Can We Just Focus on the Chiropractic Principles?
Note: As a Chiropractor, I founded Genesis chiropractic software as a way to provide the tools for Chiropractors to focus on building their practice through focusing in on chiropractic principles. We have been talking about getting back to basics, the root of why we became Chiropractors in the first place and about supporting businesses who are pro-Chiropractic. Today, I would like to talk about getting back to basics in another way because I believe that it’s about time that we get back to focusing on the principles of Chiropractic and teaching those principles to our patients. As we all know, Chiropractic is not just about relieving pain, correcting postures, and mitigating symptoms. Chiropractic is definitely not rooted in the reactive type of care insurance companies promote. Chiropractic is about removing interference to the bodies innate ability to heal and self regulate. We all know this. We all learned this in school and for most of us, it is one of the major reasons we chose to become Chiropractors in the first place. We believed in these core principles of Chiropractic so much so we’ve based our our professions and our livelihoods around them. The problem is that in the day to day grind of staff management, chart updates, insurance billing, patient visits, chiropractic software, marketing, and all of the other hundreds of tasks we perform, we often forget about what Chiropractic is truly about. In fact we started Genesis chiropractic software to help you remove the interference in running the day to day operations of your practice, with systems that enable you to grow and profit more effectively. We can begin to think of our patients by their symptoms or lack of symptoms rather than about the natural, healing power that is released when subluxations are corrected and the profound impact this delivers to the lives of our patients. Now is the time with the new year ahead of us to re-focus on the principles of Chiropractic. Each time we see a patient we should remember why and how Chiropractic works. Even more, we have to take the time to educate our patients and our staff on the principles of Chiropractic. A staff that is fully educated and informed about how Chiropractic began and how it changes lives, not just by relieving pain, is a staff that can deliver more to your patients and your practice. We have to take the time to train our staffs to not only handle billing and appointments but to also explain Chiropractic to our patients. Each interaction a staff member has with a patient is an opportunity to further the message of Chiropractic and create a patient for life. Patients that understand the philosophy behind the Chiropractic care they receive are not only more likely to follow-through with care, they are more likely to continue with maintenance care as well. Additionally, these are the patients who refer their friends and family members because they understand the profound impact of their health on their lives and their family’s lives. Let’s make 2016 the year that as a profession, we get back to basics, re-focus on the principles of Chiropractic, and build a patient base that understands the importance of Chiropractic. It’s about time we stopped letting the insurance companies and the medical community force chiropractic into the mold of medical doctors and instead return to the reason we became Chiropractors in the first place.
It’s About Time For Us to Show Our Support for Chiropractic
We’ve been talking about a theme, “It’s about time…”. There are so many things that we can say about that when it comes to our profession, but today, I want to talk about one of the most important ones. It’s about time that we as Chiropractors show our support for Chiropractic and the place to start is with our pocketbooks. We have to begin giving our money only to companies that support Chiros and stop funding companies that support anti-Chiro legislation. Chiropractors and the Chiropractic profession itself have been under fire for a quite a while now and make no mistake, it is not over. In order to preserve our livelihoods, our profession, the message of Chiropractic we bring to our patients, and the good we bring to their health and their lives, we are going to have to take a stand for what we believe in. Too many of the companies that Chiropractors give their money to every day are not pro-Chiro. Instead, they not only support legislation that is damaging to Chiropractic, but many of them want to turn us into medical doctors, forcing us to give vaccines in our office and ignore the basic principles of health that Chiropractic was founded upon. When we choose to do business with these companies, whether they handle our phone service, our billing, or our electronic health records, we are helping them in their fight to mold Chiropractic into the medical model, make us subservient to the MDs and the insurance companies, and even put us out of business completely. We need to choose where we spend our money more wisely and use our dollars to show companies that we as Chiros will stand together. We can and should do business only with companies who support Chiropractic and by extension support who we are and what we believe. There are so many good pro-Chiro companies out there that it is not hard to find them. We must be diligent in researching and choosing with whom we do business. By choosing to spend our money only with businesses who support our profession, we can send a message that we will no longer tolerate these companies attacking Chiropractic and by extension ourselves and our practices. Let’s start putting our money where our mouths are and start spending our hard earned dollars where they can do some good, with companies who are clearly pro-Chiro, who work to advance our profession and who believe in the power of Chiropractic to change the lives of our patients. It’s about time that we support Chiropractic by supporting the companies that work so hard to advance the profession every day.
