Groupon Instead of Health Insurance?
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Groupon CEO Andrew Mason was interviewed on 60 Minutes this past Sunday night. He discussed more about how the daily deal website has exploded over the past few years, resulting in their IPO at the end of last year. There was even an example of how doctors are using Groupon to reach more patients. One thing the segment didn’t touch on was how patients are using Groupon when it comes to healthcare.
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Wall Street gets Groupon’d
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Groupon finally made their NASDAQ debut on Friday and did quite well for itself. After pricing their initial public offering at $20 a share, prices spiked and finally settled in at a bit over $26 a share at day’s end. At a closing price of $26.11, Groupon raised around $700M and is now valued at $12.7B (with a ‘B’). That makes them the largest IPO since a little company named Google went public back in 2004. But what does this mean for your practice?
LivingSocial and PracticingLegal
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Groupon’s IPO appears to be back on track for November and it’s bringing to light how the legal end of healthcare is still struggling to keep up with rapidly evolving Internet side of healthcare. With the rise in popularity of daily deal sites like LivingSocial & Groupon, there has also been increased scrutiny as to the legality of this practice and whether it violates any ethics rules for doctors. While we’re still not convinced that the legal arguments against these practices hold much water, they do raise some interesting questions.
Groupon Best Practices for Your Practice
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Groupon’s preparation for their upcoming IPO has brought them quite a bit of attention…and a fair amount of criticism. While Groupon has been wildly successful for some businesses, there are others that proclaim Groupon is the worst business decision they’ve ever made. So, what makes for a good Groupon deal?
Get your Groupon On…
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The biggest news online so far this year is the explosion of group buying sites that offer daily deals. Sites like Groupon & Living Social have exploded into every major market, offering highly discounted deals to residents. And, by highly discounted, we’re talking up to 80% off! The benefit of an 80% discount is pretty obvious to the patient – but what’s in it for the doctor? Let’s take a quick look at how the biggest site – Groupon – works for doctors…
In order for patients to get their discount, there need to be a minimum number of patients that purchase the deal. This ensures there’s a minimum number of deals sold.
Once this minimum is met, the deal is officially on and the patients are immediately charged the discounted price. The money collected is then split 50/50 between Groupon & the doctor. But, after splitting the money after an 80% discount, how does the doctor cover their cost?
The secret to these deals is something called a “breakage rate,” which is really just an fancy way of saying “patients who never redeem their Groupon.” Since the patient is charged up front, the doctor receives their half of the revenue regardless of whether the patient ever books an appointment.
Still sound like a bum deal? We’ve managed several Groupon deals for our doctors in the past few months, and check out an example of how these truly do benefit the doctor…
One of our doctors ran a deal where the patient received a $599 service for $195 – a 67% discount. Over the course of the day, 616 patients purchased the deal. Doing the math (less the 50% that goes to Groupon), the doctor made $60,060 in one day from one deal on Groupon. Even with an average redemption rate around 60%, that’s close to 370 new appointments. (And, there are an additional 240 patients that paid for a service that the doctor won’t ever spend money on performing.)
Right about now we can hear you thinking to yourself, “how do I get my practice on Groupon?” There’s a bit of a waiting list, and there’s the need for online reviews that Groupon can link to in order to show patients the quality of the doctor they’re promoting. So, with an online presence & a little patience, your practice can also benefit from offering a daily deal on Groupon.
What’s that? You don’t have any reviews online to qualify you for a Groupon deal? We can help you with that predicament…
Check our our Panda Cub to learn how to get your patients to spread the good word about you online. And, schedule a free personalized demo of the best online value for doctors to see if Panda Cub is a good fit for your practice at:
http://doctor.DoctorBase.com/cub
What’s A Groupon and What Can it Do for Your Practice?
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Groupon is essentially free advertising for your practice. You heard right, FREE advertising. In the past, DoctorBase clients have advertised promotional deals for current and potential patients with big results.
The idea behind Groupon is offering risk-free coupons for services at your practice, like some heavily discounted teeth whitening, for example. The deal is then emailed to Groupon’s database of users in your city, recipients then choose to purchase the deal and share it with their friends on Twitter and Facebook. If enough people sign up for the deal, it goes into action and if not, the deal is canceled and you don’t lose out on advertising and marketing investments.
Groupon is the next step in building an online presence for your practice. The site won’t accept a business unless there are good online reviews to link out to from the offer page that’s been setup for the daily deal. What would be a good online review link, you ask? Your DoctorBase.com profile, of course!
Groupon gets new patients in the door and when a new patient has a good experience they’ll tell their friends, review your practice on DoctorBase.com and the lovely word-of-mouth cycle continues.
Visit www.grouponworks.com/ to find Groupon success stories.
Want to learn more about using all of this new-fangled-technology to provide your patients with better healthcare? Looking for more insight on how to use online reviews to help your practice in a HIPAA-compliant manner? Join us this Thursday at 12p (Pacific) for a 1-hour CE course on how online reviews can help you improve patient care. RSVP to save your spot here:
