Chiropractic Software Patient Education Increases Compliance
Personal Growth Could patient education help reduce Dr. Ben’s exasperation with compliance? Ben pulled a weed viciously. His wife looked at him with raised eyebrows. “What did that dandelion ever do to you?” “I guess I’m just exasperated,” Ben said, tossing the weed into a wheelbarrow and starting in on another. “You can take out all your exasperation on these weeds,” Carmen laughed. “But tell me what you’re upset about.” “Another no-show this afternoon!” Ben said, pulling more weeds with more force than was absolutely necessary. “I’m just getting sick of it.” “I thought you had worked out –” “Oh, we have a good system in place now, as far as the practice is concerned. But I still hate it. This particular patient skips half her regular adjustments, and then comes in with pain and emergencies that she probably wouldn’t have if she just followed her treatment plan. It’s frustrating to know that I can’t do my best for her because she won’t cooperate and be in compliance.” Carmen nodded sympathetically, digging out a stubborn root. “I sometimes think,” Ben went on, sitting back on his heels, “that they don’t really get what we’re doing.” “Maybe they don’t,” Carmen suggested. She reached across to help their son with a tough weed he was trying to pull. “They act like what you do is magic. They don’t know why it works, they just feel happy that it does.” “But you see, that attitude means that they don’t follow through with my recommendations.” “You explain things clearly, I know,” Carmen assured him. “I’ve heard you do it.” “Better sometimes than at other times,” Ben admitted. “It depends how busy I am, and which room I’m in — some have better visual aids than others.” Carmen laughed again. “I hadn’t thought of that, but it’s true. Plus, you’re not always the one giving the explanation. It’s not really systematic, is it?” “I guess it’s not,” Ben agreed. “We all just answer questions and give explanations as needed — office staff, too. And of course we work together on patient cases, or with other health care professionals. There can be a lot of people involved in a single medical decision, and we don’t all end up sharing the same information.” “I don’t do a lot of education in my business,” Carmen said, “but I know that anything that doesn’t use a good system ends up taking more work, more time, and more trouble than it needs to.” “Hmm.” Ben stood up, brushing dirt from his knees, and hoisted the wheelbarrow. “It sounds like non-compliant patients are my fault.” “That’s not how I meant it,” objected Carmen. Jonathan scrambled up into the wheelbarrow, shouting that he wanted a ride. “I’m just going with what you said — they don’t always get what you’re doing. Then they might not realize the importance of doing their part.” “I’m doing my part,” Jonathan announced. His parents assured him that he was, and Carmen lifted him down from the wheelbarrow so Ben could tip the weeds onto the compost pile. “A little patient education might do wonders,” Ben said. “I hadn’t really thought about it, but I’m sure the patients would be more cooperative if they understood the value of follow through.” Could patient education help reduce Dr. Ben’s exasperation? Disclaimer: For HIPAA compliance, all characters appearing in this post are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons or actual events is purely coincidental.
