Blog, Chirosecure Live Event April 15, 2024

Chiropractic Malpractice Insurance – Getting Started in Personal Injury

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Hi, I’m Dr. Mark Studin and I’d like to thank ChiroSecure for the opportunity for me to share this time with you and share my information and actually what’s going on in the industry. Like you, I’m a chiropractor and I’ve been in the game since 1981, so this makes it my 43rd year and I don’t want to say that I’ve seen it all, but I’ve seen a lot.

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And I’ve seen a lot of schemes come and go and I’ve seen a lot of gurus come and go and I’ve just seen so many things and I get excited, not about a whole lot, but what I do get excited about are the changes in the industry. So unlike other presentations, I just want to sit and chat with you today. I want to sit and talk about what’s happening and I’d also like to talk a lot about personal injury.

Because I am asked all the time, how do I break into personal injury? Why personal injury? Well, the reality is, is that personal injury is probably the best last way to earn a living in our industry. Managed care is horrible. It’s horrific. Cash is great, but very few people can bring, can build sizable cash practices.

Um, and there, there’s a lot of things that come with it all, but I love personal injury. Why? Because I love trauma care. Hey listen, if you’re in this to make money because it’s a good way to earn a buck and you like the checks that come in, please go someplace else. It’s about trauma care. And it’s about understanding all those things.

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And when you deal with attorneys, and by the way, I don’t want you to be a lawyer centric practice. I want you to be a primary spine care provider. That’s what I want you to be. And what does primary spine care mean? Primary spine care means you’re the first referral option for spine. Not just for lawyers, but medical primaries, medical specialists, urgent cares, and emergency rooms.

When they have spine, they need to come to you. They need to come to you first. And we all have the basics of understanding that. As a matter of fact, dealing with Cleveland University in Kansas City College of Chiropractic, we’ve created a fellowship in primary spine care. And guess what? We’ve also gotten those courses approved through The State University of New York at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

Why? Because it’s about credentials. It’s about knowledge and more so than the credentials in the F Fellowship PSC primary spine care. After your DC it’s your name. It’s about the knowledge. It’s about the knowledge of how to interpret MRI and understand it. That’s funny. I teach in, um, in, uh, I’m a professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Medicine, but I also teach, I’m a professor at, um, uh, Cleveland University in Kansas City College of Chiropractic, and I’m a professor at the University of Bridgeport School of Chiropractic, and I run a clinical, um, a clinical rotation in MRI brain and spine neuroradiology.

at Bridgeport through the State University of New York at Stony Brook School of Medicine, the Department of Neuroradiology. And I have chiropractic Studins going six hours a week for six weeks. Two, is it six hours a week or twelve hours? It’s twelve hours a week. It’s two six hour sessions for six weeks.

At, at, for the Studins, the senior interns, to sit with a Harvard trained neuroradiologist Who’s possibly one of the best in the world. And after the first session or two, the chiropractic Studin said, I don’t see the point of this. I wanted to rip their heads off their shoulders. You don’t see the point.

If you don’t know what’s causing your patient’s problem. Your clinical examination doesn’t give you the answer. If you have pain radiating down your arm, what’s causing that? Don’t tell me a bone on nerve in your neck. Don’t tell me subluxation. Don’t tell me a herniated disc. Don’t tell me a varices, which is an inflamed vein.

Don’t tell me a tumor or a bullet. Don’t tell me any of those things. You don’t know. And if you don’t know, you don’t guess. You have to know exactly. What’s going on with your patient? And include an accurate diagnosis. Because here it is. You need an accurate diagnosis, prognosis, treatment plan, and then you treat.

But not until then. Because if you don’t know, you’re only guessing. And I’ve seen too many doctors guess. On what’s wrong with their patient to the detriment of their patient. Maybe we need to be co treated and collaborated with a surgeon. Maybe they need to be in your office frequently. Maybe they need bed rest.

I don’t know because I don’t know what’s wrong with them. And that leads us right into personal injury. If you want to be a personal injury provider, you had best follow the doctrine of diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment plan. Then you treat. You need to know exactly what tissue has been injured. What are you treating?

