DOES
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I T S
RICHARD DRAKE
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A WORK?
ou’ve screened all of
your patients of record and
treated dozens, hundreds,
THOUSANDS of patients with
Oral Appliance Therapy.
You’re getting some physi-
cian referrals, but that can
be inconsistent. Ten in one
week and then none for two
weeks. So what do you do?
I’ve recently begun a pret-
ty extensive external D2P
(Doctor 2 Patient; I think I’ll
coin that one) marketing
campaign. Has it worked? I
don’t know. It’s still in prog-
ress, but guess what? I’m
going to bring you along
the journey with me.
We spent time interviewing
media buyers and market-
ing gurus to finally come
up with “the plan” last fall.
Two themes, we thought:
one for PAP failures, and
one for snoring and tired all
the time. That about covers
it, doesn’t it? The 10%, and
the 90%, respectively, of the
400,000 plus sleep apnea
candidates I estimate reside
in San Antonio, Texas. We
hired an actor, an actress,
and a camera crew. We set
up the bedroom scene in
the media buyers home, and
before you can even write
the $10,000 check it took to
make three thirty second
commercials, I heard some-
one say “Lights, camera,
action!”
Concurrently, we held staff
meeting after staff meeting
trying to distill our current
systems to better handle
and route the calls we soon
expected. Phone scripts.
Updated job descriptions.