Guest post from David Straight, PT, DPT, OCS

When it comes to social media marketing (SMM) for physical therapy practices, many wonder if it is worth the time and effort.   When asked, how much business they have received from their social media efforts, the typical answer is, “I am not sure.”  Some go as far as saying that they don’t get any patients from it at all.

One thing that is attractive about Internet marketing is the easy-to-access data from which you can make decisions.  While the data sets might be relatively small for a PT practice with just 2-3 locations, you can gather enough information to make the decision as to whether your SMM efforts are a good return on your investment/time.

If you have say 500+ fans of your physical therapy practice’s Facebook Page, the data we gather from our clients suggests you probably do get some business out of it.  While you may not be able to state the precise number of patients your SMM has generated, you can look at other indicators for clues and have some idea if you should continue, increase, or decrease the resources you dedicate to SMM.

Work Backwards to See the Big Picture

When it comes to generating repeat patients from social media marketing, the Facebook sales cycle (steps the practice follows to guide prospective patients from initial contact to getting them in the door for initial eval.) is pretty straight forward.   It looks something like this:

• Current patients are encouraged to “Like” your Facebook Page.
• Current patients are discharged.

Then assuming some of your discharged patients have problems you can treat, here’s how Facebook can get them back to your practice.

• Former patients  see your wall posts on their Newsfeeds.
• Former patients  go to your website or Facebook Page (depending upon the link they click) to read more about solutions for their problems.
• Former patients call your office and schedule becoming a new patient again.

In order to measure your key performance indicator (KPI) of new patients that come from your SMM efforts, you need to access some basic marketing information:

• You need to know how many unique visitors your practice website gets each month (traffic).
• You need to know how many of those visitors are converted to patients.
• You need to know how many website visitors you generate from Facebook.

Now, let’s use an example to illustrate these concepts.  Let’s say you get 600 visitors per quarter that visit your website (this is pretty common).  Let’s also assume that 24 of your new patients are influenced by the search engines or your website when choosing to come to your clinic (also, pretty typical).  That equates to 4 percent of the visitors to your website converting to patients.

Now let’s say you launch a SMM campaign on Facebook.  You build up your fans and you have several hundred people that Like your Facebook Page.   You check your web statistics and see that over the last quarter you received 200 visits to your website from your Facebook Page.  Now simply multiply by the 4 percent conversion factor.  The result of your simple calculation is that 8 patients were likely to have come back to your practice because of your SMM efforts.

Accurate but Not Precise

When it comes to marketing, if a campaign does not generate new referrals, it doesn’t make any sense.  Furthermore, SMM can be a time sink and the last thing most PT practice owners have is extra time.  However, if you do measure website traffic, and have calculated a simple key performance indicator (i.e. what percentage of web traffic converts to new patients), you can calculate an accurate, not precise, but accurate number of patients your social media marketing efforts are generating.  From there, you can decide if it is a good return on investment.

David Straight, PT, DPT, OCS is the president of E-rehab.com -  His company provides Physical Therapy Websites, Video email newsletters, Search, and Social Media for physical therapy private practices.  His company does not work with POPTS.  He can be reached at by phone at 800-468-5161 or
dave@e-rehab.com .

With several years of experience providing EMR software to Physical Therapists all over the country, we have heard a million different needs for a million different scenarios. One of the more surprising requests is the desire for a system that "does all the work for me."

We have thought a lot about this request and decided that it is rooted in education. EMR is the future of healthcare and with the future comes ideas of artificial intelligence and flying vehicles. We aren’t there yet, and I’m not sure EMR will ever get to that point.

Why can't an EMR just do it all for me?

One of the main reasons is that EMR is not a solution, but rather a tool. Its a tool to help you do what you already do, only faster, better and for less money.

You spent all of those years slaving over the books and gaining all that expertise; it would be a mistake to assume that software could replicate all of the nuanced human elements that go into a patient visit. With that in mind I would like to say, ‘No, the system will not complete your note for you.' Some other EMR providers come close to this. They allow you to simply check off some boxes without the ability to elaborate. The notes that come out of those systems read something like this.

_________________________________________

Shoulder

Operative

Operative Procedure

TSR

History

            Fell off bike and hurt shoulder

Objective

AROM

            WNL

Plan

            3/week

_________________________________________

Patient Care

This note doesn’t pick up on any of the nuances of the patient, it doesn’t accurately cover the conversation that occurred during the subjective portion of the exam, and it doesn’t allow anyone in your office, or any other medical office for that matter, to take your information and use it to better treat and care for this patient. There must be an element of professional responsibility in an EMR. It must be designed to allow you to do what you do best; treat patients.

Legal Ramifications

As EMR becomes a more relevant topic, some have raised questions about the legal ramifications that may result if you simply check off the boxes. What if there is a negative outcome and you have to ensure your documentation provides ample evidence of your treatment? When you present the above note as evidence, I am sure there will be a barrage of tough questions coming your way. If your EMR wasn’t so rigid and allowed you to use your medical knowledge in your examination, you would have a detailed account of the patient, their injuries, and your testing and care.

Human Touch

There is a fine line between what an EMR can do and what it should do. The human expertise is needed more than ever in healthcare and allowing an EMR to guide clinicians down a predetermined path isn’t the best way to document. With WebPT, for instance, we allow you to template out cases that you see often, but you always have ample room to test anything you like and type out notes and nuances that your patients will give to you in a visit. You can completely switch courses in the note and pick up right where you left off.

When searching for an EMR, make sure you have ample opportunity to make educated decisions about your patients without being guided by a rigid EMR.

Even some of us non-physical therapists know that regular exercise is beneficial for many reasons. The Mayo Clinic listed the top 7 benefits of regular exercise as:

The social revolution

We are currently decompressing from our last month Social Media crash course. If you missed any of the content, including our Webinar, you can view it here and here. 

One thing we learned based on all the feedback is that the medical community, physical therapists especially, are very interested in joining the social revolution, but they just don’t know how. These tools were never a part of their daily lives and now they are foreign and hard to understand. This idea leads us to the fundamental problem of knowledge and comfort level and how that leads to acceptance. We hear a lot of “This all sounds great, but I don’t have the time” or “I think this Social Media thing just isn’t for me.”  Ignoring this movement in communication is a folly, and successful clinics everywhere will take the time to learn, integrate, and update their social outlets.