Presentation topics at Miami Cosmetic Surgery

While Dr. Kaplan will be speaking on several topics that relate to BuildMyBod Health, his first presentation on Thursday morning is actually related to his day job as a plastic surgeon!

On Thursday, February 20th, he’ll discuss the technique he created, the Single Incision Minimally Invasive (SIMI) neck lift. This is a procedure that reduces the typical number of neck lift incisions from three to one. Most importantly, the two incisions eliminated in this procedure are the two longest and most unsightly. The incisions behind the ears.

He’ll show before and after photos of his own patients and results from his study in the peer-reviewed Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Global Open journal.

Topics relating to price transparency, ie BuildMyBod Health

BuildMyBod Health is a revolutionary platform that takes a critically needed issue – price transparency in healthcare – and makes it more accessible for the consumer, and more palatable for the physician.

Consumers want to know their out of pocket costs for all healthcare services. Either because they’ll be paying out of pocket for a medically necessary service if they haven’t met their deductible or if it’s considered cosmetic. BuildMyBod Health allows the consumer to check pricing through the doctor’s website from the privacy of their mobile phone. In the process of checking pricing, they have to enter their contact info before submitting their “wishlist” of services.

The consumer instantly receives an email with a breakdown of costs delivered to their inbox. And the healthcare provider receives their contact info – a lead for follow up! Dr. Kaplan will show how this kind of give and take can benefit the doctor’s business.

On Thursday afternoon, Dr. Kaplan will talk about turning social media followers into consults. Since physicians are utilizing social media to create content and educate consumers, they want something to show for it! All of that content creation should generate clear, measurable results. Offering the opportunity for the social media follower to check pricing is the easiest way to capture their contact info.

How price transparency grew Dr. Kaplan’s newly purchased practice

Dr. Kaplan will also speak on his experience buying a practice in San Francisco. He will review statistical data on this transaction and how many patients he retained from the previous doctor. But he will also talk about how he used a Price Estimator on his website to grow his email database to over 10,000 potential patients in 6.5 years. And that will improve his valuation for a future sale!

If you’re in the Miami area this weekend and want to get your learn on, click here to register for MCS! And if you’re a healthcare provider that wants to use price transparency to generate leads, click here. And last but not least, if you’re a consumer that wants to check pricing from a doctor near you, click here.

Click here for the original blog post written by Dr. Kaplan for BuildMyBod.

The post Dr. Kaplan speaking at Miami Cosmetic Surgery first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.

Quick Primer on Snapchat

For those of you not familiar, here’s some background. Snapchat was originally a messaging app. One person could message a selfie, photo or video to a friend and after 10 seconds, that message would disappear. It caught on because your shenanigans weren’t kept online in perpetuity like Facebook. Those 10 second disappearing clips evolved into folks piecing together multiple 10-second clips into a story. Snapchat stories, a compilation of as many 10-second clips as you want, expire and therefore delete after a period of 24 hours.

These videos are different than YouTube because they’re posted to the network right after you “film” the video, not days later. It’s not technically live video, but definitely more real-time than YouTube. You record the video and then choose whether to post that clip or maybe re-record it. Once posted, you can still delete it but otherwise, it’s there for 24 hours along with the rest of your story.

Your followers and viewers can watch your story and even message you questions based on specific clips within the story. This allows for interaction with the story, not just passive viewership. Additionally, you can manipulate the video by making it go faster, slower, posting emojis on it and even include filters that highlight the time, temperature, where you are or even place humorous “lenses” or masks over your face.

At this point, if you don’t understand, that’s ok. If you think this sounds contrived, I actually agree with you. However, there’s no mistaking that hundreds of millions of people enjoy the app. To better understand what this is all about, consider downloading the app and trying it out for yourself. Now, onto why this app transformed my practice, and maybe yours too.

Patient Rapport

Many of our patients have already watched us on Snapchat before they come in for a consultation. By watching us in our “natural habitat,” the prospective patients feel like they know us. We seem more approachable. By the time they show up, there’s more rapport between us vs patients unengaged with us on social media. They’ve already seen our office staff interact in humorous situations. They know we don’t take ourselves too seriously. But at the same time, they see our professionalism when watching video of surgery.

Patient Education and Transparency

Yes, we record 10-second clips of our surgical procedures and create a “surgery story.” We explain what tumescent solution is, how we perform liposuction and our technique for breast augmentation. We answer questions they submit through the app during the operation. By showing the operation, they know we have nothing to hide. Even more fascinating than the ability to provide education to viewers, we’re educating the patient and the patient’s family! Let me explain.

Normally the family leaves after we take their loved one back to surgery. Several hours later, we call them to return when the procedure is complete. Because the family is able to watch the operation while the operation is occurring on Snapchat, they’re fully informed by the time they return postop.

