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Hey everybody. Dr. Randi Ross here, CEO of Premier Practice Consultants. I wanna thank ChiroSecure for letting me spend a few minutes with you today. And today we’re gonna talk about if you happen to be one of those providers offering neuropathy care in your practice, I’m gonna take you through some very important things that you need to know for the future.
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So pay attention and I’m sure you’ll have a few takeaways. Today I wanna take you on a little bit of an educational process for a trend that has been happening within healthcare and within chiropractic. So I feel it’s important to bring these things to light for those of you that might be in that particular sector.
So when we talk about trends, and you’ve heard me talk about this before, if you follow anything that I do, that it’s important to understand trends and acknowledge them and follow them to some degree or another. Trends change for a majority of reasons. Healthcare is like any other business in that respect.
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Within healthcare, the trend changes. Have to do with a few different variables. I’ll just mention a few here. Some of it becomes what you can refer to as direct to consumer, and this is something that the pharmaceutical industry changed a long time ago, is in other words, there’s so much information out there and whether that be TV ads or being able to Google something where people can.
Kind of research and gather information and knowledge, general public being people about things that are wrong with them, or conditions they feel they have and how they go about. Actually having the options to help themselves get better. Some of it becomes advancements in research where they learn how to provide better services that help people get them, get them healthy.
Some of it is. Technology driven technology changes pretty much almost at the speed of light. And we all have all kinds of new tools that help facilitate, whether it’s healing or wellness, or just really increasing the quality of a person’s life, their lifestyle, and some of it. What we’re gonna talk about today has to do with an increased aging population.
And as people live longer, due to all these things, we will get an increase in a larger percentage of our population are aging. And listen, no matter how much you take care of yourself, no matter how many things that you do, good. Although many people do a lot of things bad throughout their life, there you are gonna have certain things that come about that you want tore address to again, improve the quality of your life very often.
So today I wanna talk about neuropathy, and this has really become a big sector within the care that chiropractors provide. And you’ll also always hear me talk about, I call it A BMR, always be market ready. And it specifically holds true within this particular area that we’re finding is becoming more and more prevalent.
Within the service of chiropractic care. The few things that I wanna make sure that if you have a clinic that provides neuropathy care and relief for people, you want to make sure that there are a few things that you always have in place that maybe. Are important for any business and any practice. But sometimes, and I’ll explain this as I go along, why it’s really important when we are talking about a neuropathy type of practice.
So really well-trained staff is so important and also. Within this sector, it’s important to pay well for those well-trained staff because you don’t want to have a lot of turnover. Training really good people to support your neuropathy practice is not quite the same as any other conventional front desk or that kind of employees that we’re talking about.
So really well-trained, committed staff, which means to get people committed, you have to pay them really well. Okay? I want you to have a manual, some type of training guide that’s not just based on you. Listen, we all know when we’re really good at our business, we can go in and we can train someone, but for reasons you’re gonna see in a few minutes, it’s important that someone else maybe not as good as you.
Could actually step in because you have this really great manual that’s gonna teach you how to train the different areas of your staff, because this is one of those types of businesses that the different staff members are very different. It’s very rare that they cross train for other areas. So having these specific guides, manuals, whatever word you wanna use on how you train that person.
Specifically the ones that are dealing directly with the care of the patients. That’s gonna be super important and super critical as we keep going in this conversation. The next thing that’s really important because within the neuropathy type of practice, often one of the biggest expenses is going to be your marketing budget.
And for everyone, that’s a little different. In other words, if you figure out that secret sauce, whatever that is for your particular clinic, you want to have a detailed understanding. So are they coming from mostly TV ads? Is it radio in your community? Is it print? Is it social media? What is driving this influx of new patients and tracking that really specifically, I.
Super important. So you want to, again, understand what sector of advertising is the majority of your patients coming from, and we understand that can be a bit of a moving target. Those percentages will change over time. How much money are you spending? Because within this type of business, it’s really important to understand what you’re spending, to understand what does every patient actually cost you, and what is your return on that investment.
Okay, so it’s important because marketing is really the key driving factor in a neuropathy clinic that you want to track that and have as much of a history so that it could be reviewed and really looked at over trailing 12 months, let’s say. To really understand how important this is, as we’re gonna talk about to a potential buyer, but for you to even understand if you’re throwing 50% of your marketing budget at TV and there’s almost no patients coming in from tv, maybe you wanna shift that money.