It’s About Time for Chiropractic to Become the Profession to Choose
In my last post, we talked about getting back to the beginning and starting with why…why we became Chiropractors in the first place, why Chiropractic works, why we do what we do every day. Now, I want to take a look at the next generation of Chiropractors and whether or not we are doing enough as a profession to make Chiropractic an attractive choice for those students that are trying to decide what to do with the rest of their lives. Don’t you think that it’s about time we made Chiropractic a great career choice? Yes, it should be about the satisfaction of helping others but we also need to make Chiropractic an economically viable choice as well. Let’s face it…getting an education today is expensive and most students who come out of college are carrying student loan debts, probably in the tens of thousands of dollars. In fact, according to an analysis of government data, the average amount of student loan debt for a graduating college senior is a little over $35,000 and 71% of these graduates have loans to pay back. Add to that the statistics from a 2014 study published in the Journal of the Canadian Chiropractic Association estimating that 88% of Chiropractic students graduate with between $100,000 and $175,000 in student loans, a massive burden to any Doctor first out of school. In order for students graduating from college to decide to go to Chiropractic school, spending more time, and taking on more debt, they have to be able to see a future where Chiropractic not only allows them to pay off their student loans but also provides them and their families with a nice life. The problem the Chiropractic profession has experienced for many years is that so many of us struggle just to make a living, much less the nice income that we should be able to expect in return for the number of years we spend becoming Chiropractors, the risk we take opening and running our own business, and the hours we devote every week toward improving the lives of others. In fact, in 2010, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a median wage for Chiropractors at just over $67,000, not much in comparison the $140,000 to $300,000 incomes reported by Osteopathic Physicians. I think that it’s about time we made Chiropractic an economically viable profession choice for future students. This means that not only do we need to see more patients, we need to price our services to reflect their importance to the health of our patients. We also have to put systems in place to manage and improve the patient experience so that more people continue Chiropractic care not just through corrective care but also to maintain their health. We must also scrutinize our processes to ensure that every step we take each day is done in the most effective and efficient way. Our offices should function smoothly and at the end of the day when we go home, we should know with 100% certainty that everything has been done and done to the highest possible standards. Making the choice to become a Chiropractor has never been and never will be solely about money. I firmly believe that myself and my fellow Chiropractors have a calling to help others and improve the health and lives of our patients. Still, we can no longer ignore the economic realities and disparities of income experienced by Chiropractors in comparison to other healthcare professionals. We have a duty to future Chiropractors to increase the income of our profession as a whole and make Chiropractic an economically viable choice. It’s about time.
Starting with My Why
I recently read the book “Start with Why” by Simon Sinek . It really hit home with me that the reason behind why we do something is often so much more important than our actions themselves. This made me re-evaluate my life, my business, and the Chiropractic profession as a whole. In many ways, our profession has come so far but looking at it from this new perspective, I could see how we have often gotten away from our true values, what made us Chiropractors in the first place. It made me think of one phrase, again and again…”It’s about time.” There are so many things in Chiropractic that it’s about time for, don’t you think? It’s something you are going to be hearing from me over and over because it is time for progress. In that spirit, I think that it’s about time that you know my background and why I became a Chiropractor in the first place. It’s important because my why has made me who I am. It’s driven me to not only help patients but to help other Chiropractors improve the patient experience and build practices that get back to the root of the profession, making sure that every patient understands the importance of Chiropractic in their lives, in their health, and in creating their futures. I was always an athlete and into health and wellness. I always steered away from medications. I was also very into science and found that I was good at biology and math, so in my second year of undergraduate, I decided to become a biology major. The problem was that I didn’t have a direction, a passion. By the end of college, I still did not know what I was going to do until one day, my mother gave me a call. She told me that she worked with a woman who had a son who was a Chiropractor. He was going to be speaking and asked if I wanted to check it out. I wasn’t expecting much because I had a cousin who was a Chiropractor and I had actually seen one myself for an injury in high school but had never heard anything about the Chiropractic philosophy. Still, I went to the seminar and when he began speaking about what Chiropractic was really about and how it really worked, I knew with 100% certainty that I had found my life’s work. It was a moment of total congruency and surety that only happens a few times in your life. I drove back to school that night where I was just finishing up my biology degree and said, “Hey, I’m moving to Georgia and going to Chiropractic school.” The Chiropractic philosophy became “my why”. It is the reason that I knew with such certainty that Chiropractic held the path for my life, that it was my passion. It is still the reason that I get up each day and work toward improving the patient experience in all Chiropractic offices. The Chiropractic philosophy is the reason behind everything we do in our profession, so isn’t it about time that we all remember why we became Chiropractors in the first place?
