A Recursive Principle

Our last two newsletters have been about structure.

Practice growth depends on putting the right structural elements in place at the right time. Internal procedures, hiring, training, marketing, and many other elements come into play. In addition, aligning each function with the others is part of the challenge for the practice owner and the practice team.

But your patient has their challenges as well. Their success depends on how well you lay out, and then help them follow, a structured pathway to their health goals.

Structure is needed to help ensure the function of the practice – its energy and capacity for growth – occurs unfettered and unimpeded. It is also needed so your patient sees how they will progress to their health goals and how you will help them.

Lack of Structure in a Chiropractic Practice and the Practice Roller Coaster

I have seen this in so many offices…

…an otherwise ambitious, caring chiropractic doctor with well-meaning, positive staff grows the business over many months. The appointment book starts filling up, the patients come in with summer cucumbers as gifts, and the adjusting tables are full.

But 6 months later, appointments are spotty, the tables are empty, and the doctor wonders where the patients are. Where is the “leak?”

The Practice Roller Coaster is a well-known malady.

The energy is there – and so is the hope, the care, and the drive.

But the structure wasn’t.

It may have been at one time, but it didn’t hold. Successful procedures that helped grow the practice dropped out. Others that were needed were never put into play. The improvements needed were overlooked.

The structure – the policies, procedures, and people – wasn’t organized to continue the progress and growth.

You might even say that the misalignment and lack of structure impeded patients’ and the practice’s progress.

Perhaps you have experienced this. Maybe it sounds familiar.

The Recursive Principle – Structure Supports Life

What is amazing about chiropractic is that its basic principles can be seen at different levels of life and work.

• The spine. The chiropractor adjusts the spine (structure) to improve the body’s function. (This is why all professional football teams have chiropractors!)
• The patient. The practice team puts the patient’s care plan (structure) in place and helps the patient achieve their health goals.
• The practice. Leadership, management, and the team ensure the practice procedures (structure) are in place – and continually improved – to allow the practice to grow.

Structure supports function.

And I think you’d agree… function has its own goals.

Function is life – and life naturally wants to thrive.

You do, right?

Whether you are a chiropractor, a support professional, or the director, you work with the structure that helps the patient’s life and the practice’s life flourish and reach their goals.

Give us a call if you are wondering if your practice needs an adjustment.

And stay.. Goal Driven!

Ed Petty