You’re not treating pain. Pain is a sequelae to a problem. What’s the underlying diagnosis? What’s the cause? Now, I really struggle with using or not using the word subluxation. I come from a subluxation background. I saw 650 visits a week. I mean, I, I was there. I treated families. I treated kids. I treated everything.

But when I started dealing with the medical community, I don’t wanna be a medical doctor. I have no desire to do that. I wanna adjust every single patient. And we don’t manipulate, we adjust. And that’s a big issue. And the, the evidence and literature shows why we should adjust and not manipulate because a chiropractic spinal adjustment gets, I think, 83% better statistical outcomes and manipulation, which is actually an, uh, an arthro, kinematic, or aromatic glide of the joint with pressure.

That’s what PTs do, that’s what osteopaths do. We render a high velocity, low amplitude thrust. And even if you use instruments, it’s the same amount of force per, uh, pounds per square inch at the joint level based upon the evidence in the literature. But when I dealt with medical doctors in the community during my 40 plus years, and I would say, hey, I treat vertebral subluxation complex.

I treat subluxation. Now, I want you to know where that came from. Leonard Fay, who’s still around in the 60s. He’s still around. I actually spoke to him about two months ago, and that’s a great guy. And, um, you know, I’m in awe at Len. In the 1960s, in a library in London, in London, England, he sat in a library.

He was on like the fourth or fifth floor because it was the biggest source of, uh, of anatomy books. And we didn’t have the internet then. And he created the five components of subluxation complex based upon those books, which has been theory all the way through. And then when we talk about the subluxation complex, it’s pretty much theory all the way through.

We’re starting to see some reporting of it in the literature. But really what it is, is a biomechanical pathology. It’s a biomechanical lesion. It’s a vertebra at a position. So therefore, and by the way, as a side note, you don’t put down subluxation as a clinical finding. You put it as a diagnostic conclusion.

But when I spoke to medical doctors, medical primaries, orthos, neuros, neurosurgeons, and I teach them now, but all through my 40 years and I mentioned vertebral subluxation complex, they look at me. Shake their head, smile at me, and say nothing. Because what they’re saying is this putz is trying to say that the bone in the neck is at a position slightly less than a dislocation.

Because they have no reality to our verbiage or, um, uh, how we assign that word to what we do in chiropractic. And listen, I am not going to fight windmills like Don Quixote. I started changing my language to biomechanical pathology. They all understand that one. They don’t know how to treat it. And when I assign that to, um, to non specific back pain, which they are perplexed with, which helped fuel the opiate crisis because 50 percent of the opiates are with back related pain or musculoskeletal pain.

And I explain that to them, that we treat that, and according to the Tadon in 2020, we have a 96 percent um, uh, uh, uh, efficacy rate based upon a patient outcome, and the cohort was 8 million people over 4 years in a national survey. And when I point out to them, and on the U. S. Chiropractic Directory, uschirodirectory.

com, it has an article that was just published in the NIH, in the National Institutes for Health. which says that if physical therapy is the first provider, there’s an 80 percent increase in opiate use where if chiropractic is the first provider, there’s a 55 percent decrease in opiate use. And the, and the cohorts were four and 6, 000 people respectively.

So we’re not talking 10 people in a study, but when I start talking biomechanical pathology and assign the opiates to explain the outcomes and the evidence, there’s to orthos, neuro, neurosurgeons, and primaries stop using the language vertebral subluxation complex and start using the language biomechanical pathology with a chiropractic spinal adjustment which is unique only to us.

Now all of a sudden they want to work with us and when I explain to them that I am educated through the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Medicine where all of you have an opportunity to get an education, any willing provider can do that. Just reach out to me. I’ll show you how to do it.

It’s just go to teachdoctors. com, T E A C H D O C T O R S. com. All the courses there are through the State University of New York or Buffalo and Chiropractic Academia, if you see credits. Now all of a sudden I become a peer instead of a technician. Now all of a sudden the referrals start and guess what’s in those referrals.

