Health care professionals can be stereotypically stuck in their ways, but are those habits and practices leading them down a path to extinction? Ask yourself the hard questions about where you stand and you are already taking your first steps towards evolution.

- Not marketing your value to patients directly

With a more significant weight being placed on practices’ and hospitals’ quality metrics, patients are paying more attention to the way health care providers treat their patients. Of course, patients experience a lot of emotions, so helping them see your true value can help them make more educated decisions about their care. Remember to think like them, not like yourself.

- Not tracking the ROI of your advertisement efforts

Here is a funny little cave-dog. Just for fun.

Avoid the spray, pay and pray methods a lot of health care institutions adopt when it comes to their advertising efforts. Internet marketing can be significantly more effective than plastering up a billboard, plus you are able to point to the effectiveness of your efforts.

- Not helping to relieve referring physician work load with unique efforts

The relationship your practice has with referring physician offices is a delicate thing that you must constantly be working to improve and foster. By assisting their practices in unique ways, helping them to save time and become more efficient is utterly invaluable to them. Think out of the box.

- Not using pricing as a marketing component

Patients are becoming more accustomed to shopping around for health care procedures, especially more expensive out-of-pocket services. Using your price to market to patients is helpful, even if you don’t have the lowest price in town. It is better to be a part of the conversation than be left out entirely.

- Not showing differentiation between yourself and your competition

It is okay to show patients what sets your practice apart when it comes to quality of service. Of course your mother told you, if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all, and we are not giving you license to bash your competition but a little differentiation never hurt anyone.

- Passive approach to cancellations and no-shows

Every practice suffers the frustrations that come along with last minute cancellations and no-shows. It leaves a hole in your schedule and keeps you from helping as many patients as you could have if you had a system for filling those empty time slots with a capacity exchange program.

- Crossing your fingers and hoping transparency trends will end

Bad news kids, this whole price transparency epidemic is not going anywhere so it’s time to jump on board. Like we said before, it is better to have a seat at the table than to be on the table. Your patients and referring offices will appreciate that you are taking steps towards transparency and innovation within the industry.

Where are you? Do you need help? Besides if this guy can do it, you can too.