Practical Prevention BannerReducing practice costs with patient education
Lack of patient education might be costing you more than you think. Excessive phone calls, confused patients, questions about misinformation on the internet, and concerns about conditions that are preventable or home-treatable—these symptoms of inadequate patient education may be demanding a lot of attention from you and your staff. But time spent in this way is usually not time spent cost-effectively. Our advice: Investing in an effective patient education program can help your practice run more efficiently and profitably.
Seizing the opportunity
Your patients come to you to help them stay well. You provide valued advice in the office and answer questions by phone. But what about all the weeks your patients aren’t in contact with you? This time represents a missed opportunity for your patients to learn more about prevention and wellness.
Practical PreventionSM is designed to help you take advantage of this opportunity to educate your patients. The prevention education program consists of an ongoing series of physician-written, ready-to-publish bulletins you can send to your patients. Follow the links on the navigation bar to learn more.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why buy patient education when I can write it myself?
Writing in a consistent tone and style that holds reader interest takes considerable time and effort. To do it well, the process usually involves research, writing, editing, reviewing, revising, polishing, publishing and delivery. It can become a full-time job.
While a desire to write is commonly expressed, in reality few clinicians can regularly find the time. Plus, it’s more cost-effective to provide professionally written patient education, freeing your time to more profitably care directly for your patients.
To make sure the job of creating patient education gets done efficiently and effectively, we invite you to team up with Practical PreventionSM to provide interesting and engaging prevention and wellness articles for your patients. You can then quickly add your own comments or practice news before or after the articles to personalize the topics for your patients.
Can Practical PreventionSM help me publish my newsletter more regularly?
Yes. Our ongoing stream of newly created content can help you keep your newsletter publication on track. You can easily add your own articles and practice news as well as comments about the articles we provide whenever you have the inspiration and time to do so. With our program in place to supply appropriate content for your newsletter, it can start to become not only feasible but fun.
Can I make changes to the articles?
No, the articles consist of copyrighted material. Instead, we recommend that you add your comments before or after the article. In your comments you can emphasize to your patients certain points from the article or explain how your opinion is similar or different from the one presented in the article. With each article we provide you with an introductory message or teaser that you can modify to personalize the topic for your patients.
Do the articles appear to have been written by me?
No, Practical PreventionSM is not a ghost-writing service. Providing the same syndicated articles to all of our subscribers allows us to offer them at a fraction the cost of ghost-written stories. You can easily personalize the articles for your patients by adding a note before or after the articles. For your convenience, we provide topic teasers that you can modify.
When you provide personalized comments about our professionally written articles, you become the medical expert for your group of patients. Our patient education program leverages your expertise in a more powerful way and helps save you time and money.
What if the articles don’t always sound like me?
They probably won’t since the syndicated articles are written for all of our subscribers. We recommend that you take a straightforward approach. Make an announcement to your patients that you have teamed up with Practical PreventionSM to provide a regular series of preventative health bulletins. Let your patients know that the communications are an important tool that will help you share the latest preventative health information with your patients.
We would like you to think of us as part of your healthcare team. Much like your office staff and outside consultants, we can help make your job a whole lot easier.
How do the articles differ from a blog?
Blogs are typically written off the cuff with little or no research. They are usually not a polished piece of writing and often appear irregularly. Blogs work well to express a person’s opinion over time about different aspects of a particular topic.
In contrast, our prevention education program is researched, written, reviewed and edited with care. It goes through a lengthy revision process to ensure that each article is accurate, informative and entertaining. In addition, we publish the articles on a regular schedule twice a month, a consistency that helps patients anticipate and look forward to receiving the next installment. This helps build loyalty for your practice and readership for your practice publications.