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Hello and welcome to deduct to today’s show growth without risk. And it’s brought to you by ChiroSecure, who I really appreciate the opportunity to connect with and work with for, for years now, Dr. Hoffman and his entire team. My name is Dr. Janice Hughes, and I’m really excited to have a conversation today based on something that I’ve really been watching in a lot of Facebook groups. Um, I recognize teaching and going to some of the chiropractic colleges, it’s sort of a distinction about whether you have a practice or whether you’re building a healthcare business. And I want to lead today with the question about, could you imagine never actually having to out our numbers, you know, how do we attract clients? How do we get enough of the right kind of training? Likewise, we go into practice, we go into building a business. And what starts to happen is, you know, we’re constantly having to think about that next new client, or where do these new clients come from?
Well, let’s face it. A lot of times we’ve been thinking in terms of we have to go out there, you know, and meet and connect and, and, you know, with groups or organizations, you know, and for years within the health care professions, there’s been people talking about turning around and, you know, going into, you know, again, screenings and marketing. And what starts to happen is obviously the way the world has changed. And we don’t have that. But now before you know, it, we’re still constantly thinking about where the next new client’s coming from. So I think it’s a bit of an affliction that we go through in this healthcare space. Now you notice the medical teams don’t tend to have to think about that because that’s almost like it’s just been a constant expectation that we all go for these regular checkups or for dentists.
Well, I know that we can’t discuss today how we change the whole perception of chiropractic. But what I’d love to talk about is how do you begin to build your healthcare business without the stress constantly of new patient or new client acquisition? So what I want to talk about is three different steps. I think the first really critical step let’s call it. Step one is how do you build systems for attraction and promotion? Whether we like it or not a lot of, especially as we get started, or any of you that want to keep the pipeline of new clients going, we tend to know that a lot of it is based on us, our, our ability to connect with people, um, the, the connections that we do or don’t have. And I like to call that kind of the attraction. You know, sometimes we have to recognize that we have to build systems to continue to attract.
We also have to build systems of promotion. So in the current world, we all instantly then think about Facebook ads and funnels. So they are absolutely critically important. They’re a powerful tool, but not at the expense of also you doing other things like who in your community are key centers of influence, that it’s important for you to speak with, connect, with, talk with, you know, within your own patient base. Many of you actually already have a few of those patients that send you a lot of clients. Like if you look over the years, they’ve been really high referrals. So how do you maximize that? Even more maximize a couple of companies that like literally become those centers of influence for you. I know a couple of people within their communities that, you know, they end up working with people from orange theory as an example, great company, um, in many areas, it’s a thriving business, even through the craziness that we’ve come through in 2020, and now in early 20, 21.
Well, if you know those people and already work with them, how could you leverage that? That’s the question you begin to ask yourself when you want to, you know, think about these centers of influence. How do you leverage it more? And I know we realize that you can’t now go to an orange theory or their managers and say, look at me, just send me patients, but what can you offer them? Um, how do you help them? And so a lot in this step, one, building these systems for attraction and promotion, how do you leverage things that you’re already doing that are working well, that more importantly, how do you leverage and build some systems to attract and promote the practice? Now don’t just think it’s, if you’re extroverted or if you’re a more outgoing personality that you do, those things, there’s ways to leverage being an introvert or more internal driven practitioner.
So I just want you to recognize this is a whole topic onto itself. This step one of systems for attraction and promotion, then step two is how do you build stronger care plans or what I call case management. This is how you plug the leaky bucket, because what happens after years of coaching, thousands of practitioners, chiropractors, natural paths, acupuncturists. What I recognize is that I could have these great promotion or I can teach people how to attract and have people come in. But often the leaky bucket is that you’ve got as many or more people going out of the system. Now, I don’t mean that we can stronghold them and say, you have to stay here, or you have to stay beyond acute care, but you can build systems by understanding that there’s a big difference between acute care versus reconstructive care versus what I call wellness or, you know, health prevention care.
And all too often, we really get the, okay, take them out of acute. And then the word is we put them on maintenance. Well, again, what does that mean? You know, so maintenance to me, or really, if you ask anybody in the public is well, it’s maintaining the things the way that they are well, is that necessarily so great? You know, so what you want to think more about is, is enhancement, you know, health enhancement, you know, improving their health and wellbeing. And a lot more people are even interested in that now, based on the fact that they don’t want the illness, that’s been the big focus through the crazy pandemics. But what I want you to understand is you have to build a case plan. You have to build systems around case management. You can’t just go, Oh, I think this is what we’ll do.
Or a lot of times, if you give this great report of findings, you find or think that those people are the ones that follow through or take longer, you know, care plans. And that’s not necessarily always the truth. You know? So you notice that sometimes the less you say, all of a sudden, some people end up staying or being part of your practice for longer or referring more. Sometimes it’s almost like we need to get ourselves out of the way, but a lot of practitioners that build great case management turn around and you get to take a little bit of the personality out of it. That’s how you train other docs. That’s how you train other associate doctors. Or if you have a multidisciplinary style of practice, that’s the way that often, you know, again, you have the same patient now, not just partaking of your services, but more of the entire clinic services.
So one way that you start to know, if you have really good systems is take a look at the last 15 or 20 new clients say from the beginning of the year or later in last year and pull those cases. And where are you losing people? I call this your dropped visit analysis, where do you in your care plan, loose people? So what I want you to understand is that this takes time, a lot of leadership to realize that often our language is where we’re losing people. So if you set up a care plan and you say, well, it’s going to take a typical case like yours is going to take this many visits, whether you say six to 10 and how I know that that’s still settled a lot in our profession is because really statistically, we know that the average is that a new client often stays with a chiropractor for seven visits.
