How to Create a Patient Satisfaction Survey

Patient feedback is critical to the success of your PT practice. You need insights on treatments, staff, facility and communications. Sending a patient satisfaction survey helps you to gauge your clinic’s overall performance. It can also solicit new reviews and testimonials. There are several key elements within your survey design and execution that can make all the difference as to whether patients complete the survey and provide honest feedback.

Designing a Patient Satisfaction Survey

When it comes to your survey design, it is best to consider two criteria: effort and information. Your goal should be to create a patient satisfaction survey that requires minimal effort on behalf of the patient and your practice. While also maximizing the quality of the information received. Here are some strategies to accomplish those goals quickly and effectively:

• Use a free survey tool. There are plenty of great, free online tools that you can use to minimize your efforts in creating and managing the survey program. We recommend Survey Monkey for its easy set up and variety of plans and reporting options.
• Ask less than 10 questions. No one wants to spend more than 2-3 minutes completing a survey, so keep it short and sweet. Focus on the key areas of interest: treatment, staff, facility, communication etc. to streamline the survey and increase completion rates. It is helpful to order the survey questions in the same flow as the patient would have experienced their visit. For example, start with asking how the patient found out about your clinic. Then, end with will they come back to your practice for PT in the future.
• Use ratings to improve data and analysis. A ratings set could be—on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being Very Satisfied, and 1 being Not At All Satisfied, answer the questions below. This answer method allows patients to rate their satisfaction with their experience and helps to provide consistency across patient responses. It also avoids tying the ratings to an emotion (ie. happy v. unhappy). Emotions tend to be more subjective and less accurate in assessing the clinic’s performance.
• Include a write-in option for more details and reviews. Write in answers often have a very general question. For example, “Please provide more details and comments about your experience at ABC PT”. This allows the patient to leave a good review for their PT. Conversely, it also gives them the chance to write about a possible improvement to their experience. Place this question towards the end, but not as the last question, to encourage completion and quality feedback.

How to Implement a Survey

After you have designed your patient satisfaction survey, it is ready to be implemented into your routine marketing and communications. There are two key points in the patient experience where you should request feedback: after the initial visit and after the completion of treatment/discharge. There are pros and cons to each option. The right fit for your practice depends upon your current needs and observations.

Download our free guide for tips on marketing your PT practice and getting more new patients

Are you seeing a number of patients who do not complete treatment or who are no-shows for the first appointment? If so, you should request a patient satisfaction survey after the first visit. This will help to identify what may be leading patients to not complete their care. It could be anything from poor scheduling by the front desk, to too long a wait time, to unclear insurance policies. Once you can identify what is happening, via the survey feedback, then you can work to correct the problem.

If you are seeing a good number of patients be successfully discharged, then request a patient satisfaction survey after the last visit. This will allow you to evaluate the patient’s experience throughout their entire course of care. Be sure to include a question about whether they would return to you for PT or refer their friends and family. Consider even adding an incentive, such as a $20 gift card, for a referral.

Patient satisfaction surveys are a mix of qualitative and quantitative analysis on the patient experience. You want to identify your learning and data goals, and minimize the effort to manage the survey program. You also want to maximize the information generated from the complete feedback. Learn more about PT marketing and patient engagement strategies today!

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How to Increase Patient Referrals to PT

Your past patients are one of the best marketing resources available. They have already experienced your practice’s expert care and seen great results—making them a real life testimonial for physical therapy. But how can you purposefully increase patient referrals to PT once the patient is discharged from the clinic? Let’s look at some easy ways to build patient referral opportunities into your marketing plan.

5 ways to increase patient referrals

Use a patient referral system. These systems allow past patients to easily refer their friends and family to your practice. Start by mailing a referral promotion in your practice’s newsletter or postcard. Next, distribute referral cards to all patients as they are being discharged from the practice. And, follow up with a thank you card to any patient that refers someone else to you.

Offer a referral incentive. People are more likely to complete an action, such as telling a friend to see you for PT, if there is some benefit for them. This incentive should be something they can readily use like a gift card or promotional item. It needs to have some real value so that the patient feels motivated to refer others.

Talk about it on social media. Almost every practice has a testimonial where one patient saw great results. Then, the patient referred a friend to PT, and that friend saw great results too. Turn that story into a social media post (with all the proper permissions) and share it out to your followers. People love “feel good” stories of friends helping friends and can relate to the desire to help others feel better and have less pain. Be sure to include a good call to action, such as “Who do you know that needs our help? Send them to PT today!” to increase responses.

Download our free guide for tips on marketing your PT practice and getting more new patients

Send a patient referral email. If you already do email marketing for your practice, this should be an easy option. Send an email that describes the benefits of PT and includes a patient testimonial. Next, ask patients to forward the email to someone they know who is in pain or could benefit from PT. Tell patients that you will not be collected their friends’ email addresses. You want them to know that, by forwarding the email, they will be helping someone else to feel better.

