As a business owner – and doctors with private practices technically are business people – you must protect your investments. Now, for most people that means protecting your employees and your medical equipment. Your employees are your life. They realize and carry out your vision of how a business should be run. And your medical supplies and equipment are there for you and your employees to use. Without them, you can’t do your work. You need scalpels and microscopes and imaging equipment and… well, you get the point. These are the easily identifiable investments that can impact a business’ bottom line, but there do exist other, less obvious investments that also need to be protected. Like advertising.

Advertising gives your business the initial push it needs to reach the customers. You can have the highest quality product or offer the best service, but your customers need to know it. And, as a doctor, much of your in-office advertising is done through posters, signs, and brochures – all of which is tangible and thus prone to wear and tear. You need to protect your marketing material, guys, and the best way to do that is with Plastic Products: acrylic sign and poster holders, brochure holders, plastic frames. Whatever you do, just stay in the mindset that you need to protect your marketing material just like any other type of company asset.

Using a super thick sign frame won’t just physically protect your signs or posters; it’ll allow you to “float” your poster in between two thick acrylic panels. Your poster will get a breadth and a depth that helps it stand out. They’re versatile, too, giving you the option to mount the poster on the wall or just stand it upright on a desk for optimal viewing. You are running a business. A business in the business of providing health care. Saving lives, doing good deeds. The fact that you accept money doesn’t ruin the purity of your service, but it does make what you’re doing a business venture. Accept this fact, as well as market and protect your assets accordingly, and you’ll have great success.

Okay, this one might sound a little screwy. You’ve agreed to bear with us as we extol the many and multifaceted virtues of implementing Plastic Products in your medical office. You now understand that marketing your health services as if it were a cutthroat business – which, really, it is – reaps untold benefits for your bottom line and allows you to help even more people with their health issues. If you’re still reading this, you’re probably a convert to our way of thinking. You’re probably starting to think about your private practice as a business, first and foremost, and how doing so will improve your customer service and customer satisfaction levels. And above all, it will make you a better public servant.

Assuming all that, your office is most likely heavily inundated with a constant flood of patients. People have come in sick and walked out satisfied – and they’ll be back. When they do come back, you need to be prepared to handle it. So many small businesses lose their way when they taste success; it’s not that they get complacent or lazy, it’s that they’re unprepared for the logistics of serving a large clientele. Don’t fall in that trap. It’s difficult to extricate yourself from it.

Again, a warning – this is going to sound petty and inconsequential. But please listen.

Outfit your waiting room with plenty of pens. Yes, pens. Ballpoint, felt tip, whatever. Just have enough pens on hand to account for the crowds and their sneaky tendencies to pilfer. People do take pens. You’ve probably done it yourself. It’s the American way – like taking lighters. So have tons of pens on hand, as well as an acrylic pen holder to hold them all. Remember, your office is the paragon of professionalism, with its sign holders and wall mounted business card holders and snappy design choices, so you need to present your pens in a similar manner. The acrylic pen holder – for either 8 or 64 pens – is the way to go.

Private practices – doctors, dentists, chiropractors alike – offer a valuable service to the community. Some would probably even consider their services a humanistic, charitable thing intended as a right for every living person. And most health service employees work in the industry in order to help people. Sure, making a decent living helps out, too, but most doctors are idealistic people who got into the industry because they wanted to stamp out disease, or help deliver healthy babies, or cure cancer. The fact remains, though, that saving lives takes money. And saving lives is a business. Our world thrives on innovation, and innovation feeds off of profit. It may not be the most idealistic way to look at life, but it’s certainly pragmatic and realistic.

Doctors’ offices should probably pay close heed to this idea. You might fancy yourselves champions of healthy living unconcerned with profit or money, but following the marketing designs of more traditional businesses will do wonders for promoting your services. Their advertising methodology is proven to work regardless of the quality of the goods or services being advertised; you’re offering people services that will improve the quality of their lives, so implementing some basic advertising principles will work wonders for your “business.”

