Why Trust Is the Real Growth Engine of a Cash Practice

Welcome back to the cash practice solution. I'm Doctor J and I'm here to talk to you about something that is in short supply these days in healthcare. Since Covid oh man that disaster, trust. Patients used to trust their doctor. Seventy, eighty percent of patients, if you ask them, they'd say, I trust them with everything, with my life. Now it's down to about forty percent. So if you want to be successful, you want to learn how to build trust. In healthcare now, the number one thing you can do to build your practice in a way that will make it bulletproof, future proof and absolutely successful is to build trust. Your insurance background is not going to do it because we don't do insurance, It's not going to be the institution you work for because it's a smaller practice, So it's going to be you. And this episode is not about tactics or funnels or pricing. This episode is about trust. Patients don't choose cash practices because it's convenient or it's cheap. They choose them because they trust you. And, without trust, no matter what you do, you can have slick marketing and incredible wording and incredible teams behind you. They won't convert consistently. No matter what you charge, it's going to feel like it's too much. And if you grow and you're having this incredible curve, it's going to be delicate because people won't trust you. So we're talking about trust in business and why of all the things that you can do, if you can focus on one thing, that's going to be the consistent growth driver for a really long term, consistent growth pattern in your practice, you can build trust. Trust isn't a sales tool. It's the foundation. It is the bedrock of a great practice. Trust is confidence in the reliability, integrity, and intent of your cash practice. The insurance companies are not covering you, the institutions aren't covering you. It's you and the patient. Every patient is asking, is this person safe to trust? Are they acting in my best interest? Can I rely on them? Well, you can do that for them. You can answer those questions by the way that you act. The burned out patient who's already seen a whole handful of providers, they're not really so interested in your price. They're really asking if you're going to waste their time. They're asking if they can trust you to take care of them, if they can trust you to listen to their story and then learn the problem and then address it to their satisfaction so that potentially they could, they could get well. I mean, oh my gosh, can you imagine? They can actually get well. Why do people say yes to us? Because they trust us before they buy the care. My patients are referred by other people. And if you want to have a tremendous way to build trust, you have word of mouth referrals. I mean, people will come in already kind of preloaded for trust, but trust is actually built on four pillars. The people who are referring have experienced this quality. Number one, the outcomes that I promise show up. I don't promise when I do a stem cell injection.this is going to make your knee better. There's no question about it. Your shoulders are going to be perfect. I never make that promise. I give them the data from my clinical experience, from the literature and say, you have a good chance of having some really great symptom relief and you may need surgery. Frequently, I'll refer them out to have a surgical consultation before I even do it, so that we can have real clear information. And my outcomes will match. The next thing desired is  security. Patients want to know that what they're saying in the room with you is protected. Their data is protected. Their privacy is protected. And really because we see people, we do hormone therapy, there's a lot of very sensitive stuff. Their dignity is protected. And the way that we do that, besides making sure that our staff knows there's no jibjab, our security and our technology is excellent. There's no data mining allowed from our systems. We don't allow our data to be pulled out by anybody else. It's entirely enclosed. The third pillar is transparency. When I see a patient and I have a plan for them, I don't just say, hey, we're going to do our detox plan. I actually give them a clear explanation of the plan, kind of what the idea is behind it, that,, you do better if your body can detox, your liver is functioning well. And  list the pricing, what it's going to cost, for half a year, it's going to probably be two or three thousand dollars. And, I can show them very clearly. And finally, responsiveness matters so that when things don't go exactly the way that they were expected, that you're there and the buck stops here, t,  They know, there's somebody there who, no matter what happens,, they're going to have an answer and they're going to have somebody who's going to accept responsibility. And be able to do a great job to correct any problems that show up.  