The Ten Questions That Separate a Consultation From a Sale

The consultation is the only part of this process where a prospective patient has real leverage, and it is the part most often surrendered. Many people arrive prepared to be evaluated rather than to evaluate. An hour later they leave holding a quote and a financing brochure, having asked almost nothing.

A good consultation is diagnostic in both directions. Here is a list you can take with you.

The ten

• What would you do if I asked for nothing at all — is doing nothing a reasonable option here?
• What is the least invasive procedure that would address my actual complaint?
• What have you declined to do for a patient recently, and why?
• What does this look like at twelve months, and at five years?
• Who performs which parts of the operation, and who is in the room?
• What is your revision rate, and what does a revision cost me?
• What is the most common complication in your hands, not in the literature?
• What would make me a poor candidate for this?
• How many of these did you perform in the last twelve months?
• If I do not book today, what changes?

Reading the answers

The last question is the most diagnostic, and the answer should be nothing. A practice that attaches urgency to a decision of this magnitude — an expiring price, a surgical date being held, a limited window — has told you that its incentive structure is not aligned with your deliberation.

You should be able to walk out, wait six months, come back, and be treated exactly the same. If that is not true, you learned something.

What a clarifying visit feels like

Patients who describe a good consultation rarely describe being impressed. They describe being asked more questions than they asked. They describe leaving with a narrower, more specific understanding of their own complaint than they walked in with — sometimes an understanding that the thing bothering them is not the thing they came to fix.

That feeling — smaller problem, clearer picture — is the signal. Excitement is not.