Market patient referrals in your newsletter. Every month you have the opportunity to actively increase patient referrals when you mail your practice’s newsletter. Past patients are reading the newsletter and being reminded of the benefits of physical therapy. So it is the perfect time to encourage them to refer someone who needs PT to your practice. Include this referral marketing at the bottom of the exercises or articles so that they can directly tie your practice’s care and expertise to the opportunity to refer someone they know.

For more information on physical therapy marketing and how to increase patient referrals, check out our products and blogs. Contact the team at Practice Promotions today to start growing your practice.

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Physical Therapy Logos and Graphic Design

Your physical therapy practice’s logo should be an iconic visual representation of your practice. If any of your patients see the logo, whether it’s on a billboard, newspaper ad, or building sign, they should be able to instantly identify it and connect to your practice. Logos and graphic design are more than just creating images that look nice—branding, conceptual insight, and quality should inform and influence the imagery.

Your practice’s branded identity includes your logos (icon and wordmark) and their treatment across your clinic, print, and digital marketing. Having a distinct branded identity helps new patients identify your clinic and reminds past patients about your care and results.

But, there is often a case to refresh your logo and do a “rebrand” to update your logos. You can probably see plenty examples of old graphic design and physical therapy logos from other businesses and clinics. Having an outdated logo can create the public perception of being behind the times and not being cutting edge or relevant. You want to ensure that your physical therapy logos and marketing is on par with industry leaders. And, you want to have the best looking website and print materials.

Physical Therapy Logos

Logos should visually epitomize your practice and give the foundation of your company colors. Your logos and colors will combine to influence the look of your website and print marketing. Thus, choosing the right image, font and colors is crucial. Your logos should be simple so that they stand out—nothing is worse than a complex or abstract logo that is confusing and not grounded in your practice’s mission. It’s best to have a few different draft logo designs and colors, and then ask a group of peers and patients which they like best.

Download our free guide for tips on marketing your PT practice and getting more new patients

Define your practice’s brand and visual identity

Whether it is your physical therapy website, newsletter or company materials, you need to have a beautiful, branded look. Everything should seamlessly carry through and really bring all of your promotions together. This makes it easy for a new patient, physician or the general public to identify your brand.

Need help with building your practice’s image and brand? We can help! From logo designs, websites, newsletters, brochures and more—we make your practice look professional to new patients and help to grow your business.

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How to Start Printing and Mailing PT Newsletters

Putting together a monthly newsletter for your PT practice can be a challenging task and take up a lot of time and money. As a key marketing program, a newsletter is an excellent investment that is most effective when managed by a professional company. If you have marketing staff in your practice, their job is to coordinate your strategies, develop professional relationships, and drive business development. Spending time designing, writing, printing, and mailing a newsletter is a full time job in itself and not a valuable use of your staff’s time. This is an action you should to outsource to maximize your resources in terms of both time and money.

Trust you physical therapy marketing to the experts at Practice Promotions. Our Practice Newsletter System combines professional, informative articles with custom content and pictures from your practice. We have a team of graphic design who create a template specifically designed for your practice—using your logos, colors, and branding. After you approve the layout and content, we print and mail your newsletters to patients and local physicians. We also will ship any extra copies to your practice (for free!) so that your marketing staff can distribute them in your waiting room and to physicians’ offices.

How it works

The team at Practice Promotions makes it easy for you to market your practice with a monthly newsletter. You are assigned a dedicated account manager who handles your content, revisions, mailing list, and printing. We use our industry expertise to get you reduced rates on printing and postage—a savings that can equal thousands each month. Our goal is to make it easy for you to send out a newsletter that promotes your brand, PT knowledge, and practice.

Download our free guide for tips on marketing your PT practice and getting more new patients

Get results

We have over 5 years of experience as both marketers and private practice owners and have helped our clients see dramatic results. Visit our results page for more information and specific case studies on how our clients saved time and money and got more new patients and referrals—optimizing their return on investment.

For more information on our Practice Newsletter System, call us today at 800-594-7656.

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PT Practice Marketing Plan [How-To Guide]

How often do you plan out your practice’s marketing? Do you have short and long term plans—for the month, three months, or year? A marketing plan aligns with your business development goals and keeps you on track to see results for the practice. Your marketing plan should be your blueprint, roadmap, and checklist to build campaigns, organize promotions, and monitor the impacts. Every PT practice should have at least a monthly marketing plan to ensure that you are consistently communicating with prospective patients and referring physicians.

