The Perrymount Clinic “CAM clinic of the year 2012” finalist

I have been an osteopath and naturopath for 15 years and only 4 years ago decided to open my own multi-disciplinary clinic after working for osteopaths as an associate and also renting space in other clinics. I knew I could open my own clinic because I had built a substantial client base over the years and I had both my own ideas on how to run a clinic and the good and bad from other clinics I had worked in.

The Perrymount Clinic opened in 1997 and in our first year we won a Best New Business award from our local radio station, which is actually quite a well know award in our area. My initial ideas for The Perrymount were to have a number of excellent practitioners who all knew each others specialities and would cross refer to each other as necessary. Although we may all work as self-employed individuals I wanted the patients health to be foremost and if that meant passing patients on to another practitioner who was better suited to them then great. I am pleased to say that we have achieved this and it has in fact increased the amount of patients we each see by creating these mini strategic alliances within our practice. For example cranial osteopathy and homeopathy teamed together in the care of babies and children, osteopathy and sports massage and our 3D Gaitscan scan suit our sporting patients and nutrition advice and acupuncture helps our patients seeking fertility help.

I have always tried to make The Perrymount excel is as many areas as possible and to create as many USP’s as possible. Initially I thought our USP was that we had many practitioners and in turn so many therapies that we offered. An “all under one roof” approach. We even had a beauty therapists full time in one room and this was excellent for us in generating new patients. However, I have gradually and naturally moved away from this notion for a couple of reasons. Firstly, most patients don’t know we offer so much, they come for their specific problem to see a specific practitioner. From here we educate them that we do more therapies. Secondly, each practitioner naturally became specialised in a problem they had greatest success in, so we now have a number of specialities under one roof.

For example I have built a lovely reputation treating babies with naturopathy and cranial osteopathy and the local midwives and health visitors now refer me many babies. I have also written a book called Calming Colic – How to help the 10 causes of colic. Our homeopath wrote an article on candida for her trade magazine that was shared literally around the world via the internet and she now does Skype consultations from around the globe with candida patients. Anne, our sports massage therapists worked for two weeks at the Olympics last Summer and from this she had articles written about her in the local press and also had radio interviews.. Another of our osteopaths uses 3D Gaitscan technology to assess foot function, biomechanics and to prescribe foot orthotics where needed. There aren’t any other local practices that have 3D Gaitscan technology so this sets us apart again and we now have many sports person visiting us for our specific slant towards being a “sports injury clinic”. Whilst these sporty patients are consulting us they may have a colicky baby crying in the room above them!

I have seen that patients want to visit a specialist who knows the most about the condition they have and patients that play sport want to see sports specialists. The Perrymount has naturally grown to have many individual “specialists” under one roof and I feel this has increased our local reputation exponentially.

Of course you can’t continuously bring new patients in and keep current patients without excellent customer service and I believe the single most important person in the clinic is our receptionist. I have a slight bias as she is my mother! Our patients continuously mention how lovely our receptionist is and we have many patients that just drop in for a cup of tea and a chat. She has even been known to drive local patients home if they are in pain, the weather is bad or they miss their bus. I cannot stress how beneficial it has been for us to have a fantastic receptionist that looks after patients as well as doing the business side of things like giving out information leaflets to make sure each patient knows about every service we offer.

Being a CAM Clinic of the year finalist was extremely exciting for us all at The Perrymount. Each one of us dedicates themselves to helping patients and also adds thoughts and ideas on how to continuously improve The Perrymount and the experience our patients have from booking their appointment to having a treatment to their after care. It was lovely news to be recognised for this effort we have put in. There is hard work and effort behind running a clinic but when we all love our jobs like we do I always think “hard work” is the wrong phrase because it is enjoyable. Thank you to CAM for recognising our clinic!

Calming Colic – How to help the 10 causes of colic by Christian Bates is available on Amazon Kindle and also as PDF download and paperback from www.calmingcolic.com. It is a fully experienced based and medically researched book on the causes behind colic that Christian has seen treating colicky babies for 15 years. It is primarily to help parents with their colicky baby but as it is medically referenced it can be used by professionals too and will stand up to the scrutiny of orthodox health professionals if need be! Christian can be contacted at christian@theperrymount.com for more information.