Blog, Chirosecure Live Event July 22, 2020

How the Pandemic Cemented Drug-Free Pain Management’s Place in Healthcare

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Welcome to ChiroSecure’s Facebook live. I’m Dr. Sherry McAllister. I’m delighted that you joined me today, friends today. We’ve got a very important topic ahead of us. And with you joining me the Foundation for Chiropractic Progress and all of the opportunities we’re going to change the way patients around the nation are looking at chiropractic and why it’s so important. Why? Because today’s presentation is all about how the pandemic cemented drug free pain management place in healthcare. That’s kind of the key and the opportunities now for us to really explore what that’s gonna mean for September 1st and foremost as normal, you know that we can’t do this without our corporate sponsors supporting our nonprofit, granting us the opportunity to create the materials we need to educate the public about chiropractic care as always a special thank you to Cairo secure for inviting us to present this month, live Facebook series, as well as we jump in.

I want you to be prepared because a lot of what we’re about to see today is going to be happening in September. And you’re thinking it’s July, you’re going to blink your eyes. And before you know it, if you’re like me in this COVID whole world of chaos, and what day is it? And who’s doing what, um, it’s going to happen before you know it. So my job today is to bring you in as my chiropractic family and explore how we’re going to make drug free pain management awareness month, the best month ever to explore how we’re going to help those that are in need. And speaking of need, the reason numbers show that 128 people die every day from an opioid opioid overdose. This is why we have the foundation for chiropractic progress. Started the drug free pain management awareness month campaign almost four years ago.

It’s to be celebrated each September. We need to help reach our communities with drug free care options. This is more important now than ever before. Why? Well, the obvious is there’s so much going on in the world so much negativity and not only are lives being lost, but the current state of suffering and people in pain due to the pandemic is real. COVID made things exponentially more challenging than before. And a pandemic made with an epidemic is statistically worse. In fact, one of my colleagues at the CDC called it the pain DEMEC and I’m going to be going to a griefing through Congress on Friday, about what this looks like and how important it is. And let me tell you chiropractic friends that we have an extraordinary opportunity to make more people aware. And that’s really why this whole July preparation is so critical. Well, people are suffering with mental health issues due to the stay at home orders.

Those with high intensity, chronic pain need our help. And this month is more important than any other September campaign we’ve had in the prior months. Consumers need chiropractic care more now than ever where we’re still at a losing high number of people on opioid overdose. We need to work harder to build greater awareness of chiropractics importance and not only the opioid crisis, but how we work in the pandemic to help people be aware. And one of those awareness pieces is really working with collaborative opportunities at the foundation and with your health. We want to be able to touch the lives of all sorts of consumers coming from all areas. The FRCP is actually very honored to work alongside organizations that are committed to countering the U S opioid epidemic. We have teamed up with groups such as the American Society of acupuncturist, crossover health, the Institute for natural medicine, the international association of yoga therapists, care notes and hope out of Ohio, which stands for health and opioid prevention education through our collaborations, we’re going to be putting forth the information to the patients is they’re the center of our care.

We’re able to start building bridges that we’ve never done before. This will increase our in our visibility and showcase. Chiropractic is a safe, alternative to opioids and the collaborations are real. They’re real in your community. And this is what the foundation on a national level is doing. I want to walk you through how you in your practice right now become the person who reaches out and increases our awareness and start building the opportunities that we vastly have explored in the past, but are now so, so very important. So what are on your July to do? Let’s start with the beginning of what to do. We want you to contact your local legislative body. Now this could be your board of supervisors for your city council requesting a proclamation for the month of September to Mark. September is the drug free pain management awareness month. We’ve created a customizable letter template to accompany your proclamation.

So what I’m saying is I’m making this perfectly easy for you. It’s plug and play. You can give it to your front desk to do your back office person, whoever fits the bill for you, because I know a lot of people are still working from home, and this is an opportune time to actually get people, to pay attention to what you’re doing. No time like the presence. In fact, what I often tell my staff is you miss every shot you don’t take. So let’s take some shots this September, because it’s really gonna make a difference. So we are going to take your customized easily formatted template letter, along with the proclamation file. And you’re going to make it a town city and or state, um, opportunity. And as you go through this, you’re going to see how simple it is. I’m just going to show you here’s the letter template.

