Jarrod Shapiro, DPM PRESENT Practice Perfect Editor Joined Mountain View Medical & Surgical Associates of Madras, Oregon July 2008

As a young physician who has been involved with opening three separate offices in three separate locations, I’ve had the opportunity to experience firsthand how effective different marketing strategies can be. Some of the various methods I’ve tried thus far include: direct physician visits, billboards, various lectures, community fairs, newspaper ads, mailings, and screenings. Among these methods for building volume, two stand out as most effective: physician referrals and word of mouth.

Since we’re all aware of the importance of physician referrals, let’s focus on word of mouth. In my opinion, word of mouth is equally important to referrals as the most significant sources for increasing practice volume. Obviously, we’re not talking about “closed” communities like the VA system or Kaiser Permanente. Although, even in these cases, I’d bet word of mouth is still significant.

	Today's Premier Lecture is Endoscopic Gastrocnemius Recession by Lawrence DiDomenico, DPM, FACFAS.

Here’s a nice example of the power of word of mouth.  Soon after I started my practice in Central Oregon, I saw as a new patient, a lady who’d had a prior bunionectomy with a poor result.  I revised her bunion with a good result and the patient then referred her mother, three daughters, and a couple of friends over the next few months.  This one patient’s satisfaction resulted in a second bunionectomy, a toenail procedure, a wart procedure, multiple E&M codes, multiple radiographs, and three pairs of orthotics.

But be careful, word of mouth can be a two edged sword.  Just as your satisfied patients will tell others, so will your unhappy patients tell even more people how dissatisfied they were.  In the case of physicians who take poor care of their patients, this is a good thing, a system of checks and balances, hopefully minimizing the potential damage that physician could do to a community.  On the other hand, patients often misunderstand or don’t listen to their doctor, later thinking they didn’t receive quality advice, when in fact they did, and later misrepresent the true quality of the physician.  This is an unfortunate situation that deprives the community of a good foot and ankle physician. I would also argue this is potentially more damaging to a rural physician’s practice than an urban doctor's. In a large city, there’s a larger pool of patients who are less likely to be in direct contact with each other.  In a small community – and it's correspondingly smaller patient pool – a poor reputation can be detrimental. 

Here are my thoughts on creating positive word of mouth:

This all boils down to respect.  Respect and care for your patients and word of mouth will have increasing numbers of patients coming to you! 

Well said, Dr Marble. What more needs to be said? Keep writing in with your thoughts and comments or visit eTalk on PRESENT Podiatry and start or get in on the discussion. We'll see you next week. 

Best wishes!

Jarrod Shapiro, DPM
PRESENT New Docs Editor
[email protected]

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