HOW TO CELEBRATE National Physical Therapy Month Is your practice taking advantage of National Physical Therapy Month? In this article, you’ll learn 4 ideas to build on the momentum of National PT Month and grow your new patients!
1 LET PATIENTS KNOW THAT PT = AN ALTERNATIVE TO OPIOIDS According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in 2017 almost 200 million prescriptions were given to American patients for opioid drugs to help them relieve pain related to disease, injury, or surgery. And while these drugs are sometimes necessary, there are other options for pain relief besides opioids, including physical therapy. A study conducted by the Stanford University and Duke University Schools of Medicine found that people who got physical therapy soon after getting a pain diagnosis decreased their likelihood of using opioid drugs by 7% to 16% in the months following the diagnosis. And those patients who did use drugs to control pain saw a 5% to 10% reduction in the amount of opioids they used for pain relief. All of this is to say that people often resort to drugs for pain control because they don’t realize they have other options, including getting physical therapy. One of the reasons why National Physical Therapy Awareness Month exists is to educate patients about how physical therapy can not only reduce the need for opioids but get to the pain’s source and prevent pain from happening in the first place. 2 CELEBRATE SPIRIT WEEK WITH YOUR STAFF Get some swag, like T-Shirts, mugs, and postcards for staff to wear and to pass out to patients. Postcards, in particular, can
proof, and they raise awareness of the benefits of physical therapy at the same time. And have fun! Create a competition with a fun reward, like a pizza party at 50 or 100 reviews. 4 MARKET TO DOCTORS DURING PT AWARENESS MONTH Catch busy doctors’ attention with physical brochures! According to the National Library of Medicine, in the year 2013, doctors averaged 25 emails per day and spent about two hours and 30 minutes a week reading those emails. It’s likely that those numbers have only gone up in the years in between. We mention these stats to remind you that the professionals you want to market to already get overwhelmed with emails, and it’s likely that the emails they prioritize are those from patients. Emails from marketers probably land somewhere lower on the proverbial totem pole. But beautifully designed print media does something else. It capitalizes on the construction of the human brain. According to MIT, the human brain requires only 13 milliseconds to process an entire image. The human brain processes images 60K times faster than it does text. In other words, when you market to doctors through email, your subject line’s text won’t impact the doctor’s consciousness as quickly as your postcard will. FINAL THOUGHTS ON CELEBRATING NATIONAL PT MONTH Creating marketing campaigns centered around National Physical Therapy Month allows you to capitalize on the attention that National PT Month already gets. Want to use this National PT Month to kickstart your practice growth? Contact your Account Manager about using brochures or newsletters to market to doctors!
serve double duty if you use them to get referrals. 3 START A GOOGLE REVIEW COMPETITION!
Encourage your staff to reach out to current and former patients to get reviews on Google and Yelp. Reviews also provide social
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