I know you can’t see a lot of it, but let me tell you this. As you see this, this is just a screenshot of the proclamation letter. It’s just an easy, you’ll see the blue, you just fill in the lines and this customized letter will then go along with your proclamation. And you’re going to start to see that it all falls together. Here’s the proclamation itself. And along with this letter template that we’ve developed, we want you to send this exactly how it is to your local government, because we have strengthened numbers. That’s the best and beautiful part about chiropractic is we’re a pretty thick group. We’re strong, we’re mighty, and we love to get involved. So we want to make sure that we’re doing, we’re putting our best foot forward. We want you to put this letter forward and see what interest you get.

Because if anything, even in your local newspaper, if you wanted to just reach out to them and start putting, you know, that this is September drug, free pain management awareness month, all sorts of opportunities can come your way. But more importantly, you’re reaching the person that really matters. That’s that person in really intense pain that really doesn’t know where to turn in, maybe at their wit’s end. And you happened to be that person who showcases that you care and have an opportunity and they become more aware. So I just want to put that out there. You have a law, a lovely letter, an easy proclamation, and then you can move it forward, but it doesn’t just stop at the local legislative level. We want you to start reaching out to your community, all the healthcare providers in your community bond with them create those cohesive collaborative opportunities that the foundation for chiropractic progress has put in place.

Here’s one of them. This marketing implementation toolkit is a downloadable resource for you and your staff to review and implement at your practice. In fact, this version includes methods to reach out to other healthcare providers, such as medical doctors, to build more referrals and more relationships. You don’t know what they think of chiropractic until you pick up a phone or send an email. We have plenty of resources. And if you’re not a member of the foundation, yet I encourage you to be, to be one because we’re binding together as one solid force of showcasing the benefits of chiropractic care. So the time no better now than than any other day to start getting things made easy for you. No sense in reinventing the wheel, this implementation toolkit is all yours. All you have to do is implement it. Everything I have is you have to take action.

Can’t do it for you, do a lot on a national level for the profession, but we all have to work together. There’s a couple of studies that are very important. I need you happen to be able to during COVID just have a conversation on the phone, or maybe you can decide that you’d like to do your social distancing and have a cup of coffee on a, an afternoon, or maybe a breakfast. Talk to them about the studies. Are they aware that? And if we start talking about costs and cost savings, a third party payers, other healthcare insurers, even corporates, are looking at their bottom line because right now the time is really important to start looking at how do we take care of our employees? How do we take care of our staff? And what are those? The things that we can ensure that make the greatest benefit or the return on investment in 2011, there was a study that came out that analyzed 26 studies concerning healthcare costs for low back pain.

The interesting part was when you looked at the multidisciplinary approach involving the non-pharmacological care, such as our spinal manipulative therapy, physical rehab exercise, what they found was the cost affective opportunities were there for the patients. The other study that is very important on cost savings that you can look at. And I encourage you to really start to read some of these studies that are found in the research papers that we have is that when you start looking at cost per value, the MD and the DCS, the change was over $1,600, less for uncomplicated, low back pain. When you took a chiropractor involved. And when it was more complicated, it was an $1,800 savings. And these numbers actually will matter as we start spreading the word on how chiropractic is a viable, safe, effective, and cost effective opportunity. And we like easy. I know that life is busy.

We all get very busy. And when someone can just kind of lay things out in a simple, easy to use format, it just becomes almost robotic in, in implementing in your community, this drug free pain management awareness month. So as you can see right in front of me here, we have this monthly easy to use week by week strategy. It’s a snapshot that I just have for week one, look how jam packed it is. You don’t have to do all of it. You can pick and choose with your front desk or your, your back office person go through and see what works for you. This is your practice. It’s your environment to showcase yourself as the expert for those that are suffering. But I just want to remind you the action steps. You’re going to be working with us on implementing them in your social media cover photo page.

You could do it in the new pain management course that I’m going to talk about. And also you’re going to obviously sharpen your saw. Look, no one’s great at everything the first time. Um, but what if you did a YouTube channel video that you put in your newsletter for your patients, that’s a best way to really connect with them. They love to see you, um, chiropractors are known for their patient satisfaction levels. And so when you start reaching out to them, they’ll reach back to you. I referring more patients, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, you name it. We got it. We’re going to take care of you. You just have to feel comfortable with what platform you want to use. When we’re talking about pain management. Now, I promised you that it’s not just about the patient. It’s also about you and your staff. So we have put together for those that are interested a course on pain management.

