Medical Laser Blog - Fotona Straight Talk for the Physician

The Ideal Practice For Adding An Aesthetic Laser

So here’s an interesting question I got the other day... “what is the ideal practice for adding an aesthetic laser?”  Well, the ideal practice is one with people coming to it that are interested in maintaining a youthful appearance.  Now, that pretty much means EVERY practice. 

Let me ask you – what would you think would be the furthest practice from an aesthetic market?  Maybe a Pediatric practice?  Well, we have several Fotona owners who are pediatricians.  They don’t market to their patients, but rather to the parents of their patients.  When the parents bring their child in for an office visit, the waiting room will have information available about aesthetic procedures offered in the clinic, and most importantly, they have before/after pictures tastefully framed and hung in the waiting room.  This grabs the attention of the parent and often this converts into an additional aesthetic conversation along with the well-child visit.  Many of our pediatric owners are quite successful in their aesthetic businesses.

What about Urology?  This practice type might seem a far distance from an aesthetic practice, yet we have several very successful Urologist laser owners who are able to easily able to convert patients from their urological issues (once properly treated of course) to the treatment offerings from the aesthetic laser.

These are just two examples of medical specialties – fairly distant from anything you might consider for a cosmetic practice – and yet they are quite successful.  What doctors fail to understand is the demand for aesthetics.  In our practices, whether it is primary care such as Family Practice, Internal Medicine  or Ob/Gyn, etc., we are so bombarded with people being upset about the cost of their co-pay that we can’t imagine that they’d actually put down cash for non-covered services such as aesthetic laser therapies.  The truth is…people pay for what they want and they begrudgingly come in for the things that they need!

J. Paul Getty once said, “Give people what they need and you can make a living.  Give people what they want and you can become rich.”  So while you are indeed providing what people need in your primary specialty, remember that you can augment your income and you can dramatically improve the satisfaction of your patient base by offering cosmetic therapies (including laser therapies).  

So the ideal practice for an aesthetic laser is YOUR practice!

Are You Qualified to Run or Supervise a Medical Laser?

I’m gonna bet that you did pretty well in high school.  Then you went to college – learned the material set in front of you and got good grades.  Then you went to Medical school.  Only people with really good grades get into medical school and you were there, learning and competing with a bunch of really smart people – and you survived.  Now you’re a medical doctor and you went to some kind of specialty training (probably) and in that training, you learned more material.  

I don’t think anyone could question your ability to learn, but what about your general reasoning capacity?  Well, you’re a doctor.  You have to collect data, synthesize it, formulate a problem list, a differential diagnosis and proceed to a firm diagnosis.  This is your daily routine.   Your daily routine is problem solving and sleuthing.  There is no reason to question your ability to problem solve and critically reason.  

So what about other specialties?  Is anyone really getting laser training? Well recently – yes.  But as little as just a few years ago there was no-one learning about lasers in their primary training.  And now, most of the training people get on lasers is in its use as a cutting tool (using a CO2 as a scalpel during laparoscopic surgery for example).    It’s not as if some other specialty has a giant let up on you.   They don’t.

So what would be required for you to be competent to run or supervise the running of a medical laser?  The proper training.   You need to understand the machine.  You need to understand how it could be dangerous. The scalpel is a very dangerous tool.  The difference is that you have to be in direct contact with someone with the scalpel.  With the laser, if you haphazardly point it, you could injure someone from a distance.  And believe it or not, the more dangerous lasers are the ones that aren’t ablative (in general).    So – there are some tricks you need to know, but they’re easily learned.  Basic safety can also be easily learned and then you need to learn the applications -also easily learned and far less complex than most other areas of medicine and those areas that you already work in now.  

To become a competent laser operator or supervisor requires mastery of a fairly small domain of topics.  Once you’re a competent laser operator, you need to simply follow the protocols.  If you follow the protocols, it is possible to get expert outcomes simply by being a competent laser operator or supervisor.  

