Chiropractors are by our nature proactive. For our patients, Chiropractic is a new way to look at health. We educate our patients about the necessity of caring for their spine and nervous system in the prevention of health problems. It is therefore ironic that the one area where this has not been true has been in the technology and software we have used to operate our practices. This one area that is vital to the health and success of our business has instead been relegated to old methodologies, old ways of building technology, and ineffective, reactive approaches.
So, what does it mean to have a proactive technology? How can changing from a reactive to a proactive approach improve the management of the patient experiences and result in 62% higher collections per visit, 26% better patient retention, and 32% higher documentation compliance?
Let’s look at it from the same perspective as a patient being introduced to Chiropractic for the first time. Do they think it’s possible, when they come in for their lower back pain, that what they are about to learn could totally revolutionize their health? No. Do they know that it could improve the function of their body and therefore alleviate the headaches they’ve had all their lives, improve their child’s asthma, and lower their husband’s high blood pressure? Of course not. They don’t even think it’s possible to get those kind of results because they have an outdated health paradigm, or an outdated technology. They are looking at it from a reactive paradigm.
Yet, when these same patients are educated and begin to learn about the spine, the control the nervous system has over the functioning of their bodies, and the way Chiropractic benefits their overall health, then it all starts to make sense. From their new proactive paradigm, they are able to understand and achieve improvements in their health that they would never have thought possible before.
It is the same when you look at the technology used to manage your Chiropractic office. With the out-dated, reactive system used in so many practices, you have to go find what work needs to be done before you can do it. If you want to follow up on an insurance claim, you have to go to some aging report, find the claim, and then work through the steps. This means you have to probe and actively go find the work before you do it.
No one knows, including the owner, how much work was supposed to happen that day versus how much actually did happen. You have cash flow reports, no-show reports, no future appointment reports, expired care plans, compliance reports, billing reports. The list of reports to check the work of a single day is exhausting. Even worse, this type of system leaves you always reactive. You are never preventing problems and encouraging growth. You are just putting out fires.
But, with a proactive technology, your office operates from a whole new paradigm. In my next post, I will walk you through and demonstrate how this new proactive paradigm leads to the proven results I mentioned earlier – higher profits per visit, retention, and compliance.