The player is loading ...
49 | A follow-up visit experiment
Experimenting with a new follow-up visit option
Sometimes, a standard follow-up visit just isn't long enough.
In this episode, I share a small change I've made in my follow-up offerings that allows clients to self-select the type of follow-up visit they need/want. It's working really well!
There's also a bonus tip included that helps both your client and you remember how long your visit is supposed to last.
I'd love to hear what you think of these tips. Send me a message at https://intheclinic.com
Thanks for listening.
I'd love to hear from you. Leave me a voicemail with feedback or submit a question (click the pink "Send Camille a Message" button on the side of the page) 💚
Camille's Helpful Links for Practitioners
Transcript
Camille (00:00)
Well, hi there. Welcome to in the clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman. I am a licensed nutritionist and registered herbalist. And in this podcast I share little tips and tidbits that might be interesting or helpful for other practitioners.
Camille (00:21)
Today I want to talk to you about a pricing dilemma that comes comes up for people sometimes. You might notice that not all follow up visits are the same. Most of the time. We have a pretty good sense for how long we need for a follow up visit if the person is basically staying on track, and if their health more or less stays the same within a reasonable parameter of things getting a little better or a little worse, as they tend to do. Sometimes though, we have situations that are outside of the usual.
Camille (00:52)
For example, if we have a client we've been working with for a while, but then they don't come in for six months or twelve months, or sometimes even more, and then sooner or later they schedule a follow up on our calendar. We might be like, oh, I don't even quite remember what was going on with that client. And we know that it's going to take a little bit longer for that client to figure out where they are, what's been going on, to check in with them to get a handle on any recent labs, doctors visits, changes in their status, and so forth. Another reason that this might come up is if you're working with somebody regularly, but there's a major change in their health status, there's a bunch of new information coming in. So, for example, if you're working with somebody to support their digestive health, maybe they have IBS or IBS like symptoms, and you've been doing a lot of work on that, and all of a sudden, they go in for their annual check up and find out that their blood glucose is creeping up and they've been diagnosed as prediabetic.
Camille (01:51)
And all of a sudden, they're really worried about this, and they really want to address that more fully. And you know that there's going to be a lot of lifestyle education changes, support, you're going to need some time to go through their labs and to retool their protocol or any recommendations that you have. Same as before, it's going to take a little bit longer of your face to face visit and there's going to be a little bit more work on your end in terms of charting and coming up with your recommendations and communication with other practitioners and that sort of thing. So most of us have our systems set up so that people can either schedule an initial visit or a follow up or some package of follow ups. But once people have done the initial visit, most of the time it doesn't show up and it doesn't really make sense to have them schedule for another additional initial visit.
Camille (02:45)
So the option the client has is to just schedule the follow up and then it's a little bit awkward after the fact to say, hey, this is actually a longer follow up, so I'm going to charge you more. Or this is going to be 15 minutes more or 20 minutes more to just kind of estimate how much time it's going to take and how much to charge for that. It can be a little bit strange. The alternate option, of course, is just to not get any additional compensation to price your follow ups, such that, you know, some follow ups are going to take a little bit less time than expected, and some are going to take more, and it kind of evens out as long as you price your follow ups correctly. Recently, I came up with a third solution for this dilemma, and I decided to try it out with not much fanfare, but I just implemented it a few months ago in my practice, and I wanted to share how it's been going in case something like this is helpful for you.
Camille (03:39)
So what I decided to do is add two follow up options. So instead of just you can schedule a follow up, or you can schedule a package of three or five, which was the choices that I had before. Now, people who have already had an initial visit with me have the option to either schedule a standard follow up, which is 30 minutes. That's how long my follow ups have always been, essentially, or they can schedule a long follow up, which is 60 minutes, and it's a little bit under half, double the price of the standard follow up. So there's a little bit of a discount in terms of the time spent.
Camille (04:20)
And the way that I'm having this happen is that the client picks which one they want when they schedule. And at first I thought, well, I don't know if anybody would really ever schedule a long follow up. Maybe that's just wishful thinking on my end. But in fact, my clients have done an excellent job of sorting themselves into which one they seem to need. So the descriptions of each type of follow up have a short paragraph just directing people as to how they should select.
