Tips for Drumming up More Business in Your Pediatric Clinic

There are so many ways you can increase your business just through simple, basic promotional actions done inside your clinic. Pick your favorite ideas from the ones I suggest here and start rolling with it. 

Keep Developmental Checklists Out Where Everyone Can See Them

Post your developmental checklists in your waiting room. Laminate these checklists and post them all over your clinic. Post them in the waiting area, in the bathrooms where parents are sometimes held captive while the children are on the potty. Post checklists wherever your parents are going to be. If you have a video screen in your waiting area, that’s fantastic. Create one or more videos featuring developmental guidelines and play them constantly. 

You can have a special developmental checklist focusing on specific skills like preschool readiness. What do children need to have and know to be successful at kindergarten? Educate parents on what four-year-olds need to succeed in kindergarten by making developmental checklists featuring these skills. Parents who aren’t in the treatment rooms, they need to see these checklists everywhere.

Promote Your Pediatric Specialties to Everyone in Your Clinic

If you have specialties like AAC evaluations, aquatics or feeding therapy, you need to promote those specialties everywhere. Don’t assume parents know all the services you provide. Promote them. 

In my clinic, we had what’s called a Tip of the Week Board. We have this really cheap 11 inch by 14 inch frame. We slap on an 8.5 by 11 inch piece of paper featuring tips and tricks. What’s important is that it needs to be updated every week without fail. Someone like the front desk person or a therapist is in charge of creating the Tip of the Week. 

What’s great about the Tip of the Week is that you can talk about the discipline the child might need most. Is it OT, scissor cutting, pencil grasp, shoe typing, buttoning? Put all these tips on the board, one each week. 

You are the content leader, providing parents with the information that they need. Put the information on the board in big letters and make sure it gets changed every week. Don’t just create this feature and not utilize it. Here’s how to make it easy: The next time there’s a big snowstorm or other event that means your staff have free time, have one of them create all 52 weeks of Tip of the Week. Or get a student or volunteer to create them. Make them cute. Put them in a folder. Then it’s easy to update the board every week. 

Screen the Siblings Coming into Your Office

You have siblings coming through your office all the time. It’s great for your front desk to have conversation with siblings so they can notice that they don’t have language. You have to train your front desk staff to know how to engage these kids to observe if they need any help. 

Here’s another tip. When you’re working with a child in a treatment session, give the sibling something they can do so you can notice if they need help as well. Give them a maze or something to cut. Check the peer-to-peer challenge, right? In this way you can do screenings when you’re not doing screenings.

Or you can tell the child they can invite a friend. Have the friend do the same thing as the child. Again, it’s doing screenings when you’re not doing screenings. 

Notice who’s in your clinic already and make sure that you’re helping them as much as you’re helping the kids in your care. You might have a therapist who’s not treating at the moment and tell the parents of the sibling or friend, “We’re offering free screenings this week. Do you want to have the sibling screened? Or maybe we can just give you some tips and tricks.” Maybe that child is doing great. 

The whole idea is just noticing what’s coming through your clinic and finding out if they need some help, too.

Learn How to Generate More Business for Your Pediatric Practice

It takes more than one blog post to teach you how to boost your business! That’s why we have so many helpful videos in our Lemonade Library. Get registered and look for Lemonades that can teach you and your team to expand your practice with ease.

About Diane Crecelius

Diane Crecelius is a physical therapist and founder of a multi-million-dollar, multi-location practice with well over 3,000 visits per week and 200 staff! In the past several years, Diane has worked tirelessly to support Peds-A-Palooza® Community & Conferences and the success of Private Practice Owners. Diane has presented at nearly every Peds-A-Palooza live and virtual conference since the first sold-out conference in 2018. Her extensive knowledge derives from her decades in practice and from being trained and consulted by Survival Strategies, Inc. She uses this training to help Private Practice Owners learn how to thrive and expand while keeping their stress low.