This is the cutting edge pain management. Many of you actually asked us for this, and we’re proud to share that we now have a pain management education course available for you for September and on while this is brought to you by the foundation, it was actually created by one of our very good friends at best practice Academy, Dr. Scott Munsterman, and he is generously sponsored by Novo pulse. This program is a 13 hour course. I know 13 hours sounds daunting, but it’s broken into a couple of ways to do it. You could do a six hour auction. You can do a seven hour option. There’s plenty of ways, but what the purpose of the courses is to get you comfortable with some of the pain management guidelines, some of the opportunities in some of the ways to which collaboration is being taken across the nation, it’s up to date, and it’s really reflective of how you can feel very confident with what’s going on with the CDC, the HHS, some of the new and latest research, some of the opportunities in collaboration, all of those are yours at your fingertips.

So if you happen to be interested in looking at this course, you can reach out to us after today’s presentation, and we’ll include a information link for you to find the drug free pain management course on, um, Cairo credit. And, um, we’ll be happy to ensure that you get the latest, greatest information on pain management. So you can be part of drug free pain management awareness month. As you grow, the patients will grow. And that is another piece of this. Now let’s talk about your patients. You have to inform them on what’s going on without you helping them. They’ll never learn on how bad pain management awareness month losses are. 70% of the patients that are passing away of drug overdose, or because of opioids, 128 are passing away a day from opioid use, misuse and abuse. The other pieces are our numbers coming down.

They are, but are they coming down fast enough? They are not. This is the reason why every life matters in chiropractic. And I think it’s so critically important that we start to use what we know and share with our consumers so that they can see that we’re not part of the problem. We’re part of the solution. Now, speaking of part of the solution, as we go, we all know that you’re building your platforms. Some of you are running. Some of you are starting to walk in depending on what, how many platforms you’re using. One of them that I highly recommend is LinkedIn. Now LinkedIn is a platform for healthcare professionals. This is your opportunity to actually reach business to business. You can create around your local area in LinkedIn, people that you want to chat with. You, you want to share what you do. And one of them is through LinkedIn articles.

Now, do I expect that a lot of you are going to want to write LinkedIn articles? No, that’s why I want you to link in with me because then you can share, you can share the research and share the opportunities and by sharing, you’re going to be showing that you care through your LinkedIn professional opportunities. This one particularly is on benzos are benzos, the new opioid great question. It’s a relevant article and we incorporate the current pandemic into the mix. Is this available to you to share via LinkedIn? All you need to do is link in with me. The more we link in together, the better off we’re going to be to providing the health care professionals around the nation and opportunity to really look inside, really start thinking about what’s going on. We talk on awful lot about opioids, but it’s also important to be able to be in the know when it comes to benzos as well.

For example, did you know that in 2010, there were over 6,500 U S drug overdose deaths that involved benzos 95% of us hospital admissions for benzos reported abusing additional substances, not to mention there’s a high potential for addiction associated with benzos. Realistically, the prescription rates are going up because it’s harder to write a prescription for opioids. So translation educate the public and the healthcare people in your neighborhood. That while we go from one, we certainly cannot go to another. We need better solutions, better educational moments. Speaking of educational moments, you are extraordinarily important to me. And that’s why I’m so glad you joined me today because today I’m actually sharing one of my free gifts. It is a new ebook and the ebook otherwise known as our electronic books is titled chiropractic care and effective drug free first-line approach to pain. This is the perfect opportunity to showcase our expertise during drug free pain management awareness month.

It’s important to know that the number of prescriptions filled by all Americans has increased by 85% in two decades. Have we really curved the pain problem, or do we really have to talk about a pill problem? This is what we as chiropractors face all the time. And I think it’s important that when we share these books, especially if you have a coffee meeting that we’re able to really showcase that we know all about pain management. That’s why the pain webinars are so important. And that’s why being able to be part of these webinars are so important. I’m excited to really showcase to you our September webinars. Every year we look forward to sharing with you and grabbing the very best in the nation that can talk about pain management. There are nine webinars for you to register for. You can register for all of them, be my guest.