Your Dream Practice Starts With a Plan
We’ve talked about using cutting edge Chiropractic software to break down, quantify, and improve the patient experience. We’ve even talked about your “Big Why”, your reason for doing what you do, your one big goal. Now we’re are going to talk about how you get there, your roadmap to your Big Why. One of the first things we do when we are preparing a new practice to utilize our chiropractic software is what we call the “Dream Practice Analysis”. When we are doing this practice analysis, we have our doctors take a conscious look at their goals and think about what they really want in both their practice and their lives. We do this because everything must begin with the “Why”. There is a quote by Eisenhower that says, “To plan is nothing but planning is everything.” This means that although things may not follow your plan exactly, just the simple process of planning itself is powerful. Nowhere is this more true than in planning your future and the future of your Chiropractic practice. By laying out your goals, you go through the process of internalizing what you truly want over and over again. This will change your history. There is one more quote that I think illustrates this point so clearly. “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road can take you there.” This means that if you don’t have a goal, it doesn’t matter what you do because you have no end in mind. Knowing what your goals are keeps you true to yourself and motivates you to keep moving toward your dream practice. Writing down your goals and keeping them where you can read them and internalize them on at least a weekly basis is a reminder to you of why you are doing the things you do each day, even when you may feel tired or start to forget their purpose. Just like our patients can start to forget the benefits of Chiropractic in their lives and drop off from care, we as doctors and practice owners can begin to forget the benefits of utilizing our Chiropractic software and practice management techniques. And, when we let them fall to the wayside, our practice and our patients suffer. By having a plan and beginning with the end in mind, we can avoid these pitfalls. Start by setting out your goals. What do you want from your practice and from your life? What type of care do you want to give your patients? Who do you want to be to your patients and to your family? What do you want your tombstone to say? Ask yourself these questions, picture your dream life, and write down your goals, clearly and in detail. Everything, including your dream practice starts with a plan.
How to Increase Collections for Your Chiropractic Practice
Increase Collections with Your Provider Workbench Increase Collections from insurance companies by watching this 35 minute webinar. Learn how to increase your insurance collections by getting every claim paid in full and on-time. Your provider workbench lists every claim that needs your attention and once you provide the missing information, they get re-submitted and get paid. It’s much easier than trying to determine what needs to be done from a list of claims in a report. Watch the webinar immediately right on this page by filling out your name and email address. We know it’s a lot to ask for your email address and we promise not to ever sell it to another company. Read the transcript: Jason: So, we’ll get started here in just a minute. During the holiday season, Jess, just to kinda kick off this conversation. I probably had more conversations with our providers, our actual customers than I had maybe the previous three or four months because we’re covering so much. And patient volumes were down, so you had time to actually look at collections. And I think most were just saying, “Oh, we’re doing fairly well. I’d just like to see if we can do better.” But then there was one provider who had a conversation with some other of his trusted peers. And they’re an in-house provider in Texas, and by in-house just for anyone listening in, I simply mean that our billing team isn’t doing the follow-up and the posting. They’re doing that in their own office and frankly they know what they’re doing. They’re not an office that needs a lot of direction. They got some top notch people. And they were asking me, you know, about the workbench and I said, “Well, you’ve got an issue with yours and I’ll tie this into our topic here in just a second.” Their office has been so used to following up on claims a certain way that they would print lists of claims, put them on their Excel spreadsheets and then organize them how they’re used to for years and years and years. And they’ve got 20 years of experience so they knew what they were doing. And so the results were okay. They weren’t spectacular but they were okay. And because I said to him, “Listen, I’m really worried about your collections right now because I see that your workbench claims are so high.” And he said, well, for anonymity’s sake, I’ll just call her Jessica. Jessica, you know, was on the call and said, “Oh, I just don’t do it that way.” And so today, we’re gonna talk