Increasing Range of Services to Drive Revenue Example Case Study
Bluelight Mental Health Services
Problem: Only one type of service offered, narrowing profit margin, fear of losing patients if session prices were increased
Bluelight Mental Health Services was running out of capital and their operating cash flow was decreasing after hiring new therapists to meet growing patient demand. They could not afford to keep retaining a profit because of the cost of new hires (including job advertising, salary, and time spent on interviews) as well as the rising costs of utilities and other expenses. Their profit margin was getting smaller month after month, but they did not want to raise the prices of sessions in fear that many of their patients would look elsewhere for care.
How we created a tailored solution for them:
Firstly, we identified the specific problems of not having any other sources of generating revenue besides single appointments, not having varying options for appointments, and sliding scale pricing was not working given that many of their patients were in a similar economic hardship at the time.
Then, using our GPT derived from an advanced AI platform, we were able to find similar case studies where a mid size practice with 25-50 employees, was also struggling with lowering profit margin and decreasing cash flow. We then did more research on Bluelight Mental Health Services to find the best available options for them based on their location, patient demographics, and their technology skills.
After analyzing all the data, we created a list of strategies that included:
Adding virtual group sessions:
allowed for reduced pricing plans to give access to more patients
created a way to generate more revenue than a typical personal one hour session
We also introduced the idea of online self therapy programs:
allowing patients to access self help exercises from their own home
created another stream of revenue
brought in patients that were unsure about taking therapy sessions and the stigma surrounding them
Creating a strategy to add emergency appointments:
for an extra monthly fee patients would have access to emergency appointments as soon as the same day
the hourly rate would be higher than standard if they did not choose to pay monthly fee
offered same day care for crisis which helped drastically improve patient satisfaction & retention
After inquiring with the team at Bluelight Mental Health Services they chose to implement all of these strategies to their practice. So we created a simple Step-By-Step guide for them to follow for each of the strategies making sure they understood exactly how everything operates.
We also developed a plan for future strategies they could start to implement in the coming year as they grew such as:
extending their virtual therapist team to reduce utility expenses
using a client portal to better track revenue growth and invoices
using an online program to create social media posts
adding a 24/7 emergency service
Results:
Patient satisfaction and retention increased by 32%
Profit margin increased by 12%
Patient volume grew by 27%
Revenue increased by 40%
Operationally efficiency was greatly improved
These strategies were very beneficial in increasing revenue without overcharging their existing patients. Offering group sessions and virtual sessions made it more accessible to their patients, and offering online programs and emergency services helped create other flows of income while increased virtual sessions instead of in person helped lower utility costs.
