Trouble Brewing
By Kathleen Casbarro ICD-10 spells a major adjustment What will Ben’s chiropractic office face with the changes in insurance reporting? Carmen sat on the sofa next to her husband and pulled her feet up under her. “Ben,” she said, taking his hands, “I want to know what’s going on. You picked at my homemade manicotti, you provided no challenge at Wii Bowling, and you didn’t even do the voices for Jonathan’s bedtime story.” Ben smiled ruefully. “You’re right. I’ve got something on my mind,” he admitted. “Remember I told you about the new codes for insurance reporting?”“ICD-10 codes?” Carmen thought back to the previous week, when Ben had told her some government changes would affect his chiropractic clinic. “I remember you didn’t seem to know just how they would affect you.” “Ignorance might have been bliss! I just found out that the effects are going to be significant. The AMA estimates that complying with the changes will cost a practice like mine in the neighborhood of $83,000.” “That’s not a neighborhood we’d feel comfortable in,” Carmen protested. “Things have been rough with the practice already–” “I know,” Ben agreed. “It’s already so stressful dealing with uneven cash flow, I don’t know where I’m supposed to come up with the funds to cover this kind of investment, but it’s not optional. We have to complete these changes by October 1, 2014, or we won’t get paid at all.” Carmen frowned. “Are you sure it has to cost that much? I’m pretty good at pinching pennies.” “I know you are, but this isn’t like negotiating with your suppliers at the pizzeria. I can’t negotiate with the government, and the the new ICD book has 1,107 pages of non-negotiable changes. We’ll need software upgrades, changes in billing practices, training for all the staff… that’s all going to cost.”Carmen and Ben both stared glumly ahead. “Even if you figured out some way to do everything yourself, you’ll have some opportunity costs,” Carmen said. “You’d have to cut down on the patients you see or the other work your team is doing. I’m at your place a lot and I never see people sitting around doing nothing. You’re already running efficiently, so extra time is the same as extra money.” “Exactly. Plus, any change increases the risk that we’ll be audited or that the insurance companies won’t pay claims. We don’t yet know what will be considered medically necessary under the new system, but we’ve heard that there’ll be opportunities for cherry picking. That means that our choice of words in the notes we write up could affect whether or not we get paid.” Carmen shook her head. “You’re already dealing with non-payment of claims, aren’t you?” Ben nodded. “I just don’t see how we’re going to get through this.” “Things are good at the restaurant. And, as I said, I’m good at pinching pennies.” Ben forced a smile. He was lucky to have Carmen, and he knew she’d do what she could, but the stress was getting to him. This was definitely not what he had dreamed of when he had set up his practice. What will Ben’s chiropractic office face with the changes in insurance reporting? Visit our ICD-10 page to see everything we’ve published about ICD-10 diagnosis codes.
Improve Profitability With SMART Marketing Plans
Building your chiropractic dream practice will greatly depend on how well you market your services. The hard part will be figuring out just which marketing activities will produce the desired results of attracting new patients and retaining existing ones without breaking the bank or taking up too much of your time. Regardless of your chiropractic marketing expertise, the best laid out plans will fail if you can’t find the time and discipline to follow through on them. It’s also important to set realistic goals that are ambitious enough to motivate you without overwhelming you into paralysis. Ideally, you should be able to use your marketing activities as patient relationship building tool to improve the profitability of your chiropractic clinic through increased patient flow. Measuring your success and ROI, however, will require a SMART marketing plan that complements your general business plan. And just like your chiropractic business plan, it should consist of specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time based goals that you will need to iterate each month until you achieve them. For example, if you want to improve your chiropractic billing performance to increase your monthly income by $900 you would also need to improve your Patient Visit Average (PVA). As such you could tie your chiropractic marketing goal to this specific business goal and quantify it with 30 new patients gained from all combined marketing activities, or 30 rescheduled no-shows resulting from a successful email campaign to drive up your PVA. Needless to say, you will need to have the necessary framework in place to measure the results, such as asking new patients how they heard about your chiropractic clinic on their intake form, and tracking monthly no-shows as well as billing performance with your Genesis chiropractic software. If you end up falling short of your goals of increasing revenue and/or of attracting 30 new patients through your combined chiropractic marketing efforts at the end of the month, you will need to evaluate which of your activities worked and which did not produce any results, then create a new chiropractic SMART plan for the following month. Here are 5 SMART chiropractic marketing goals you should focus on: S: Attain a specific number of new fans on facebook, twitter, and/or any other social media account M: Achieve a measurable increase in monthly traffic to your chiropractic website (e.g. from 1,000 unique visitors to $1,500) A: Expect attainable results from chiropractic social media efforts (e.g. 30 new patients/month) R: Post relevant blog articles on chiropractic treatments and appropriate healthy lifestyle tips for your chiropractic patient personas T: Track time based numbers (e.g. number of monthly no-shows & monthly chiropractic billing performance with Genesis chiropractic software) and plan marketing activities for each month based on goals on previous months’ results Last but not least, you should also assess any monthly chiropractic marketing expenses for website maintenance, advertising as well as other marketing efforts to determine your actual ROI. Since marketing is a testing game you will need to adjust your monthly goals in accordance with the results you are producing.