You see a new patient who's got a chronic problem. I have a gal who came in the other day. From the time she was a little kid, she had a venous malformation in her head. And so she needed a whole bunch of specialty work. But, she'd done our intake software and turned out she had an intestinal problem, a gut problem, leaky gut, as well as these crushing headaches. And no one had really spent the time to look through the whole problem. So we walked through it with her specifically, made the discussion of the gut brain connection clear and said, hey, if we get this gut thing better, it may positively impact your headaches. And what we're going to recommend is that you address the gut while we take care of the symptomatic control, the headache. So we did some cranial therapy, osteopathic cranial therapy, and addressed the leaky gut. We did some testing that was specific to the problem and hopefully she'll do better. I told her, if you don't do anything, the chances of you getting worse are pretty good. It probably won't kill you, but I think there's a good chance you're going to get better and you'll have some symptom improvement, if nothing else. At least you'll be somewhat better. And then I said, okay. Her mom was with her. She's twenty two years old. Do you have any other questions? And allow them to talk. Patients will wear themselves out pretty quick. Two or three minutes. If you just say, let me know what you think. If it goes over that, you can, you can kind of close it down, but give people a chance to talk, and you get a chance to hear what they have to say. And you can give them basically reassurance at the very least, sometimes you have a really good answer. But, never pressure a patient. And there's no urgency, especially when you have patients who are going to have that experience of a real long term chronic problem, and you're going to have the ability to work it out for them, they're going to love that. They're going to love the fact that you listened and that you actually paid attention and made an effort. And then they'll do this all the time. They go up front and they say, "oh my gosh, no one ever listened to me like that. No one ever explained it like this before." And they'll go out and they will evangelize. They're going to go. And they're going to schedule their follow ups, and they're going to do the work because patients don't buy the care that you're providing because they understand every detail. That's not what it is. She's not going to understand that entire tight junction in the intestinal tract thing and probiotic short chain fatty acid. She doesn't care about that stuff. What she cares about is getting better and that she trusts me. They buy the care because they trust me, and they trust the recommendation that I'm making. And I'm taking the time to listen to her. So I know her story well enough that I can actually make a good, informed decision. And then I've shown her on our transparency system all about her lab and what's going to happen. And it works.  This episode is brought to you by Esprē Health, the game changing platform for cash practices that are ready to level up. With smart, intuitive AI tools that sharpen your clinical insight and streamline your business. Esprē Health helps you run a practice that's not just efficient, it's enjoyable. So if you're ready to break up with that cranky old EMR and finally experience tech that makes your life easier, come on over to EspreHealth.com and see how thoughtful technology can transform your practice.  And hey, don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode that delivers the freedom to choose and the power to heal. Now let's get back to the show.  And then, of course, there's staff. Your staff is critical to that trust process. When patients are in the building, they not only feel you, but they feel everything that's happening around them. They feel that the way that the building is cared for, they care about the way that the staff speaks. They want to know if they called and their phone call wasn't returned, they want to know why. And when we handle those things in a way that is consistent, where we trust each other in the staff, the same way that the patient is intended to trust us, it's going to be great. So, for example, the patient comes in at quarter after and we don't get to them until half past. It's a fifteen minute wait. Instead of blaming the staff, I will engage the patient and say, hey, I am really sorry we overlooked your Scheduled appointment and now we're going to have to be fifteen minutes late. But I'm going to take the time to make sure you get everything that you need, and we're going to take care of it and make sure that the patient knows that's good. That way the staff feels like they're protected, so they're not thrown under the bus. I'm sorry about that. I want to make you look bad. I don't do that. Right? The patient feels respected. The staff feels protected. And trust increases on both sides of the desk. Right? Patients aren't going to see your staff meetings. They're not. They're not going to know what's happening back in the supply closet. But they always feel your culture. Yep. They know exactly what's going on. They can tell by the way that you look at each other. And you can do that. It just takes an extra minute. But you got to focus on trust. When you're building this trust network outside of you, you have people who provide you with nutritional supplements and laboratory services and surgical referrals. All of those opportunities should be built in that same way so that you don't use a nutritional supplement, you wouldn't use yourself. You don't use a lab that provides bad looking reports if you can possibly avoid it. You don't refer to a surgeon who happens to be in the network, but not necessarily so great. If you don't see them yourself, you shouldn't send them there. But, the hidden magical sauce in there is that all of the surgeons who I refer to, all of the specialists I refer to, they know that my patients come from a trusted environment. And they're going to come to them with this kind of open hearted