The Brutal Truth About Pricing Your Medical Services

A few months ago I wrote a deep dive on the 7 ingredients to create an irresistible offer.

And one of these ingredients is price. I like talking openly about price because it’s a topic many doctors treat as taboo. We all need to make a living but we hate the idea of having to charge our patients for our services. We also feel like we need to price our services at the absolute lowest we can or we’re breaking some unwritten rule (which hospitals, pharma and insurance seem to have no knowledge about…).

But the truth is, price is relative.

“Expensive” is relative.

Is a $10,000 price tag expensive?

As it often is the case, the correct answer is, it depends. If we’re talking about a pair of sunglasses, then yes. It’s expensive.

But if someone comes around and tells you they’re selling their Lamborghini Veneno for $10,000?

Then it’s a bargain.

What’s valuable to one, might be invaluable to someone else.

The example I often give to illustrate this is of an ortho surgeon.

Let’s assume this ortho surgeon is repairing an ACL in 3 different patients:

• Patient 1 is a 39 year old, middle class man who mis-stepped at work.
• Patient 2 is a promising 19 year old college athlete who suffered an injury after a bad tackle playing soccer.
• Patient 3 is a 29 year old NBA superstar who suffered an injury a week before the start of the season.

All 3 of them require essentially the same intervention. It will take the same amount of time. Require the same type and amount of materials. And will involve the exact same surgical team.

If the ortho surgeon decided to price this repair at 25k it might be seen as expensive by patient 1, adequate by patient 2, and a bargain by patient 3.

So instead of breaking your head trying to think of ways, tricks, and strategies to convince your existing patients to see “the value” in your services, figure out who are the “NBA superstar patients” who’d see your existing offer as a bargain.