Goal setting is very important and is a well-established function of good practice management for any chiropractic practice.  Usually goals are set for what you want to get as a chiropractic doctor and clinic owner.  Typically this includes collections, profit, office visits and new patients.  This is almost essential, and should be done.

However, goal setting often omits the processes and procedures that produce these outcomes. It is a simple formula:

If you want to improve one side, you have to improve the other. If you want more office visits, you may have to improve your procedures for patient education and retention. If you want more new patients, you may have to start to practice asking for referrals.

Money is an exchange for something valuable. If you want more of it coming in, you have to have more valuable services going out.

This is not just a matter of working harder or longer. It certainly may be a factor, but you really want to look at how you can make your services more valuable.  Review how you can increase the speed of service, the friendliness of service, and improve patient compliance and education. How can you make your patients happier with your service? How can you get them better, faster? All this adds value to your services.

If you increase the quality of your patient education, the perceived value of your services will also increase. Your patients, in turn, will stay with you longer by continuing with their care on a wellness/maintenance program, and feel responsible for bringing in their family and friends for care as well.

Working On Your Business
All this does take work. True. But it really is part of your job. In addition to being a doctor working in your business, you are also a manager and have to work on your business. Just setting a goal for collections, income, or new patients is not thorough management. Neither is trying to increase the value of your services by finding a higher RVS code.

You can schedule meetings two to three times per month with your staff to work out how you can improve your procedures. Take any service procedure and discuss with the staff how it could be improved. Then, you can practice different methods of the same procedure to see what works best. You should also practice promotional procedures.

You can ask your patients for ideas of service improvement. This can be done with formal surveys, focus groups, or informally with your more loyal, and honest, patients.

Make sure that you have a simple outline or checklist for all the steps of each procedure. This will help in the future for revision, practice, and review.

Sample Goals For Production Outcomes and Procedures
Sample Production Goals:
___1.    Income:
___2.    Office Visits:
___3.    New Patients:

Sample Procedure Goals:
___1.    New Patient Paper Work: Faster time, better experience for patients.
___2.    Patient Education Programs: Better educated patients.
___3.    Exam & E-ray procedure: More useful data, better experience for patients.
___4.    Report of Findings: Faster, more informative for patient, better agreements with patients.
___5.    Financial Consultations: All bases covered, more understanding for patient, better agreement with patients.
___6.    Patient Satisfaction Survey: 2 Surveys. Second one with improved scores.
___7.    Promotional Procedures:

By improving your procedures, you will be able to improve the outcomes, and have a much better chance of achieving all your goals.

For more information on chiropractic goal setting for improved service and marketing, go to this link. You can also read more about marketing procedures of the Marketing Manager System here.