Camille (04:50)
And all it essentially says is standard follow ups are what most people need. If we've been working together for a while, if you have just what you consider to be a normal amount of checking in that you need to do, schedule a standard follow up. If we haven't worked together in six months or more, or if you have a new diagnosis, a major change in your health, or if you just want more time to go over whatever's happening with you, schedule a long follow up visit. That's basically all it says. And then there's the pricing.
Camille (05:22)
And like I said, it's working really, really well. Most people are appropriately scheduling standard follow up visits, and every now and then somebody schedules a long follow up visit because they know they'll need a little bit more time. And so I'm really, really pleased with the way that it's going. Wanted to share that for you as an option. It's not very detailed.
Camille (05:44)
Like I said, there's maybe one short paragraph in the description of each service indicating which one you should choose. So I'm just kind of leaving it up to people and like I said, they're doing a great job choosing it. Sometimes I do go a little bit over on the standard follow ups. A lot of times that's just me chit chatting with a client if I don't have somebody else immediately following. But I really haven't had anybody where I thought they needed the long follow up and they scheduled the short follow up.
Camille (06:13)
It just hasn't been an issue so far. And even if it happens every now and then, I'm not too worried about it because this system is working out so well. Before I go, I did want to share one other small tip that has been working out very well for me, which is that in the title of the service, I actually have been putting in parentheses how long it is. So it says Standard follow up visit, parentheses 30 minutes. And then the other one says Long follow up visits, parentheses 60 minutes.
Camille (06:47)
I also have that for my initial consult, which is an hour. It says Initial consultation, 60 minutes. And the reason for that is because clients don't always remember how long it's scheduled to go, and they probably are working with other practitioners. They may be working with some people who have an hour and a half visit, some people have 15 minutes visits, some people have 20 minutes. They can't always keep it straight how long you were supposed to be on the phone for, or how long you're supposed to be meeting for in person on the video, whatever.
Camille (07:18)
So when I put the time in the title of the service, when they add it to their calendar, it goes in there with the time written on it. So it says when they get a reminder, your follow up visit, parentheses 30 minutes is scheduled for tomorrow at 11:00 a.m.. So again, they are getting multiple reminders, including how long it is supposed to take. And that really helps keep both the client and me on track to see that number repeated. So everybody is clear on this is how long we have allotted for our visit together.
Camille (07:53)
All right, so those are the tips, tips I wanted to share with you today about follow up visits. I hope they're helpful. I would love to hear how it goes. If you decide to implement either one of these or if you have any other similar tips that the rest of the community might be interested in, please let me know that as well. I'll be back soon with another episode.
Camille (08:13)
Thanks so much for listening.
Well, hi there. Welcome to in the clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman. I am a licensed nutritionist and registered herbalist. And in this podcast I share little tips and tidbits that might be interesting or helpful for other practitioners.
Camille (00:21)
Today I want to talk to you about a pricing dilemma that comes comes up for people sometimes. You might notice that not all follow up visits are the same. Most of the time. We have a pretty good sense for how long we need for a follow up visit if the person is basically staying on track, and if their health more or less stays the same within a reasonable parameter of things getting a little better or a little worse, as they tend to do. Sometimes though, we have situations that are outside of the usual.
Camille (00:52)
For example, if we have a client we've been working with for a while, but then they don't come in for six months or twelve months, or sometimes even more, and then sooner or later they schedule a follow up on our calendar. We might be like, oh, I don't even quite remember what was going on with that client. And we know that it's going to take a little bit longer for that client to figure out where they are, what's been going on, to check in with them to get a handle on any recent labs, doctors visits, changes in their status, and so forth. Another reason that this might come up is if you're working with somebody regularly, but there's a major change in their health status, there's a bunch of new information coming in. So, for example, if you're working with somebody to support their digestive health, maybe they have IBS or IBS like symptoms, and you've been doing a lot of work on that, and all of a sudden, they go in for their annual check up and find out that their blood glucose is creeping up and they've been diagnosed as prediabetic.
Camille (01:51)
And all of a sudden, they're really worried about this, and they really want to address that more fully. And you know that there's going to be a lot of lifestyle education changes, support, you're going to need some time to go through their labs and to retool their protocol or any recommendations that you have. Same as before, it's going to take a little bit longer of your face to face visit and there's going to be a little bit more work on your end in terms of charting and coming up with your recommendations and communication with other practitioners and that sort of thing. So most of us have our systems set up so that people can either schedule an initial visit or a follow up or some package of follow ups. But once people have done the initial visit, most of the time it doesn't show up and it doesn't really make sense to have them schedule for another additional initial visit.
