Hello, and welcome to the Concierge Medical Marketing podcast, the podcast where we talk about all things related to concierge medical practices, physicians, offices, marketing, and so much more. I’m your host, Stephen Schwartz, and it’s my pleasure to have you along today. My guest is Ginger Allen from Your Medical Liaison.

Ginger, thank you for joining me today.

Hi, Steve. Happy to be here. Thank you so much.

So you and I have recently met a few weeks ago, and you were sharing with me so many really interesting things that you do as part of your medical marketing business. Can you please give our listeners and our audience a little bit of background on you, your schooling, your specialties, your business, where you are now, and where you’re going next.

Sure. Yeah. Happy to. So I have been in medical marketing for the past twelve years. My husband is also a physician. So I am part of the family of medicine. I’m very involved in organized medicine, supporting physician causes, physician burnout, prevention of, you know, all things for physician health, mental health. So I’m very passionate about working with physicians and helping physicians grow their practices. And I’ve been doing that for, like I said, twelve years.

Wonderful. And what are you doing most recently, your newest efforts, your newest focus.

Yeah. So for the past twelve years, I’ve been working with specialists mostly, helping them grow their businesses. And now I’m kind of starting to niche down to a type of specialty. And that specialty that I’m really focusing on now is functional and integrative medicine MDs and DOs, which is kind of a super subspecialty. So I’m super excited about it.

Excellent. Yeah. Well, wonderful. Before we got on camera here with our recording, we were talking about how in the past you’ve helped physicians navigate the process of going from a traditional practice model to a concierge practice model. And I believe you have three areas that you’d like to talk about today in our podcast to help physicians who are considering making the transition to concierge medicine. Is that what you’re prepared to talk about today?

Absolutely. That’s why I’m here.

Cool. Well, that sounds great. Let’s get into it. Yeah. So, you know, as you know, Steve, being in medical marketing, sometimes we also kinda dabble in the consulting side, from the business and operations standpoint, because that often commingles with the marketing. Right? And so I’ve had several physicians over the years that have transitioned from a traditional medical practice to a concierge practice. And what I’ve learned along the way is there’s really kind of three ways to do it. There’s the do it yourself way. There’s the do it with you way, and then there’s done for you. So I’d like to kind of go over those three different models, what I and what I think works best for the different types of physicians.

So, unless you have any further questions, I’ll just kind of go into my experience on that. Sure. Go right ahead. Okay. So let’s talk about the type of physician you are and where you are in your practice before we get into transitioning to concierge. So you’ve got three different types, really, of physicians. You’ve got physicians that are just starting a practice, just got out of med school, all eager, they wanna do a concierge model, fantastic. You’ve got the guy that’s been established for twenty, thirty years, is really tired of the grind and insurance companies and how difficult they make their jobs. He wants to go concierge or she. And then you’ve got the specialist. Maybe they’re coming out of a hospitalist type of scenario where they wanna go into a concierge practice. Okay?

So when you’re right out of school, and you’re starting a practice, an internal medicine practice, and you wanna be concierge, you really don’t have a patient base. Right? So you need to build the patient base. And so for that scenario, I think that’s where I see the done for you model works well because then you’re kind of working with one of these large companies that, you know, we use MDVIP for an example, that really kind of help you get everything set up, you know, really position you to be ready. And they’re gonna kind of hand you know, hold your hand along the way.

Then you’ve got the physician that is what we talked about, been in business for twenty years. He’s got three to four thousand patients on his panel. He really wants to tradition you know, transition to the concierge model. Now that, in my opinion, is best done yourself. And the reason why I say that is not because I have anything against the done for you model, but because you already have the patience. You don’t really need somebody to hand hold you through, you know, the process of transitioning those patients. Even though it’s gonna sound simple, it’s not as easy as it sounds. But I’ll just kinda run through the physician that I helped. He was an internal medicine doctor, here actually in Boca, and he wanted to go concierge. He was internal medicine, family medicine, actually. And he had a great following. He had a huge panel, he had two mid levels working under him, he had a pretty robust practice. And so what we did with him and my recommendation to him was to do it yourself.

