How to Tell If Your Practitioner Is Price-Gouging You
Or is just clueless about how to get the best price
A patient recently came to me with a lab panel, ordered by another practitioner, that cost them $1,100.
If she had ordered it through us, it might have cost us $200.
Half of the labs that were ordered were pointless.
She wasted $900.
This is exactly the kind of knowledge I share in my monthly masterclass on building multiple income streams. Practitioners who know how to ethically integrate products and services create better patient outcomes while building sustainable practices.
If you want to learn what I’m doing in my practice, then this post is for you:
The Four Rules of Ethical Product Integration
I've concluded that for practitioners to sell things with integrity, a few criteria need to be met:
They need to get a good deal on it in the first place, otherwise they should just let someone else sell it.
They should pass on some or all of the savings to the patient.
They should state the facts and tell the truth about what they are selling.
They should be mindful of the patient's financial state. Financial hardship has a negative impact on your health. I feel that practitioners need to work with patients to structure a plan of care that the patient can sustain, because often the results they desire require months or even years of care.
I host a monthly masterclass on how to generate income in health and wellness, where I break down exactly how to implement these principles in your practice or business. Learn more about the masterclass in this post.
The Reality of Running a Practice
I used to think, "I should not take any margin on what I sell." I didn't want the profits from product sales to color my judgement as to what to recommend to patients.
Then I realized that I have to spend 10-20% of my time just running my business. I spend another 10% training my staff. I spend hours and hours each week just generating free content. I've spent hours researching where to get the best deals, how to get the best deals, and providing those deals to my patients, with no guarantee on any return. It might take 100 hours of research to find the right source for labs or supplements. I spent thousands of dollars on equipment that I now represent or affiliate with, and thousands more on equipment to test equipment, like my spectrophotometer (used to test light therapy devices) or my EMF meters (used to test devices for harmful EMF).
What practitioners make on goods they sell covers their overhead and justifies the time spent researching these goods. I have found that patients are grateful for the recommendations and want to support us by purchasing goods through us. They would rather pay a premium for something that works, rather than winding up with something that doesn't work for a better price.
What Happens When You Break Trust
I'll give you a recent example. I was having coffee with a pharmacist and a good friend recently, and a local physician's name came up. My friend mentioned that some of his relatives are under his care for bioidentical hormone replacement. It turns out that this physician fills his prescriptions at this pharmacist's pharmacy, and up-charges the patient for the prescription.
A prescription that costs $50 at the pharmacy might cost $100 at this physician's practice.
When patients find out that their doctor isn't hunting for a good deal on their behalf, but is in fact up-charging them, they lose trust in that physician.
The physician in question lost a whole family that day, and generated negative word-of-mouth in perpetuity.
In the masterclass, I show you how to price your services and products to maintain trust while still creating sustainable revenue streams.
The Price Reality Check
Google and AI have leveled the playing field of market and price research. You can easily search what something should cost. Here are a few places where Google and AI will get it wrong, because the truth is behind a paywall:
Most labs are marked up by 5-10x. For example, Google and AI will tell you that a total testosterone level costs $200. This is nonsense. Our patients get free AND total testosterone for about $40!
Most supplements are marked up 100% or more. A common practice is to take average goods, label them under a celebrity's name, and sell them for 10 to 20x markup. We offer a 20% discount on supplements to our practice members as a benefit of membership.
In the world of medical equipment (hyperbaric oxygen, PEMF mats, saunas, and more), run as fast as you can from the cheap products. If you are not in the mid-range for your equipment, you are just throwing your money away.
In my monthly masterclass, I take a hard look at what this means for health and wellness entrepreneurs and explain how I am handling it.
Long-Term Growth Requires Trust
I think practitioners who compromise the quality of what they recommend for short-term profits are making a colossal mistake.
In the long-run, massive growth depends upon great service and great results. Minimizing churn and maximizing customer retention leads to compounding referrals, which leads to a healthy, sustainable practice. I trust trust as my best strategy. I will happily make less to sleep easily at night knowing that I did my best to serve my patients and subscribers according to the four rules above.
Learn to Help People and Earn and Income
Read my top article on this topic:
If you're a practitioner and this resonates with you, you have two great options to work with me:
Join my monthly masterclass ( learn more here) where I share my complete framework for building multiple income streams while maintaining the highest ethical standards in a health and wellness business.
Fill out this form and let's talk one-on-one. I enjoy getting to know my colleagues and helping them improve what they are doing, so they can help more people.
The future of medicine is being built by practitioners who understand how to create ethical, sustainable practices. I'd be honored to help you become one of them.
Until next time, be well,
Dr. Stillman