Renew the contract or switch supplier?
A clinic owner has six weeks, a 40 percent price rise and two colleagues who say switching will cost patients. No spreadsheet, only what people have told her.
Everything in the grey boxes is what Learning Nodes returned in a real run, selected and unedited. The clinic is made up for the example.
INTERACTIVE VERSION · TWO MINUTES
Click through a clinic owner's session in the Workstation, one step at a time. A short note explains each screen. No sign-up, and nothing is saved.
The situation, as typed
The decision Learning Nodes proposed
Choose between renewing for three years at the new price, switching to the competitor now, and renewing for one year only and switching next winter
- Renew for three years at the new price
- Switch to the competitor now
- Renew for one year only and switch next winter
You have to decide before the contract lapses whether to renew for three years at the new price, switch to the competitor now, or renew for one year only and switch next winter. It turns on how many patients a mid-year move would really cost you against how many calls online booking would take off the desk.
What would make each option right
Renew for three years at the new price
A mid-year move would cost you more than share of patients lost in a move of your patients, and the desk's rescheduling calls cost you less than that loss.
Switch to the competitor now
Fewer than share of patients lost in a move of your patients would leave during the move, and online booking removes most of the rescheduling calls.
Renew for one year only and switch next winter
A move would cost patients mid-year but not in winter, and one year at the new price costs you less than the patients you would lose by moving now.
The words in angle brackets are a line only you can set. Learning Nodes never makes that number up. It offers one from your evidence when you have some, and asks you when you do not.
The questions in the way
- How many of the calls the desk takes are people moving an appointment?
- Are your bookings quieter in winter than mid-year?
- Will the vendor put the 40 percent rise and the three-year term in writing, and is a one-year renewal on offer at all?
- What counts as switching will cost patients here?
Claims nobody had checked
two of my practitioners say switching in the middle of the year will cost us patients because reminders and treatment notes will break during the move
If it is wrong, the main reason to renew for three years falls away.
Cheapest test: Ask the two practitioners which patients they expect to lose and why, and ask the competitor in writing what the export of reminders and notes includes.
What the owner committed (illustrative)
Renew for one year only and switch next winter
Clinic owner
- The vendor confirmed a one-year renewal in writing
- The two practitioners named the reminder and notes export as the risk, and the competitor's export covers both
- The front desk tallied one week of calls to test the one-third estimate
- Winter is the quietest booking period, so the move is planned for then
Frozen when committed. Next winter's switch is a new situation that starts from this record.
See the same case in the product, one step at a time.
Nothing here needed a spreadsheet. The value was finding the one claim the whole decision rested on, the cheapest way to test it, and the questions nobody had asked the vendor.