Focus, Identify, Create Value and Repeat
Your recipe for working with people you enjoy, know you can help, and making more money. by Garrett B. Gunderson To be as productive as possible it is essential to be crystal clear about what your business is specifically designed to do, and who you are ideally positioned to serve. This means identifying your best existing patients and figuring out who they really are as people. If you can understand what age group, gender, education level, what they do for hobbies, what books they read, where they hang out, how much money they make, etc. then you can make it a point to go out and find more people who are just like your best patients/customers. To do this make a conscious choice to determine who is already existing and “Ideal”, and build a relationship with them. Have appreciation dinners, invite them out to hike or snowshoe, or share experiences with them. Let them become more than just clients or patients – build a relationship. In this process you will not only learn how to serve them better, you’ll understand how to attract more people just like them. This leads to a business full of people that you love to see and who love to come see you. Once this happens the profits are an inevitable result of serving those that appreciate your value the most. They key is to overcome the concern that is you focus or get to narrow that you will miss out on others you could have otherwise have worked with. Here are some questions and considerations to help address and overcome this objection. If you were to look at your top 20 percent of people you work with what percentage of your revenue are they responsible for? How many people have they referred versus the bottom 20 percent? What percentage of your time is used for addressing people that do not pay on time, do not refer people and do not appreciate your service? What impact does that have on your energy, confidence and ultimately the bottom-line? Do you think there are plenty of people in your community or even your state that fit the “ideal” profile? What would your life look like if that was who you spent your time and focus on? What level of value could you create for them? How would it allow you to focus more on value creation and less on appeasing people that do not appreciate who you are, what you do or that simply are not compliant with implementing your recommendations and getting the full value you offer? So, find the best people that you enjoy working with the most. That gets the best results and refer the most people. Focus on building those relationships, cultivating those relationships, and asking them how you can create the most value for them. To discover other overlooked opportunities most business owners miss and to gain more freedom in your business as we expose models most didn’t think was possible, yet are achievable in a short period of time, check out www.freedomfasttrack.com/cfw as I interview business strategist Brandon Allen. Brandon opened up and built Wells Fargo branches for a decade before becoming the COO of my firm, Freedom FastTrack. In order to more fully express his expertise and purpose he now shares his insights and discoveries through business expansion and management with Freedom FastTrack members. In a bottom-line, no fluff interview he will be sharing how to: integrate metrics and numbers to improve business unveil the biggest mistakes business owners make in managing their business (he exposed this for me and transformed my INC 500 business) how can you create and leverage your authority in your market how to address and confront employee behavior in the business time management the key habits to run a successful business and more
Chiropractic Software Management Dashboard
Charting a Course by Dr. Brian Capra Can a dashboard simplify Dr. Ben’s path to his dream practice? Pam’s expression was troubled. “Let me make sure I understand this, Dr. Ben,” she said. Ben smiled at her encouragingly. “You want me to find all this information every week and type it into a spreadsheet.” Ben smiled even harder. “I know it sounds like a lot of extra work,” he said. “I’m convinced that it’ll save us time in the long run, though.” “It’ll be extra work,” Pam agreed, “but I don’t mind that. I’m just not sure you’ve thought this through, if you don’t mind my saying so.” Ben stared. He was prepared for objections to the extra work or the tediousness of the task, but he hadn’t practiced any response to an announcement like this one. “What do you mean?” “Spreadsheets are all very well,” Pam said, “but what are you going to do with that information? We’ll put it all in and print it out and then what?” “We’ll be able to see if no-shows are increasing, for example,” said Ben. He felt himself getting irritated and tried not to show it. “We’ll see if there are things we need to change.” “With no-shows that might work, but what about the big numbers? We might not be able to see a pattern. And what if the numbers just sort of go up and down? What if there really isn’t any pattern?” Ben frowned. “We don’t have to print it out. We can leave it on the screen, and that way we can always do calculations or insert a chart if we need to.” “But we have nine different things we’re watching. If we look on the screen, after a couple of months we won’t be able to see the labels any more.” “You can fix that in Excel, right?” “I don’t know,” Pam said, opening her eyes wide. “I don’t think I even know how to do calculations in spreadsheets. I never took that kind of class.” Ben had never taken that kind of class, either. But he knew who had. “Just a moment,” he said to Pam, and he returned to his office. When Ben emerged later, he returned to the question of the spreadsheets with Pam. “We don’t need spreadsheets. We need a dashboard,” he said firmly. Pam nodded. “We need a dashboard that shows all the information to us in a simple, visual way so that it makes as much sense to us as X-rays do.” Pam was smiling now, too. “We need a dashboard that will not just show us the numbers. There are different kinds of charts that make the relationships within information clear. Like radar charts, which are kind of like spider webs showing how different pieces of information compare or connect. And trend charts, which show how something changes over time. And histograms–” “Have you been talking to your wife?” Pam asked. “I married a woman with a business degree, I admit,” said Ben, smiling. “The point is, we’re not back in the 20th century when we had to rely on spreadsheets. So instead of taking extra time to fill in the spreadsheets, please find an integrated system that will capture all the data and create a simple, friendly user interface that will make sense to us right away… or as soon as possible.” Dr. Ben got ready for his next patient. He felt sure that they were on track, even if he had gotten distracted by spreadsheets. Can a dashboard simplify Dr. Ben’s path to his dream practice? Disclaimer: For HIPAA compliance, all characters appearing in this post are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons or actual events is purely coincidental.
