Are you attracting spine surgical cases with the right insurance?

Finding out the majority of your spine surgical cases paid LESS in reimbursements last month than your salaries & expenses will cause you to lose your hair (and possibly your job) in no time.

For those of us working in healthcare spine marketing, finding ways to attract patients with high reimbursing insurance is crucial for success and growth for the entire organization (ours and yours). It also keeps us marketers out of hot water with the boss.

Using marketing and communication to attract patients who have insurance that reimburses at an acceptable rate is every spine and orthopedic marketing team’s goal.

So, how do you do it?

At atlcg we like to use a two pronged approach where the messaging we create communicates to potential patients accepted and non-accepted insurance.  Then we use your practice’s online presence and segmentation tools to weed out visitors who you can’t help.

Here are just a few ways to get started:

Target Specific Demographics

Google Adwords, Facebook and other online advertising platforms allow marketers to target visitors by a host of segments. For example, with the segmentation tools you can create a campaign targeting specific age ranges (under 65 for example). Another segmentation available is by zip code, another by interest and so on. Get even more targeted by creating a cohort so that you are targeting a specific age range in specific zip codes who have specific interests. This may decrease your total leads, but it will increase the quality of the leads that do contact you (quality over quantity).

In Pay per Click ad copy

Do you accept Medicare or Medicaid? If you don’t why not state it in your Ad Copy? If you have an Adwords account test an ad that includes copy which suggests your practice is not currently accepting medicare/medicaid patients (first check with Google on the latest rules regarding the use of Medicare type terminology in ad copy). This may save you money in two areas; first less clicks on ads from visitors with Medicare and Medicaid which you don’t accept and second; less time spent on the phone with callers that have Medicare and Medicaid.

On your website

If we take a spine or orthopedic website for example, you can create a page that lists accepted insurances and have a link or button to that page available on your website’s homepage. This allows visitors to see if their insurance is accepted before they contact you. Possibly have a pop-up appear with a link to the accepted insurance page.

Lead gen forms

If you are using a lead gen form on your website and don’t currently have an insurance drop down question, consider adding one with a list of the top insurances your practice accepts. Make it a required field, but leave an option for “other” as to not deter those who don’t find their insurance listed. When potential patients contact you through a lead gen form you’ll have their insurance information available prior to calling them. Prioritize who you call first based on their insurance type.

Increasing your marketing return on investment

Just think, if you are currently spending $2000 in marketing to capture a spine surgical case that reimburses $2500 you are not going to continue marketing very long. Yes, we’ve run across this….. In fact many doctors and practice managers have no idea of their marketing ROI (not good). Don’t worry, in my next blog post I’m going to show you how to calculate your ROI, stay tuned…

On the other hand, what if your practice could pull in surgical cases that reimburse in the $10k-15K range or in the case of more complex procedures $40k-$60K? Would it be worth continuing to pay $2000 to capture a case? We think so! Even spending $5K on marketing to capture a $50K case is an easy decision.

Summing it all up

Let’s face it: spending money on marketing direct to patients who are searching for a solution to their condition is highly competitive and it can be very rewarding. Doing it strategically can reap amazing rewards. Doing it the wrong way can waste a lot of money and effort and cause heart burn.

This was just the start of our conversation about using a strategic & tactical approach to marketing to spine patients, and there is plenty more that we can share. We will resume the discussion where we left off, just book your practice a no cost marketing review and find out how we can help you reach the patients that can make your practice more profitable and improve your marketing returns.