To become a true laser expert, you need experience.  And experience comes from time operating and supervising the treatments.  

If you want to get expert outcomes right away, simply select your patients properly (which is easily trained and learned), and apply the protocols properly - over and over and over…. until it’s second nature and until you can begin to refine and hone and customize.  

It’s not hard.  The skill-set is relatively simple.  The parameters are finite.  The rewards are great!

Aesthetic Laser Medicine: Is it the shot in the arm your practice needs?

I was looking at this month's issue of Medical Economics and the entire issue was dedicated to bringing more joy to your practice. Well, I must tell you that aesthetic laser medicine has brought a lot of joy to MY practice. Not just for me – but for my patients. It has freed up my time, it’s freed up intellectual curiosity (I’m able to learn new things and apply them) and frankly, it’s nice to see a patient come in and do something because they want to do it and are excited to do it and not just there because they have to do it and they don’t want to do it!

The biggest challenge I have in sorting out my practice comes from my diabetic patients who are more interested in getting their aesthetic procedures done than they are in refilling their diabetic supplies. I have a few heart-to-hearts with my diabetics and tell them we’re not going to treat their aesthetic issues if their diabetes is not under good control.

That’s the difference between “want to do it” and “have to do it.” There might be a complaint about a co-pay to see me for diabetes, yet the same patient will gladly drop multiple $100 dollar bills on the table to have their aesthetic work done.

So as you’re thinking about our patients and realizing that they’re all complaining about their co-pays (because yes, that’s something they have to do – not want to do) – know that what your patients want is to feel good and look younger. In my case, I can do that by treating their diabetes so they have good control and help them to look younger by having an aesthetic practice.

They shot in the arm I asked about? This comes in the greater sense of pleasure within the practice of medicine.  It comes in a better bottom line which means you don’t have to fight quite as often or quite as hard with the insurance companies over trivial rules they have about whether or not you can use this drug or that drug, etc.

In other words – an aesthetic medicine practice gives you some freedom. Freedom = choices. Choices often lead to happiness.

Can A Medical Laser 'Recession-Proof' Your Office?

Well, the truth is, nothing can recession-proof your office, but it can diversify and stratify your income stream.

You need to think about your income in the same way that a good financial advisor would teach you about your investments. In difficult economic times, most experts would agree that the best defense is diversification. So you have stocks and bonds and real estate and precious metals…but in your office you have third-party payers – and that is all. And the third-party payers are getting more aggressive. They are decreasing reimbursement and increasing the hassle-factor of getting that reimbursement. In fact, a portion of the strategy is simply to deny and a certain percentage of physicians won’t fight the claim and therefore that’s less that have to pay out. Increasing the hassle factor for getting reimbursement is actually part of their economic strategy.

The truth is, insurance companies often live on the float. What that means is that every day that they keep the money they owe you, they earn interest on it and that interest (to a large bank account) can add up to substantial sums of money. Insurance companies are really investment companies. They take the premiums and they invest them.

So we need to take on similar strategies. We need to diversify our income strategy just like we diversify our personal investment strategies and the way insurance companies diversify their strategy. A laser can help you with that because a laser creates a pure, cash income stream – totally separate from your third party payers!

Now, how does this become a recession hedge? If you look at the statistics on any aesthetic medicine downturn during the recent financial difficulties, you’ll see that it was large cosmetic procedures like face lifts, breast augmentation and major body contouring that really went to near zero. In our office, the laser hair removal, laser spider vein treatments stayed reasonably constant. Ok – it took a bit of a dip, but nothing like liposuction or breast augmentation and those kinds of procedures.

Why would this be? Well, these procedures are in the domain of reasonable discretionary spending. They cost a few hundred dollars, but not several thousands of dollars. So an individual who has active acne and wants it treated is significantly motivated. A person with a lot of spider veins on their legs or face also has a significant motivator to getting them treated. Somebody who is maybe even fearful for their job and continuously wanting to place their best foot forward wants to treat themselves so they can compete in today’s youth-oriented job market.