So understanding your marketing budget and where you’re spending it and where you’re getting your return is very important in this particular type of practice. And also the conversion process. So in other words, once a new patient calls your office, what, or if they’re calling a call center, what are exactly the steps bet between them making that phone call and that first contact with you to them actually getting into being in the office and then once they’re in the office?
What is the very specific process that your office follows from? Some people call it day one, day two, whatever your particular terminology is. What are your exact steps that every single patient is potential patient with? Neuropathy is going to go through as they kind of cycle through your office. Until they commit to care.
What are those steps look like? Who in your office is really involved in getting them to, to become an actual patient and to commit to care? Then you want to, once that’s done, ’cause that’s another analysis. Obviously once that’s done, what is the pro, what is your fee? Okay, everyone’s fees are a little different.
What does that fee actually include? Is it equipment that they take home? Is it certain services they get in the office? And who’s responsible in your office for explaining that? I. Converting them and actually getting them to pay whatever your fee is. Okay. Is that you? Is it some type of person that is representing the clinic, A case manager or whatever terminology you use for their title?
Is it another doctor? Is it a nurse practitioner? In other words, who walks them through each step, the step to when they first come in, and the step to getting them to commit to care and start their program. So that’s important to really understand who’s involved in that, what their role is, and again, specifically what does that process.
Look, so that’s very important. How long are your care plans again, what if I’m coming in as your patient? What am I getting for typically, which is quite a bit of money? And do, are there any refunds? Obviously this is not something that you’re gonna discuss with, uh, potential patient upfront very often, but what is your policy?
Do you offer refunds? If I see your p and l. Am I gonna see a lot of refunds? What are they for? Why are they asking for refunds? These are certain things that are really important as someone is looking at a neuropathy type or focused clinic. The other thing that’s really important as we talk about always be market ready, meaning.
Are you gonna sell your clinic today? Are you gonna sell your clinic next year? And the reason why we say always be market ready is because sometimes your exit is not chosen. There are circumstances that happen in everyone’s life. Sometimes it’s they, you need to relocate. Maybe your significant other got a great job and has to relocate.
Sometimes people get sick. Sometimes people all of a sudden have little children and want to be closer to their family. Unfortunately, there are times when people pass away. That’s just part of life. So this always be market ready strategy includes understanding all these things. Having very specific manuals and details in your office.
This will help you if a buyer comes along. ’cause I’m telling you, this is what they look for. Also, when it comes to what I refer to as your hard financials. Okay? Are your tax returns up to date and current? Are your profit and loss up to date and current? They should be done at least every quarter. If not twice a year, I prefer every quarter your balance sheets also.
So all of these, and then the kind of non-financial hard documents are a lease. If you are a lease holder. If you are not a lease holder, then the actual real estate is also available to purchase. You need details on what is this particular piece of real estate? What are you asking for it? And other things are employment agreements with any staff members.
And again, these different manuals, office manuals, for lack of a better term, all of these things are super important. If you get to the point where you want to sell your clinic, that is either primarily neuropathy. Or maybe even close to a hundred percent neuropathy care based. These are the critical elements.
And the other thing is when you do get to that point, I. Where you want to place your clinic for available acquisition on the market. Don’t choose just anyone, and I don’t say that lightly. This is a very specific kind of niche of understanding all the moving parts of this particular kind of business.
And we have experience in that at Premier Practice Consultants, we have been involved in representing a number of very high volume, high net worth neuropathy practices for sale, and we have done the work, we have the skillset, we have the knowledge to be able to talk to a potential buyer. Most times it’s gonna be an investor.
So that might be a chiropractor, that’s an investor, but it might be, we use the word private equity, venture capitalist, and even sometimes more type of institutional buyers. And knowing how to talk to them about this very specific kind of practice is really important. There’s nobody out there better than we are equipped to represent your neuropathy clinic.
For sale when that time comes. So give us a call, reach out, we could start the dialogue, but in the meantime, pay attention to all these things that I’ve shared with you because you should be doing this all the time. Always be market ready so when the time comes, you’re not trying to get up to speed because playing catch up is never a good position to be in when you’re trying to sell your business.
I am Dr. Randi Ross, CEO of Premier Practice Consultants. Thanks for spending a few minutes with me today. I hope that you gain some knowledge, information, and value in what I’ve provided. Feel free to reach out at any time. We are always here to talk to you about the status of your business, whether you’re ready to sell now or down the road.
Again, I wanna thank ChiroSecure for allowing me the opportunity and creating these events so that I can share some information with you that I feel is really important.
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