Printable
The patient rack card
Patient-facing material for the rack in a referring office — simple information about a massage prescription, and a map on the back.
Supports Stage III, Step 1: Prepare Your Activities of Frameworks. Read the book →
Patient-oriented material is anything the prospect’s patients can take away with them. A rack card carrying plain information about medical massage prescriptions does that job at a size that fits the racks these offices already have.
The constraint is truth, not persuasion. Every claim on it has to be something universally accepted, so the doctor never has to worry that her patients are picking up misinformation in her own waiting room. The wording below is deliberately dull for that reason. Anything you would need to defend does not belong on a card in somebody else’s office.
The back of the card is where a map goes. That matters more than it sounds: for an office that does not want a referral pad, nesting a map into your patient material is how their staff still has something to hand a patient who asks where you are — and many will.
Placing it
Ask before you leave any behind, and look at what is already there. An office with a whole wall of sloppy brochures is not a place to add to the pile — leave a few at most. An office with a small selection of good material is worth the good stock. Bring a single sample first, ask whether you can leave some, and bring the stack on your next visit. That is two visits with a reason for each, which is the point.
Your doctor has prescribed massage therapy.
Here is what that means and what happens next.
It is a referral for treatment. A prescription for massage therapy works like any other referral your doctor writes: it names your condition, the goals of treatment, and how often you should be seen.
You choose where to go. Your doctor may suggest a clinic. The decision is yours, and you may ask for a different one.
Bring the prescription with you. Bring your insurance card as well, and any claim number if your treatment relates to an accident or a work injury.
Coverage varies. Whether your plan pays for massage therapy, and how many visits it allows, depends on your plan. Ask us to check before your first visit and we will tell you what we find.
[Your clinic name]
[Street address] · [City, State ZIP]
[(555) 555-0100]
Finding us
[Your clinic name]
[Place your map here]
Black and white, major streets and one or two landmarks only. Not a Google Maps screenshot.
Directions. [Two sentences. The turn people miss, and where to park.]
Hours. [Days and times]
What to bring. Your prescription, your insurance card, and a claim number if you have one.
To schedule, call [(555) 555-0100]
Referrals by fax: [(555) 555-0101]
Prints as two letter sheets, one per side, with the card at trim size and a cut line around it. Print double-sided on card stock and trim, or hand both sheets to a print shop. Ctrl/Cmd + P does the same thing as the button.
Adapting it
Read every sentence on the front again as though you were the referring doctor. If one of them could be contradicted by a patient’s own plan, their state, or their insurer, either cut it or soften it to the thing that is always true. The coverage paragraph above is written that way on purpose: it promises to check rather than to cover.
Do not put treatment claims on patient material. The card’s job is to explain a process, not to sell an outcome — and your state’s advertising rules almost certainly have something to say about the second one.
Four by nine inches is the common rack size, and the reason to match it is that it sits in the fixtures these offices already own. If the office you are targeting uses a different rack, measure theirs first.
This is the piece to spend money on. It is going to sit in somebody else’s waiting room next to whatever else is in the rack, and thin stock next to good stock is worse than not being in the rack at all. Same argument as the business card.
Written for licensed practitioners. Nothing here is legal, billing or clinical advice: what you may tell a patient in print about coverage and treatment is governed by your state’s scope of practice and its advertising rules.