What does it take to make a mental health practice feel welcoming?
In May 2024, I spoke with Brad Stoddard, who owns Sunrise Mental Health, a mental health practice in Arizona. Brad is not a clinician. He runs the business side of care, the part a lot of us doctors know little about.
We talked about insurance, telehealth rules, college students, and the small details of a clinic that patients notice. Much of the conversation is about customer experience, and what health care might learn from a well run restaurant chain.
How does someone without clinical training end up running a practice?
At 0:40, Brad described how it started. After earning a master of business administration (MBA), he joined a hospital group as its director of patient financial services and learned insurance from the inside. Interestingly, that is where he discovered he was good at bringing business and health care together.
In Arizona, he explained, a layperson can own a health care company as long as he does not run the clinical side. A medical director is in charge of care at Sunrise. That leaves Brad free to focus on referrals, staff, and the customer experience.
Why accept insurance when it is such a hassle?
At 3:00, I described the path many doctors take to keep things simple, with no insurance and little staff. That works on a small scale. Yet, if you want the doors open to everyone, you have to work within the system, because everybody deserves access to good mental health care.
Brad agreed, from 3:42. Only so many people will pay out of pocket, he said, and most want to use the insurance they already pay for. At 6:12, he added a problem few patients know about. Some employer plans carve out mental health to a separate payer, and the patient often has no idea.
Who comes to the practice for care?
At 4:49, Brad described a sharp rise in adults asking about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and many of them are women who first wondered about it after watching videos on TikTok. Depression and anxiety are common too. He believes that therapy alongside medication gives people a better outcome than medication alone. His follow-up visits also run far longer than a three minute medication check.
Why does the look of a waiting room matter?
At 7:17, Brad described the office. He wanted it to feel calm rather than sterile, with a mid-century modern style and very little clutter. As he put it, the perception of care is a real thing, and patients judge a practice the moment they walk in.
So, the waiting room has music, sparkling water, and snacks. He wants a patient to arrive with a sigh of relief instead of dread. From 8:59, he also pointed out that a spouse or partner often waits there too.
What can a medical practice learn from Chick-fil-A?
At 10:48, Brad said he prepared to start the company by reading two books by Truett Cathy, the founder of Chick-fil-A. One lesson stayed with him. You cannot train friendliness. That is why he hires front desk staff who are genuinely friendly, since they are the first people a patient sees.
At 12:28, I brought up a scene from the film about the founders of McDonald’s, in which they laid out the whole kitchen on a tennis court to perfect the process. From 12:53, Brad said every practice owner should study the patient’s experience from start to finish the same way. In his view, answering the phone is one of the easiest ways for a doctor to grow a practice.
How do good experiences turn into referrals?
At 14:10, I mentioned the common complaint that a doctor ran in and out of the room. Brad’s answer, at 14:35, was that many specialties are so underserved that practices with poor reviews still fill their schedules. Still, in his view, a doctor who wants to grow cannot settle for that.
He described satisfied patients as walking billboards. One person has a good visit and recommends the practice to a coworker who is struggling. In fact, after only a short time in business, Sunrise had already seen a referral of a referral of a referral.
What changed for telehealth after the pandemic?
At 16:20, Brad said that most new patients still want to be seen in person at first. Once they connect with their provider, many switch to telehealth, which he finds hard to beat for convenience.
From 17:13, he explained the Ryan Haight Act, which governs what can be prescribed by telehealth without an in-person visit and was put on hold during the pandemic. Unfortunately, as he pointed out at 18:08, in a state as large as Arizona some patients live hours from the nearest specialist. At 19:25, he credited Governor Ducey with signing a law that made the state’s pandemic telehealth changes permanent.
At 20:37, Brad said the practice plans to remain in Arizona, because quality can slip when owners are too far away to keep a finger on the pulse. I agreed. I practice only in Florida, and working under the laws of many states seems overwhelming to me.
Why do college students need fast access to care?
At 21:40, Brad described college students as a large group his practices have served. Many come from out of state, so their home provider is not licensed in Arizona. At 22:42, I talked about the pressure on a new adult who is suddenly on their own.
From 23:16, Brad explained that the University of Arizona knows his staff will call a referred patient the same day. Unfortunately, as I said on air, delay to treatment is a problem throughout health care.
Why return every call, even without a voicemail?