Do You Know Your Practice Management Metrics
Too Many Variables How can Dr. Ben effectively put his information and ideas into his chiropractic practice? Ben closed his office door gently and pulled his chair up to the desk. He pulled his wife’s crayon-made chart from his pocket and smoothed it out on the desktop. Carmen knew a lot about business, he thought. He had to admit that he found that part of his job challenging, but he was also confident that he’d be able to take control of this aspect of the practice now that he had some direction. With medical information, he could look at a few pieces of data and see what was going on — or what else he needed to know to find the answers to his questions. If he needed additional information, he knew where to look for it. And generally speaking, the patients’ charts had the data he needed in the places where he expected it to be. His own experience with that data made it instantly meaningful. It didn’t seem to work that way with practice management. So Carmen had grabbed one of their son’s crayons and drawn him a chart. Ben chuckled. Ben copied the chart into a spreadsheet and hit “print.” He heard “Dr. Ben?” at his door and just had time to put away the original chart before Pam entered. “Dr. Ben, we have another last-minute cancellation.” Pam handed Ben the patient folder. “She’s done this before, hasn’t she?” he asked, checking the file. “She does it pretty regularly,” Pam admitted. “She always says something about work, but I wonder whether maybe she just finds herself short before the appointment comes up, and makes excuses so she won’t have to pay.” “Do we have other patients who work at the same place she does? Do we have the same kinds of problems with them?” “That’s a good question. I’ll check on that. I hate to have to charge her if it’s work-related and she can’t help it.” “If we take that position, though,” Ben pointed out, “we’d never charge anybody for cancelling, even though we have a sign out there explaining the policy. Everybody probably has a reason they think is important.” “I know, but if the cancellations are caused by financial problems, then charging…” Pam continued, but Ben had stopped listening. “This is paralysis by analysis,” he interrupted. “What?” “I mean, we’re looking at so many possibilities and so many hypotheticals that we’re never going to be able to make a firm decision. If cancellations are enough of a problem to us that we have a policy, we ought to follow that policy. She could go to her boss and explain that she’ll lose that $35 fee if she cancels, and then it would be in the boss’s court. Or if it’s financial, she could level with us and we could work out a payment plan for her. All those things about her life are just muddying up the waters for us.” Pam nodded. “You’re right.” “Or if our data shows that cancellations don’t really make any difference to the bottom line, then we could get rid of that policy. But let’s narrow this in to the most basic information we need for the decisions, instead of broadening it out to include all the possibilities we can imagine.” Pam left looking satisfied, but Ben remained in the office, lost in thought. It sounded good when he said that, but the truth was, he didn’t know what no-shows cost him and whether they needed to be firm or not. He didn’t even know how often this particular patient had made a last-minute cancellation or not shown up for an appointment, and Pam simply had a feeling about it, not hard facts. This was definitely a case in which having fast access to the KPIs would improve decision-making at his chiropractic practice. In fact, if he or Pam could spend a little time sorting these things out, they would probably make it up by having fewer conversations agonizing over decisions of that kind and second-guessing their earlier decisions. Ben looked at his spreadsheet. Why couldn’t someone from the office staff pencil in the current figures every week and calculate a running total? Then when questions arose, they could take a quick look at the spreadsheet and find exactly the information they needed. Pam wouldn’t like it, he was sure, but it seemed like just the right solution. How can Dr. Ben effectively put his information and ideas into his chiropractic practice? Disclaimer: For HIPAA compliance, all characters appearing in this post are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons or actual events is purely coincidental.
