NEWS FLASH
Premiere Issue Features Vickie and Legal Nurse Consulting
With its cover story on Vickie L. Milazzo, RN, MSN, JD and legal nurse consulting, a brand new publication for working women hit the stands in Houston in March. The front cover of the premiere issue of Houston Woman Magazine showed a photograph of Vickie and highlighted its accompanying article with the lead title, "Vickie Milazzo Pioneers New Field for RNs."
Vickie is quoted, "Any nurse who has a CLNC® Certification, a strong nursing background and the courage to hang in there can make it as a legal nurse consultant. I tell my clients to believe what I know to be true: 'We are nurses, and we can do anything!' "
As a sidebar, the magazine published Vickie’s article, "5 Success Promises I Make Daily." These are the commitments Vickie has made to herself every day for two decades now including, "I will take one action step a day toward my career goals."
Click here to read the full article, "Founder Considered Pioneer in New Field: Vickie Milazzo Institute Training RNs to be Certified Legal Nurse Consultants."
CLNC® Pros Reveal
Building Successful Client Relationships, Part III
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the last part of the Best Practices for Building Successful Client Relationships article. Part I was published in Legal Nurse Consulting Ezine No. 4, dated February 20, 2004 and Part II was published in Ezine No. 5, dated March 5, 2004.
I asked our CLNC® Pros to discuss how they had successfully built relationships with attorney-clients and insurance companies. Here are their informative and inspiring replies.
Honesty, Loyalty and Communication – Your Foundations for Good Client Relations
Be honest and ethical in your business relationships. Make sure you give the attorney-client a fair appraisal of what you can do for him. Don't promise a service or product you can't provide. Be a support system for the attorney-client without breaking his pocketbook.
One attorney told me that although he knew nurses could be a great deal of help with his cases, some nurses he had used in the past were more interested in stringing out the case for money rather than supporting his case and providing the assistance he required. Fortunately, I was able to offer letters of reference from attorneys he could call for assurance that I do not run my business that way.
Go the extra mile for your attorney-client. Be available to find that specific book or article she needs before deposition, and don't charge an excessive fee for doing this. No one wants to work for free and you shouldn't, but I have found that doing a last-minute favor goes a long way toward keeping my attorney-clients happy and the cases coming in.
Be loyal to your attorney-client. Apply the same rules of confidentiality to your CLNC® business and cases as you do to patients in the hospital setting. Don't discuss your attorney-clients or their cases with other people. Understand that attorneys do not like having their business discussed with the community at large. If you have a legitimate reason to discuss a case with another CLNC® (such as a subcontractor), be very sure this is someone who also applies the confidentiality rule.
Keep your attorney-client informed of relevant medical-legal advances. Take the time to keep yourself informed of changes in the field and share this information with your attorney-clients. Provide them with copies of new guidelines and standards of care. This lets them know you are up-to-date, and they will appreciate having that information at their fingertips when they need it.
Have a backup system in place when you are unavailable. Attorneys are proficient experts at procrastination. They often wait until the last minute and want 20 hours of work done in less than 10. Be prepared for this and have a system in place so that you can provide the work they need in the required time frame.
I recently heard from my former boss, who had been promising to contract with me for months. On a Thursday afternoon he called and said, "Can you obtain all the research I need by noon on Friday and be available all weekend for trial preparation?" Of course, I said "Yes." I did the research and used my husband to help me at the library. I also had another nurse handle other calls and keep the work flowing.
This nurse is also my backup for when I'm out of town and can't personally handle assignments. Having another capable, trustworthy CLNC® onboard who believes in your business philosophy will keep stressful moments to a minimum and keep your business healthy.
– Patsy Howard, RN, CLNC
5 Ways to Show Clients You Care
Give your attorney-clients what they ask for. I have a six-year client who likes his chronologies formatted in a certain way. One time I forgot and formatted the case "as usual." I reformatted without charging him, apologized and made a note in his file to remind myself next time.
Always offer at least one additional service. After finding no nursing issues on a surgical case, it was obvious to me the attorney was choosing to pursue the case based on medical negligence. I offered to assist with developing discovery questions for the surgical technician’s deposition.
Treat the administrative assistants and paralegals with special kindness. Give them the same respect you give an attorney. I shower them with small tokens of appreciation (pens, candy, etc.) and occasionally take them to lunch or coffee.