There are many reasons why people will continue to pay for the relatively lower cost laser treatments during an economic downtime. Throughout 2009 and into 2010, the laser portion of our aesthetic office has remained busy. And I want to remind you that our office is in a small, mid-Minnesota, agricultural community, so it’s not like we are somehow on Rodeo Drive or in Scottsdale, AZ or Manhattan. We are in a small community. I’ve always felt that if our laser practice can survive and thrive, we have to be the worst-case scenario.

Diversification is the key to weathering any economic situation. If you are fully dependant upon the whims of insurance companies for your income, you ought to think about diversification. It can de-stress your practice, it can increase the “happy” quotient and it can make your financial world better.

Who Can Operate a Medical Laser?

We get calls all the time from doctors across the country wondering if  they are qualified to operate a laser.  Some of them have suggested that they might need to go back to residency to become a dermatologist or plastic surgeon or something like that.  

The truth is, that until very recently, nobody learned how to use lasers in residency and all of the current “guru’s” learned to use lasers after their training.  Some residencies now include some laser training, but by-and-large, most aesthetic laser training is still done outside of residencies.   

It’s like anything else in medicine:  we get this strange idea that after residency you’re just suddenly unable to learn anything, when the truth is that learning is a lifelong event.  In fact, your medical acumen and just plain clinical smarts are far greater today than they were when you were a resident.  You know already what an injury to the skin will look like, you know what the layers of the skin are, you know how to assess for injury…..you know a lot more than you think you know about the skin.  And by compiling it properly, you can quite rapidly become a competent laser operator and a very competent laser supervisor for your anxillary staff that may be doing some of the non-invasive laser therapies.  

So don’t be intimidated by laser medicine.  A laser is just a tool.  It is far safer than a scalpel and far safer than most of the drugs you already use.  The only mystery comes in that you don’t know about it yet.  BUT – we have highly focused, very comprehensive training programs to get people up to speed and competent very rapidly.  

Now, I’m using the word “competent” on purpose because competent means that you are safe, and that you can do the job.  It doesn’t mean you are a laser expert.  To cultivate being a laser expert requires time behind the machine.  Many studies are done on being an expert and really, being an expert requires doing – not just reading.  

So, once you have your laser, you start “doing” and as you gain experience, you become more and more expert.  But competency is something that can be learned very, very rapidly – depending, of course, on the type of procedure(s) that you plan to do.  It can be achieved in as little as an hour or in as much as a day or two of training or whatever you need.  

The answer to the question “What do you need to be a competent laser operator?” is "the proper training in safety and applications.  With time and experience you will become more and more expert."  Don’t be intimidated –it’s pretty straight forward.

Top 5 Reasons to Add Aesthetic Laser Medicine to Your Practice

1. Your patients are already getting it. If you do a survey of your patients, you’ll find out that a significant fraction of your patients are either already getting aesthetic procedures OR they are seriously contemplating it.

2. It’s a great fit for your practice. This isn’t fluff. It’s about HEALTH and WELLNESS. People want to look as good as they feel. People want to be vibrant and to be healthy both on the inside and the out.

3. With proper training, it is absolutely safe and effective. A lot of companies talk about comprehensive laser medicine training and on-going support, but our experience in working with many, many physicians over the last decade has been that a lot of companies roll their equipment into your office and then they’re gone forever. In contrast, we provide comprehensive, on-going laser training – period.

4. You can achieve EXCELLENT results. If you’ve read through my blog, you’ll know that I’m about the “wow” result. What I’m NOT about is the “well, if you squint your eyes and turn your head sideways you can see some improvement.” No! I don’t care about that. I care about excellent results and you can achieve these excellent results as well.