A whole bunch of personal injury cases, amongst other things. So if you’re on one main street in any town USA, and I’m on two main streets, and you went to Life National University at one main street, and I, and a referral source, whether it be a lawyer or a medical provider, comes to you, and says, where were you trained?

Oh, I went to Life National University. And they ask me, through the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Medicine. Guess who’s going to get the referrals? Not you. I am. Is it fair? No. Heck no. And double heck no, it’s not fair. It’s not fair at all because it’s the same course with a dual credential.

But there’s a prejudice in our society towards medical academia versus chiropractic academia. It just is what it is. And as a result of the aforementioned, um, uh, strategic business plan, I can now tell you as of this second, we’ve gotten approximately, well let me not give you approximately, let me just open up another web page.

As of this second, over the last 12 years, we’ve gotten 1, 895, 242 additional chiropractic patients in 49 states of the chiropractic practices. And a whole heck of a lot of those are personal injury. They just are. But you need to get credentialed. You need to understand the difference between a herniated, bulged, protruded, extruded disc.

Common unit, fragmented, sequestered, broad based, focal. You need to know what a, what a, what an annular fissure is. And then you also do need to understand the process of proteoglycans. You need to understand these things. All of these things is what makes you an expert. And you need the formal credentials.

Because it’s not, will the lawyer work with you? It’s, can the lawyer work with you? I just got off the phone with a lawyer an hour ago, and another lawyer yesterday. I lectured to, uh, gosh, dozens of them in New Jersey. Uh, I think it was two weeks ago. Two nights from now I’m speaking in Minnesota. Uh, last month I was in Idaho.

So I mean, I’m all over the country. I’ve spoken to over 400, 000 lawyers in 40 states. You know what they tell me? We don’t want chiropractic referrals anymore. You know why? Because we’re stuck with the chiropractor. We’re stuck with the deficient documentation. We’re stuck with their lack of credentials.

There’s a legal proceeding called voir dire. Voir dire is an expert hearing that doctors have to pass, and then you have to make your reports demonstrable. There’s a lot of itty bitty steps along the way that take a little bit of training, a little bit of infrastructure. And if you need help with that, gimme a jingle at any time.

I’ll help you. We’ll, we’ll show you the way it, it’s real easy, but every chiropractor solution. It’s knowledge and any willing provider can get there. So what we’ve done is we’ve created courses through medical and chiropractic academia. When you take a grouping of those courses, You can earn a qualification in trauma care, in MRI, in primary spine care, in diagnosing.

You can become qualified, but then you group together a bunch of those and then you can also become a fellow. But along the way, you could take a course with a Harvard trained neuroradiologist Or, uh, and, and, and become a mini fellow in neuroradiology or, um, study with the head of musculoskeletal medicine at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and become a mini fellow in musculoskeletal radiology.

So you could get mini fellows. And then when you put all those together, you become a fellow, which is recognized through the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Medicine and Cleveland University Kansas City College of Chiropractic. You become co credentialed as a fellow in primary spine care.

But now if you want to go beyond that, what we’re working on now is a CAQ, Certified Advanced Credentials. That’s another level of academic recognition called the CAQ, Certified Advanced Credentials. So when a radiologist wants to become a neuroradiologist specializing in brain and spine, they get a CAQ.

It’s a year, a year to a one to two year study, a focused study on just your specialty. We’re creating that right now in different disciplines within chiropractic. So you can become a qualified, become a mini fellow, become a fellow and become certified in advanced qualification. Why are we doing all those things?

What’s the point of these nerdy things? Because when you want to work with a lawyer and your competition is the guy that down the block that went to Life National Northwestern Northeastern University. And you are a mini fellow. You’re a fellow. You got certified advanced credentials and it’s formally credentialed through chiropractic academia and, and, and, and medical academia.

You just made your competition irrelevant. When you want to work with the, with the, with the medical primary, who doesn’t know a darn thing about musculoskeletal care, doesn’t know a darn thing about interpreting an MRI. Doesn’t know. It’s not within their specific training. They were exposed in school years ago for a little bit of time, but they don’t understand it.