You’ve already heard me talk about using acrylic sign holders to draw the patients’ eyes to medical posters or informational material. Why not use sign holders to advertise your services? Attack the problem of getting patients to try out an innovative new procedure as if it were a new variety of soda or a new movie about to come out: use an eye-popping bowed sign holder! Instead of using your basic flat acrylic plastic sheen, the bowed sign holder is curved so as to attract the customers’ eyes and draw their attention to your product. I say product, because you are advertising a product here, albeit one that could save someone’s life. The hardest part is getting over the hump and starting to think of yourself as a businessman hawking an honorable service. Treat your health services as a product, a commodity almost (or at least advertise like they are), and you’ll get more customers – and that means more people whose lives you’re potentially improving.

The prevalence of multimedia in our society is widespread and far-reaching. Just look to our presidential election. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, has a grasp of the many mediums through which we obtain our political information – and he’s winning. John McCain is the old pen-and-paper stalwart – and he looks a bit lost and his campaign is in shambles. Whether it’s through chain emails, Youtube videos, blogs, or clips from the Daily Show and MSNBC being passed around through office emails, this campaign has been played out online. But really, isn’t all of life like this nowadays?

You, as doctors looking to improve your services, need to be aware of the power of multimedia and the Internet. Now, you’re already reading this blog, so you’re part of the way there already. You can do a whole lot more than just reading blogs, though. One great way is to build on the informational material you’ve been providing already – through brochures, posters, and signs in the waiting and exam rooms – through DVDs or compact discs containing the same information presented in a hip, accessible way. Now, with the DVDs, you’ll want to create an interactive presentation. Maybe hire a programmer to create a simple game that lets the player explore the anatomy of the human body, or one that puts the player in the role of a white blood cell attacking harmful viruses. An easier presentation to implement is a simple slideshow or Power Point program. Really, the possibilities are endless – you can pretty much try anything you want. That can be secretly difficult to pull off, though. When you have all the options in the world, it’s easy to get it wrong, so take care that you don’t get careless and flippant. Make it count for something.

The best way to advertise these DVDs is in a CD display holder. Don’t be fooled by the name; a DVD and a CD are identical sizes, so the CD display holder will definitely work.

An oft-neglected part of creating an attractive, engaging waiting and examination room environment for your office is general maintenance. You see, if you’ve been following this blog and taking its advice to heart, I’d be willing to bet your offices are full of posters and poster holders and signs and sign holders and wall mounted informational material. A suggestion box on the front desk, a donation box next to the magazine rack – you guys better be following my advice! But it can’t stop there. You need to maintain the appearance of all your plastic products. Just like you use acrylic sign and poster holders to give your posters an attractive sheen and protective sheath, you need to use plastic polishes and cleaners.

Having scratched up, dusty, dull old plastic sign holders is almost as bad as having none. Wait, scratch that. It’s worse. You want to project an air of professionalism; you’re dealing with people’s health, with people’s lives, and you expect them to trust you if your office presentation is unkempt and substandard? No way.

Novus 1 Clean and Shine is a good choice of cleaner. It “gently cleans all plastics” and removes scratches, leaving “a lustrous shine that resists fogging, repels dust and eliminates static.” Sounds pretty good, and it comes in either a 2 or 4 ounce bottle.

But if your plastics already suffer from scratches, you might want to consider going with the Novus 2 Fine Scratch Remover. A little bit goes a long way – just apply a bit to fine scratches, rub, and watch them vanish. Abrasions and general haziness will also be eliminated.

Heavy scratches on plastics can be removed with Novus 3 Heavy Scratch Remover. Again, use just a small amount to start, as this stuff is pretty powerful.

Oh, and make sure you use a polishing cloth. They’re designed to maximize the effectiveness of polishes and cleaners.