5. It is a great, GREAT secondary income stream. Many of the aesthetic procedures can be done by your nurse or a technician while you are seeing your regular patients. Along with the treatment of the day, the laser operator will also be “mining” for those larger ticket items that you will need to do, such as medium depth peels, etc.

Aesthetic Laser Medicine: your patients already want it, it’s a great fit for a wellness practice, if properly trained it is absolutely safe and effective, you can achieve excellent results and it is a wonderful secondary income. That’s a GRAND SLAM. Think about it.

Enhance Your Income With An Aesthetic Laser Practice

My team and I have been very successful in all aspects of Aesthetic Medicine and we would like to show you how.  Allow me to "talk at you" with this short video and check out this web page that will also show you some conservative aesthetic laser practice financials.

If you're interested in doing laser hair removal, collagen and skin rejuvenation, laser vein treatments, treating cystic acne, warts and more - you have the patients already.

To get started, download our free papers and then contact us.  We're here to help you jump start this new and lucrative piece of your medical practice.

 

Your Medical Laser Spa Clients ARE Your Best Advertising

We get calls all the time from people we’ve trained all over the country and in fact, all over the world, asking if our medical spa or laser practice is busy.  The answer is a resounding, “YES – we are busy!”  Would we like to be busier?  Sure.  But we are busy.  And if you’re not….why not?

The problem is that the day-to-day operation of the practice overwhelms most people and they forget to do the things that bring in traffic.   What I mean by that is promotion, and I’m not talking about a multi-million dollar ad campaign, although you can do ads on cable networks relatively inexpensively these days.  What I’m really talking about is recruiting your patients to be your best advertisers and you can incentivize them.  I’ve talked about this in the past but it deserves talking about again. 

When you see a new patient, or any patient for that matter, you should be giving them a card, or several cards, that they can give to their friends and to their family.  That card has some sort of discount associated with it.  As you give these cards to your patients, you write their name on it so when they give it to somebody and that somebody brings it in to your office, not only does the card holder get a discount, but you put that card in your patient's file and the next time they come in you say to them “gosh, you have been responsible for the referral of “x” number of people and for each person you’ve referred in, you get a discount of…”

Now remember that these are discounted services, so it doesn’t really cost you anything but the time to provide the service and most importantly, it brings in a new patient.  So when a new patient is brought in, don’t think of it as simply the upper lip and chin laser hair removal.  Think of it as a whole new revenue stream because that person is going to hopefully love your office and the person that took care of them. They’re going to love their upper lip and chin treatment so they’re going to want a micro-laser peel of their face and after that they’re going to want to do their axillary hair and after that they’re going to want liposuction or some other bigger procedure.  Don’t forget that these patients are not just there for their one treatment on that one particular day.  They are a continuous revenue stream.  Treat them with the dignity and respect that they deserve.

Each one of your patients should become a source for more patients and you do that by incentivizing them to tell their friends and family.  The best possible recommendation is from a satisfied client.

A Fotona Laser Vs. The One Trick Pony

Many laser companies will want to sell you a whole bunch of boxes.  One box for laser skin resurfacing to erase hand spots, one box for this, one box for that, one box for the other thing…but you just do not need all of that equipment.  When we used to talk to physicians and they would sort of boast that they have 20 lasers in their office, we would be somewhat intimidated by that and start wondering if we had all the right equipment.  And now, quite frankly, I have to suppress the urge to chuckle because I know that they’ve got a bunch of one-trick-pony boxes…they’ve spent a boatload of money on a bunch of stuff they don’t really need.

It’s a little like this:  A Fotona Laser has just a few wavelengths and they all work completely and successfully.  Our product works a bit like the product by Microsoft called “Word.”   If you want to make a banner, you can make it with Microsoft Word.   If you want to make a business card, you can do it with Microsoft Word. If you want to type a letter, type a book, import graphics…you got it – you can do all of those things with Microsoft Word.  But most people who own Microsoft Word actually buy a special little program to make banners, and another little program to make business cards and so on.  So get Microsoft Word….get a Fotona Laser – and then learn how to use it.  

