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.
How Genesis Chiropractic Software Can Help You Build Retention In Your Practice!
How’s your Patient Retention? Picture this; you start noticing a strange phenomenon going on in your office. You can’t explain it, but people seem to be disappearing. Every time you think of a particular patient, you look through your chiropractic software for their name, and realize they are no longer in your practice. Another face pops up in your mind, and they are gone too! What is going on? These patients were not “one-timers”. They have been in your office many times. They told you they were ready to regain their health. You thought these people understood the principles of chiropractic. So, what happened? You have been hard at work ever since you started your practice—,putting in long hours, networking, marketing, getting new patients in the door, then educating and orientating those new patients while trying to cultivate a community of practice members that will be with you to the end! And yet, here you sit, in front of your computer, looking at your office stats for the month and saying, “Where the HELL have all my patients gone?!”… Does this scenario sound familiar to you? You may find yourself thinking that maybe it’s just the “name-of-the-game” in chiropractic. Maybe you should just accept the fact that people come and go while you have to work your butt off for the rest of your life to fill the vacancy of every patient who mysteriously disappears; is that it? I’m here to tell you (thank goodness), “That’s not the case! You don’t have to be the Bermuda Triangle of chiropractic anymore.” Something happened to all of those patients, yes. They slipped through the cracks in your office. That’s what happened— some offices have “cracks” and others have huge, gaping holes! Either way, as the captain of your ship you are responsible for finding and fixing those leaks. Leaks in your office could be anything that causes (or encourages) a patient to leave before they should. A “leak” could be caused by one, or more, of four things: poor education, poor service, poor procedures, or poor organization in your office. Now, I’m going to show you FOUR TIPS TO STOP LEAKS IN YOUR OFFICE NOW. By following this advice, you will be able to help more people, grow your practice to the next level, and sleep easier knowing your patients will still be there when you go to work the next day. 1) Educate: Education is key. Most chiropractors educate their patients in some way, shape, or form, but are you really providing the patient with a valuable education in health that will change their life forever? Are you really teaching them the chiropractic story with passion? After all, there are hundreds of thousands of self-proclaimed “health gurus” bombarding your patients with info every single day, but simply “providing info” is not educating! Start passionately educating your patients about the body’s healing power, adding value by instructing them how they can maximize that power! 2) Great Service: Do you train your staff to give great service to each and every person who walks in your door? Does your staff greet the patient with a smile every time they come in? They should. Great service should start with the first phone call and continue throughout the patient’s interaction with your office. Make sure you and your staff are trained and conscious about giving exceptional friendly service. Now let me ask you another question related to service: How long do your patients have to wait when in your office? If your patients are spending hours in your office, that is bad service. Even if they love the care they are receiving from you, people just don’t have time to spend hours in a doctor’s office anymore. Get your procedures down and start creating a smoother, more efficient visit for your patients. This single tip could blow your retention through the roof! 3) Get Your Procedures Down: Allow me to give you a sports analogy— Do you think there has ever been a world champion team that couldn’t run a proper play? No way. That’s one of the first things coaches go over in the beginning of a season. If you can’t run a play, and I mean run it with perfection over and over again, then the synergy will be off. If this is the case with your office, be aware that patients take notice. You must have your procedures down and train each your staff members to know their position in your office. If you do not do so already, set up a weekly staff training session where you practice running through office procedures. You may even be surprised by how many questions your staff members have about their specific roles and responsibilities. 4) Get Organized! This may just be the single biggest reason behind your poor patient retention. Your patients are walking out of your practice, and you don’t even know it! This happens to so many chiropractic offices it’s not even funny. A patient who has been coming in for years suddenly stops coming in, and by the time you realize you have not adjusted Mary in a while and check the schedule, she has been gone for two months. Now, what do you do? Do you call and check on her? Oh yeah, that will look great, “Hi Mary I noticed you missed your appointment.” Mary replies, “Yeah, two months ago Doc. You’re just now calling me?” Don’t do that to your patients and don’t do that to your practice. The fact is that Mary didn’t just quit your practice two months ago. She started showing signs of leaving way before that. Maybe she started asking you questions about how her spine was doing, and whether she was “fixed” yet. Perhaps she’d already missed an appointment or two. Maybe she didn’t show up to the workshop she told you she would attend. All of those things are just some of the signs of a patient who is