trust, right? They know that I trust them. So they basically say, well, if Doctor Mahoney trusts you, I trust you. And that is beautiful. It lubricates everything. I mean, you talk about a beautiful situation. It just works and it works again and again. And no matter what you do, if you can focus on trust, you're going to have incredible, incredible grace in every situation that you confront. Not everything goes well in healthcare. You know that. But you can build trust by listening to the patients and responding to the problems in ways that are absolutely consistent. Your partnership will be strengthened with them and with your staff. And when things do get weird, you know, the patients are going to give you slack. They're going to give you room. So trust is proven over time. You do it by consistently delivering. You don't say, you know, trust me because... Transparency and clear communication, no surprises, security, reliability. Do what you say. Respond. Respond quickly. Ethically, you recommend what's best. We've talked about this before, outcome and income. If it improves the patient's outcome and it doesn't hurt your income, you ought to think about doing it. If it's neutral, well then, good idea. If you make money even better. Occasionally, if it costs you money to make things right, you do it.The patient really expects, really aggressive treatment because you have a reputation. I have a reputation for getting people better in these bad situations. And they say, whatever it takes, I'll do whatever you ask. So you don't build up a ten visit protocol when you can get them taken care of in two visits, right? You recommend as few visits as possible, and you explain why less is better and you get that incredible trust boost. So when they go home, they tell everybody they know that not only are you amazing at your work, but that you can be trusted. So you build this long term loyalty and every referral that you get, everyone will be high quality and you don't have to sort through and  try to find any good patients? They're all good patients because they come to trust you, and they come with the expectation that you're going to have this great outcome. That short term restraint, where it's like sometimes y you need a little extra cash or, your business is struggling a little bit. Short term restraint will work. It'll build long term results. Trust drives. Repeat visits. Referrals. Lower marketing costs. Pricing power. We're a little bit more expensive than all of our neighbors. We are. Probably ten or twenty percent more. But we can afford to do that because our patient trust is so high. Patients don't stop referring because we're a little bit more expensive than the guy down the street who doesn't do as good work. Who's not as trusted as much. The patients have incentive to refer all of their friends and family to us and to continue with us, because they know they're going to get results and they trust us. The most successful practices in our community aren't the ones with that big billboard. As you drive down the highway, that's not the one. The one that's most trusted is  the one that doesn't need the billboard. Not necessary because I have trust. The blinking magical sign that everybody knows, and it shows up everywhere. You open the door to our office and the little jingle bell that when you open the door. And our front office staff exudes trust. You can trust them because they're looking out for you. We had a guy actually come to the front desk one time and say, "everybody in your office is so honest." Which like that's an atypical thing. And I think it is. And when people have that response, then you're going to build yourself a practice that just grows and grows and grows. And you have peace. You're not just rocked up on your toes trying to sell and sell and sell. That trust will sell services. So are you building a practice of selling services? We work with a lot of practices that they're kind of desperate to grow. But unless you get that foundation, right, I mean, you want to build it on trust, right? And you can do it. It's not a mysterious thing. I mean, I've given you the pillars. They're simple transparency. You know, ethics. Consistency. Basically patients ask this question, you know, this question. "If it were your mom, what would you do if it were your sister, what would you do?" That's how your practice should run, right? Trust isn't part of the business. It is the business. So thanks for tuning in to the Cash Practice Solution podcast. If today's episode resonated with you, share it with a colleague, leave a review, subscribe for more insights. So until next time. And this is the key to trust. Ready? Listen to your patients. Learn their stories and love them with all your heart. You'll be unstoppable. Thanks for joining us. And if you have enjoyed today's conversation, be sure to hit subscribe so you don't miss out on future episodes packed with insights to help your cash based practice thrive. And don't forget to check out all the tools and resources available at CashPracticeSolution.com They're free to you, and we're always adding more. Keep raising the bar in patient care. We'll reconnect in the next episode with more ways to help you succeed. Learn more about Esprē here. Disclaimer: This article is intended for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute medical or legal advice. Clinicians should follow current evidence-based guidelines, regulatory requirements, and individual patient circumstances when making treatment decisions.