{"id":1033,"date":"2012-04-24T12:35:16","date_gmt":"2012-04-24T17:35:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pmaworks.com\/observations\/?p=1033"},"modified":"2023-01-26T09:42:12","modified_gmt":"2023-01-26T15:42:12","slug":"how-bottlenecks-can-suffocate-the-growth-of-your-chiropractic-practice-and-what-to-do-about-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pmaworks.com\/observations\/how-bottlenecks-can-suffocate-the-growth-of-your-chiropractic-practice-and-what-to-do-about-them\/","title":{"rendered":"The Theory of Constraints: How Bottlenecks Can Suffocate The Growth Of Your Chiropractic Practice And What To Do About Them"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you work hard but you just don\u2019t get as far as you should?<\/strong>\u00a0 The reason may be that you are running into unseen bottlenecks that are choking off your production and suffocating your growth.<\/p>\n

Here is an example:<\/strong> One doctor we worked with a few years back had a small office of about 1000 square feet. He was seeing about 140 visits week but wanted to see more. He felt the problem was not enough promotions generating more new patients.<\/p>\n

We visited his office<\/strong> and noticed that he already had a decent amount of marketing underway and he was getting external new patients. While his marketing could have been more effective, it wasn\u2019t that bad.<\/p>\n

We noticed that the reception area was tiny<\/strong> and mentioned this to the doctor and suggested he move to a larger office. He had his mind made up.\u00a0 He did not want to get a larger office because he had heard of doctors seeing 300 O.V.\u2019s per week in 1000 square feet with very low overhead and he wanted to do the same.<\/p>\n

So we set up a special focus group<\/strong> and personally interviewed his patients. The primary complaint was that the reception area was too small. The patients interviewed said that during peak hours there was no room for them to sit. They said that they felt that he must be too busy and therefore they would not come in to see him because he was full, and that they referred their friends to other offices.<\/p>\n

Well, with this information, the doctor finally decided to move into a new office<\/strong> with a larger reception room.\u00a0 Shortly thereafter, his office visits shot up to an average of 225 per week.<\/p>\n

There are a number of lessons to learn from this story.<\/strong> One being not having a fixed opinion of how things should be based upon hearsay, or what may work for one doctor may not work for you. But the biggest lesson has to do with capacity. And, there are many examples of capacity restraints that we often uncover in our consulting and coaching work over the years.<\/p>\n

Bottlenecks can occur at the front desk, in the therapy area,<\/strong> and in the insurance department. They can occur with the patient flow, with paperwork or in doctor time.<\/p>\n

The theory of capacity management,<\/strong> as expounded by Eli Goldratt and explained in his books, including the best selling The Goal<\/span>, discusses the theory of capacity constraints as applied to a manufacturing environment.\u00a0 The same principle applies to a health care facility.<\/p>\n

According to Goldratt:\u201cCapacity is the available time for production.\u201d A bottleneck is:\u00a0 \u201cwhat happens if capacity is less than demand placed on resource.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

SOME CHIROPRACTIC EXAMPLES:
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n