And he was like, well, you know, what does that look like? And I said, well, you know, basically you need a couple of things. Number one, you need to have an attorney draft a contract so that, you have a contract to give to your patients. Number two, you need to really understand how the back end processes work in a concierge model. And he’s like, well, how do I figure that out? And I told him, I said, you know, one of the things I love about physicians is they really are very open to helping fellow physicians. That’s one of the things I love about them. And I so I said to him, do you have any friends that are concierge doctors? He goes, oh, yeah. I have like five. I’m like, okay. So let’s see if one of those five would be willing to kinda give you how the back app office of running that practice runs, and see if they would be willing to allow your practice manager, who’s been with you for over ten years, to speak to their practice manager so that they can talk through the logistics and how it works and how you still bill on the back end for labs and, you know, the insurance stuff and and all of that.

And he’s like, oh, well, that’s, you know, a great idea. And I said, and then step three is really, first of all, converting some of that existing patient base. So if you’ve got four thousand patients, you know, he’s looking to have a concierge practice model of about four hundred patients, at two thousand five hundred dollars a year. That’s kind of his target. And so I said, well, that’s really you only need to convert ten percent of your existing base who already loves you. They already know you. They already like you, trust you, all of those things. So, you know, that’s you know, to me is gonna be a pretty easy thing to do. So what you need to do is draft a letter, that goes out to all four thousand patients, letting them know that you are transitioning to this model. And would they like to, sign on for the, you know, the kind of the VIP, treatment? And he, you know, he had a separate waiting room, and he really, you know, set it up right. And so we did that. And he converted, I want to say about one hundred and fifty patients within the first month.

Great. Very successful with that. And, you know, the other thing that, you know, we talked about is obviously you really need to have a marketing campaign in place, with somebody that specializes in concierge marketing, somebody like yourself, Steve. And to really help you build on the rest of the practice, right? So you’re going to have attrition. You’re going to have patients that don’t want to sign up, you really want to get new patients coming in the door for this. So that’s where the marketing program really is essential in building the rest of the practice. Because, again, like we said, his target is four hundred. Now we’ve converted one hundred and fifty. So we still got quite a ways to go. And so, you know, he was very open to that. So, you know, we got the Google, ad campaign going. We got, you know, a newsletter going out. We’ve got a mailer going out. So we’ve done a lot of things. And, you know, I’m happy to say that he’s building, on average, five to ten new prospects per month into the practice, which is great.

I mean, I think that’s a really good, good, you know, flow. And, you know, he’s very happy. You know, one of the things that I loved about him, and I just mentioned this because when you’re thinking about transitioning, this is something that will come up. A lot of the patients that don’t wanna transition to concierge medicine kinda feel like they’re gonna be without a doctor. Right? And they’ve been with you for a long time. So one of the things I liked about his practice model was he already had those mid levels in place. So he said, listen, we’re not gonna kick you out of the practice. We are gonna allow you to remain a patient of the practice, but you’ll be seeing Lisa instead of me, which I still oversee, you know, the mid levels. So I’m still in the background. But you’ll be you’ll still be a part of the practice. That doesn’t always work for everyone. Sometimes you’ve got physicians that, you know, really are just doing it themselves. And then in that case, you know, the patient really has to either find another practitioner.

Some physicians have adopted a hybrid model where, like in this case for your physician colleague, had four thousand patients on the panel, one hundred fifty transitioned to concierge, that still leaves you nearly four thousand patients in the traditional sense. And perhaps it makes sense to literally, as you said, continue to serve them in the same way that he served them before. However, the mid level physicians are gonna take over as the primary, physician contact for those patients. And, obviously, if there’s a special situation where we need to bring in the big guns, you know, he can come into the office and, meet with the patient. But just understanding that your physician wants to grow his concierge piece. But in doing so, you don’t wanna lose what’s been traditionally your bread and butter. So the hybrid model certainly makes a lot of good sense for physicians who are in that position of being established already, who are transitioning. Would you agree?

