People are getting into aesthetics or pain management or anything that they want to get into at this time. Empire Medical Training for the past 22 years have been teaching through workshops, seminars, and live training in the latest techniques for aesthetics, Anti-Aging services, pain management, general medicine, and surgical procedures. Empire Medical Training offers these different accredited programs and have trained over 150,000 physicians.
To make learning easier for you, we are providing all of this training and different methods of learning for you since people may not want to leave their practice or have the time to go to a workshop or seminar location.
So now Empire Medical Training has all these different methods for you to get training, we have the live workshops vantage where you get to interact with the instructors and vendors. We also have now two different types of preceptorships. One type is a shadow preceptorship where you go to one of these celebrity physician’s practices and you work with them. In addition, we offer an office preceptorship where you could do one on one training in your office.
Recently, due to the COVID-19 crisis, we now offer virtual training of our regular scheduled programs, which is something we are very excited to offer to our members. In addition, we now are offering our Five Stars Aesthetics Consortium. Each of our programs at this time are live, interactive training which is done through live stream technologies.
These are not videos that we're doing but rather live stream programs in real time. Empire Medical Training will be presenting these programs up until this crisis ends which hopefully that'll be sooner than later.
As stated earlier, the other new program development at Empire is our meet the experts Five Stars aesthetics consortium live stream events. What we've done is we've picked five of the most, renowned physicians in the Aesthetics community - celebrity physicians. These are doctors that have been in the industry for many, many years and are very sought after leader in the Aesthetics community.
These five doctors are going to teach you the entire aesthetics curriculum of Empire Medical Training starting May 1st. Everything is in place and the entire aesthetics curriculum can be seen right here. Week one is going to be our neurotoxin and dermal filler programs and every day from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM a different physician is going to talk about neurotoxins and fillers. Each week there'll be a different module presented by our distinguished panel of physician experts.
At the end of the first week, you would have completed the entire neurotoxins, dermal filler module and five different celebrity physicians will have taught that program. The next week we're going to go into anatomy, facial aesthetics, and this is very important. This is actually my opinion, probably the most important week, most important presentation because this is how to do these injections correctly and safely.
I'd like to introduce Dr. Gregory Buford who is a board-certified plastic surgeon. Dr. Buford is out of Denver, Colorado and a very renowned physician. If you look them up on the internet, you'll find a ton of great stuff on there.
It is difficult to find as a speaker or get as a speaker because someone whom everybody wants to work with them. Dr. Buford is one of those people that's a great entrepreneur and a great teacher, so I think you'll enjoy what he has to say. He has also written books on business and marketing so I'll leave the rest of himself stuff because he's a great speaker, so I'm sure he'll fill in some of the details that I've met.
Steven. Good morning and good morning to everyone out in the audience. I hope you guys are doing well. I'm hope you guys are, you know, are, uh, are surviving and figuring out how to take your practice to the next level during this very unprecedented time. So, this morning I talked to Steven Cosentino before about this, and here are some of our points.
During this time, you know, what have you done for your practice? What changes have you made to prepare not only for what's going on right now, but also how we're going to emerge. We're going to emerge in a whole different arena and most likely we'll be practicing aesthetic medicine in very different ways.
Today's topic is virtual consultation - what is it and why should you be on board? Again, I am Greg Buford and I'm a board-certified plastic surgeon. I am a master injectables trainer, published author, and I'm currently practicing in Denver, Colorado from my home.
I did my medical school, a medical school training at Georgetown university, completed two residencies. Then in general surgery and plastic surgery. I then went on to do a cosmetic surgery fellowship. And then ultimately, uh, during the course of the last few years completed the Anti-Aging restorative medicine fellowship and the physician CEO program at Kellogg school of management.
Um, so let's take a quick, quick poll. What is your training background? Are you a doctor? Are you a nurse? Are you a PA, uh, an aesthetician or do you serve another role?
Go ahead and answer, I'd like to get kind of an idea of, of who's on the call and, who's basically tuning in from around the country.
Okay. and then next, where in the country are you located? Are you in the Northeast? Are you in the Southeast?
We talked a little bit about the virtual consultation and how things are changing dramatically in how we practice moving forward is most likely going to be reflection and how we're going to practice in the future.
We may not be able to access our patients as much. But there's still a strong demand for those patients to receive a set of consultations. So I want to go over a few of the things that the teaching points that I learned in taking my virtual consultations from what I would say is a very rudimentary level to something that's a lot more complex now and something that's going to be able to allow us to hit the ground running when all of this is behind us and hopefully you as well.
Let's talk about the why so in other words, why should you be interested in virtual consultation? Why will virtual consultation be a valuable part of your practice? Where could your patients be going after this crisis and why standard consultations are probably good for most people.
The virtual may not be a good fit for everyone, but I do think that as time goes on or could become more of a norm that it makes sense that your patients would be good candidates for virtual consultations. The question is on the implementation, how do we actually begin this in the practice and how do we grow it?