about what way people use our system to follow-up on claims and what best practices are. Because Jessica is an expert. She’s a billing expert. She knows more than I’ll ever know about medical billing. She cared about the practice, she was engaged. Jessica was doing the right thing, it’s just that nobody knew about it. And so I wanted to help Jessica accomplish her goals but also give the practice on her some piece of mind as to how to check up on Jessica should something go wrong. Because Jessica could win the lottery, Jessica might have to quit and move somewhere else, you know, there are lots of things that can happen. And so today, we’re gonna change our focus to not necessarily billing perforJasonce, per se, but the thing that helps you achieve billing perforJasonce and that is the tool in our system that helps identify claims that need an action. That action can vary and we’re gonna talk about what type of actions, you know, can be done. But more importantly, what the methodology is to choose and identify those claims that need follow up. And so that’s how we’re gonna spend this first 15 to 20 minutes of today’s time together. And then after that, we’re gonna open it up to any questions that anybody has regarding this topic or any other topic. So to do that, we’re actually gonna jump right into this topic and talk about measuring. We’ve done that here before and we’re gonna start off the same way. I’m gonna blow this up, Jess, to make it really easy for our viewers/listeners, webinar participants to see this. And I’m gonna start by focusing really largely on our dashboard. We’ve gone over this before but we’re gonna focus on a few numbers. Our 32,000 is our total outstanding accounts receivable. Those are the insurance charges that have either just been submitted or I don’t care if they were submitted ten years ago. If they still have a balance on them they’re gonna show show up here. Then we break those numbers down into buckets, 26,000, 4,600, and zero. I’ve talked about this on this program before but we like to measure how long it takes for a practice to get paid. If that practice is getting paid in 30 days, everything is great. If that practice is getting paid in 30 days, everything is great. That practice is not getting paid in 30 days and we have our 120-day bucket, meaning those charges, you know, our date of service from over 120 days ago, we get worried. Not just a little worried, we know that the likelihood of collecting on those claims goes way, way down. So today, we’re gonna talk about how to address the total outstanding backlogs that comprises an accounts receivable of 32,419. When I was on the phone with our hypothetical, Jessica, who is a real person in Texas, I asked her the question. I wish you could have been on this phone call, it was great because her answer made a lot of sense and I’d like to move our discussion and look at those particular claims. I asked her, “Well, how do you know which claims are gonna follow up on?” She goes, “I always work the hardest ones first.” That’s surprising, right? I can see the
Genesis Chiropractic Software Releases a New Care Plan Solution for Chiropractors
Automated Care Plan Management Software Is Now Available with Genesis Chiropractic Software Genesis Chiropractic Software helps practice owners automate patient care planning and monitoring. Their Care Plan software creates an agreement between the practice owner and the patient that automatically manages all five aspects of the patient care plan, including financial, scheduling, monitoring, notification, and projections. According to Dr. Brian Capra, President of Genesis Chiropractic Software, design and tracking a comprehensive care plan is very complex. “Patient will not commit to care if they cannot easily understand their financial commitment. As importantly, chiropractic office owners must stay compliant by charging, adjusting, and writing off the correct amounts. In our experience, insurance companies leverage any opportunity to delay longer and underpay more insurance claims. We leverage the cloud, billing experts, and Artificial Intelligence to create an effective and easy to use individual patient care plan,” says Capra. About Genesis Chiropractic Software by Billing Precision, LLC: Genesis Chiropractic Software by Billing Precision was designed by chiropractic business owners with both patient experience and practice profitability in mind. Genesis chiropractic software provides a complete chiropractic practice management system that supports every role in a busy chiropractic practice, from the owner and practitioners to the front desk and back office. It automates the vast majority of standard tasks, including patient relationship management, revenue cycle management, compliance and office management. Its exclusive workflow functionality continuously improves productivity, control and predictability, fostering teamwork and time savings, which leads to greater profitability and practice growth.
Does X-Ray and Posture Software Make Your Practice Better?
X-Ray and Posture Software That Makes Your Practice Better!