I agree. And, you know, the other thing that’s really great is and I will say it’s been a little bit of a challenge because his mid levels weren’t used to that kind of volume. Right? So he really did, you know, he still has to jump in once in a while. And that’s okay. He’s okay with that because he understands it’s a process. It’s getting the mid levels up to speed, having them, you know, learn to be a little bit faster. And, you know, so he’s going through that process now, and he’s getting there. But, yeah, it’s definitely a change in the dynamic. But, you know, I think that when you own the patient base, there’s no need to give a huge percentage of your revenue to a done for you program. It’s quite significant. And so I just really don’t, you know, if you don’t have patience, that’s one thing. But if you own the patience, it’s really not necessary for you to give that big, you know, portion of the revenue. I think the biggest challenge, and this is where you come in, Steve, the biggest challenge, I think, is they’re afraid of, you know, how the marketing piece is gonna work. Right?

Like, because this is what the done for you programs offer. They offer everything, soup to nuts. Right? We help you with the back end. We help you with the marketing. We help with you with everything. And so I was fortunate in that he trusted me. And I told him I got you. I can do all this marketing. Even though I’m not a cons I don’t specialize in concierge medicine practices like you do, Steve. I had enough knowledge in medical marketing, being in it for twelve years, that I could guide him through that process. Okay? And I could build the website. I could do the SEO. I could help him with the mailer. I could help him with the newsletter. All of those things that that you do for them, Steve, I was able to help him because I had had that experience working with other physicians. So that was the biggest thing that I think that physicians struggle with is, hey. You know, I need this marketing piece. Well, that’s fine. You can hire Steve for a fraction of the cost that you would, you know, give of your revenue share, and put that money in your pocket.

So that’s that’s what he did, and he’s he’s sure happy that he did that now looking back. Excellent. Yeah. I think that’s a good point is is many times, physician practices where there’s one doctor who’s busy seeing patients and trying to run a business and has a spouse and has kids and they’re you know, people are busy. Right. And the idea of, look, I’m trying to get to four hundred patients and I’ve only got one fifty. What do I do? How do I do that? You know, what exactly is SEO or what are these citations I’ve heard about? Or, I’ve heard of Google pay per click is really expensive. You know, there’s so much misinformation and, half knowledge about certain things in the digital marketing space. And what I try to do when I have a consultation with a prospective client is I wish to educate. I wish to talk to people and really get a good idea of what are their challenges, what are their goals, what have they tried in the past that’s worked, what have they tried in the past that hasn’t worked, and to really dig deeply to get a great idea of their current situation and where they want to go so that I can make a recommendation to them on how I can how they can best get to where they wanna be and allow them to focus on medicine, allow them to focus on their patients, which is the whole reason they became concierge physicians in the first place. Right?

So far far too often, in my industry, a client will call an agency and say, hey, I need SEO. Or, hey, I need ads on Google or ads on Facebook, and the agency says something like, great. It’s this much per month. Give me your credit card. Let’s get going. And with concierge medical marketing, it’s a totally different method. We believe in a consultative approach where we truly want to get to know our patient, really understand what their challenges are and what their goals are so that we can make a solid recommendation to help them get there. Very similarly to a physician. Right? Somebody comes in and says, you know, hey. I have tuberculosis. I need x y z. The doctor says, hang on a second. Let’s do some tests. Let’s take your temperature. Let’s check your blood pressure. Let’s do this this way before they make a diagnosis that a person has tuberculosis. Right? They’re not just gonna throw some medicine or some treatment at a patient who just comes in and says, hey. This is my problem. I want you to treat it. You know what I mean?

Yes. Yes. You know, I think one of the mistakes that I see physicians make a lot in the marketing space is they kind of do things fractionally and very disjointed. And it’s not intentional. They’re trying their best. They’re like, yeah. I’ll do Google Ads, but they don’t have their messaging in place. They don’t have their website pixel pixel set up. They don’t have all of the other processes that are gonna be necessary to really make that marketing budget, you know, give them the best ROI. So I always tell physicians, you know, find a company. I’ll use you as an example, Steve. Find a company that specializes in what you do. And then let them handle everything. Okay? Because when you have one person doing this and the other person doing that and another person doing this, it’s disjointed. And you’re not gonna get the best bang for your buck because it’s not all you know, marketing is a package. Right? It’s gotta all work together and flow. And if you’re having all these different people doing things, it’s impossible for you to maximize your ROI.