Let's talk about the advantage, advantages of being from your home and unlimited reach. You can literally reach people from around the world as long as they have internet access and they don't even actually have to have a webcam - obviously that's beneficial.
It's very beneficial if you need to see everything, you can also even just do a phone consultation. Time efficiency is also very important if you think about it. If you are in New York city or you're in Los Angeles, it can take you 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour just to go a few blocks.
If you can schedule virtual consultations, your patients connect with you without having to drive across town or without having to sit in your, in your waiting room, it is really making much more efficient use of your time and your patient’s time. It's also the ease of accessibility.
Denver, Colorado, we've had days where we've had to close the office, obviously because inclement conditions, I can do virtual consultations all day long at my home. It's very easy to access to perform these consultations while you're creating convenience for all.
Now there are going to be some disadvantages as well too. What are those? The disadvantages are technical challenges. And as you can imagine, especially, you know, working with millennials who are essentially raised on this technology, um, you know, for them it's actually very straight forward. For some of us older folks, it may not be so for, and also too, depending on the platform, I tend to focus on zoom.
I think it's a very easy to utilize. Um, ease and understand platform for both the user as well as the person that's hosting it. You want to get this as easy to utilize as possible and decrease your risk of technical challenges to patients, though it may create a perceived loss of familiarity. In other words, patients often come in, because they just want to meet you in person.
Patients may perceive that you're not as familiar. They're not as familiarized with you because they've only met you online. My prediction is that as time goes on, this is actually going to change dramatically, could this becomes more the new norm?
Another way that we may see as a disadvantage is pushback. This could be from, three places, the physician, the patient, or even both. Some people just don't want to change. Some people don't want to look at other options and that's okay, but I think it's important to understand this is why we wanted to host this webinar today.
To potentially reduce pushback to allow you to understand that these are not written in stone and not difficult to establish. These are actually very easy to implement in your practice in a few steps and could potentially help you grow the reach of your practice dramatically. So, who are good candidates for the virtual consultations?
If you think about it, busy executives, how many of you travel all over the United States on a frequent basis. It's hard to get consultations scheduled with busy executives. I can literally say, you know, you're going to be on the road, for the next couple of days. Tell me when you're going to be back in your hotel room, we can arrange something. They don't have to be in town. And if their schedule changes quickly, they can actually adapt quickly as well too. Same thing applies for our out of town clients as well concerning virtual consultation which makes it very easy for patients and for us.
Virtual Consultation allows us to meet patients on a first-time basis, but also to follow up with them. Finally, your time conscious patients they prefer virtual consultations. I can do a consultation in about 15, 20 minutes, no drive time. and no waiting time. It's, it actually makes it much easier for them.
We need to figure out, are those the who's that are in our practice that we can work with that will help us adopt to virtual consultations. Now that you're hopefully a little bit more convinced that the first step is just do it. Choose a platform, zoom, Skype, FaceTime, WebEx, whatever, figure out a platform that's good for you and embrace that platform. Learn how it learn how it works on both ends for you and for the patients.
Ultimately design flow is very important and is a two-way street. This is a dialogue, not just, not just a monologue. You want to figure out how best can you work with your client on a virtual console and ultimately once you have this in place and you promote the presence of your virtual consults, your VCs.
Get the word out across your social media channels, let people know what you're doing. Let patients know that virrtual consultations are very simple and straight forward. I think that's the one thing that really intimidates a lot of people is when they hear virtual, they think it is very complex and so forth. It's only as complicated as you make it.
Let's talk about design pearls and this is something that I asked several of my friends about. Instead of I know wat I'm doing right now ask them what is it which really worked well? The one piece of advice I was told is make sure you really screen these patients well enough.
Ask enough questions before the consult to ensure that they're really interested. If someone clicks on virtual consultation button, but they're not willing to answer five questions, they're probably not very interested in having a procedure. Screening questions are hoops that they're jumping through to really make sure that these are good clients.
Then I ask for photos before the console to avoid embarrassment and to allow for pre consult preparation with the photos there. I perform a lot of breast surgery, the last thing they probably want to do is have a consultation with me and then during the middle of the consultation I ask them to take the shirt off.
This way, I actually have seen photos in beforehand and can review them. I know exactly what I'm going to suggest for them. I also think it makes them feel a lot more comfortable as well too. And then I put all this stuff together and use the screenings rates through URI to see how easy was it to get them on a virtual consultation?
How well did they fill out the form? I assess their interest and then rank their potential interest based on suggested services. Why is this important? Because our schedules, unless your schedules are wide open, we'll have a few areas where we need to focus in and, put in breast augmentation patients, liposuction patients, or what have you- this allows us to rank them and schedule them accordingly.
The design flow is important, sit down with your staff and say how can we make this as easy as possible, as simple as possible? Well, here it is. Okay, five easy steps. One, the patient goes on and request a virtual consultation. Two, they complete the interest questionnaire and they submit photos.