At 24:14, Brad said he asks his staff to return voicemails within minutes, not days. At 25:28, he told a story from his own time at the front desk. He phoned back people who had left no message and signed up four new patients in one week, because his practice was the only one that called them back.
That is now a policy at Sunrise. As Brad sees it, a return call either gets ahead of a problem, such as a prescription question, or reaches a new patient who has heard only voicemail everywhere else.
What should a busy doctor do about the business side?
At 27:25, Brad said that doctors truly care about their patients, but they cannot give care and also make sure the front desk answers the phone. His answer is a manager who shares the doctor’s values. At 29:50, he described a surgery center he ran, where he had the bathrooms cleaned twice a day on colonoscopy days even though no law required it.
His advice was simple. If several patients mention the same frustration, take the time to fix it. At 31:32, he urged doctors to hire people who care as much as they do.
Who is Brad Stoddard?
Brad Stoddard owns Sunrise Mental Health, a mental health practice in Arizona whose medical director oversees clinical care. He holds an MBA, began as director of patient financial services for a hospital group, and has also run a surgery center. His focus is the business side of care.
What can listeners take away from this conversation?
Patients notice far more than the visit itself. In Brad’s view, a calm room, a friendly voice at the front desk, and a phone that gets answered all tell a person whether a practice cares. Those details are within any practice’s control.
How do I approach this today?
Today my practice focuses on helping people come off benzodiazepines and other medications gradually, and on medication for alcohol and opioid dependence. Physical dependence is not addiction, and the safest way off is usually slow.
This page is educational. It is not medical advice, and listening to the episode or reading this page does not create a doctor-patient relationship. Decisions about starting, continuing, or tapering any medication should be made with your own physician.
Full transcript
A note from Dr. Leeds: my guests speak from their own experience and expertise, and the terminology they use is their own. Whatever the topic, this show holds to one distinction: physical dependence on a prescribed medication is not addiction. This transcript is educational content, not medical advice, and nothing here creates a doctor-patient relationship.
Read the full transcript (32 minutes)
Dr. Mark Leeds [00:00] Okay, Brad Stoddard, it’s great talking to you. Welcome to the podcast.
Brad Stoddard [00:08] Hey, thanks. Glad to be here.
Dr. Mark Leeds [00:12] Yeah, thank you for joining me. Yeah, so the idea of what you do, the administration side of mental health care and organizing the business side of it, you know, something that a lot of us doctors know nothing about. We’re not very good at it, but you make it possible. You make it possible for a lot of people to get help. So tell us a little bit about the business that you started in the Sunrise Mental Health Facility.
Brad Stoddard [00:40] Yeah, so I am not clinical at all. I went to school and got my MBA. I always wanted to be in health care, but the cards never played out like that. So it was so lucky after I got my MBA that I was able to join a hospital group. And was their director of patient financial services. And so I learned about the insurances, the ins and outs. And I think they were just desperate to have anybody, even though I didn’t have experience. And I later found out they had fired the previous four directors in front of me. And so they gave me a shot and it went really well. I found out I was really good at bringing business and healthcare together. And so you’re absolutely right. I’ve met so many doctors and worked with so many doctors and clinicians that all they want to do is work with the patients and do patient care and provide excellent service. But unfortunately, the business side is always there. You have front desk people that need to be trained and hired. You have billing, which is a huge part because, you know, you can give exceptional care. But if you don’t get paid for it, you know, then that’s a that’s a huge issue. So I’m lucky to be able to jump in and handle all those situations, definitely from a different perspective and for more energy. I feel so bad for so many entrepreneurs who are doctors who open up a clinic and they’re giving their all to patient care. And then there’s just not a lot left in the tank to handle HR issues and, you know, payroll and all the other stuff that goes with it. But, yeah, like you said, so right now I own Sunrise Mental Health. And in Arizona, a layman can own a health care company as long as I’m not running the health care side. So we have a medical director that is in charge of that. But it’s nice because it allows me to focus on the customer experience you know how are we doing referrals I can go out there and build the business I can manage our online presence I can do all these things all these things that lots of doctors can’t do because they’re giving patient care so I’m in a really unique situation right now
Dr. Mark Leeds [03:00] Yeah and one approach that a lot of us of taking, you know, doctors that don’t want to work within that system is that we try to simplify things and say, okay, we’re not going to deal with insurance. We’re not going to deal with staff, you know, and that does work on a limited scale. But when you want to help everybody, you want to make sure that the doors are open for anybody that walks through and that you can help everybody that comes to you. You really can’t avoid that stuff. You have to be able to work with the system. And it does get very complicated. And so what you’re doing is really incredible. And it’s important because everybody deserves to have access to good mental health care.