So I would also and I also tell my physicians, you know, ask the person how long they’ve been in business. How long have they been doing marketing? Because I know, Steve, you’ve been doing this for what, twenty five years? Correct. Okay. So you and you have great testimonials. You have great customers that love you and speak to your integrity and your honesty. And, you know, that’s a challenge for physicians because they’ve been burned a lot. You know? They tend to be targets, by unscrupulous marketing people. They get emails every day from people that, you know, are promising them the world. But who are these people? You know, are they people that have been in business here locally for, like me, you know, twelve plus years, you, twenty five plus years that have, you know, if a doctor says to me you have references, I can give you three cell phone numbers right now without even having to ask. Okay? And I know you can too. So that’s extremely important. And I think, you know, because doctors are so inundated with so many different marketing people, that’s the main thing that you need to be asking yourself is number one, does this person have the experience? Number two, do they specialize in my industry?

And, you know, you know, number three is, you know, do they have references? You know, do they have the references to back up what they’re saying? And so that’s you know, if you do those things, and have somebody handle everything for you, you’re gonna be in a much better position to make sure whatever amount of money that you’re spending is really being judiciously handled. And so I wanna go into the third option because there is a third option, and that is a done with you, program. And, actually, Steve, you helped me with this, so I’m gonna let you speak to that. So I came into a situation recently with a specialist that wanted to go concierge. And that’s a and he’s actually coming out of a hospitalist situation. So he doesn’t really, have a brick and mortar, you know, situation that he’s going into. He wants to do telehealth. And he also has a really great following online. But, of course, he’s not taking that hospital patient base with him. Right? So I was kind of like, oh, this is a really unique situation. And so I was talking to you, Steve, and you’re like, hey, I have a company that I work with that specializes in helping, physicians transition and really give them a consulting, which is the pro form a on the front end, you know, looking at what it’s gonna cost financially for them to do this. And then on the back end, helping them with, you know, all of the setups and, you know, picking, you know, what kind of practice management, what kind of administrative support you’re gonna need to have, and the the, you know, those types of things.

So, I’d love for you to kind of touch on that because this is the third model. And I found that this is really necessary because I could not help this doctor through this. I don’t have practice management experience. I am not a financial expert. Right? So I can’t do pro formas. I can’t tell you how to run the back end of a medical practice. You know, you need somebody to help you with that. And so you referred a great, I’m I’m gonna say doctor Ira, but I know he’s got a company name. So I’ll let you speak to that and how how you connected me with them.

Sure. So doctor Ira Pearlstein is a physician who went from a general practice to a concierge practice a few years ago. And in doing so, he figured out how to do that and how to do it well and how to do it successfully. And then he started another business called Juniper Advisors, basically helping other physicians who wish to trans to change from, you know, traditional to concierge practice. And so he’s a physician and a consultant. And so you had your, your physician who wanted to become a concierge doctor. You told that to me. I said, you’ve gotta talk to Ira. He’s the guy to do it. Doctor Ira Pearlstein’s located in South Florida as well. And, based on us getting together and putting the right people together, your physician is, gonna get help from doctor Ira Pearlstein to, to become a concierge practice physician.

So next couple of months, great stuff coming together there. And I just gotta to share briefly how exciting it is for me through the people I’ve met, the people I communicate with, through our podcast, and through this business. Because for me, this is not just, oh, there’s another marketing business that wants to provide services. My goal is to help American health care get better. Alright? My goal is to help American physicians to enjoy their lives and their careers better. And in doing so, they’re gonna get better outcomes with their patients. And therefore, the patients can enjoy their lives and their families more, and everybody wins. The old adage of the rising tide raises all the ships. I really believe that. And so through the podcast, I love that we can connect these different people who may have never had the opportunity to meet each other and put them together so that everybody wins. And, so, Ginger, I’m so grateful that you brought, your physician’s name forward and that through our, working together, we were able to get him the assistance he needs to become a concierge physician located in South Florida.

So oh, well, let me let me just talk to that for a second real quick. So, your consultant is based in South Florida, and we’re both in Florida. However, this position is not in Florida. This position is on the other side of the United States. So I wanna let physicians know if you need help anywhere in the United States, not only can Steve help you, but Doctor. Pearlstein can help you. You know, yes, you know, having a local person, is is great. But for this particular concept, podcast isn’t saying, oh, well, you know, I’m in Maryland, so they can’t help me. No. No. We can help you. This doctor is, you know, on the other side of the country, and doctor Pearlstein is is helping him through that. And then he also did consult with an attorney because he wants to do nationwide, which is a licensing thing that he just needs to figure out. So Sure.

