79 | Navigating Dual Practice Dilemmas: Insurance vs. Cash-Based Services

0:00 Hi there, welcome to In the Clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman. I am an herbalist and nutritionist. And in this show, I share little tips and tidbits that might be helpful for other practitioners. So today I have a question from Gabriella. And before I answer the question, I just want to remind you that I would love to have your question submitted. You can go to intheclinic.com and there's a little section on the side there that says leave a message for Camille. and if you submit it there, I will get it and I will answer if it's something that I think I can answer. You are also welcome to email me if you have a question too. So let me read Gabrielle's question to you. All right, here it is. I'm a CNS. I take insurance at a clinic twice a week, but I also want to start my cash-based private practice.

0:45 Every week I receive messages from people that find me on their insurance list, Google my name, land on my website or my Instagram, both need to be updated and want to schedule to work with me. I had a calendar link to book a discovery call, but I took it down because I got tired of spending time with people on the phone to not sell my program because they wanted to go with their insurance. It's frustrating because it seems like all the effort I put into this to actually just end up driving people to my job where I take insurance versus to my private practice. Okay, so the idea is what kind of tips, what can we do to navigate this situation? I totally get how frustrating it is. Most of us, if we have a kind of employee or contractor position where we're getting paid hourly, oftentimes the hourly rate is way lower than if we run our own practice on a cash pay basis.

1:32 So it's really, it can be really hard to navigate these two streams of a clinical practice. So the first thing that I always think about when we're running into a dilemma like this is to put yourself in the shoes of the client. Okay. Because the people who are coming through their insurance, they do want to go with their insurance. And that makes sense. Like they pay for their insurance. They want to do something that's covered. I absolutely get why they would want to do that. So what we need to think about is, first of all. How do you make the case for those people? Like, why should they choose your private practice versus just going to your place of employment where you take insurance?

2:12 What is the selling point for them? And that's something that I can't answer for you. It sounds like you have a program of some sort. So maybe you say like, okay, at my workplace where I take insurance, here's what you get, you know, up to X number of visits. We, you know, we, whatever type of work you do there, you can say that is one option. I also have a program that you can take. It is not covered by insurance. And here is why it's a good choice for some people. Then what you need to say after that is if you would like to use your insurance and schedule with me one-on-one, here is the link, you know, go here, sign up. It's done. There you go.

2:55 If you are interested in the program, you can schedule this discovery call to talk about it or, you know, click here to schedule. So you want to make that differentiation for people so that they can make a choice. But really, there's no way to pretend that you don't work somewhere that takes insurance. The other thing you could think about, and I am not an expert in this at all, but it's just something that occurs to me, is if people are searching your name, because it's coming up under an insurance list as your name, but you have a business name that is different from your own name. So for example, my name is Camille Freeman. My business name is Bloom and Grow. So what you could do is if people Google your name, maybe you could do like, okay, here's the information about my insurance practice, my cash pay practice.

3:46 Here's why you would choose one or the other. possibly you could have a separate website or a separate page on your website that ideally would come up first if they google your business name that really wouldn't go into your insurance practice and that way if anybody just googled you know nutritionist in stanton virginia and by case. Ideally your business would come up and it would be like nutritionist in stanton virginia bloom and grow nutrition and that would be at the forefront so i don't i am not a google seo. Expert, but there may be a way to do that where you highlight your business name versus your personal name. But in reality, I think what's going to happen here is that you're just going to have to make the case for the difference between insurance pay and your private pay practice and make it very clear that people are making a choice.

4:38 If you're going insurance pay, you click here, you schedule, we don't need a conversation. If you want to do the private pay option and here's why that may be a good choice for you then we set up a discovery call you schedule here you you do this but that insurance is not accepted at this location, So the real work of this for you is thinking through what are the advantages for people who may want to work outside of their insurance and how do you make it really obvious that people are making that choice first thing. Okay, so I hope that helps. If anybody else has ideas, please do reach out and let me know. Otherwise, I will be back soon with another episode of In the Clinic with Camille.

5:20 All right, take care, everybody.