Brad Stoddard [03:42] Yeah. And you’re absolutely right. It is really hard to do both. But it is possible. And you’re right about there are a lot of providers who they’re just like, you know what, insurance is such a nightmare and such a mess that I’m just going to stick to self-pay. And you’re right. You can help a small amount of people, but if you want to be able to scale your business, there’s only so many self-pay people that are willing to pay in your area for it. And so one of my goals was growth. We wanted to help as many people as possible. And to be able to do that, we have to go through insurance because most people want to use their insurance, you know, they’re paying a monthly premium for it and they want to use it. So that’s why we decided to use insurance and work with insurance, even though it is a hassle because we can grow faster than just self-pay.
Dr. Mark Leeds [04:36] Yeah. And so what kinds of, conditions can people come to Sunrise for what, like, what are the most common things you treat and the range of conditions that you can treat there?
Brad Stoddard [04:49] So, I think a lot of it is due to TikTok. You have those TikTok diagnoses, but we’ve seen a huge uptick in ADHD. So right now we’re handling a lot of ADHD, a lot of women. I would say the majority of people calling us are adult women who, you know, saw TikTok or something and they just are like, wow, maybe I have it. So we do ADHD, depression, anxiety, OCD, PTSD, and we’re experts at medication management. We also provide therapy with that because we feel like it provides a better outcome than just that medication management. So our first appointments are about 50 minutes long and then follow ups are about 20 to 25 minutes long instead of just like a three minute med check.
Dr. Mark Leeds [05:37] Oh, that’s great. That’s great. And I know something related to addiction care, which was really important, was the part of the Affordable Care Act. They have that part of it that says that everybody deserves to get or everybody has to have access to mental health care equally to any other condition, you know, that they can’t limit mental health care. I know that helps people with getting addiction treatment. And I would imagine across the board for any kind of mental health care is that insurance companies can’t refuse to help people when they need help with mental health.
Brad Stoddard [06:12] Yeah, it is interesting. A lot of the commercial payers will have a carve out. So they’ll like they’ll work for Boeing or they’ll work for the McDonald’s Corporation. And let’s say that they have Blue Cross Blue Shield. What’s interesting is they’ll have a carve out for mental health. And that can be a challenge, too, because the patient doesn’t know that they have a carve out. So they’ll present that they have Blue Cross Blue Shield. And then we’ll find out by reading their card. It’s actually a carve out to something else. So I wonder if that’s the reason that they are doing carve outs, because they are required to provide mental health care. But sometimes it’s not combined. So if you’re in mental health, you have to be on the lookout for those carve outs, because sometimes the patient doesn’t even know that they have a separate insurance payer that’s covering their mental health.
Dr. Mark Leeds [07:06] Yeah. So what is it for a patient that comes in? What does it look like? How big of a place is that sunrise?
Brad Stoddard [07:17] Yep. So we’re on to our second office already. We’ve been in business less than a year, but we outgrew our first place. And so we really wanted to have a place that didn’t feel sterile. And so when you come in, there’s a mid-century modern feel to our place. That’s kind of upscale because we want people to feel like, you know, the perception of care is a real thing. You know, and so the way that your office looks and how many times the trash gets taken out, that’s all so important. Because you get judged, you know, right when that patient walks in the door. So we try to keep our offices very clean, very minimal. We don’t have a lot of clutter. We don’t have a lot of things posted on the walls unless it’s mandated by law. And then we just want people to come in and just feel calm. So we have nice music. What I try to do is try to go above and beyond. And so we have drinks and snacks. You know we have a sparkling water and we have diet coke and we have jerky and granola bars and we have all this stuff to make a little haven for people so when they come in instead of like oh my gosh you know I’m here again at my mental health provider they come in and then they just have a sigh of relief that they’re there and then we have calm music we have the snacks and then we provide excellent care so kind of a little bit different than lots of other places yeah
Dr. Mark Leeds [08:48] Yeah, that sounds really good. It makes me want to go visit now. […]
Brad Stoddard [08:59] Oh, wow. Yeah, good coffee too. Yeah, and that’s another thing. A lot of times the patients will have a caretaker, either a spouse or a partner or somebody who comes in with them. And so, yeah, it’s just another thing to make their experience a little bit better. As they’re waiting for their, you know, their loved one to get seen by us, they can have a little treat and enjoy the ambiance a little bit. So yeah, that’s interesting about your, that’s a, that’s a great thing. Maybe we’ll have a coffee bar soon.