Chiropractic Growth Metrics | How to select the right statistics?
Picking the right Key Performance Indicator (KPI) consists of a process that everyone involved in practice management needs to understand in order to effectively track, manage, and modify the cause-and-effect relationships that are critical for your chiropractic clinic’s performance and growth. The metrics practice owners use most often to measure, manage, and predict results, include both quantitative and qualitative aspects. Charges, payments, patient visits, pay per visit, referrals per patient, no-shows, and no future appointments are the most frequently used quantitative KPIs. Qualitative KPIs typically include patient loyalty and service quality. We distinguish four stages for managing your KPIs: Stage 1: Define your main objective This step is essential because it guides your capital allocation. In a free market system, the most logical objective is creating economic value. It’s determined by the value of your practice, which is often determined as a one year value of your gross income. But such a simplistic way to value the practice discounts patient referrals and the growth potential. An alternative way to define the practice value would be to add up the values of all of its patients. It requires a methodology to compute patient’s value, that takes into account an average visit value, average number of visits, number of expected referrals, and loyalty. Stage 2: Develop a theory of cause-and-effect presumably driving the main objective: Generally, such a theory focuses on sales and costs. For your practice, it should be earnings growth and cash flow growth. They depend on your patient visit growth, new patient growth, and average pay per visit, as well as non-financial measures, such as patient satisfaction, patient loyalty, and perception of teamwork and expertise. If you determine that patient satisfaction is indeed persistently and predictively linked to revenue and cash flow growth, then you can start figuring out which specific staff activities drive patient satisfaction. Stage 3: Identify specific activities your staff can perform to help achieve the main objective: Your goal is to maximize your main objective by applying skill to the controllable measures that are linked persistently and predictably to your main objective. So, if you determine that a satisfied patient makes more referrals and that patient satisfaction depends on the perception of teamwork and expertise, then you can use this information to determine specific opportunities and phrases your staff can use to improve your patients’ perception of teamwork and expertise. Stage 4: Evaluate your statistics: The drivers of value change over time and so must our KPIs. For instance if demographics of your patient base is changing or the insurance reimbursement rules are changing, you need to review the drivers of patient satisfaction or the set of physician skills you need in your practice to continue to drive your main objective. As the patient base becomes younger and more digitally savvy, your online patient portal and online patient education become important tools in driving patient satisfaction. By adjusting your selection of KPIs to the changes occurring at your chiropractic clinic you will be able to measure performance and growth more effectively.
Chiropractic Marketing | Google+ communities for patient relationship management
Patient relationship management without a doubt makes up a key ingredient in any chiropractor’s success formula. Since online communities provide an incredibly useful vehicle for building relationships with your patients and getting valuable feedback from them, it only makes sense to use free Google+ communities to achieve your chiropractic business goal of building your dream practice. Naturally, it will be close to impossible for you to maintain more than one online community in between patient treatments and practice management activities. For that very reason it’s important to pick the most effective platform for building your online patient community. Just how can you determine which social media site is the best fit for your chiropractic clinic and patient personas? For starters, choosing a site that most people are already familiar with, such as Google, will certainly help getting your existing patients involved. Also keep in mind that not all of your patients possess the same level of internet savvy, so simplicity is a must. Once again, as the most popular search engine used worldwide Google has already proven that it provides user-friendly and effective features. Building on the success of Google search engines, the new Google+ communities make it easy for chiropractors to strengthen their relationships with existing patients while also attracting new ones and increase the patient flow at their clinics. By providing free chiropractic patient education and allowing patients to share their personal experiences or ask questions, your online community can function as the go-to place for expert information on various chiropractic topics. Ultimately, interactivity will be a catalyst for community growth– online, as well as off-line at your clinic. How to use Google+ communities for your chiropractic patient relationship management: Identify patients who have a specific shared interest (patient personas) Select an effective name for your community that will attract patient personas (e.g. ‘Tennis Elbow Relief,’ or ‘No More Headaches’). You should avoid using your clinic’s name for this online community since that will not attract people looking for info on the health issues you treat. Decide if you want the community to be an open or closed (exclusive membership for existing patients) group. Open communities will help you attract new patients while closed ones have little to no potential for growth. Choose if people who find your group via Google search need your permission to join. Edit your group’s profile information and set up categories for discussion and content sharing. Promote your new online community on your chiropractic website and in your patient emails.