That’s really shocking because there’s a lot of you that have these great, well, you know, managed care plans. So imagine some people are just a couple of visits and they’re already losing people to get that low of an average. But what I, I want you to start to think in terms of, even if you say 12 to 24 visits, or if you’re a practitioner that says a typical case like yours is going to take anywhere from two to four dozen visits, remember that people always hear that lowest common denominator. So what they’re hearing is that low end number, if you say six to 12, they’re hearing six. So you need to be able to come up with a plan that talks about your phases of care or how you’re going to help them move through varying stages of their care, because then you can still say, well, then here’s where we begin.
And then we do a great re-examine re-evaluation after that. So what I want you to think about this again, is an entire topic onto its own. Like how do you put together these great care plans? And I’d love to in another upcoming session, say, even interview somebody, I know several doctors that do really strong care plans and case management planning, all based on good clinical feedback and, and scans and technology and, and ways of reviewing where people are progressing, but for yourself, figure out where you’re at by doing your dropped visit analysis. And sometimes that’s a little shocking, because if you’ve said you typically plan out two or three dozen visits, but your drop visit analysis is showing that you’re on average, losing people at visit 12. The reason that I liked this number is it now tells you where you need to increase your education.
You don’t wait until you’re losing people. So if you re-examine somebody at 10 visits, and then you’re not going to re-examine them again till 25 visits, but you’re losing them around visit 12 or 13. It’s important that you’re building more strength and more knowledge into what you’re sharing on that 10th visit re-exams. So I’m not going to say there’s a magic number. I want you to find your number and then how build and enhance your case management. So step one was systems for traction and promotion. Step two is stronger case management. So you’re not having a leaky bucket and just losing people. It doesn’t mean everybody stays beyond acute care that it means you have to have that plan and vision. Step three is how do you build in referral generation referral, generating conversations, referral generating approaches, and how do you build that consistently? And I apologize.
I know some of you are coming in and out. I’m getting a couple text messages about that. And my apologies, welcome to technology. Welcome to my dog in the background. Welcome to sun coming in and on the screen. So I thank you all for putting up with some of the technical pieces today, but let’s talk about this step three. So referral generating conversations, it doesn’t always have to be like more extroverted and saying, send me your family. But when someone is telling you that they’re getting really great progress, that’s the ideal time to acknowledge that and say, fantastic. Who else do you know that would benefit from these health and wellness changes? You could, even, if you really specialize in headaches, you could turn around and say, you know, who else do you know that has headaches? You know, so that you could ensure that you’re getting really good.
You know, I’m going to say almost an acknowledgement of the fact that I, I work with lots of people. I work with others, just like you. You can also say things like part of my mission is to change the health and wellbeing of my community. So not only working with you, but I would love to work with others. You know, you can ask about company their company and do they have, you know, programs for health. And like I said, you know, enhancement, not necessarily neatness or wellness, but health enhancement strategies, how could you have a conversation? You know, how could you bring that to their company? So the idea that part of my mission is to change the health and wellbeing of my entire community can be very powerful. So what I want you to see is today, we haven’t broken down every one of these categories and said, okay, here’s the five steps in each one, but I’ve tried to give you some ideas and tips and tools to turn around and start to think about your health care business.
How could we turn around and ensure that you, your practice and your business can run with, or without you, that’s really powerful because what starts to happen is we have these concerns, where are the new patients coming for from, you know, what’s next? How do I grow? You know, often many of you are still the key employee in the business, you know, without you adjusting, there aren’t any billings. We need to start to begin to think about our practice as a healthcare business. So some of that is the mental shift to this business approach and strategy. Then from there, thinking, in terms of worry, isn’t a strategy from my perspective, you know, how, instead of worrying about new patients or the attraction or the billings, or can I hit my goals? How about putting some systems in place? So we’ve talked about some steps today, for example, to not be worrying about new clients, you know, so step one was putting in systems for regular attraction and promotion.
Are you doing some regular PR so that you have the opportunity to be, have your face in front of people, ads in front of people, things out there in the community. Are you yourself working on knowing the fact that a lot of you you’re the key employee? So how can you have consistent energy and educate consistently? So building those kinds of systems for attraction, step two was really strong case management. How do you build out great care plans for every one of your patients? Not that everyone is always going to accept it, but you need to be able to envision it. So if you want a PDA of 30, or if you want a typical PBA of 40 and you have a PVA of 12, then you need to say, I need to build some systems. And then the last step, step three was regular referral generating conversations, very authentically.
You know, just knowing that that is your role as the key chiropractor as the lead chiropractor, sometimes as the only chiropractor it’s, how am I constantly asking for referrals? You know, if somebody says to you, I really need to get my husband in here. Could you turn around and say, how can I help you with that? Do you think it would benefit if you brought him in, on one of your visits, do you think it would benefit if I have a phone call with them? You know, so a lot is are you just really staying attention and paying attention to those kinds of referral opportunities? So I want to take this opportunity to just have realize, like I said, worrying is not a strategy, take a little bit of time and even think about those three steps I’ve talked about and build and put some systems in so that you can have consistency of new clients and new client attraction. Again, I’d really love to say thank you to ChiroSecure for sponsoring these kinds of conversations. And also let you know that next week’s host of Growth Without Risk is Mike Miscoe. So definitely tune in for that. So thank you and have a wonderful day
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