Dr. Mark Leeds [09:31] Yeah. Yeah. It sounds, it sounds great. Yeah. […]
Brad Stoddard [10:13] But I think that’s so great like those those two places you mentioned they’re thinking outside the box because they just don’t want the patient to come in and leave they want it to be a better experience so I think that’s awesome of them to do to do that
Dr. Mark Leeds [10:28] Yeah yeah definitely yeah that’s great though they just the idea of like you know because nobody wants to go to whether it’s a psychiatrist or the dentist or whatever, you know, and just to already have people in a good frame of mind just before they even come in to see their doctor or their healthcare provider is really great. So,
Brad Stoddard [10:48] Yeah, and then just making sure that your front desk person has a smile on their face. When I was trying to get ready to build this company, I read two books by Truett Cathy, the guy who started Chick-fil-A. And one of the things that he teaches is you can’t train friendliness. And so when we’re trying to hire, we make sure that front desk person, because that’s the first person the patient sees when they walk in, is a friendly, a genuinely friendly person. And so that’s another thing that we try to do is make sure that our staff are good people. They’re happy people. Because I agree with Truett Cathy, you really can’t motivate happiness or friendliness. Yeah. Yeah, Chick-fil-A.
Dr. Mark Leeds [11:38] When you line up to go in Chick-fil-A, I feel like I’m in a line for Disney World or something. There’s something about it. You feel like something good is coming up.
Brad Stoddard [11:48] Yeah, I actually grabbed about 20 points from those two books about how to start a company like Chick-fil-A. And that’s kind of our foundation, our principles. We try to build off that. So I joke all the time that we’re the Chick-fil-A of psychiatry. Just because when you go to Chick-fil-A versus Taco Bell or McDonald’s, it’s a night and day difference of customer experience. And so that’s what we try to be. And the good thing is as owners of the company, we have control over that about who we hire and who we don’t hire. So we definitely have the ability to make sure we’re choosing the right people to greet our customers.
Dr. Mark Leeds [12:28] Yeah yeah and you remind me also of I just saw I think it was on social media they were showing like different clips of that founder movie you know with oh yeah mcdonald’s and they showed that they showed that scene where it was like half the tennis court where the mcdonald’s guys like laid out the whole kitchen and perfected their process of how the kitchen would work and had everybody come out to the tennis court and pretend they’re making food
Brad Stoddard [12:53] Yeah and that’s really what you have to do just recently I started looking at our business from a to z exactly what they were doing in that movie they wanted to find out the process from a to z and that’s what we have to do as business owners is you have to understand what happens the minute that person calls us does it go to voicemail all our front desk people answering the phone or does it go to voicemail and a recording that says we’ll call you in 48 hours if you’re a doctor who’s trying to grow your business that’s one of the easiest things you can do is make sure you’re answering your phone but that’s what we do is we went from a to z and we tweaked little things about what can we do to answer the phone faster call back people faster call the referral faster when a voicemail call you know is left what can we do and so I think that movie did such a great job of doing that, but all doctors need to step back and take a look and see what is the customer experience from A to Z. And just like they did on that tennis court, you have to understand where are the points that are frustrating for a patient, and then see if you can tweak them a little bit to make them less frustrating. Frustrating.
Dr. Mark Leeds [14:10] Well, yeah, that’s, that’s great. I think a lot of, like, healthcare facilities don’t really, maybe don’t, don’t think all that stuff through, especially with, you know, you hear the common kind of nightmare of patients saying that they barely saw the doctor, they kind of ran in and ran out, and, you know, and just not enough time being given to, or attention being given to the care of the patient.