But yet their fifth most prevalent diagnosis His musculoskeletal and back pain, number five. So I deal with a lot of doctors around the country and it’s not uncommon for them to get 25 to 30 referrals from one primary. How are you going to get the referral for the primary when you have these advanced credentials to show they know what CAQ is, they know what a mini fellow and a fellow is, they know all these things.

They understand when you say I’m qualified, And trauma care through the state, through Cleveland University, with courses credentialed through the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Medicine. I have my CAQ, Certified Advanced Qualification, in that same trauma care, in MRI. And based upon the evidence in the literature, PT’s, opiates go up 90%, chiros go down 55%.

With PT’s, injections in the spine go up 53%. So do hospitalizations, medical specialty care, and surgery care combined go up over 50%. In chiropractic, patient satisfaction in a four year study with an eight plus million cohort has a 96 percent effective rate. And there’s no such thing as non specific back pain.

There’s technology now we’ve created something called Synverta. There, and you go to SemperFi. com if you want to look about it. There’s technology which makes nonspecific back pain very specific. I hope you’re getting the gist of how I relate all of this to personal injury. Because I’ve witnessed doctors, whether in practice one year or 40 years, take a family practice that occasionally sees a personal injury case.

Someone happens to get into an accident. In a relatively short amount of time, turn it around. Thank you very much. Where they’re seeing 40, 50, 60, 70 new PI cases a month. Do you know why the lawyers don’t want you and they don’t want your referrals? Because you come with documentation. You come with baggage.

You don’t understand the stuff. You don’t have the knowledge your true spine specialist should. And you become a one and done. That’s the worst thing in the world to become a one and done. You get the referral is worse than not getting the referral. Because when you don’t have a referral, at least you haven’t set a reputation.

But if you’ve gotten the referral and you were one and done, they’re not going to want to work with you. I did that with an attorney. I’m in Long Island. Uh, 20 years ago, I sent him a case before I knew anything. I was so, it was actually 25 years ago. God, I’m getting old. Wait,

my Disney cup for my grandkids. Um, I had an attorney 25 years ago. I didn’t know what I was talking about. My documentation was horrific. He lost this case. I saw him Thank you. A few years ago, he still won’t even look at me. And I tried to say, listen, you were right. I didn’t know what I was doing. I’d love to sit and chat with you.

I don’t have a practice anymore, but I’d love to chat with you. He wouldn’t give me the time of day. I was forever one and done with him because of that one case. So you need to get credentialed. You need to get trained and not through a political organization. Do not get trained through political organizations, folks.

Get trained through academia. It matters tremendously because people recognize academia, they don’t recognize political organizations. And not that I’m against political organizations, they serve a tremendous force. They need to work within politics to ensure your rights. But academia should control academic courses.

It’s just the way it is. And which is why I’ve worked so hard to be ensconced within academia, uh, at every possible level I can. The only, oh, and by the way. I just got an email from this person. I can get you, in a very creative way, all the new patients you want. I can get you this. I can, I get those emails every single day.

Well, guess what? Do you think, my wife had cancer three times, okay? And she’s doing fine. The last cancer was 10 years ago. But do you think her cancer surgeon, Advertised on a bus stop bench with his face. Do you think he sent out, uh, uh, uh, invitations to, to referral sources for breakfast, lunches, and dinners?

Heck no! He did it through credentials, academia, and actually posting his credentials online. I want you to know, I found him in Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. I went to every single, my wife had a kidney cancer, urologist, which is a, Kidney surgeon. I went to every urologist from Boston to New York, to Philadelphia, to Washington.

If you can’t find a good surgeon in that corridor, you’re in trouble. I spoke to all of them, but I found one I liked because he said the right things about where he went to school, where he was trained, and I went online and I looked up his credentials. Where, where was he trained? What was his credentials?