One last word of advice for all you doctors out there looking to improve your business and make your patients’ visits memorable ones: consider investing in donation boxes for the office. Why donation boxes, you might ask? What’s the point? You’re already giving out incredible health advice and saving lives, after all. Having a donation box – for whatever cause – might seem a little redundant, right? Well, again, it’s all about appearances. Think about the posters and signs you put up. You use acrylic sign holders to protect them, but mainly because they look professional. Even if your office is a bumbling bastion of ineptitude, you still need to appear professional, which is why you use the holders.

Putting a donation box out in your office creates – if nothing else – the idea in patients’ heads that you are a man of the people with their welfare in mind. You’re not some rich, elitist doctor administering healthcare from your ivory tower; you’re a good honest doctor with real concerns about helping people. And the donation boxes? They’re proof of this.

But look: donation boxes are good things. When you put one out, you will collect money for a charity at little to no cost to you. Where’s the harm? It’s not like you’re out actively campaigning to raise money for these charities. You can just put the donation box in a good spot, slap a label on it identifying the charity, and sit back. Let people’s natural sense of goodwill and charity take over. You’ll be helping people, improving your image, making people happy – both the charity recipients and the charity givers – at no cost to you. Making the socially conscious choice is always the best choice, especially when that choice mainly consists of buying some donation boxes and putting them out for anyone to donate.

Last week, I spoke to you about the importance of using sign bases in your doctor’s office to profligate good, helpful information to your patients in the form of posters and signs. And the bases remain crucial – they allow the signs and posters to stand up and be seen by any of your patients, and they give you more freedom to place posters as you see fit (no more plastering the walls with poster after poster) around the room. The thing is, simply getting a sign base isn’t quite enough. You’re also gonna need acrylic sign holders to finish the job.

Acrylic sign holders are sturdy protective sheathes that maintain the rigidity of a good poster while protecting its corners and lending an eye-catching, attractive sheen. They give your operation the air of credibility – not that you’re lacking in that area, but if your office is full of naked posters with frayed edges and dull matte finishes, you will appear less than totally professional. And in an industry where people are staking their health on your professionalism, allaying any fears they might have is important.

Don’t stick your posters and signs up on the walls with old thumb tacks. Don’t prop your signs and posters up by leaning them against books or walls. That’s just – pardon the pun – tacky. Instead, use acrylic sign holders for your posters on the wall, and use acrylic sign holders with sign bases for your tabletop signs.

Doing so won’t just keep your patients informed, happy, and patient; using acrylic sign holders to highlight your informational material will maintain the professional appearance your patients have come to expect and deserve.

We’ve been talking for awhile now about the importance of getting informational material out into the examination and waiting rooms of your offices. I think I’ve done a pretty thorough job of urging you doctors to take an active role in making sure your patients are well informed, engaged, and never bored. And, for the most part, I bet you doctors reading this blog will most likely take my advice to heart and start focusing on the little details that make a doctor’s visit a good one, or a bad one.

First, put up informational signs in the waiting room. Waiting room visits are taking longer and longer nowadays, and people will eventually get sick of all the old outdated magazines for which doctors’ offices are famous. If you fill the customer’s periphery with great medial informational posters and signs, you’ll have an engaged, informed customer clientele. Put up some cool pictures of the human body or something, too – the kids love that stuff.

Use much the same method in the examination rooms, too. Imagine this: you’ve been sitting in a noisy waiting room with screaming children for half an hour, only to be ushered into a plain examination room with the assurance that “the doctor will be right with you.” But be honest, docs – you’re never “right with us.” Have a heart and apply the waiting room poster concepts to the exam room.

Whichever you choose, be sure to use acrylic sign holders to protect your posters and give them a professional appearance. You can opt for wall-mounted holders – most do – but another option is to use sign bases. The sign base simply allows a poster or sign to stand up at a slight angle (perfect for viewing) on a table or desk. You don’t want the walls to be absolutely choked by covers, so use sign bases to give your poster arrangements some three-dimensionality.