Brad Stoddard [14:35] Yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot of people, just because lots of specialties are underserved in America, a lot of people don’t have to try hard, you know, to get patients because there’s always going to be a default where you’re like, well, gosh, they have a 2.2 rating, but I need to go into this cardiologist because I need care. But if we, if doctors want to grow their practice, then they can’t be just happy with the 2.2. And like you said, this pop in, pop out, they have to find out how to engage the patient more. And if they can do that, then they’ll be able to grow and get more patients. Because one of the things that has helped us a lot is we’re getting referrals from our referrals from our referrals. And that means, you know, Bob comes in, has a great experience. He’s at work the next day and somebody’s complaining about depression or anxiety. And Bob’s the one who is our advertising. And he’s like, you know what, I just went to Sunrise Mental Health. They were so nice. They had San Pellegrino in the waiting room. The music was really nice. And then that person is now a walking billboard for us. And it just continues. We’ve already had, even though we’ve been in business very shortly, we’ve had a referral of a referral of a referral come in to us because they’ve heard about how great we are. And so it really is important that patient interaction pays dividends because, you know, as you’re trying to grow your business, you need people out there talking about you, even when you’re not asking them to.
Dr. Mark Leeds [16:12] Wow. Yeah, that’s, that’s really good. Now, what about telemedicine? Are you guys involved in telemedicine right now?
Brad Stoddard [16:20] Yeah, because COVID, we definitely see the value in that. Surprisingly, Interestingly, as we’re getting new patients, the majority of them still want to be seen face to face. So we offer in person and we also offer telehealth. But what I’ve noticed is as soon as that patient has a good connection with our psychiatric provider, then they’ll switch over to telehealth. Because you really can’t beat telehealth for, you know, it’s so simple. You don’t have to leave your house. You don’t have to drive to the clinic. You can just go in your car if you have a good connection and do the appointment through your car. And so we offer that because there’s a lot of people. We work with a lot of college students and they would just want to do a telehealth visit. So it’s good to offer both modalities.
Dr. Mark Leeds [17:12] Oh, is that throughout the entire state of Arizona?
Brad Stoddard [17:13] Yep. As of right now, it might change later this year. It was supposed to change the Ryan Haight Act was kind of put on hold for several years during COVID and then they were going to bring it back and basically that changes what you can and can’t prescribe via telehealth and you have to see the person in person to see the patient in person before you can prescribe certain things that has been placed on hold again as the government’s getting more and more comments about how they should proceed but right now we can do telehealth without seeing the patient. And then if it does get required that they have to be seen in person, then we’ll just pivot and make it work. But we’re not worried about that at all.
Dr. Mark Leeds [18:06] Yeah. I was wondering about that. Would they have to see you in person every visit or is that just periodically?
Brad Stoddard [18:08] So how the rule is written right now, it’s once for every two years of care. And so that really isn’t hard. You know, if we’ve had the patient, they fall in love with us, and we’re like, gosh, I know that you’re an hour away, but just come in once, and then we can give you care for the next two years. And that’s just up until, as it’s written right now, my guess is they’re going to tweak it because everybody has moved to telehealth, and it’s such a benefit, especially in, you know, Arizona is huge. And, you know, we have people who are, you know, three hours away from our clinic because there’s no specialists in their area. And so it does seem silly to make them drive three hours when we could just do it over a video call just as fine.
Dr. Mark Leeds [18:55] Yeah. And there’s some big telehealth companies that I guess, you know, on one hand, there are competitors. But on the other hand, there are advocates because, you know, they’re out there lobbying and fighting to keep things going. Because that’s their whole business is telehealth. So, yeah, we have them on our side, at least in that aspect of hopefully keeping things workable, not inconveniencing people so they don’t have to travel far for care and everything.
Brad Stoddard [19:25] Yeah, and we have a really great – our former lawyer, I mean, mayor or governor, he’s actually governor, Governor Ducey. During COVID, he signed a law that said telehealth, everything that went to telehealth, all the changes are to be made permanent. Because I know some states have rolled back some of their telehealth abilities. And he saw the benefits of it. With my old company, we’d have somebody in Page, Arizona, which is right way up at the tippy top of Arizona, We’re right on the border of Utah. And our specialist that was treating them was in Phoenix. That’s six hours away. And so what a great blessing for that patient just to do a telehealth visit instead of saying, hey, you know what? I know we know you well, but you’re going to have to drive six hours to see us. And so I’m really hopeful that they keep the changes because it really has expanded care to a lot of people who weren’t getting it before. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Leeds [20:35] Is that like just Arizona or do you also are you able to help people in other states?
Brad Stoddard [20:37] We’re just Arizona and we’ll probably just stay in Arizona for a while. I think I think that’s kind of a fallacy of some people is they’re like, well, if I could just get into another state, I could grow faster. But we just want to keep it close, close to us so we can make sure that, you know, the quality of standard doesn’t decrease. And sometimes when you expand farther away, you know, the quality of care will decrease because you’re not there to keep your finger on the pulse.
