Webinar One - AHPRA Friendly Advertising and Marketing

AHPRA’s very strict advertising regulations for Chinese medicine practitioners have caused a large amount of confusion, stress and outrage in our industry. Many practitioners feel that the advertising regulations are putting their business in jeapordy, leaving them unable to communicate with prospective patients the conditions they treat and the value that they can offer.

Traditional advertising strategies, advice from marketing and advertising gurus will very often land us in hot water, and in breach of the regulations. We can be left feeling like we have no options, and no way to promote ourselves and reach the people who need our help the most.

My first and only AHPRA audit at the beginning of 2018 was an incredibly stressful and upsetting process for me. I was one of the first practitioners to have proceedings begun against me, opening the breech notice on my birthday - 30th January, whilst breastfeeding my 5 week old baby. I was on maternity leave, and myself as well as the 5 practitioners and 2 admin staff working at my clinic were relying on the clinic being able to continue to attract new patients as we normally would whilst I was away. I reached out to my professional association for guidance who told me I was the only one who had this notice, and that they had no advice or support to offer.

Over the next few months, my already rocky marriage was under even more strain, I had practitioners leaving the practice, my baby (and me) weren’t sleeping, and I was dealing with AHPRA in a process that to me felt abusive. I had no one I could reach out to for help, and I felt completely on my own. It was the most difficult time in my career as a Chinese medicine practitioner.

I couldn’t understand what it was that they wanted from me, the sternly worded emails threatening me with disciplinary action if I didn’t comply were so overwhelming to me. They were breaching me on so many things, I even had social media posts from 5 years ago that were listed in my breach notice. Short of deleting my entire social media history and majority of my website there seemed to be few options. At one point in the process I spent an hour sobbing on the phone to the person who was investigating me, trying to understand what the specific problems were, what I was allowed to say, or not to say, and got nowhere, no clarity, no answers.

Later in that year, as more and more people received notifications, there was more support from professional associations in how to comply with the AHPRA mandates, however most of the information was about what we COULDN’T say rather than on what we COULD say. None of it was helpful for me.

Those who know me well, know that I’m stubborn, and I don’t like being told what to do! If someone tells me I can’t do something - I see red, and it makes me want to double down and do it even more than before!! So I was determined to find ways that I could promote my clinic, promote the type of work I love to do, and have people feel confident that I was going to be a good match for them.

In this seminar I will run through EVERYTHING I learned, and worked out about how we CAN advertise and what we CAN say about the conditions we treat. We can attract the exact type of patients we want to see in our practice, and we can do this in a way that complies with AHPRA advertising requirements. 2 hours to give you all the info you need to adjust and hone your advertising and marketing to be AHPRA friendly and also attract your dream patients.

Webinar two: The A-Z of Telehealth

The delivery of healthcare has changed enormously in the past few years, and telehealth is now a concept that almost everyone has experienced at some stage. Some patients prefer telehealth consults, some patients absolutely LOVE telehealth and would rather consult with you from the comfort of their sofa, or their work desk, and not have to battle with the logistics of getting to and from your clinic.

I have been running telehealth consults for the past 7 years, back in the days when people didn’t know what telehealth was, and they had trouble getting their head around the concept of speaking to their practitioner over the phone or via skype (I know - how old fashioned does that sound!)

Thankfully, connecting with our patients via telehealth is now a breeze - clinic software has inbuilt telehealth facility that allows for seamlessly connecting with your patient via secure video call.

There are many challenges that practitioners face when running telehealth consults, and many practitioners feel like there are one or more aspects of telehealth that they are still finding challenging:

• onboarding process

• creating or refining your online intake questionnaires

• developing rapport via video or phone call

• strategies for an efficient and effective consult

• making a diagnosis without pulse and/or tongue

• treatment prescriptions and treatment timeframes

• scheduling review consults

• pricing and payments

• logistics: herb and supplement dispensing

My brain is wired for detecting patterns and developing systems, and over the last 7 years I have made mistakes, made some over-corrections, and really refined my processes to make life so much easier for my patients, my admin staff and for me. I’ve done all the hard work for you, and in this 2 hour webinar I will share with you all my gems, all my best recommendations, and all the mistakes I wish I hadn’t made. All this will allow you to work out exactly how to implement this information into your clinic and the way you want to improve your telehealth consult processes and efficiency.

2 webinars, 4 hours CPD - Professional Issues

Lifetime access to the recording.