Be open to case discussion. Talking with the attorney is a skill nurses are good at. Many physicians are reluctant to give of their time and they lack interest in discussions not directly related to their task. I never charge for the initial telephone conference about a case, and I try to be helpful from the get-go.
Stay in contact with the attorneys or their assistants. Some cases last for years, and an occasional follow-up call shows the attorney that you care and keep your files current. (Don't forget to note the date you called and what you discussed.)
– Colleen Lindell, RN, MHSA, CNOR, CLNC
Patsy Howard, RN, CLNC is the owner of Metro Legal Nurse Consulting in Missouri. She has 23 years of nursing experience in hospital nursing, home health, management, medical malpractice litigation and legal nurse consulting.
Colleen Lindell, RN, MHSA, CNOR, CLNC, Wisconsin, is CEO of Med-Legal.net, Inc., a nurse-owned firm providing attorneys with research, expert case review and opinion.
BEST PRACTICES FOR MARKETING
7 Strategies for Marketing with Client Relations
by Debra Gross, RN, MSN, CPC, CLNC and
Laurie Thornton, RN, BSN, CLNC
Our firm is unique in that the co-owners are sisters who also live across the street from one another. We are surely an example of the principle that if you are committed you can succeed. We both have strengths in different areas and take full advantage of these strengths in both the business and nursing aspects of our practice. We have used this to our advantage in establishing and building client relationships, marketing and working on cases. Here are our steps to success:
Get organized for creating great client relationships. We meet weekly to establish short-term and long-term goals. At first the ONLY goal was landing our first case. We give ourselves assignments, then report back on progress (or lack thereof). During our first meetings we established our name, logo, power colors and brochure layout and wording. Next we came up with a plan to market ourselves and build attorney-client relationships.
Network, network, network. We made a list of everyone we knew who knew attorneys, dated attorneys, etc., and called them. We used a spreadsheet (Excel) to keep track of the names and addresses of these contacts and their response to our call. We learned a lot about our potential attorney-clients – their specialty, what kind of cases they handled, their reputation and how well respected they were in their own community. Checking Martindale-Hubbell was also very helpful.
Schmooze past the gatekeeper. Our next step was to call all the attorneys we came up with to book an appointment. We bypassed the gatekeeper by name-dropping: "Joe Smith recommended that I call and speak to Mr. Attorney-Client." This usually worked. We would briefly tell Mr. Attorney-Client who we are, what we do and who gave us his name. Again, we kept track of the attorneys and their responses on a spreadsheet.
Open the door with persistence. Attorneys get very busy, but if we even got a hint that they were interested in our services, we were persistent in trying to meet with them. One attorney we currently work with took three months to book a meeting, but we walked out with a case. We made ourselves available by leaving our office and cell numbers, and we always have our fax and answering machine on. Email can be a great way to communicate also.
Meet your attorney-prospect face-to-face. We usually ended up with an appointment with the attorney and sometimes with his whole staff. This face-to-face meeting set up the relationship. Both of us attended this initial meeting, and we always stressed how their time was "invaluable" and how we could save them time and money and help them become more profitable. Then we presented our brochure and example work product.
Involve the attorney-client in discussion. Attorney-clients love to talk about their practice, their successes, their conflicts, their successes, their family, their successes, etc. Use this to draw them into telling you how they became successful and how they usually handle a case. Listen carefully and note where you can help them become even more successful. Sometimes we find ourselves being quizzed on medical issues they or someone in their family is facing or on a current case issue. With our combined nursing experience we are able to answer just about any question fired at us. If we do not know, we simply say, "I’ll have to look that one up and get back to you" – and then we get back to them.
Cement the relationship with follow-up and communication. Some of our attorney-clients tell us to call periodically to touch base on a current case or to see if they have questions on a case they have not yet given to us. They'll let us know if we are bugging them. Sometimes they ask simple questions, such as "Can you find an article on...?" or "What would a nurse do when...?" We always answer ASAP, and they gradually learn that we are a valuable "warehouse of information." Questions lead to cases, and then we really WOW them.
Debra Gross, RN, MSN, CPC, CLNC and Laurie Thornton, RN, BSN, CLNC have more than 40 years of combined nursing experience. They are co-owners of Delor Legal Nurse Consultants, LLC in Ohio. Their specialties include OB/GYN, peds, CCU, ICU, coding and billing, compliance, HIPAA and Medicare fraud.