Did he do any research? Was he published? All of these things. And by the way, speaking of published. And that’s how I found them. And it saved her life, because if I would have went to the other people where someone just, Oh, he’s good. He advertised. No way in hell. Become published. Right now, doctors who work with us, through my, um, uh, being a professor at SUNY Buffalo Medical School, I’m working with these people and we’ve now published, uh, let me just add them up.

Uh, case reports in the National Institute of Health. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 20. Exactly, 20 on the nose. We’ve got 20 articles published in the last two months. Case studies from doctors that work with us who write case reports. And now they’re being published to the National Institute of Health for the whole world to see.

And it’s really pro chiropractic studies. So we’re really starting to flood, to flood the research folks with prochiropractic studies. You want to, you want, you want to work with lawyers? Tell them you’ve been published extensively. You want to work with medical doctors? Tell them you’ve been published in the NIH.

They’ll get it. This is how not to become a technician and to stay a peer. And listen, it’s going to take some extra work. You got to put some time in. When you study with us, you either listen on your cell phone, it’s podcasted, or you watch a video. Just put toothpicks in your eyes and stay awake. And you take a quiz when you’re done.

It’s not that hard. Um, but without those credentials, you’re going to be a one and done. You don’t have the knowledge. Oh, I spoke to someone yesterday. By the way, it’s funny. Um, on the consulting side, when I work with doctors, um, I said, well, if you’re going to bill a review of outside records, which is a 99358, I recommend you use a publication called Medical Fees in the United States.

I like them because they give you different percentiles. 50th, 75th, 90th percentile, and it’s based upon advanced credentials and experience. So I was talking to a guy yesterday, And, um, and I said, well, you would build the 50th percentile. And he goes, no, I’m, I have great credentials. I said, what are your credentials?

He said, I’ve been in practice for 30 years. I said, that’s not a credential. That’s rings around the tree. You’ve got some experience, but if you have a trauma qualification through Cleveland University, SUNY Buffalo Medical School, you know, if you’ve got real credentials, now you could build at a higher level.

That’s what credentials do. You also make more money, folks. You notice that’s the last thing I discussed was money. You make more money when you have higher credentials because you can do more things with it. It opens doors. Credentials and knowledge are key. If you want to thrive in personal injury, you want your referral sources to run after you, create an admissible CV.

If you want, email me, I’ll show you how to do that. Create an admissible CV. Share that with your referral sources. Let them know what you’re doing. Have a demonstrable report of giving you all the secrets people pay for. Have a demonstrable report, put it all together, and now you’ve got personal injury.

You want to know what you do not do? I own an x ray digitizing company. I could tell you factually right now. If you do x ray digitizing, it will not get lawyers to run after you. They want to have a clue, they don’t care. It’s a piece of the puzzle. If you write these special reports to bust the insurance company’s algorithm, their Colossus algorithm, so that more money goes to the lawyer, it’s the lawyers don’t care, but you’re going to get something unintended.

On your door, possibly say you’ve been served because carriers don’t take kindly to that. You have to do what’s honest, ethical, and please try to stay conservative. Those, um, uh, lien referral cases, these companies that work with attorneys that will send you liens and cases and all these things. All these entrepreneurs out there.

You’ve got to be careful. Too many of them have runners and are paying people in accidents. So, you know, I work with the attorneys for the insurance companies. And they know every single case because they’ve got algorithms that do everything with massive computers Because they’ve got more money than most countries and they know where chiropractic pain management doctor and lawyer are working in tandem Which ones?

Which, which marketing companies? Which ones are they ping ponging around between different locations? And federal lawsuits called RICO under the Organized Racketeering Act are going out continually. I have relationships with those attorneys So you know what? You just get the referral sources to run after you.

It’s not that hard. It’s really not. So listen, I could ramble on forever, but this is really a very high level yet in depth overview of the state of personal injury. It’s incredible. I mean, from a reimbursement perspective, it’s awesome. There are certain states that are getting 300, 400, 500 a visit. And the numbers keep going up.

So if you ever want to chat about it, you give me a jingle. It’s my pleasure. In the meantime, I’d like to thank ChiroSecure so much for giving me the opportunity to share my time with you and have a great day.

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