These two steps are honestly essential because that gets the ball rolling. Once I get that information, then I scheduled a consultation. Once that consultation is scheduled, we complete it and then I send the information over to my practice manager who then closes it.
She goes back to the patient, says he or she, this is what we're looking at and these are the options. She reviews the financial costs and availability as well as hopefully finalizes the appointment and procedure.
Basically, you request it, patient completes the initial intake information, you scheduled the consult. It is simple. Is that, and we don't need to make it any more complicated, I would ask everyone you have as patients, don't just promote this across social media.
Do not forget your website as well too, but at the top it says request your virtual consultation. Once you do this and you click there, and this is first and foremost, they see that you are not completely closed.
Patients are open for virtual consultations and will click on that. As you can see this is only a screenshot, a part of it - as you can see very basic. First screen has your intake information and you're allowed to submit photos as well. In fact, you're, you're asked to submit photos and once I get these back to me and I can figure out, is this a serious client?
Is he or she asking for something that I can potentially accomplish? And let's go from there. If it is something I am interested in, let's get them scheduled. Now, these are our virtual consultations I have on my website. You could also have third party software such as real self. I work with real self just for purposes of disclosure, I'm on the business advisory board.
I'm happy to forward you along to the right person who can help you get this set up so whether or not you have it on your actual personal website or what have you. Set it up and have some way that you could interact versus with your clients and then promote this across social media and email blasts.
Is it something that we promote? just to let people know we're offering virtual consultations. We did them before, but now we really want to highlight this and we perform these consultations every couple of days.
The intake form is basic information, so you know, if you were expecting to get a very intricate, very deep, detailed schematic, you don't need it. What I try to do is basic and really simplify the process because in reality this should be a very simple process.
I'm going to ask for a start the questions and answers. Let's see how we could do this with some questions. Let's see what kind of good questions we have for you.
You know, there's so many different platforms out there, right? What's, what do you recommend? You know, I really, uh, I do Skype in the past. The problem that I've had with Skype is Skype can be very challenging.
Skype really requires you to go in, either you to go in and find your patient’s account or for them to go in and find you. Skype can be very easy to use but also can be frustrating and tricky to connect with patients. That's the one platform that if I've had any issues with.
I did like Zoom from what I found, zoom is so easy and I think a lot of people know how to use it and is great resource.
Dr. Buford, you assign rules for different steps of the virtual consultation flow?
Yes, the scheduling is performed by my practice manager and she puts it on my schedule right away though right now it's a little different because obviously I'm working from home. My schedule is a little bit more open these days but fortunately I do have task assignments for everybody along the way.
Everybody knows their role, from the time that the patient actually says, I want a virtual consult to the time the consultation is actually a completed, everybody has a role.
Concerning HIPAA, which is always a concern, how should the patients submit their photos at any special? Any Pointers, or things you want to mention to pertain to maintaining HIPAA compliance?
As you are aware and probably know HIPAA requirement within HIPAA rules have actually been waived temporarily to allow for telemedicine. BCSB S E that actually is HIPAA compliant and I have been told that Skype is also HIPAA compliant.
if you're not having them in having your patients disrobe or anything like that, that's one way or avoiding that issue. But they are sharing information with you over a platform, so that's something that I think will continue to develop. I'll check into that.
Different doctors do things differently, some people offer their initial consultation free and some people charge for the consultation in different ways such as applying part of the hpayment.
Dr. Buford, do you charge your patients for the virtual consultation?
At present, we're not charging potential clients, it also depends if it's a follow-up. We don't charge for it because that's all included in basically the global fee of the procedure right now for obvious reasons.
Right now, we really want to get this up and running as fast as possible, so we are waiving it. Once every, once the dust settles, we'll be charging for an office consultation. We charge anywhere from a $100 to $150. This allows us to see if the patient is serious. In reality if a patient pays for on a credit card, they can always challenge the credit card. We find that most people are actually pretty good. Virtual consultation allow access to patients, some people are very reluctant to do it at first, but once they ultimately do it they're vested.
I encourage all you guys go on my website and just check it out. I can actually show you, or even send you all the questions that I use on a Virtual Consultation. They are a broad band of questions based upon whether you want facial rejuvenation, body contouring or other services based upon your aesthetic goals and needs. For example: Have you had previous Facial rejuvenation procedures in the past? If so, when and do you know what are you looking for with respect to timeframe. You want to do as many questions is reasonable such as four or five pages of questions.
Okay Doctor Dr Buford, Thank you very, very much! This was great and we're going to be doing this now once a week. For everyone, Dr Buford actually volunteered to do these information live stream segments and thank you again for that. We are going to be interviewing different on different physicians every week with the goal of helping practitioners grow their practice.
Hopefully all of you found today’s talk with Dr. Buford very helpful and thank you for joining us and we'll see you next week.