In the past, I would go out and speak to the family and explain everything we did. Now, when I go out to speak to the family, they’re ecstatic, telling me which parts of the operation was their favorite and complimenting the team on the work we’ve done. Since we show intraoperative before and after photos, they see the early results of the procedure before the dressings and garments are placed on the patient. And when I call the patient that evening to check on them, they’ve watched the operation themselves! That level of transparency and patient education was unheard of, until now.

Generating Leads

One of the most common questions we get through Snapchat while the viewer is watching the operation, is how much does that particular operation cost. We could reply with a figure but then we’ve lost an opportunity to generate a lead. Because Snapchat, like Instagram, only shows the patient’s handle – the screen name they’ve chosen – the viewer’s contact information is not readily accessible. You don’t know their real name and certainly not their email address.

Therefore, we direct them to that specific procedure-of-interest on our website’s Price Estimator. Once there, they add that procedure to a virtual wishlist and submit their wishlist along with their name, email address, phone number and ZIP code. Immediately and automatically they receive a cost estimate for at procedure in their inbox and we receive their contact info for follow up – a lead.

Between their phone number and email address, we can call to see if they have further questions or follow up via a monthly email newsletter. Without this method for converting consumers to leads, we’re simply interacting with a bunch of anonymous viewers.

“Pay it forward” Mentality

One of the first questions I get from other doctors is, do patients balk at having their surgery filmed? While someone out there that may not be comfortable, they’re the exception, not the rule. A majority of patients have watched videos of surgical and non-surgical procedures before the consult and certainly before their own procedure. Just as they learned from someone else’s willingness to showcase their procedure for the purposes of education, many of these patients are willing to do the same. For that reason, they sign a photography/video consent to pay it forward for others watching at home or work.

Referrals

This next part may be a little hard to explain but Snapchat has geofilters. These are images or words or even ads that are accessible to the user to showcase where the user is located. For example, you can only use the “San Francisco” filter when geographically located within San Francisco. Hence the term geofilter. Similarly, a business can design their own geofilter so that consumers can include the filter on their snapchat when in that business’ vicinity.

As seen in the photo, my practice designed this geofilter so that when someone is near the office, they can use our filter. They don’t even need to be a patient. If they simply like our graphic and it represents an area they’re in, our filter is available to them. Ultimately, all of their friends and followers see where they were and see our filter.

One day, a woman saw me on the street and told me that she goes to a clinic in my building. Because she noticed our filter, she included it in her story last time she went to see her doctor. Subsequently, a friend saw her story, noticed our filter and came in for a consult! So while word of mouth referrals are a known entity, self-referral after seeing a Snapchat geofilter is something altogether new.

So what does it all mean?

I recognize that many physicians out there are against social media in the operating room. That’s fine. They don’t have to do it. I’m actually not trying to convince anyone to use social media in the operating room, or out. But for me and my practice, this level of communication, information sharing and improved rapport with the patient is unattainable otherwise and has transformed my practice in an undoubtedly positive way.

Click here for the original blog post written by Dr. Jonathan Kaplan for BuildMyBod.

The post 5 Unexpected Ways Snapchat Transformed My Practice first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.

Advertising only works if it generates leads

Patients are exposed to marketing constantly. Let’s try to name all the ways they’re bombarded with our messaging. TV commercials. Google AdWords. Retargeting with pop up ads and banners. Radio commercials. Sponsored ads in social media. Billboards. Print (newspaper/programs/brochures/magazines) advertising. Press releases. Product placement and general PR. Probably forgetting a few.

Anyway, the point is that all of that advertising is pointless unless you provide a call to action and drive folks to your website or phone number. But getting them to your site still isn’t enough. You still have to convince them to provide their contact info. You have to give them a reason to reach out. That’s why I’ve argued that the most useful call to action is the consumer’s need to determine price on a particular service before they come in for a consultation.

Our office gets literally hundreds of leads every month. Mostly through our BuildMyBod Health Price Estimator. This allows consumers to add procedures-of-interest to a “wishlist” and then submit that wishlist along with their contact info. Instantly and automatically the consumer receives an estimate for those services. Instant gratification. At the same time, our office receives the consumer’s contact info, the lead.

Patient Leads after Midnight

Along with the wishlist leads and leads through the contact submission forms, we’ve noticed that any leads late at night, particularly after midnight go nowhere! Whether it’s alcohol that drove the consumer to contact us through one form or another on the website, or boredom, the act of spontaneity was fleeting. They weren’t really serious. At least not when we followed up with them.

Which is why it’s all the more reason to filter serious vs non-serious consumers in an automated and efficient way. Whether it’s an automated price estimator or an e-book that answers the consumers’ question, it’s important to not put patients in an awkward situation wherein they come in for a consult for a procedure they can’t afford or divulge their deepest insecurities for a procedure they’re not a candidate for. So while leads after midnight may lead nowhere, better the patient knows that in the privacy of their mobile device or computer, rather than taking time off work to learn their procedure-of-interest isn’t an option in a 45-minute to an hour long consultation.

Click here for the original blog post written by Dr. Jonathan Kaplan for BuildMyBod.

The post Why patient leads after midnight lead nowhere first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.