The nice thing is, when you begin setting up a medical spa and buy a laser from Fotona in the United States, comprehensive training and clinical follow up comes with it.  You don’t have to worry about how you’re going to learn the depths of this machine.  You’re taught and it’s easy.    It’s like we’ve taken the concept of Microsoft Word and put it on a Macintosh platform so it’s easy to use. 

So, no one-trick-ponies.  I know…I keep saying that, but it’s just that time and time again we see this one-trick-pony thing. Don’t buy a machine that either does a whole bunch of things well not very well (like an IPL) OR a machine that only does only ONE thing well. 

 

Get a machine that does a whole bunch of things extremely well.  Fotona.

Growing Your Laser Hair Removal Practice

Hair removal is about 50% of most laser offices practice.  And it’s much easier to see a big increase in revenue by getting a small bump in your hair removal than it is to develop a whole new therapy, because there you’re starting from scratch and there’s a wind up time.  So here’s one thing that we do.  We identify our patients who have really been excited.  Though all of our patients are happy with their hair removal, some are really excited.  Some are evangelists and you need to find those evangelists. When you identify an evangelist, you partner with them to market, and here’s how you do it.  It’s quite simple.

You tell them that you want to have a party for them.  They’re going to invite a minimum of 10 friends to your office and you’re going to have hors’devours or whatever is appropriate for your practice in your area.  If you don’t sell make up, you have the Mary Kay rep come out, or whoever has been trained in make-up application. Or if you sell make-up in your office, you have your make-up specialist there to give make-up tips.  You have a discussion about botox. You have a prize drawing to give a free botox treatment to the lucky winner and you have a discount on the sale of laser hair removal packages.  

Now the word “package” here is important.  You never sell a single hair removal treatment because a single treatment will give them a single “shed” but then hair will continue to grow.  You need a series of treatments to get effective hair removal because remember, there are 400 (more or less) hair follicles per square centimeter on your entire body and we can only kill a hair follicle when it is actively growing.  So if you have 5 follicles growing in that square centimeter when you do a laser procedure, you kill those 5 follicles.  But the other 300+ follicles in that square centimeter are not injured so we have to wait for the next growth cycle to kill them.  So you never sell in a single – you always sell a package.  You sell a package of 3 or you sell a package of 6 at a bit of a bigger discount and so on.  

We tell the party organizer (your evangelistic patient) that for every person that signs up for a treatment package, whether it’s for hair removal or some other therapy you provide, we’ll give the party organizer a gift certificate.  The gift certificate can be in any denomination.  We give out pretty big certificates.  For every party attendee that signs up for a treatment, we give the party organizer a $200 gift certificate.  Now, the sign up has to occur on the night of the party.  So we provide the party with the packages, and a 10% sign-up discount.  When the person buys the package at the end of the night, and if all ten people bought a package, the party organizer gets 10 $200 gift certificates.

Now you might think, “oh my gosh, I’ll go bankrupt doing that.”  Well, hair removal with the Fotona system, remember, is quick and quite comfortable. Why?  Because we use the right spot size, with a computer controlled scanner to get excellent clinical results with minimum discomfort and at remarkable speed.  So when they come in to use their $200 gift certificate (they’ve previously done hair removal on their upper lip and chin and now they want to do their under arms) - it takes us about 5 minutes to do their under arms on each side and that 10 minute investment of time with that patient just earned us an entire new package which is worth about $1,000.  So the gift certificate is a wonderful way to highly incentivize your patients to bring new customers to you and it’s a wonderful way to make your evangelists even more evangelical!

Think about growing your hair removal practice by recruiting your evangelical patients. The want more procedures, they love the idea of getting them at a reduced cost and they are really happy with you and your clinic and want their friends to know about it…they just need a better vehicle for them to tell their friends and this is one of those vehicles.