Tag Archives: procedures

Practice Fundamentals – Communication and Control

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“Get the fundamentals down and the level of everything you do will rise.”
— Michael Jordan

It’s always the basics. The fundamentals.

This is what all efforts to improve performance – and health — go back to.

All of your efforts in practice management boil down to communication and control.

All the books on procedures, patient management, and practice management can be distilled down to communication and control. Those are the basics you need to get to your goals and those of your patients.

  • Doctors, and staff, that have excellent communication with their patients have many referrals and a busy practice.
  • Doctors who communicate well with their staff have a happy and full practice.
  • Doctors that have positive control with their patients see their patients succeed.
  • And business owners that have proactive control over the office – are prosperous.

Of course, the inverse of these facts is also true. Whether out of fear, confusion, or fatigue, when these fundamentals are not administered, things don’t go well.

Communication

I was recently helping a doctor and the practice manager improve their patient financial consultations. The manager and doctor had worked out what to say that they liked. They called it a “script.”

A few months passed, and I noticed their patient retention had not improved. Neither had collections or other metrics. When we did some training on how the patient consultations were performed, we found that the staff focused on the memorized script, not the patient. Their communication was robotic, and they never got to know the patient. We replaced the script with a simple outline and let the staff get to know the patients. Visit average and collections improved.

Good communication is alive, interested, and empathetic. It results in understanding.

Control

Another office we worked with complained about low collections. They had plenty of new patients — the veteran doctor got great results. After investigating, we found that the report of findings and treatment plans were rarely completed, and scheduling was hit-and-miss at best.

And that’s not all. The doctor and staff often came to work just a few minutes before patients came in. Sometimes they came in late.

This office was out of control — and so were the patients.

Positive control is moving a project, patient, or condition from one status to a predetermined goal. This is what a procedure does. A well-run business has procedures, protocols, and systems that it adheres to achieve its daily and weekly goals.

Management

Management is implementing effective procedures, with excellent communication, to achieve goals.

In all your practice improvement efforts, check first if the procedures are being done, and then if they need to be improved or removed. Then, look at the quality and quantity of communication used to implement the procedures.

Improve the fundamentals — your patient and team communication and control — and you will have a prosperous and happy 2023.

Seize your future – with a smile!

Ed

Your Chiropractic Practice Marketing Plan

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How is your marketing plan?

Do you have one?

You really should have a marketing plan for your chiropractic practice, and it should be updated monthly, nudged weekly, and totally reviewed every three months.

This may sound oversimplified, boring, or too too obvious, but in our experience, it is a major key to practice building.

Sure, there are many other factors behind a successful business, but constantly marketing is essential. And, if your practice is not growing, it may be because you are not routinely marketing.

And how do you make sure that you are marketing? Have a plan.

A Marketing Plan Is Simply Marketing Activities Scheduled,
Assigned, Regularly Supervised, And Measured.

The key to effective marketing is simply planning. This is because marketing often just does not get done.  It is not that your marketing did not work. More than likely, it just didn’t happen.

To overcome this, you need to schedule short planning times each week, and longer periods each month.

This is the core of the Marketing Management System as we have developed it.

Your marketing plans should include the following:

•    Recurring Marketing-Oriented Procedures. These include not only your internal marketing procedures, but recurring clinical and administrative procedures as well. They are the usual recurring procedures that go on regularly in your office. Often overlooked and neglected, they are the most important form of marketing. They need to be reviewed and practiced regularly to be keep fresh and important. Because they are so routine, I usually schedule them last.

Very successful offices rely mostly on these types of procedures. When you hear chiropractic doctors say “We don’t do marketing”, it is because they have their marketing as part of their internal procedures and they do these extra-ordinarily well. These could be the way the phones get answered, the report of findings, the new patient lecture, the simple consistency of patient flow procedures, great internal staff and doctor communication, staff training procedures, staff meetings, etc.

•    Special Promotions. Hold special promotions every now and then. These could include a Kid’s Day, a donation drive, mother’s appreciation day, teacher’s appreciation week, etc. I walked into an office a few days ago and in the middle of a very cold, snow packed winter, the doctor and staff were wearing summer clothes, offering smoothies (without the run), with a big sign saying: “Welcome to Chiroville”, no doubt referencing “Margaritaville” and warm ocean lifestyle. What a refreshing and friendly surprise greeted each patient that day!

•    Patient and Community Education Programs. These are usually held in your office. Educate your community through your office and patients by providing special workshops that are chiropractic or health related. Or, you can sponsor a special “Awareness Week”, such as a Headache Awareness Week, offering no charge or discounted condition specific screenings, consultations, and or exams.

•    External Community Services and Networking Events. These can range from spinal screenings, to in office ergonomic workshops, lunchtime “Lunch & Learns” for local businesses, setting up referral sources with business or other professionals, or working in the food pantry twice a month feeding the homeless.

There are other procedures, such as advertising, PPO soliciting and reviewing, yellow pages, web site, but many of these can be put onto a yearly, quarterly, or monthly recurring checklist.

The above are various categories of marketing. But again, the most important part of marketing is doing it, and the key to getting marketing done is to schedule it and assign it and measure it.

For the best reference, review the materials in your Marketing Toolkit which is part of your Marketing Manager System computer software, if you have it.

Here is a sample marketing calendar for a chiropractic office.

NOTE TO CLIENTS AND PMA MEMBERS: You may find a customizable sample calendar on our PMA Member’s web site.