From the Wrist Watch, to Siri, to Smart Software
Ask a room full of under 25 year old professionals if they are wearing a wrist watch. If you are over 25 you will be surprised at how few are actually wearing one. Why? The digital world has eliminated the need to look at you wrist to tell the time. The time is everywhere. It is on their phone, on their computer, in their car. For the most part they can find the time at any given time without the major inconvenience of looking at their wrist. In the past a wrist watch was a status symbol. It meant you were able to afford the latest technology. It said, “I am a serious business person”. I heard a quote one time, “I never trust a man who does not wear a watch”, but why? It meant they valued their time and yours. That they lived for more than the present moment and considered the future. Wearing a watch meant you were forward thinking. My how things have changed. So what does this have to do with Siri and chiropractic software? Clearly the new status symbol is the cell phone, or now, “smart phone”. Not only does it say you are cutting edge, but it means you are connected and it even means you are more intelligent Prediction: 30 years from now wrist watches will be for collecting and old people. There is another important distinction sown by the modern smart phone. They are “smart”. Siri has a name. Let me say that again, you can name your phone. Why name it? Because it talks back! You actually have a relationship with your phone! What does the phone tell you? Forget an appointment book. Remember that thing you used to carry around? Gone. Not needed. An analog/paper version. You used to have to memory manage you schedule for the day and tomorrow and next week. Not anymore. Just tell Siri. In the past, busy people, like chiropractors, might have an entire full time or part time employee just to manage their appointments. Not any more. From Siri to Smart Chiropractic Software There was an in between step from the appointment book to Siri (Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface). That was a digital appointment book. Remember the PDA? Same basic function as the paper appointment book but it saved a lot of space since you could store all of your contacts in it. There were the Palm, BlackBerry and even the original iPhones. Older chiropractic software like Platinum or Chirotouch rely on the wrist watch concept. They are not as bad as paper but they are NO Siri. They are like the Palm or BlackBerry. You can save lot of space, document digitally, and even make your office more efficient. The gaps between these types of systems and a system like Genesis Chiropractic Software are many but in this context, there is one glaring difference. This systems are not going to speak to you. They are not going to tell you how many no shows you have. What’s that? A report? That’s good but there is a big difference between having to look at a report (Appointment Book or PDA) and the report coming to you (Siri Talking to you). Genesis tells you, in the form of tasks, what critical patient relationship risks need to be addressed right now. It identifies the outstanding issues and assigns them to a specific staff member, maybe even you, automatically. There can be many types of tasks. Just to name a few: Missed Appointments Expired Care Plans No Future Appointments Balance Threshold Exceeded Daily SOAP Notes That Are Not Signed Compliance Red Flags Insurance Claims That Need Immediate Attention With software that functions more like Siri and less like a Blackberry, you can begin to gain control over all of the important things that need to happen every day because it is not dependent on you looking anywhere. The information comes to you. It is like not having to look at your watch or look at a blackberry to tell the time or what appointments you have tomorrow. The technology speaks to you in the form of tasks. When all critical tasks are put on one manageable dashboard you can see at a glance you can see who has the most work, what type of problems are happening most, and how much work there is and most importantly, what work did not get finished. Think of the billing software that finds the claims for you rather than digging through aging reports and having no idea if your biller is getting everything finished. Think of a schedule that is telling your team what they must to in order to maximize retention… Imagine a documentation and compliance system telling you when you put yourself at risk of an audit… Imagine a chiropractic software that markets to patients for you based on their specific demographic… Imagine how happy your patients will be when you and your team never miss a step… Your team is more efficient but at the same time more accountable to you. You sleep at night knowing you are safe from a major audit. Less time documenting, more time doing the things you love. Less stress trying to remember everything that needs to be done, more peace of mind. Genesis – The coming into being of something; the origin. This is a whole new world for chiropractic software.