Camille (02:45)
So the option the client has is to just schedule the follow up and then it's a little bit awkward after the fact to say, hey, this is actually a longer follow up, so I'm going to charge you more. Or this is going to be 15 minutes more or 20 minutes more to just kind of estimate how much time it's going to take and how much to charge for that. It can be a little bit strange. The alternate option, of course, is just to not get any additional compensation to price your follow ups, such that, you know, some follow ups are going to take a little bit less time than expected, and some are going to take more, and it kind of evens out as long as you price your follow ups correctly. Recently, I came up with a third solution for this dilemma, and I decided to try it out with not much fanfare, but I just implemented it a few months ago in my practice, and I wanted to share how it's been going in case something like this is helpful for you.
Camille (03:39)
So what I decided to do is add two follow up options. So instead of just you can schedule a follow up, or you can schedule a package of three or five, which was the choices that I had before. Now, people who have already had an initial visit with me have the option to either schedule a standard follow up, which is 30 minutes. That's how long my follow ups have always been, essentially, or they can schedule a long follow up, which is 60 minutes, and it's a little bit under half, double the price of the standard follow up. So there's a little bit of a discount in terms of the time spent.
Camille (04:20)
And the way that I'm having this happen is that the client picks which one they want when they schedule. And at first I thought, well, I don't know if anybody would really ever schedule a long follow up. Maybe that's just wishful thinking on my end. But in fact, my clients have done an excellent job of sorting themselves into which one they seem to need. So the descriptions of each type of follow up have a short paragraph just directing people as to how they should select.
Camille (04:50)
And all it essentially says is standard follow ups are what most people need. If we've been working together for a while, if you have just what you consider to be a normal amount of checking in that you need to do, schedule a standard follow up. If we haven't worked together in six months or more, or if you have a new diagnosis, a major change in your health, or if you just want more time to go over whatever's happening with you, schedule a long follow up visit. That's basically all it says. And then there's the pricing.
Camille (05:22)
And like I said, it's working really, really well. Most people are appropriately scheduling standard follow up visits, and every now and then somebody schedules a long follow up visit because they know they'll need a little bit more time. And so I'm really, really pleased with the way that it's going. Wanted to share that for you as an option. It's not very detailed.
Camille (05:44)
Like I said, there's maybe one short paragraph in the description of each service indicating which one you should choose. So I'm just kind of leaving it up to people and like I said, they're doing a great job choosing it. Sometimes I do go a little bit over on the standard follow ups. A lot of times that's just me chit chatting with a client if I don't have somebody else immediately following. But I really haven't had anybody where I thought they needed the long follow up and they scheduled the short follow up.
Camille (06:13)
It just hasn't been an issue so far. And even if it happens every now and then, I'm not too worried about it because this system is working out so well. Before I go, I did want to share one other small tip that has been working out very well for me, which is that in the title of the service, I actually have been putting in parentheses how long it is. So it says Standard follow up visit, parentheses 30 minutes. And then the other one says Long follow up visits, parentheses 60 minutes.
Camille (06:47)
I also have that for my initial consult, which is an hour. It says Initial consultation, 60 minutes. And the reason for that is because clients don't always remember how long it's scheduled to go, and they probably are working with other practitioners. They may be working with some people who have an hour and a half visit, some people have 15 minutes visits, some people have 20 minutes. They can't always keep it straight how long you were supposed to be on the phone for, or how long you're supposed to be meeting for in person on the video, whatever.
Camille (07:18)
So when I put the time in the title of the service, when they add it to their calendar, it goes in there with the time written on it. So it says when they get a reminder, your follow up visit, parentheses 30 minutes is scheduled for tomorrow at 11:00 a.m.. So again, they are getting multiple reminders, including how long it is supposed to take. And that really helps keep both the client and me on track to see that number repeated. So everybody is clear on this is how long we have allotted for our visit together.
Camille (07:53)
All right, so those are the tips, tips I wanted to share with you today about follow up visits. I hope they're helpful. I would love to hear how it goes. If you decide to implement either one of these or if you have any other similar tips that the rest of the community might be interested in, please let me know that as well. I'll be back soon with another episode.
Camille (08:13)
Thanks so much for listening.
Listen On