A doctor’s greatest ally, believe it or not, is the well-informed patient. One might think differently. In fact, in popular media these roles always seem to be antagonistic and opposing. The aging doctor feeling insecure when the patient anticipates his diagnosis; a know-it-all patient trusting the Internet over the M.D. and winding up dead because he believed some crack-pot homeopathic cure; both harboring feelings of superiority, and nothing gets done. We’ve all seen these depictions in sitcoms or episodes of ER, but is this reality? Are doctors really so insecure that a patient armed with some clinical study abstracts and pre-conceived notions sends them on the defensive? Are some patients really so arrogant as to disregard a trained doctor’s medical advice? I suppose if every examination room wall could talk, at least several would report back in the affirmative for both questions. The vast majority of doctors actually welcomes well-informed patients – they make their jobs easier and increase the chance that the patient will actually understand the doctor’s terminology.

The result is a streamlined flow of information between doctor and patient. It’s almost as if they have become peers and the two can speak frankly and effortlessly, like two doctors discussing a medical case. That’s exaggeration, of course, but it’s true that treatment moves more smoothly when the doctor doesn’t have to stop to explain every single little detail to the clueless patient.

Young and middle-aged patients tend to be the best-informed. They’re the ones for whom the Internet has become a research staple. Interested in dining out tonight? Hop online for thousands of restaurant reviews. Worried about that rash? You can probably find a decent approximation of a diagnosis online. It’s your elderly patients – the most numerous of all – that are largely computer illiterate and, therefore, mostly ignorant of medical issues (unless they’re talking about their own previous health issues – we all know how Grandpa lives to discuss his arthritis to anyone who’ll listen). They do seem to have a healthy curiosity and willingness to learn, so you just have to present information in their terms.

Aside from perhaps including “Internet for Dummies” with your waiting room fare, your best bet is to set up an assortment of acrylic brochure holders containing informational brochures. When designing brochures, skew simplistic; you have to assume these people are walking in with little to no existing medical knowledge. Give general overviews supported by details. Provide the basic necessary information and the patients will respond with intelligent follow-up questions in the exam room.

Customer feedback is the lifeblood of any service provider. A business ultimately exists to make money, sure, but it achieves profitability by providing excellent service that customers are happy to purchase. You don’t get there by ignoring your customers; even the smartest people take advice from others. Of course, it isn’t realistic to expect a patient to openly discuss their impressions of a doctor’s performance. There are no exit interviews at the doctor’s office, unfortunately, though a good, honest exit interview would do wonders for your practice. Besides, you’d never get a straight answer from most people in that situation. They’re quick to post a review on Yelp, though.

But Yelp, popular as it is, still ignores a significant demographic – that net-illiterate group which trends curmudgeonly. These older folks have more health issues, visit the doctor more often, and subsequently have more complaints. They also don’t have an effective outlet for their complaints, besides maybe grumbling at the receptionist. Grandma won’t be rushing home to blog about the hour wait, and even if she did, no one would read it. Nope, not even you. You wouldn’t read Grandma’s blog. Just admit it.

On a serious note, there are ways to get valuable customer feedback without putting people on the spot or assuming they’re net-literate. With the patient’s receipts and medical papers, include a small written survey and ask the patient to complete it before leaving (or take it home and return it on the next appointment). Put a few acrylic suggestion boxes out on the counter for the completed surveys, so the customers can respond at their leisure. Keep the survey short and sweet with questions that cut to the important issues. Be cautious about asking the right questions. Heck, consider asking what the customer considers to be an important issue, and then have them give a rating on that issue. After all, because you’re asking for feedback to understand what the customer wants, confirmation that your questions address relevant problems that matter is paramount. Give enough blank space for the written responses, and don’t let the suggestion box fill up before you read any of the surveys. If you respond to a customer’s suggestion, you validate the concept of the suggestion box. The more you communicate with your customers, the more they’ll feel inclined to give you helpful feedback.

And the most important rule: take the advice to heart. We can all learn from each other!