Category Archives: Practice Management

Chiropractic Business Development: Go Before You Know

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As a chiropractor, you always have to know before you go. However, successful business leadership sometimes needs to act first and figure it out later. It all depends on which role needs to be fulfilled.

There are times when you should leap before you look.

As a chiropractor, you have a number of different roles. And for each role, there is a certain but different mindset that is most effective.

Your first role is that of doctor. The mindset and motto for this role is: Know Before You Go.

Each time you start a new case, you do your diagnosis to find what the best treatment program should be. You want to know what to do before you go with the treatment program.  And, at each visit, you briefly reassess the patient’s condition before you go ahead with that day’s treatment.

In your role of senior manager, you have a similar mindset. You assess the business situation, make plans to improve it, and then execute the action steps. Again: Know Before You Go.

The opposite seems to be true with entrepreneurial doctors that have successfully built their businesses. The lesson seems to be that, as a business owner, you need to have the inclination to GO before you KNOW.

Why is this?  Because we are all faced with degrees of procrastination, of fear, of “paralysis by analysis.”  Given any opportunity, many of us can find reasons to wait, do more planning, get more information, talk to more people, and just think about it some more.

Pretty soon, other issues come up and our planning gets bumped to handle new issues. In time, we have a garage full of uncompleted or never started practice building projects.  An attitude of going for it, without waiting for all conditions to be perfect, gets us out there promoting our services, telling our story, and serving more people.

Too many of us get ready, then aim, get more ready, aim some more, and never fire. On the other extreme, the successful entrepreneur often just fires. This can result in wasted money and time, but it does get the office moving and this is what leadership is all about. Hence, the sequence of fire, ready, aim.

Many chiropractic practices and businesses do suffer because the entrepreneur has never adopted systems of good management that stabilize the business so that it can grow. Their growth is stunted because of poor organization. We see this all the time.  But, that is the role of managing.

We also see the opposite: wonderful, skilled doctors, well organized, and broke. Or nearly so.

Successful business owners and entrepreneurs have a bias for action. This especially applies to marketing activities, but can apply to anything that improves your business. Marketing is a very broad category and covers everything from the services you provide to the way you promote them.

For example,  you can always improve the brochures and letters you send to your patients and community. And you should improve them. But no matter the quality, you need to get them out and distributed, not lying around in stacks on the top self in the storage closet.

When was the last time you painted your office, gave a lecture, did a screening, wrote a letter to the editor, set up a referral relationship with an MD, dentist, or car repair shop? The color of the paint, the content of your lecture, the location of your screening, the grammar in your letter, or what you say to the MD or business owner is secondary to just doing it.

As a doctor your have to know before you go. In practice management, you have to develop strategies based upon set policies and procedures. But as the business owner and leader, sometimes you need to just get going, and figure it out later.

Starting firing!

Improvement Goals Worksheet

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You can use this worksheet to help you implement a process of continuous improvement in your clinic.

Today’s Date: Person in charge of meeting: Date of Next Meeting in 3 Months:
Clinic Areas for Possible Improvement Grade: 1- 10 Improvement Goals
Front Desk
Billing & Collections
Case Management
Internal Marketing
External Marketing
Staff Training & Education
Patient Education
Office/Clinic Appearance
Patient Service (Extraordinary, fast, friendly, etc.)
Wellness Practice
Office Volume
Speed of Service
Paperwork, Documentation
Clinical Enhancement
Other
Personal Areas for Possible Improvement Grade: 1- 10 Improvement Goals
Professional, Technical, or Job Skills
Health Care Education
Personal Health Program
Other areas:
Recreation
Family
Relationships
Savings
Study
Hobby
Spiritual
Other

Improvement Goals

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It is not enough just to have goals.

It is a good start, but there is more.  In fact, just setting goals does not work. You have a staff meeting and decide that in the New Year you are going to see 400 Visits per week average and 30 new patients average.  Then you go back to work. That’s great, but it’s just not enough.  Plus, you have probably done this before so it becomes boring at best, or at worst, brings to mind past failures.

Just setting goals is lazy management. Like General Motors.

You have heard of them. They make cars, like Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, Pontiac, and the Hummer, to name a few.  Each year they set production quotas and they once dominated the world.   Over the years their market share has been shrinking, their stock has been shriveling, and they continue to close plants and lay off workers.

Toyota, on the other hand has been growing for decades and  is now predicted to overtake General Motors  as the number one car manufacturer in the world.

Kaizen

Toyota sets goals and quota’s, sure.  But they do something more. They set improvement goals and implement a process to reach these goals.  They call this process KAIZEN. It translates roughly as continuous improvement.

As a business, you either continue to improve, or you eventually die.  It is not enough to improve once every five years. It has to be continuous. You are either improving your clinic this year, or your patients may be drawn to an office that is. That is the way the market works.  You should review the level of your efficiency, patient care and service, promotion and public relations, patient education, and staff training and see if there is room for improvement.

You don’t have to make big improvements, but you have to constantly work on it.  It has to be a process or system of improvement, with incremental tweaks here and  there,  working out the bugs as you continue to grow.

Real business improvement also requires that each team member work on improving themselves personally.  Better health, greater fitness, more education, new hobbies, better relationships, etc., all add up to an improved team and an improved office.

Chiropractic is the improvement profession. This is an added benefit for anyone working in chiropractic because it supports constant professional and personal improvement.

There are many benefits that come from a process of constant improvement. And the consequences of not setting and working improvement goals? Ask a recently unemployed GM worker or stock holder.

Make the 2006 your Year of Improvement.

ACTION STEP. Have a staff meeting and make a list of at least 5 areas in your clinic that you want to improve on over the next three months. You can download a worksheet to help you do this (click here) .  Discuss each area with your staff, and assign each one a grade on a scale of 1-10. Set a goal to improve this part of your clinic in the next three months. Next, have each staff member and doctor do the same for 5 areas of their lives. Have them grade each area, and set an improvement goal for the next three months. The last step of the meeting would be to set a date for the next meeting, three months later.

Repeat this drill every three months for a twelve month period.