Dr. Mark Leeds [21:07] Yeah, I agree. I like Florida. I just stay in Florida. Yeah, the idea of trying to maintain and work with the laws of different states seems kind of overwhelming to me. Yeah.
Brad Stoddard [21:20] And there’s plenty of people in Florida. Yeah. So, yeah, I think that’s the better way to do it. I think there’s so much need in Arizona that we don’t have a need to go outside of it.
Dr. Mark Leeds [21:35] Yeah. Now, you had mentioned college students. What universities are in Arizona?
Brad Stoddard [21:40] Well, we have three major ones. University of Arizona, which is in Flagstaff, and then ASU, Arizona State, and Tempe, Arizona, which is by Phoenix, and then University of Arizona, which is in Tucson. And with my little company college students were a huge huge demographic that we served a lot of times they’re coming from out of state and so they don’t have care because you know their provider isn’t licensed in Arizona so if you’re in an area that has a college like and a lot of them are struggling with depression anxiety ADHD you know a lot of these college students started college during COVID and it’s been a challenge for them. So we try to create a really good relationship with the university and we can help take off some of those patients that might be slipping through the cracks or they can’t care for anymore. So I think colleges are a huge, huge impact on business.
Dr. Mark Leeds [22:42] Yeah. Yeah. It’s stressful, you know, going to college and, you know, then I can imagine, you know, things that might not have, a person might have been dealing with through high school, you know, suddenly you’re out on your own and depression, anxiety, you know, things catch up to you and you now you have to deal with taking on college, you know, now, you know, you hear everybody saying, you know, that this is it, like you have to perform, you have to, you know, you’re gonna have to go to work someday and do something well here. So it’s a lot of stress to be put on someone that, you know, an adult, a new adult suddenly out in the world in college.
Brad Stoddard [23:16] Yeah, yeah. So we try to create a good relationship with them. And back to just being fast, when they send us a referral, we jump on it the same day. I know some doctor’s offices, when they get a referral from a PCP, it’s not an importance to them. It just kind of sits there for a couple of days or even a week or two. And the University of Arizona knows that if they send us a referral, that we will call the patient the same day, which just makes them want to send us more patients. And then we can grow and help more people.
Dr. Mark Leeds [23:50] Yeah, it’s true. Yeah. That’s kind of a problem all throughout healthcare of like the delay to treatment, the time it takes to actually get an appointment and talk to somebody. Yeah, that’s really important. You know, same day. So people can, you know, they’ll get a call right away or they’ll be able to get through to someone right away and get a visit pretty quickly.
Brad Stoddard [24:14] Yeah. And I know, I know when I call family practice doctors and I’ll leave a voicemail, you know, they, several of them do say like, we will call you within 48 hours. And I tell my staff, we should be calling patients back in four to eight minutes is what our turn around time is. And I think back to that, a lot of practices, you know, they get patients no matter what, you know, whether they’re fast or slow, they’re still going to get patients. But our job is we want to grow. You know, we want to help as many people as possible. And so if we’re really fast and I love it when we surprise a patient and they’re just like, oh, my gosh, I just left you a voicemail three minutes ago. So, you know, I’m not used to this. It just makes us stand out a little bit more. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Leeds [25:07] So you’ve prioritized that. That’s like that’s your priority where other people, other businesses or doctors or facilities may have other priorities like you. And I think that’s unusual. I mean, I don’t think that’s a common thing of let’s make, you know, customer service and responsiveness a priority.
Brad Stoddard [25:28] Yeah. And so I was, you know, when we first started, you know, I was answering the phones and I still do answer a lot of phones because we’re so small. But the last month that I answering the phones full time, I signed up four new patients in one week because they called. I was on the phone with somebody else. And I called back the missed call, even though they didn’t leave a voicemail, I called them back and I said, Hey, this is Brad with Sunrise Mental Health. I’m so sorry. I was helping another patient. I saw that you called. Can I help you out? And I signed up four new patients that were just calling down the list in Google. And we were the only ones that had called back. And so that’s another policy of ours is we call back all missed calls. Because if somebody is calling you, whether they’re an established patient or a new patient, they’re calling you for a reason. And I think a lot of front desk people, when they see that missed call, they just don’t care. They’re just like, they’ll call back. But we go above and beyond and we call them back. And it either gets us in front of a problem. So maybe a patient is calling about a prescription issue. And now we can attack that problem and get it solved fast or it’s a new patient that’s just calling and they’re just keep getting voicemails and we’re the first person to call back so once again it makes us look good and the people are like oh my gosh I can’t believe you’re calling me back I didn’t leave a voicemail so it just makes us look really good.