So, yeah, we we can help people all over the country. I just wanted to make sure we’re we’re clarifying that, just because you and I are local and we have a local consultant. This consultant is helping somebody, in another state. Ginger, thanks for bringing that up. I guess I was under the impression that your physician was located in South Florida as well. So on the other side of the country, but we’re able to put him together with doctor Pearlstein. And through that, he’s gonna get the help he needs and support he needs to, to get it done and launch his new career. And, I hope that, he reaches out to Concierge Medical Marketing, my agency, for his marketing. But even if he doesn’t, that’s okay. We wanna see everyone succeed, and it’s a a thrilling experience to be part of all that.

Well, I think I mentioned to you, Steve, that, you know, even though I do marketing and I’ve been working with doctors for twelve years and, you know, I know marketing pretty well, I would still encourage a concierge medical marketing doctor to go with you. And the reason why is because this is your specialty. This is what you focus on. Now if you have a functional medicine MD, please send them my way. Because that’s what I want to focus on and that’s going to be my, you know, specialty. But I’ve worked with all kinds of doctors over the years. I have vascular surgeons, OB GYNs, you know, internal medicine. You name it. I’ve worked with them. But every type of physician is a different type of marketing. Right? So the way you market a vascular surgeon is gonna be totally different the way you market an OB GYN. The way you market a concierge medicine doctor is gonna be totally different than the way you market a traditional internal medicine doctor.

So that’s why when it comes to the concierge model, I would highly, recommend you, to to assist with that. Yeah. I because I know that’s your area of focus and expertise. Exactly. I appreciate you mentioning that. And the fact that, yes, it’s all health care, but there’s so many distinct areas within health care based on the type of patient that we’re dealing with or the issue that we’re dealing with. Right? Like you said, OBGYN. And the target audience and the target audience is different. Right. An an OBGYN doctor versus a cardiovascular surgeon. It’s like, you know Two totally different target markets. Right? Young women having babies and, you know, people with heart disease. Exactly. It’s a help with the varicose veins in your legs or whatever. It’s just completely separate. And so the marketing message has to be different. For sure. Within having a very specific niche for a marketing agency, the longer we do this, the more we learn the challenges of our clients and what they need to succeed and to get their full panel that they wish of concierge patients, the more we can help not just them, but other concierge practices all across the country. So, again, the rising tide raises all the ships. Love it.

And what I love and what I love about you, Steve, is you’re not just somebody that just started a concierge medicine marketing company. You’re somebody with twenty five years of digital marketing experience. Back in the day when digital marketing wasn’t even on the scene, you were already doing it. So you bring that knowledge with you to help these guys. And so, you know, you might meet another, you know, marketing person that does, concierge, you know, medical marketing. I would ask them how much experience they have. Because I want to work with somebody you know, I’ve been doing it twelve years. You know, I feel like I’ve pretty got a pretty good handle on how to help these guys.

But you want to definitely work with somebody that, you know, this is not something that they started on a whim. This is not something that they just started yesterday. This is somebody that has a depth of experience in marketing and now they wanna help you, you know, grow your practice. So Wonderful.

I’ll leave it at that. Ginger, thank you so much, for your kind words, for your enthusiasm, for sharing your knowledge. Really a pleasure to to know you and a pleasure to have you on the the show today. If a member of our audience needs some help and something that you’ve said today has really fired up something in them, they wanna get an answer, are they able to contact you or call you? Are you willing to give, you know, some advice or direction?

Absolutely. So I always offer free consultations, because I just like to help people. That’s part of who I am, and I’ll definitely try to point them in the right direction. You can just go to my website, which is ymlteam.com.

And I’ll be happy to help in any way I can. Thank you again, Ginger, for being on the show. It’s been a real pleasure talking with you today.

Thank you, Steve. I appreciate it. Have a great day!

You too. And to all our listeners, thank you for tuning in to the Concierge Medical Marketing podcast. We hope you found today’s episode informative and inspiring. If you have any questions or need further information, please feel free to reach out to us. Until next time, take care and stay healthy.