TAB’S BLOG: MARKETING & THE HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY
So this blog is a little bit different than my usual
blogs – not so much about health improvement but about a soapbox of mine as
well as about where Insight and Restore are headed.
This past year at Insight has been particularly
difficult for us. With the changes that
are coming about with the Affordable Care Act and with where our nation’s
healthcare system is headed, we have been hit particularly hard. We have been labeled by several health
insurance companies as “poor quality”.
When we called to find out why, we were told that we
don’t see enough patients (i.e. doing 5-15 minute appointments and herding
people through) and that we don’t prescribe enough prescription drugs. For instance, they consider us giving poor
quality care when we diagnose someone with high cholesterol but they don’t see
the patient go to the pharmacy and buy a cholesterol lowering drug. They are tracking this kind of stuff and the
accepted “standard of care” is to prescribe a drug to treat a symptom.
Well, that’s not what we do at all! Synthetic prescription drug therapy is so far
from the mission of Insight Family Health Center that it is almost
laughable. We are all about preventing
disease and partnering with our patients to get them off prescription drugs and
headed towards their personal level of optimal health.
Our business model of seeing a patient every 30 minutes
to 1 hour and accepting insurance reimbursement has always been tenuous
financially. We have struggled a lot
just to stay afloat and some years we’ve gone in the hole. Trust me; you make a lot more money seeing a
patient every 5-15 minutes! Scarily, you
can do enough in 5 minutes to qualify for the same reimbursement that you get
for a 30 minute visit. Been there, done
that. Felt guilty for doing it and
opened my on practice so I could spend more time with my patients.
The whole idea that quality healthcare is tied to
seeing more and more patients and prescribing synthetic prescription drugs is
frightening. It scares me for your
future. It scares me for my future. I tell people frequently to stay healthy and
not need the doctor as much as possible.
I also say frequently that I’d rather take a hundred vitamins just to
avoid taking even one synthetic prescription drug. I never want to be dependent on the
healthcare system as it is now or as it is going to be if we keep going in the
same direction. I want to be healthy and
vital and active till the day I die and I want to spend my life helping my
patients do the same.
So because the care provided at Insight is such “poor
quality”, the plan of the health insurance companies is to penalize you for
coming here (higher co-pays) and to penalize us by cutting our reimbursement
rate. Considering that they barely pay
us enough now to stay afloat, if they make cuts, we are in deep trouble. The cuts are starting in January. L
So we are forced to figure out what else we can do to
stay open and provide the type of care to you that we do. I really don’t want to be part of a system
that thinks “quality” care is seeing a patient every 10 minutes and just
prescribe drugs. I worked in that system
before and realized I couldn’t give the type of care that actually helped
people change the course of their health for the better in 10 minutes! That’s why I opened this office in the first
place!
Over the next months you are going to be receiving lots
of emails and Facebook posts and advertising.
Just like a lot of offices in this town, we have to increase our
services that are not dependent on health insurance reimbursement in order to
keep the doors open. What I want to ask
of you is that you read all of it and share it with your friends and help us
survive.
I’ve struggled with the concept of advertising in
healthcare and of advertising extra services that are offered in this
business. And because of that inner
struggle, I’ve not been consistent with our advertising. But now, I either advertise and grow the
business in other ways or close down.
And growing the business can’t be within the health insurance system
because they are just planning to cut our reimbursement.
It seems a little yucky to advertise in a business that
is about caring and healing people. But
the bottom line is that I do what I do because I love helping people heal
themselves but I also have to support myself and pay my staff. I can’t keep running a business that is not
breaking even much less making a profit.
Insight is not a non-profit or grant supported business. We didn’t even qualify for any subsidies provided
by the government to upgrade to electronic records. We live by what we make. Period.
So, as we go forward, as I said, you will be receiving
lots of advertising from us. Please read
it, partake of our services, and share it.
Our guarantee to you is that we don’t provide and won’t advertise
any service through Insight or Restore that will not help you or that has any
great potential for harm. For
the most part, the staff at Insight partakes of all of our services so that we
can reach our optimal health goals. I
often experiment on myself with a particular treatment before offering it to
our patients. Trust me, we won’t offer
anything that we haven’t tried or think isn’t helpful!
The great thing about natural therapies is that they
usually only help and never hurt. So
there won’t be any disclaimers at the end saying “this treatment may cause
cancer, heart attack, stroke, arthritis, etc….” like many of the pharmaceutical
drug commercials do. Those remedies are
synthetic and have great potential for harm.
The treatments we offer are natural and have little potential for harm. Sadly, because we live in such a litigious
society with an FDA and medical board that doesn’t like anything natural, we do
have to put a general disclaimer on everything we do. L
At this time, we only offer 1 service that is 100% just
about vanity and that is the VI Peel. Total vanity that I personally take great
pleasure in partaking of. I often tell
patients that I’m not completely natural in everything because I really do like
to not have wrinkles and spots on my face and hands! Getting ready to start my winter face peel
series in October! J
So, I wanted to be up front and honest with each of
you. I want you to understand what’s
happening and why we are doing what we are doing when it comes to
advertising. I hope you will continue to
help us grow but more importantly allow us to partner with you in reaching your
optimal level of health. Our patients
rock and we love helping you!
Sincerely,
Tabetha L. Smith, FNP-C & Wanna Be Advertising Guru
J
September 2014