What is a Deliberate Extreme and How Can it Grow Your Chiropractic Office?
This week Genesis Chiropractic Software is bring you a blog that will blow the front doors off your practice! Check it out and make it grow. Every successful chiropractor and business owner has implemented a “deliberate extreme” at some point in their career. If you really want to take your business to the next level, you need to know what a deliberate extreme is, as well as understand the best ways to manage one without causing to much stress to yourself, your staff, and even your family. We have all heard the empty talk about how you should try to create balance, and how you shouldn’t work too hard out of fear of getting burnt out. But this type of philosophy simply isn’t true! Furthermore, it can be damaging— especially if you are striving for success and have a business you are trying to grow. Disappointing as it may seem, there are times in your life when you are going to have to work your tail off in order to get ahead. Like the beginning of a marathon, the runner knows that if he wants to have a chance at winning the race he has to get out of the middle of his competition. He gives it his all for a short period of time so that he can break away. Deliberate extremes, as applied to the business world, are short bursts of hard work that help you grow and get to the next level. The best way to describe how a chiropractor would implement a deliberate extreme is to give you an example. Example of a Deliberate Extreme: A chiropractor decides to devote four weeks of hard work to getting more new patients in his office. He splits these four weeks into four different marketing themes, working on one specific marketing theme per week. Week 1 – The chiropractor will work on setting up more spinal screenings in his community. Every free moment he gets at the office, and maybe an hour after his regular workday is over, the chiropractor will search for and contact local businesses and events that he could set up a spinal screening and interest booth at. Week 2 – The chiropractor will work on setting up more health talks in his community. He will also use his spare time to call local businesses to offer health talks. He will also have flyers made up that he and his staff members can pass out to his current patients, letting them know he is available for health talks at their own work places or events. Week 3 – The chiropractor will dedicate this week to getting more referrals into his practice. During the morning huddle with his staff, the chiropractor will select a handful of patients to ask for referrals. To encourage patients to refer, he will also set up monthly themes and/or drawings for his office by giving away gifts to the person who refers the most people to the office that month. Week 4 – The chiropractor will devote several hours this week to creating a stronger presence for his clinic on the Internet. This week he will shoot several videos on different health topics and post them to YouTube, Facebook, twitter, and of course, his business website. The chiropractor will also look through all the main search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others and make sure his website is listed and information is correct. He will also have a laptop and a camcorder set up in the office to encourage patients to give video testimonials and write Google reviews for a free gift. ATTENTION: The next portion of this article is the most important part of implementing a deliberate extreme. Please DO NOT skip this part or you risk destroying yourself and your relationships! Before starting any deliberate extreme, sit down with your staff at your office and your loved ones at home. When you meet with your staff, go over your plans and explain to them exactly what you are doing, but also let them know that your goal is to take your practice to the next level, and you want them to be a huge part of it. Tell them that they are going to share in the success and you will give them a bonus for their hard work (Take an average of what you bring in monthly, and then tell them you will give them a percentage of what you bring in over that amount for the following month, such as 10 percent of the increase). Don’t forget your Genesis Chiropractic Software in your office can help you to implement your deliberate extreme with more effectiveness and less stress! Genesis Chiropractic Software has a unique built in ticketing system that will help you coordinate tasks between staff members. There are so many different ways to use Genesis to grow your practice. When you sit down with your family, explain to them that you are going to be working really hard for the next four weeks (or however long you determine is necessary). Share your goals with them, but make sure they know it is a temporary situation and that you plan on doing something really special for them at the end of it. Maybe you can plan a weekend trip for all of you. Let them decide where to go and what to do. It doesn’t have to be a big trip, but even just driving to a nearby city and spending the night can be a fun getaway and give all of you a much needed break. The key here is to be able to put in a lot of hard work in a short amount of time so that you can “break out of the pack” and take your practice to the next level.
