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What is the lifetime value of your average patient? Can you point me to some numbers or statistics that take in consideration all services offered, and estimated amount spent, during the first and subsequent years.

Thank you in advance!

I very much doubt if there is anything on this. Even if there was, what does it mean? A primary care patient seen routinely vs a surgical episode of care vs an orthotic patient vs a one off treatment?

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Craig Payne
Department of Podiatry
La Trobe University
Melbourne, Australia
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/podiatry
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God put me on this earth to accomplish a certain number of things - right now I am so far behind, I will never die.
The views expressed above are those of the author and not that of La Trobe University
This is where I am, where are you?

This information would be extremely useful when analyzing the effectiveness of a marketing campaign. I've looked at some studies http://www.mdcircle.com/documents/Customer_Lifetime_Value_Analysis_for_Dental_Patien ts.pdf, but nothing related to podiatry. I understand that there is no single answer for this question, but on average, how much would you be willing to invest in marketing to acquire a new patient?

I was intrigued by this rather strange post.

I thought we were in the business of assessing, treating and discharging patients not working out how long we could hang on to them?
Or have I been asleep at the wheel?

In the same way I am always suspicious of those practitioners who are fully booked for 6 weeks (with mostly the same patients) and who complain they can't see any new ones.

There are too many variables to consider to even have a educated guess at a figure.

Dido

Interesting......


I would love to see someone analyse the job satisfaction of the practitioner who is booked 6 weeks in advance seeing the same pt's for general care vs "diagnose, manage and discharge" practitioner.

The lifetime value of patients will be practice specific. It will depend on your patient mix, your treatment style and other factors such as whether you have a retail side to your business.

I have recently taken on working this figure out for my practice and will admit that I did guestimate. The plan is to increase this figure over time, not by overservicing but by focusing my marketing on attracting more of my target patients.

In other words, you are asking how much money should a podiatrist expect to make off of a patient over their lifetime? Honestly, I don't understand why an ethical podiatrist would even be asking such a question.

Rather, the podiatrist should be more concerned about learning as much as possible so they can provide the best medical service to their patients. Then after the podiatrist has devoted sufficient years to their training in order to become an excellent medical practitioner, they will then be able to treat their patients successfully and should charge appropriate medical fees for their medical services. In my opinion, how much money a podiatrist will make off of a patient over a patient's lifetimes should never be a consideration for the ethical podiatrist.

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Sincerely,

Kevin

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Kevin A. Kirby, DPM
Adjunct Associate Professor
Department of Applied Biomechanics
California School of Podiatric Medicine at Samuel Merritt College

e-mail: kevinakirby@comcast.net

Private Practice:
107 Scripps Drive, Suite 200
Sacramento, CA 95825 USA
My location

Voice: (916) 925-8111 Fax: (916) 925-8136
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