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.