Useful content vs. white noise
Knowing the difference between white noise and useful content for your target audience will basically determine the level of marketing success you can achieve with your Facebook fan page. Granted, one person’s trash is another individual’s treasure. Nevertheless, there are some lines that should not be crossed to avoid alienating potential as well as existing fans. What is White Noise? In social media terms, white noise can be defined as posts that fail to provide value to the receiver of the message. On Facebook, your fans, subscribers, and any member of your target audience are the receivers or your messages. As a result, they may either hide your status updates from their newsfeeds, or ‘un-like’ your page altogether if you pollute their news feeds with white noise. Examples of white noise on Facebook: • Sales pitches • Self promotion • Random updates lacking any relevance or value to your target audience What is useful content? In stark contrast to white noise, useful content helps your fans improve their lives in one or more ways. It adds value in form of advice, information, education and inspiration. In that sense, your status updates would show them how to do something better, solve a problem or reach certain goals. Needless to say, it makes sense to share tips that relate to your area of expertise. Examples of useful content on Facebook: • Tips on nutrition, health, wellness • Education on chiropractic treatment options for a specific health issue • Information about upcoming events, special offers at your practice Focus on what’s in it for your fans and give them a good reason to let your updates become a contribution to their news feeds.
Aetna’s anti-chiropractic strategy exposed
Aetna follows one simple logic to deny the claims as not medically necessary regardless of any supporting records the clinic may send. Most of the time Aetna’s insurance rep will not explain why they consider the claim to be not medically necessary. Rule 1 : If no improvement is documented within the initial 2 weeks, additional chiropractic treatment is considered not medically necessary unless the chiropractic treatment is modified. Rule 2 : If no improvement is documented within 30 days despite modification of chiropractic treatment, continued chiropractic treatment is considered not medically necessary. Rule 3 : Chiropractic care in persons, whose condition is neither regressing nor improving, is considered not medically necessary. Why updating initial date of treatment is so very important when the care is closed and new care is started after few months for a new condition ? If the date is not updated, Aetna will assume that treatment is still being given for the illness that occurred several months before. Say for example if the initial treatment date is 1 year old, it proves that patient’s condition is not improving. If provider’s send records proving that the condition is improving, it is in contradiction with what is sent in claims because a treatment that improves patient’s condition does not require one year to cure.
How Chiropractors Take Advantage of Social Media?
It is well known that for success of every business and organization it is crucial to connect with its audience and understand what they want, think and feel. Therefore, it is safe to assume, that for chiropractic practice success it is also very important that chiropractors know what their patients want, think and feel. After all, your practice and its growth are directly related to your patients. The difference between a practice that is doing ok and one that is doing exceptionally well, is the ability to connect with patients on a close and personal level. So, how do you connect with all of your patients? How do you connect with all of your patients on close and personal level that you should have? Even better, how do you find the time to connect and maintain relationship with your patients? Well, the answer is clear, through Social Media. Now, with more than one billion users combined on all platforms we can agree that social media is here to stay. There should be no doubt in your mind that most of your patients are using social websites. Most of them most likely are using Facebook. Almost 72% of all internet users in the United States are on Facebook. Therefore, social media platforms, and especially Facebook, are a great place for you to meet and interact with your patients. It might also sound strange, but social media platforms can help you interact with more patients on a closer and more personal note than you could ever possibly imagine. It has become trend to ask for Facebook profile, or to check a Facebook page for any of the business that you are interacting with. It is only logical to expect that your patients will be searching for your practice page, and you should better be there. So, why not use Facebook and Twitter to connect with them? You can improve your patient retention and compliance by keeping them engaged. If you provide information on health and wellness and engage your patients in 2 way conversation you can expect your practice exposure to go up. Genesis Chiropractic Software, being a huge fan and advocate for transparency, is seeing great opportunity for communication and engagement with patients online. You should give a chance to your patients to communicate with you as well as to talk about you on social media platforms. This transparent way of communication will not just seal the good practice-patient relationship and patient compliance but will also increase your patient network and community. In the busy world that we are living people communicate through social media platforms. Without social media, it could take days and weeks for your patients to talk about great experience they had with your practice. But, once you build your social network and community, all it will take for referrals to go up, is for your patients to like or share valuable content and information that you are providing to them. Even better, they would be more than happy and proud to share health and wellness tips with their friends, that are coming from an expert they know. So it is not just that you can establish a strong relationship with your current patients, you can also start new relationships and build larger community faster than ever before.