And as a member of the foundation, if you’re silver or higher, guess what? You can watch them at your time. You go listen to them on the way to work, and you can watch them right before bed. If you’re a silver member or you get the recordings, but these webinars are available for everyone because we really do want everyone to be on the same page with us showcasing that we’re a really important opportunity for those that are suffering. We also have, as you all know, I’m seeing before a current roadmap, this is the September. Our annual roadmap is going to show everything for you in an easy to flow cover by cover presentation, by presentation, easy to walk through with your staff moment. Cause we heard you. You said, make it easy. You said take advantage of all the things that chiropractic do. Does it make sure the consumers are aware of it?

So friends that link below is going to showcase to you our September marketing roadmap. And that’s a critical component to being able to create what’s important for your community. Now I’d love to say this. You can do remarkable things. And I bring an example of remarkable things to you. This particular article was picked up and you can see it’s the tr the Tribune Chronicle by our own doctor, Patrick as McGirt, um, eyes muggers, sorry from I Ohio. This is a very timely piece. And we’re so proud of him, the state association, because they’re reaching out and they’re really getting the opportunities to educate the community opioid crisis lingers amid coronavirus. So if you can see, this is June 21st, this is the opportunities that we’re talking about. Being able to describe them and really showcasing how to bring awareness to it. Last week, we had an article in healthcare business today.

It touched on how healthcare payers could save significant funds and reduce the chances of longterm opioid use while patients experience low back pain relief by pursuing chiropractic care. First, this article is available to you, just Lincoln with me, um, just to give you some background, healthcare business today reaches more than 180,000 very specific individuals on a monthly basis with 5,000 email subscribers that are healthcare executives, top of their game in hospital situations, physicians that are making decisions for others and third party payers. So it’s a really important place for us to be, to showcase that we’re cost effective. And you putting this article out onto your LinkedIn pages, your social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter helps us get the word out because it’s not one person that does it. It’s a hundred thousand that do it. That makes the difference. And that’s why we’re imploring. You easy to do, just click share and away you go.

And that’s how we’re going to be able to win more awards. Now, speaking of awards, I bring this up because this is your award. We’re proud to share this from the foundation’s perspective, because we were awarded on the merit due to our posture article series a couple years back, you may remember there was this famous drawing and it was, it was by a neurosurgeon who is quoted as an expert in posture. Now each and every one of us sitting behind this computer right now knows that it’s rare that a neurosurgeon would get involved in posture until you have to do surgery. So chiropractors are properly trained posture, okay? Experts. And we needed to gain control of that spot because we don’t want it to be a surgical candidate. Before we start talking about proper posture, we need to start from ground one from the day that those little people have a backpack and we start educating them all the way through.

Well, let me tell you, the profession has never won a digital healthcare award and the profession wasn’t yet positioned to be experts in posture, but we should be because we are, that’s what we do on a daily basis with our patients. So alongside dr. Oz in many other big names in the healthcare world, digital we won, and it it’s a small but mighty opportunity for us to get ecstatic because we’re starting to make a dent in places we’ve never been before. So I congratulate you for being today on this Cairo, secure Facebook lives for being part of promoting posture and postural awareness, and also supporting the chiropractic profession on a national level. Now, as we move forward, what else do we have? Well, we do know we’re in the COVID world and we need to continue to educate our patients on what are the safety messages.

We’ve developed a ton of resources for you that align with current events and are appropriate for you to share. This particular image is a graphic that can be shared on your social media, on your, in your newsletter, showcasing what the doctor is doing to ensure CDC protocols are met. This can be printed for the office staff to hand out on their way out. It can be put on your, your website, or you can put it on your various platforms that you’re using. Just make sure you continue to showcase to them that you care and that you’re there for them. And in, well, it is a new healthcare environment. We hope that we will make an definite engagement with our community and it starts with you. I think one of the critical components that helps patients feel better is our connection with them, whether it’s virtual or whether it’s in our offices.

And that is why I thank you from the bottom of my heart in foundation, that we make a difference in September for those that are suffering and that we continue to Hanse their health with our education and our caring with our hands, our heart, and educating ourselves to be the very best we can be. I want to thank ChiroSecure for having me today. And please remember same time next week, ChiroSecure. We’ll be hosting another fantastic episode as well as we will be back this time. Next month, to share more of how we as a profession can continue marketing chiropractic and all the fantastic benefits that go along with it. I hope to have you join me next month. Thanks.

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