5 Simple Rules for Growing A Successful Wound Care Center

Sometimes it is not necessary to pay an expensive marketing consultant to state what a wound care professional should already know. Many times across most industries the key to truly effective marketing is simply creating a valuable and strong product in your field, so that people will positively refer it to others.

In this author’s medical career key components have included working in hospital-based and free-standing wound centers that were owned by outside companies. During that time period, the author served as an employee, an assistant medical director, and a resident. The experiences gained in each setting allowed the author to establish his own free standing, privately owned wound center and mobile wound service.

This author has also learned much about the marketing strategies that help make a wound center profitable and successful, in addition to the issues that will likely lead to the demise of a wound center.

Fiscally Sound
Firstly, any wound center or medical practice, must be organized with the understanding that it should be fiscally sound and profitable, to ensure that the services provided will be ongoing. Wound care professionals are all too familiar with the disheartening stories of wound centers that start out with significant fanfare, only to become a casualty of any number of excuses. The bottom line is literally the bottom line.

Principles and Rules
Just as there is no magic wand that professionals can use to heal every wound they encounter, there is no magic formula as to why one center succeeds while three others may fail. However, there are a few principles or rules, which if followed, are sure to predict growth and success of a wound center.
As with any successful business, the motivation behind the business plan should be honest and well though out. It is also essential that the owners and workers enjoy their work. While success of most businesses is measured purely in financial terms, wound care is first measured in successful healing outcomes and a reduction in amputation. However, financial success is the residue of providing exceptional wound care and integrating the
following five rules.

Rule Number 1
Wound care is not a glamorous specialty and a perception exists that it is extremely profitable. If the primary motivation behind the establishment of a wound center is monetary, then failure is almost guaranteed. A genuine love of providing exceptional and evidence-based wound care is an intangible that is not always found in providers.
Wound care requires that its practitioners be willing to get down and dirty and their initial motivation must be and should remain to help patients heal as quickly as possible.

Rule Number 2
Patient population does not allow for just a casual interaction on an intermittent basis. Professionals must be willing to spend the necessary time with each patient as dictated by their needs assessment at each encounter. The quest to do the right thing is never ending and very often quite difficult.
Wound care providers must treat each patient the way they would treat a family member remembering how they would wish to be treated if they were the ones in the treatment chair or hospital bed.

Rule Number 3
First impressions come with only one shot or chance, to make it a positive and lasting one. Patients who are referred to a wound center have obviously reached the point of needing a specialist’s care. Weeks, months, and even years of unsuccessful treatment of their condition makes them psychologically fragile and wrought with frustration. Whenever possible try to schedule new patient evaluations separately from existing patient appointments. This provides a setting where new patients will not feel hurried. During an initial new patient evaluation while learning of the extent of our patient’s condition, they are unconsciously evaluating the professionals as well. Simple listening (in a controlled fashion) goes a long way in the creation of a positive first impression. Asking questions during the history and physical is only part of the assessment. Listening to the patients will not only provide the essential information, but will earn a greater degree of respect from the patient. Make each new patient feel like they are the most important patient of the day by optimal scheduling and
courteous listening.

Rule Number 4
Treat the established patients with continued respect. Establish the understanding with the patient during the initial encounter that they need to meet half way in the management and treatment of their wounds. This not only places a vested interest in the patient’s condition back on them, but it establishes a partnership with them as well. In subsequent encounters it is important to maintain the lines of communication and do not take the fact that the patient has returned for follow up care for granted. Thank them at the end of each encounter. Remind them to call if they are experiencing any new concerns prior to their next appointment. Share in their success, and explain issues to them when things are not going as planned with the assurance that you are not giving up on them. Bottom line; continue to work to earn the trust and respect of established patients during each encounter.

Rule Number 5
Everyone takes different paths en route to their careers in medicine. Although it seems like it was in a different lifetime, in the first five and a half years after graduating from college, this author worked in sales and marketing for three very different but large and successful companies. It was during a stint with an advertising and marketing company that the author first learned of the Rule of 5’s, and has used it for the last twenty-or-so years.
The Rule of 5’s is not a scientifically derived formula but instead it is brilliant in its simplicity and wisdom.
Profound and effective when followed, the Rule of 5’s states that if one does something good for someone, they will tell five others about the good deed performed. On the other hand, if one mistreats someone or does something not so nice, they will tell five others about it, only five times faster than they would tell others about the good deed. Good news travels fast, but bad news travels much faster. Professional reputation and public perception of the wound center will either benefit from or become a casualty of the Rule of 5’s. Make a conscious decision to make the Rule of 5’s work with the center, not against it.

Reputation is Key
Obviously, the reputation of a wound center within a community is subjective, but is based on objective findings and some key intangibles that assist in spreading the word about the center. Coffee mugs and pens emblazoned with your wound center’s logo have a place; unfortunately this place is often the trash or a shelf, rarely to be seen again.
Interestingly, not one of the principles or 5 Rules requires any added expense or increase to your marketing budget or overhead. Following the 5 Rules outlined in this article will assist in converting the intangibles into the tangible results of increased patient satisfaction and an improved bottom line. n

Desmond Bell, DPM, CWS, FACCWS, FAPWCA is the CEO of First Coast Diabetic Foot and Wound Management Center and Wound Care on Wheels, Jacksonville, Florida. He is also the founder and director of Wound Summit Outreach, Inc., the Southeastern Interactive Wound Summit, the Wound Care Consortium of Jacksonville and the "Save a Leg, Save a Life" Foundation. Dr. Bell may be reached at drbell@wounddr.com or
a drbell@savealegsavealife.com