Chances are your treatment offering and patient protocols are short-changing you and your patients.
If you look at the treatment protocols of Australian cosmetic enhancement clinics, you will find many to be incomplete. If you delve even further, you will find that the majority of their clientele are not long-term clients. Look at the books and you will see that these businesses are not bringing in the revenue they should be.
So, how do you offer a complete treatment experience that benefits your patients and boosts your bottom line? The answers are right in front of you.
Building long-term patient relationships from the get-go
From the moment your patient walks through your doors, it should be every clinic’s aim to meet and, where possible, exceed their expectations. You should be assessing all of their aesthetic needs and prescribing the best long-term solutions for those needs. Have you scanned and assessed their skin, taken a full case history including any skincare they are using and treatments they have been having? Have you looked beyond the face to the body? (Bodies age as well as faces, especially prominent parts like the hands.)
Are you really doing all of the above groundwork? In my experience, most clinics are not.
Prescribing is different to selling
You should stop ‘selling’ anything to your patients. Rather, you should be prescribing. After all, you are an expert in your field and have gathered a large amount of knowledge to enable you to prescribe the best treatments to meet your patients’ needs and wants.
When you stop selling, you take a lot of the pressure off the clinician-patient relationship. It also allows you to prescribe treatments that will yield the best-possible clinical outcomes.
Let’s walk through it. In the patient’s first consultation, you should map out a treatment plan for the next 12 months which focuses on all of their aesthetic needs. You must stop the supermarket approach to aesthetic care, which is when the patient comes in for their treatment and then they’re swiftly out the door. You have not met all of their needs. Nor have you started a clinical relationship with that patient. You wonder why they disappear when one of their friends tells them about another clinic.
The basis of any treatment plan should be skincare
A greater understanding of the skin ageing process has enabled manufacturers to design skincare that helps to mitigate the mechanisms of skin ageing and offer solutions like never before.
A skincare plan should be part of your patient treatment protocol. Once you have assessed the aesthetic needs of their skin, you can prescribe.
This skincare plan should be based on the patient’s needs as well as the understanding that it will prepare their skin for any of the treatments that will follow. Even if a patient is having surgery, the area of procedure should be prepared properly and skincare is the first step.
The ‘pre-care’ programme
As noted above, properly prepping the skin to enhance the results of cosmetic surgeries and procedures is all-important and can be prescribed as a ‘pre-care’ programme.
This pre-treatment protocol could include treatments such as LED, HydraFacial, peels and microdermabrasion. These treatments all offer healthier looking and functioning skin. It has been proven that a healthier skin always heals faster and more evenly when properly prepared. Such treatments are also excellent when prescribed for early intervention plans.
For patients undergoing non-surgical procedures, appropriate skincare plus a treatment such as LED, peel, HydraFacial or microdermabrasion will start the stimulation of elastin feeding the collagen fibre mechanism, leading to even better results after injectables or laser as well as faster downtime. Pre-treatment protocols will start to address not just age-related alterations in the area to be treated but also help to rebalance the microbiome of the skin after more invasive non-surgical procedures.
Post-treatment programmes are also essential. Start your patient on a yearly treatment plan that includes both a pre-care and post-treatment programme to expedite healing and enhance outcomes.
Why treatment packages work
In addition to maximising clinical results, packaging up treatments makes the patient feel they are getting a better deal. It also makes them feel you are offering the best care possible for their individual needs.
Bundle skincare with treatments. Right now, your patients are most likely spending dollars online and in department stores and pharmacies, buying skincare products rather than in your clinic with prescribed products for their individual needs. In the long term, you will be saving them a lot of money as they will only have what is really appropriate for their needs.
You might also think about adding supplements to your treatment plans. While less common in Australia, stocking and prescribing supplements in clinics is the norm in many overseas countries. It can be difficult to maintain a healthy diet, and good nutrition does play a role in the condition of the skin. Of course, if you are pre-treating your patient for cosmetic surgery, tell them which supplements are vasodilators and should be stopped beforehand but also make sure they are using the ones which will expedite healing as well.
If you offer massages, don’t forget about them in your treatment plans. Pain is part psychological as well as physical, so including massages before treatment will help decrease pain sensation during a procedure.
Lymphatic massage, in particular, is highly beneficial in the cosmetic clinic. Used pre- and post-surgery, it offers significant improvements in healing time. Package this massage up in the surgical fee.
The silent benefits of pre- and post-care programmes is a huge growth in patient loyalty and support of your clinic. By providing customised and considered long-term treatment plans, your patients will feel reassured, heard, important and valued. They will understand that you want the best for them and you are offering them a plan unique to them and their needs.
In today’s society following a pandemic, everyone is feeling more anxious and vulnerable so this individual care and attention is worth so much to them.
Plus, not only will you end each working day with a great feeling of satisfaction of a job well done, but it will also give a significant boost to your business’s bottom line. AMP