Download our free guide for tips on marketing your PT practice and getting more new patients

Build your marketing plan

Your marketing plan should focus on the key audiences that will support your business objectives and the way in which you are going to encourage them to patron your practice. Most practices focus on patients and physicians, but you can also market to community organizations, healthcare centers, and businesses. Once you know your marketing’s recipients, you can identify what campaigns and promotions to use to engage the respective audiences. Below are some examples of different ways to market your practice:

• Mailing a monthly practice newsletter to patients and physicians
• Mailing a monthly physician mailer
• Sending postcards for targeted campaigns and promotions
• Emailing an e-newsletter
• Having a high-quality, responsive website
• Managing social media profiles and posts
• Networking with physicians and referral sources
• Sponsoring community organizations or events
• Having professional brochures, rack cards, and in-office promotions

The above marketing programs require an investment of time and money to develop and execute. In your planning sessions, you want to decide what programs to use to market your practice and how you will implement them throughout the month(s) or year. You can also identify “big” projects, such as redesigning your website or adding a new direct mail campaign, that require additional preparation to get started. Your practice’s marketing plan keeps your efforts on track and working towards the big picture—a busy practice that generates growth and revenue!

The team at Practice Promotions works with you to develop your practice’s marketing plan, complete projects, and monitor the results. We make it easy for you to put together amazing campaigns and programs that help your grow your practice. For more information, call us today at 800-594-7656 or contact us.

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Managing Your PT Practice Marketing Budget

What is the right marketing budget for your physical therapy practice? How should you be spending that budget to get the maximum amount of return on investment? Most practice owners know they have to spend money on marketing, but many struggle with finding the right balance and budget. Answering a few simple questions about your practice can help you define your marketing goals and the budget needed to achieve them.

Is your practice seeing growth, stability, or declines in patient volumes?

Most PT practices experience almost all stages of business development throughout the calendar year so take a look at your quarterly or yearly stats to determine your overall trend. At that larger view, practices tend to be growing, aka seeing more patients, or shrinking, seeing fewer patients. While growth is almost always the preferred state of the business, you can be intentionally scaling back due to market or operational constraints.

If you are experiencing a roller coaster, inconsistent growth or decline trends, it could be related to the effectiveness and consistency of your marketing program. You need to be marketing campaigns and promotions that are attracting new patients and referrals, and you need to be doing so on a regular basis to keep growing. Once you have a solid, successful marketing program, you want to keep investing in it. Monitor your volume of patients, explore new marketing opportunities, and plan your business development to align with your practice’s long term goals.

Download our free guide for tips on marketing your PT practice and getting more new patients

What is the right marketing budget for your practice?

A standard rule is that you need to invest 8-10% of gross income on marketing to support business growth. However, many practices spend less than 5% of their gross income on marketing, which can lead to declining patient volumes or stagnant growth. Check your current budget by taking your monthly marketing expenses, without including any dedicated marketing staff, and divide by your monthly gross income.

(Monthly Marketing) / (Monthly Gross Income) = % of Income spent on Marketing

What is your practice’s marketing budget? If it is less than 5% of your gross income, you should try to spend at least 3% more on marketing per month and put that investment towards high return projects. We recommend improving your website, expanding your newsletter, or mailing monthly postcard campaigns. If you are spending more than 5%, you are on track! Closely monitor your data and consider scaling up your marketing budget and programs to align with your business development and growth goals.

Get the most out of your marketing budget and call us today for more information 800-594-7656

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Public Relations for PT Practices

Public relations is the practice of spreading information about your business to the public—focusing on communicating your mission, knowledge, and expertise. Public relations differs from marketing in that PR centers on building awareness of your practice’s brand whereas marketing promotes your practice’s programs and services to prospective clients. The perfect combination of PR and marketing creates compelling campaigns and promotions that encourage new patients, increase physician referrals, and expand business partnerships.

Public relations for PT include:

• Developing a practice mission. This should be 1-3 sentences that convey your point-of-view (POV) on physical therapy and how your practice approaches PT. Share your mission on your website, in printed materials, and in presentations. A good test of your PR and marketing is that each promotion and campaign should be able to relate back to at least one core component of your practice’s mission.

• Building your brand involves increasing its recognition with key groups, such as physicians, medical offices and their staff, and community organizations. You want these individuals to immediately think of your practice when they think about PT.

Download our free guide for tips on marketing your PT practice and getting more new patients

• Sharing practice news and updates. This is where PR and marketing can work together to attract new patients. The public relations efforts are directed towards writing press releases and copy for clinic news and updates. The marketing efforts are promoting this content in your monthly newsletter, on your website, and on social media.

• Handling the tough stuff. Occasionally, your practice might make news and not for positive reasons. You need to use PR to influence the media and public’s impression of your practice towards a positive light. Developing media statements, handling inquiries, and ensuring a consistent response keeps your practice looking polished and professional.

Public relations takes your practice’s brand and shares it with the larger community—helping you be known as the PT experts who achieve great results for their patients. For help with your PR and marketing, call us today at 800-594-7656 or contact us online. 

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