Three Ways to Up Your Treatment Plan Game
No matter how thorough or thoughtful, your treatment plans are only as effective as your patients’ ability to follow through. As practitioners, we have our patients’ best interest at heart, but sometimes unconscious habits might make that follow through harder for them.
Use this checklist to see where you can further improve the quality of patient communication and arm patients with the understanding and knowledge they need to put your treatment plan into action.
A lot of new (and some experienced) integrative and functional medicine practitioners find it challenging to leave enough time at the end of visits to deliver treatment plans. These final moments are often the most important to patients–it’s when they learn what they need to do to start feeling better.
Expert tip. When it comes to timing your recommendation, practice makes perfect. If you struggle to get a natural feel for when to shift to your recommendations, you can try setting a discreet smartphone reminder. Leave enough time to write your plan, discuss it with your patient and answer any questions. With Wellevate, you can enter recommendations in as little three minutes.
Imagine a conventional provider prescribed an antibiotic for you, but provided no additional detail. You leave the provider’s office and drive to the pharmacy where you’re faced with a wall of different antibiotic types, formulations, brands and dosages. How do you know which one is right for your condition? At what frequency? And for how long?
Okay, this example is extreme, but for a lot of patients, this is what it feels like when they leave our office after we tell them to start a daily probiotic. With more guidance, those patients may choose to rely on retail store associates or worse, look to online reviews to make purchase decisions like refrigerated vs. shelf stable, bottle vs. blister pack, strain variety, number of strains, etc.
Expert tip. Clearly written treatment plans that include product type, brand and dosage recommendations as well as specific instructions on how and when to take supplements make it easier patients to follow through. Want to be even more efficient? Wellevate makes it easy to add the recommendation details your patients need and provides it to them in an easy-to-read, straightforward list format.
We’ve all done it–sent patients out into the world without any guidance on where to purchase quality products. Time spent sourcing our recommendations can be intimidating and influence how well and/or how long patients stick with treatment plans.
Expert tip. Make convenient purchasing and auto-refills part of your service to patients. The easier it is for patients to access the products they need, the more likely they are to stick with treatment plans. Greater treatment plan compliance may lead to better patient outcomes, which in turn, gives patients additional reasons to stick with your practice. With your Wellevate store, you can build recommendations for every patient, during every visit and keep them on a clear path to wellness today.
Want to hear more?
Listen to one of the most clinically successful dieticians, Dianne Rishikof, explain how she delivers a treatment plan to patients, and how and when she introduces Wellevate to them!