Handling the Mission Critical Points of the Chiropractic Patient Experience
In a previous blog article, we talked about how using proactive Chiropractic software to quantify and improve the patient experience can take your practice to a new level. Chiropractic software can do this by handling the mission critical points of the patient experience, making sure that no detail is missed. So, what does mission critical mean when we’re talking about the chiropractic patient experience? Mission critical points for your practice are things that you have to follow-up with in real time or risk losing your patient. Every task performed by you and your staff each day, from scheduling to billing, inventory, collecting recurring cash payments, etc. From the first exam to following up on chiropractic insurance claims will have an impact on the experience your patients have in your office and will determine whether they continue with or drop out of care. Think about how many tasks you and your staff must perform each day to achieve a perfect patient care experience. Exams, adjustments, chiropractic SOAP notes, diagnosis codes, billing, taking patient payments, credit card on file, asking for referrals, scheduling future visits, and following up on no-shows and expired care plans are just a few of the mission critical points your practice experiences every day. These all have to be monitored in real time or the patient experience suffers. To retain just one chiropractic patient, there are an estimated 331 tasks that have to happen perfectly every single time. But, why are these tasks mission critical? Let’s take no-shows as an example. What does a no-show really mean to not only your business but to your patient. If a patient was going in for chemotherapy and they had to miss a visit, would they be waiting for you to call them to reschedule that visit? Absolutely not. Would they walk out of chemotherapy forgetting to schedule their next visits? Or, would they reach the end of their treatment, get their testing done, and not follow-up to get their doctor’s recommendations for the next phase of their care. Never…it is too important to them. So, when a patient in your chiropractic practice no-shows for a visit, walks out without a future appointment, or is not excited about their re-exam, what are they telling you? They are telling you that they don’t value their care. It is no longer important to them. They are telling you that they don’t value their care. Patients visit a Chiropractor and sign up for chiropractic care for the right reasons. They don’t sign up for 36 visits if they don’t understand the value Chiropractic brings to their lives. The problem is that they forget. And, they don’t tell you they have forgotten. They show you they have forgotten by not showing up for their appointments and forgetting to schedule new ones. If you don’t monitor and follow-up on these things in real time, you are in immediate danger of losing that patient. This is mission critical. A proactive Chiropractic software, like Genesis Chiropractic Software brings real value to your practice by monitoring each and every mission critical point in real time. It ensures that every one of those 331 tasks that have to be performed to retain each patient are not only assigned to the best staff member to handle them but also have been completed, giving you the ability to create an outstanding patient experience. Managing these mission critical points is the ultimate key to building patient loyalty, boosting patient retention, decreasing staff frustrations, increasing referrals and dramatically increasing the revenue per patient on average.
Chiropractic Software ROI Increases with Higher Patient Retention
We’ve talked about how important the patient experience is to the success of your practice. We’ve also discussed how using proactive Chiropractic software and technology to quantify and improve that experience helps you to run your practice at the level of big business. Now, let’s look at it from a purely marketing perspective and break down your Chiropractic software ROI (Return On Investment). Most already know what return on investment is. For example, if you gave me one dollar and I gave you back five dollars that would be a 5 times return on investment, a good ROI. But, if you gave me five dollars and I gave you back only one dollar that would be a bad return on investment. Almost every Chiropractor knows that they should be calculating their return on investment when they put an ad in the paper or send out a mailer. However, what these same Chiropractors don’t realize, is that they need to calculate their cost of marketing and getting new patients versus their Chiropractic software ROI of increasing patient retention. According to Harvard Business Review, it costs you five times more to get new patients than it does to retain patients you already have. Five times more. So, what does that mean? It means that you give me five dollars and I give you back one dollar – a bad return on investment. Bringing in new patients is five times more costly than utilizing a solid patient retention program. Yet ironically, most Chiropractic marketing software and systems focus on increasing the number of new patients rather than boosting your patient retention. It is interesting that the best businesses in the world are also the best at customer retention. Take the Ritz Carlton for example. Every single thing they do is broken down into small steps to ensure no detail is missed, every customer experience is personalized, and each person that stays at the Ritz receives the ultimate gold-standard care. The Ritz Carlton focuses on customer retention and in return achieves a huge return on investment with customers who return time and time again, happy to pay their five hundred dollars plus rate per night. It is time for Chiropractors to understand what the largest, most successful businesses in the world already know…retaining your current customers or patients equals a higher return on investment than marketing for new customers or patients, a five times higher ROI. This means that increasing patient retention by focusing on improving the patient experience is vital to achieving success in your practice. Any business person knows that you put your money where you will achieve the highest return on investment. For Chiropractors, the greatest ROI is not found in new patient marketing where most of the marketing dollars have traditionally been spent. Instead, investing in a solid patient retention program, similar to the Ritz Carlton, where each step of the patient experience is broken down and quantified so that no detail is missed, will generate the highest possible return on investment for your practice. Don’t miss our next post where we will discuss managing the mission critical points of the patient care experience.