Chiropractic Marketing – Top 5 Mistakes with Fred Lardaro – Metro Marketing
Dr. Brian Capra: Okay, everyone thank you very much for joining me again, this is Dr. Brian Capra from Billing Precision. Today, I have Mr. Fred Lardaro from Metro Marketing. Metro Marketing is a New Jersey based company, they do amazing chiropractic marketing programs. I was a Metro Marketing client for a long time and one of my best patients, family of patients and referrals from that family and also eventually my office manager came from a Metro Marketing campaign. Again, Mr. Lardaro is on the phone today and I wanted to ask Fred, first of all thank you for coming on today and I’m going to ask if you can quickly tell me what is that Metro Marketing does specifically and then we’ll get right into the top five Chiropractic marketing mistakes. So, what is it that Metro Marketing does exactly in your words? Frederick Lardaro: Hey Brian, thank you for inviting me. For 16 years we’ve been generating prospective new patients for Chiropractors all across the United States and no upfront financial obligation to the doctors. By that I mean they will actually be seeing new patients before they actually will be paying for them, given the way we construct our payment schedules. We find patients around Chiropractors who need the care and will become good patient and referral sources for the doctors with whom we work. Dr. Brian Capra: Awesome. Okay. So, you know, it’s a no-brainers as far as I’m concerned. Finding new patients is it just a telemarketing campaigns or is there any other services Metro Marketing offers? Frederick Lardaro: It is primarily a tele-service campaign and with no competition on our phone calls we engage in a conversation related to Chiropractic and will then introduce those folks with whom we’re speaking to the doctors who hire us. We’ll schedule them for an assessment or screening when the doctors want to see them at a place that’s comfortable for the doctors with whom we work. Dr. Brian Capra: Yeah, absolutely. I mean you can turn the volume up or down or and it’s really just the no-brainer. We would get the fax everyday which tells you who is coming in, when they are coming in and work like a charm. So, all right, let’s get into the top five Chiropractic marketing mistakes and if you could just review number one with us. Mistake number one wait and see attitude, what do you mean by that Fred? Frederick Lardaro: Mistake #1: Wait and see attitude With wait and see attitude what we’re finding is that the Chiropractors are just not going to do any marketing or advertising at all. A lot of folks are thinking that they are going to get all their business from referrals. What we’re trying to explain and what we represent and what marketing and advertising in general represent is a way to reach out to people in the community and let them know that you exist and let them know the benefits and the values of your services. And so, with advertising marketing you are going to find potential patients and future referral sources out there in the community who don’t know you and don’t know the patients that you’re currently seeing. Mistake # 2: Creating a wrong marketing message for you and your practice. You know, the doctors have to find out, you know, what’s important to the people who matter the most and what they are really thinking, considered the geographic audience, where your patients are coming from, you know, zip codes. We worked in zip codes around the offices for the doctors with who we work, subject to audience, you want to know what’s important to those people was going to get them to actually – well receive your offer and then hear what you have to offer, they will be the once that raised their hand and introduce themselves and get themselves into your practice. Mistake # 3: Not knowing your return on investment from marketing or advertise. You really want the greatest return, you want to keep back the statistics about what you’re getting in response to your marketing and advertising. Direct every, you know, you have to treat every patient as your only patient, don’t underestimate the value of your current patients and track where they are coming from, you got to know that. Mistake # 4: Don’t cut back the marketing budget. When money is tight one mistake is cutting back the marketing budget. While other Chiropractors are not marketing and advertising, that’s the best time for you to market and advertise. Lot of people slowdown and stop marketing around holidays or especially in the summer time. But, that’s the timing when there is less competition buying for the same patients and you have to feel about yourself and there is a better quality of patient out there for you. Mistake # 5: Don’t look for the magic pill, be open to try new things different things, find the marketing and advertising that works best for use with your working smarter, not necessarily working harder and Brian I think that about doesn’t. There is my top five. Dr. Brian Capra: Okay. Fred, thank you very much, hopefully you can see on the screen where it says, www.chirometromarketing.com, that’s your website. Do you have a phone number that everybody can reach out and get you? Frederick Lardaro: Anyone can reach me anytime at 1-800-696-7788 extension 242. And, you know, what? Anyone can call me for any reason, anytime, I would really welcome speaking with anybody about any topic related to Chiropractic and I certainly would appreciate any opportunity to produce new patients. So, the Chiropractors that are out there and interested in Metro Marketing.
