Bill Esteb for Patient Media

Bill Esteb and Patient Media can be contacted at (800) 486-2337 or by visiting: www.patientmedia.com

Complete transcript (Click here to download this transcript):

Bill Esteb: Well hello everyone. Bill Esteb with PatientMedia here to share a couple of idea and some resources that might be of help to you in your journey to influence the behaviors and habits of your patients. First let me thank Stu and the folks over at ChiroSecure for allowing me these few brief moments to address their tribe and to share with you what I’m up to at PatientMedia. I got involved as a patient, still a patient, back in 1981 when I was invited to write what became known as the Peter Graves video for Renaissance International. Since then I’ve been in some phase of patient communications in this profession. Helping support doctors to be able to get the message out to patients. Since starting PatientMedia back in 1999, there’ve been three things that we’ve held up as being very important in terms of guiding us and the decision to make tools and resources in our business.

The first, is that the materials need to be visual. We’re a visual culture and in same way you’re watching video now, people want shortcuts and if you can capture strong powerful graphics then you have a way of having increased leverage in your communication message. The second thing had to do with conciseness, making things short. It’s easy to load up the kitchen sink and throw whatever you want the wall and see what sticks. But I’m reminded of that Ken Burns Civil War documentary where he was reading a letter from someone from the front and at the very end the soldier wrote, “Sorry my dear I would’ve made this shorter but I didn’t have the time.” Making things short and concise is really, really critical these days particularly since many patients have the attention span of gerbils. So you gotta keep it short, you gotta keep it on point.

The third thing that we keep in mind as we go through creating new products and services at PatientMedia is that it needs to come from the patient’s point of view. We’re not chiropractors, we’re all chiropractic patients. One of the things that I’ve noticed over the years is that after about the second or third quarter at chiropractic college, most lose that patient’s point of view. They forget what was it was not to know what they know. That’s one of things that we keep first and foremost as we go through the creation of our products of tools.

One of the things that we do twice a year is we create a catalog and this actually is in the mail today, this is the new one. It’s our special report of findings issue. 32 pages with lots of color pictures of our products, over a 100 of them that help leverage your time and talent. Report tools, posters, charts, postcards, brochures of course, and videos. One of tools that’s in that particular catalog that I’m quite of proud of because it took so long to make it is something called Back Scratchers. This is a deck of 60 different cards. Each card has a different message on it. This is one about Text Neck. Patients read a very short message and then on the back is a sentence completion and four possible answers. They have to think about what the right answer is and then they scratch off like a lotto ticket to see if they answered it correctly. It’s this type of engagement that really makes patient education fun and it’s just something that I’ve been thinking about for years and we finally got this put together in the last year.

One of the things I became famous for was some of the books from the patient’s point of view series that I’ve done over the years. The first one is back in 1992 called, The Patient’s Point of View. This is the eleventh book called Recalculating. I always like the newest one the best. This and Adjustments are the two newest books. Has all the latest stuff in it and if you want to spend more time with the patient’s point of view, this might be a resource that you might want to avail yourself of. Also on the website are lot of free eBooks, instead of a physical book, we’ve put together eBooks about the report of findings, about how to improve your practice in 30 days, how to inspire patients, that sort of thing. So going to patientmedia.com and downloading those and get your own personal copies would be a strong recommendation, be a great way to get up to speed from the patient’s point of view.

Something that we’re doing new starting this year are monthly webinars. We hope to do something on a monthly basis that 15, 20 minute, it’s just a short mini seminar, if you will, about some facet of the doctor patient relationship from the patient’s point of view, of course. Do you care too much? How to give a better report of findings. The first visit procedure. How to make your pre-care interview the most important part of that relationship. Again, that’s something that you might want to avail at the patientmedia.com website.

There’s also something else that I particularly enjoy doing and that is doing one hour phone consultations. Kind of got started doing in office consultations and with the travel and all the rest of it, just became cumbersome so what we’re doing these days is spending an hour on the telephone with chiropractors who are interested. That’s a lot of fun. It’s a 150 bucks for the hour. I’m not getting rich but it’s a great way to keep everyone focused in on task and you control the agenda. You control what we go through. If you’re facing a big decision. If you’re getting a little crispy around the edges, that would be something that you might want to avail yourself of as well. That’s on the PatientMedia website too.

Something a little bit more ambitious that we do every spring is something called The Conversation. This is something that I especially enjoy doing. It’s a 30 day program and it’s limited to seven chiropractors. To be able to do what we do in 30 days, the group has to be small. You can’t do what we do in a seminar setting. What I do over the course of that, of those four weeks basically is email chiropractors who are participating, 12 journaling assignments. These are thought experiments, these are, it could be something as simple as cleaning your desk or your garage or forgiving people. They’re interesting assignments. And then we get together around a table in Denver Colorado for a weekend. All day Saturday, half day Sunday and we do what’s called the Denver Debrief. That is a blast.

We walk through those journaling assignments, we talk about what’s shown up for people during that particular time. And we have probably one of the most interesting, robust, deep conversations about chiropractic that you’ve probably ever had. We do that every spring, sometimes in fall just depends upon who’s interested and what’s going on. Still in time to get some great spring skiing in Colorado if that’s your cup of tea.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention during this brief time together, the sister company Perfect Patients. This is our website business that been doing since 2006. My business partner who is the spouse of a chiropractor who resides in Perth Australia, he and I get to shepherd a team of about 60 different digital marketing specialists around the world and we look after a couple thousand chiropractors’ websites. If heaven forbid you don’t have a website yet, you might want to join us in the 21st century and get one. If you have one that’s underperforming, you might want to upgrade to Perfect Patients and see what’s possible.

At least contact Perfect Patients at perfectpatients.com and schedule a free 15 minute website evaluation. One of our marketing specialists will get on the phone with you, fire up the internet and walk through your website and point out opportunities for improvement. Opportunities for enhancing the new patient conversion aspects of your practice website. That’s something you might want to avail yourself of that will help you actually get new patients. After you get new patients you’re going to want to educate those patients and that requires state of the art communication tools and that’s what we offer at PatientMedia.

The one last thing that I would like to point and it’s something that I’m quite proud of. Each week since 1999, without fail, not even five minutes late, I’ve been sending out Monday morning motivation. It’s a 150 words, carefully crafted about some aspect of practice, some aspect of the doctor patient relationship, head space, communication tip, that sort of thing. I send that out at one o’clock Mountain on Sunday afternoon because it’s already Monday morning in Australia and New Zealand. If you have not subscribed, I would encourage you to do so. It’s free as well.

Our commitment is really about doctor success. We provide patient communication tools but we’re in the doctor success business. One of the things that I’ve learned over these 36 odd years or whatever I’ve been doing this that the real advantage that busy chiropractors have who are busy taking names and making a ruckus, these are people are great communicators and it’s huge leverage to be able to enhance that. Communication is a social skill. Like all social skills, whether it’s tying a bow tie or what to do with 20 forks and 10 knives at a formal dinner, it’s a learned behavior. We can get better at it. It’s certainly one of the things that I’ve worked on myself quite a bit over these last couple of years.

On behalf of the patients at PatientMedia and a big shout out and thank you to Stu and the folks over at ChiroSecure, thank you for your attention and thank you for listening.

Speaker 2: This has been a ChiroSecure production.