help yourself, help patients, and bring this exciting treatment opportunity to your community. Thanks so much.

Outro
This has been "The Business of Orthobiologics" podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you want to know more, please join us on the website "PRP-Now.com" and click on the FREE masterclass. Also, don't forget to SUBSCRIBE to this podcast to get more guidance on integrating PRP in your busy practice. Bye for now.