Dr. Mark Leeds [26:59] Wow well that’s that’s yeah I wish you could be everywhere you can go fix all of health care I mean that’s we need you everywhere and maybe you can clone yourself and yeah there’s so much of healthcare is broken and just you know that responsiveness and letting people know that you care and being there for them that’s that’s really great
Brad Stoddard [27:25] Well I think it goes back to what you were saying at the beginning mark that you know doctors they care they truly care about their patients, but they can’t be in charge of giving care and they can’t be in charge of making sure that the front desk people know how to answer their phones, right? So that’s why it’s so important to find a manager that has the same values as the doctor and truly, truly cares about the patients because then they can just be like, hey, remember we call back every missed call and then that manager can can do that because it’s so hard for a doctor who is trying to do it all to make sure that customer experience is really really high you know I feel I feel I feel for that demographic that can be everywhere at once but truly cares
Dr. Mark Leeds [28:14] Yeah yeah it’s yeah it’s kind of like the again the chick-fil-a analogy like like there used to be there was this guy on the beach years ago when I was in high school that he made burgers and had a little burger stand. He’d made the greatest burgers in the world. And you’d have to go out to the beach and stand in line. And it was just one guy making burgers on a grill. But who knows what happened to him? You know, he disappeared. But yeah, but then you have this place where you just get in line. He’d feel good about sitting your car in a line and these nice, cheerful people giving you a number and taking your order and everything. It’s like, you know, bags of food. […] yeah I mean I mean it’s you know just scaling up and making everybody happy and taking care of everybody and making people feel good about it’s really a great thing and it’s not the guy in the kitchen who you know he can’t do that you know he can’t go to the Chick-fil-A the people making the chicken and say we need we need you to go out and take orders on the line or something I mean everybody has their part to play in it so yeah but that whole system the idea give it like, you know, why does one, and that’s true in a lot of businesses, you know, when something works, like here, you know, the big grocery store in our neighborhood is Publix, which I know they don’t have everywhere. And you kind of take for granted how well run the place is. When you go into like any other supermarket, you’re like, you know, I didn’t realize that it’s such a keeping the food at the right temperature in the freezers and refrigerators and, you know, making sure everything is fresh and making sure that the place isn’t dirty and strange looking. You know you really realize like there’s a lot that goes into keeping this place clean and organized
Brad Stoddard [29:50] Yeah and it’s just kind of falls down to the value of the company it’s because it’s not rocket science to make sure that your clinic is super clean you know that’s that’s not crazy but you know I’ve been in clinics that you know maybe they weren’t changing the trash out as often as possible. One thing that I did when I was running a surgery center was I noticed that on colonoscopy days, the bathrooms got a little bit dirty during colonoscopy days. So I had my staff clean it twice a day. And we didn’t have to, it’s not like, you know, we’re required by law, but I wanted that feel to be, you know, I want our patients to feel good when they came in. And so we recognize the problem. And then we just created a super simple solution. So when doctors find a problem, or they know that patients don’t like something, instead of just being like throwing up your hands and being like, well, gosh, you know, I wish it was different. You know, change it, you have the ability to make changes. So I encourage people to actually make the changes. If you have a sticking point, and you’ve had 10 patients say, you know what, we love your clinic, but XYZ happens, then take time to think about what can you do to make that not a frustration anymore. And your patients will thank you for it.
Dr. Mark Leeds [31:18] Yeah. Well, Brad, thank you. Thanks for joining me. This is incredible. I think doctors and patients will get a lot out of listening to this conversation and hearing this incredible wisdom that you’ve shared with us here. Thank you.
Brad Stoddard [31:32] Hey, you’re welcome. My pleasure. And I just want to leave with doctors like, I know how hard it is to do both when you are running the whole show by yourself, but try to hire people who have the same values and care as much as you so they can carry on the work that you want to see done. But I’ve really enjoyed my time with you, Mark. Thanks so much. Thank you.
