Before we explain how to lower the cost of healthcare, let’s discuss one reason healthcare costs more in this country than many others. The quality of care is great here. There’s no place I’d rather be sick than in the US. But why does it cost more than other industrialized countries?

Why the cost of healthcare is so high?

So much of the healthcare that we receive is filtered through our health insurance. That means we don’t always know exactly how much services cost. At most we’ll see the negotiated fee between the provider and the insurance company. Essentially, healthcare facilities will charge whatever they think your health insurance will cover. The more insurance will cover, the more healthcare facilities can charge. That increases costs unnecessarily.

Don’t believe me? Then why do healthcare facilities offer lower cost self-pay rates when you don’t use insurance? They understand that if you’re paying out of pocket (due to lack of insurance or more typically because you haven’t met your deductible), you’re more discerning because it’s a first-party transaction. Take that one step further. If self-pay prices were posted online, that price awareness would result in more discerning consumers. To attract those discerning consumers, facilities would lower their prices. That’s competition – the secret ingredient to lowering healthcare costs.

But there’s a key secondary ingredient to make this work. The hope of attracting consumers isn’t enough. Facilities need a way of capturing those new prospective patients.

Using an interactive Price Estimator on the facilities’ website can get consumers to check pricing but only after they provide their contact info. A lead for follow up. This gives the facility the ability to contact patients and help navigate them through the gauntlet of healthcare.

In summary, competition can lower healthcare costs but to get more buy-in from providers, they need something in return – a lead.

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

The post How to lower the cost of healthcare 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.

Paying it forward

Video is critical to a patient’s preop education. They book their surgery and they want to be prepared. Reasonable enough. In the distant past, that meant talking to someone who had a similar experience. Then in the not too distant past, they started reading about it online. And now more recently, with the rise of video clips on Snapchat and YouTube, they’re watching the entire procedure ahead of time and checking the cost.

Patients benefit and appreciate that video preparation. So when the patient undergoes the procedure themselves, they want to educate those that come after them, i.e. paying it forward. In the case of a procedure under local anesthesia, patients are filming their own surgery. You can see an example below of a patient getting their upper eyelids “done.”

Video: Patients are filming their own surgery

Considering surgery? Click here and check pricing from Dr. Kaplan but also watch some video of the procedure!

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

The post Patients are filming their own surgery! Yeah, that happens! [video] first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.