3 Things About Growing Your Practice No Certification Course Can Tell You

If you're a certified professional, it's no secret. You probably got little training on how to make money with a business. So today, I’ll share the key secrets you need to know on your way to seven figures.

Have you ever wondered how data and treatment planning connect? Data is something really precious to me. You can always count on it. You analyze it, and it drives your decisions. And if you're a data-driven doc, you now have an amazing data dashboard, and life is good.

Now, treatment planning is one of those things that really drive the growth of your practice, and mastering this skill is crucial if you change patients’ lives. You have to help patients overcome barriers, and I'm going to give you the framework for treatment planning. Like data, you can count on it because it works and will drive success.

Step 1: Produce Sample Marketing

Step one in this framework may seem a little strange, but let me ask you: have you ever walked into a Costco on a Saturday? It's like swimming through a sea of people, but they also have these cool stations where they offer free samples of their latest and greatest products.

Guess what? Those companies actually pay to be there. They're basically giving away their product for free, hoping you'll try it, love it, and walk out with bulk quantities. It's a low-risk way for them to introduce you to something new, and honestly, sometimes you walk out with enough to last you a year!

This is like treatment planning. We want to produce sample marketing because it’s an opportunity for your patients to engage with your patient transformation at very low risk or low cost. So, when we talk about creating an offer or building a road map to case acceptance, we want an opportunity where the patient gets to engage with you and sample some of your services.

This step can drive a high start rate in your practice because they get a mini transformation before we sit down and present the full care plan.

Step 2: Recognize That A Driven Doc Is A Very Ethical Doc

We’ll never prescribe treatment for a patient that isn't absolutely necessary to help them reach their health goals. However, we recognize that we want to accelerate tissue healing, and we have to make the connection between symptomatic and functional for a patient.

There are treatments to help patients recover from their symptoms, which is typically what insurance will cover. But beyond that, we want to increase function. As we both know, that is the non-symptomatic phase where we may challenge the tissue, and it does re-engage some of the symptoms, but that's what we want to connect for the patient.

We want to challenge the tissue, strengthen and stabilize it, and the symptoms may come and go through that process. Eventually, we’ll reach a point where we can challenge that tissue with no symptomatology coming back.

When we make this connection for a patient, it really adds value. We’re basically asking them, “Sure, we can help you get rid of the pain, but for how long do you want to be pain-free?” Because if we just focus on treating the symptoms and then send you on your way, there’s a good chance that the pain might come back.

So, by connecting these dots, we’re helping the patient understand that they’re here to truly get better. They’re ready to take on the challenge to strengthen their body. They want to get back out there, be active, and not worry about the pain returning. And that’s a different treatment plan.

So, as a physician or clinician, the more experience you get with patient care, the more confidence you'll gain in identifying your exam findings and your diagnostic testing and predictably putting together what treatment plan will take to get that patient to their health goals.

One of the things that helped me in my practice was explaining to a patient that even though you're committing to this, I can't necessarily guarantee results. But, we will stop every 10 to 12 visits to do a re-exam. These are progress exams to make sure you're progressing as expected.

It's the opportunity during that progress exam to determine if we need to change something. Are we behind schedule or ahead of schedule? Their commitment to the treatment plan is key to that. If they're missing appointments, not doing their home exercises, or not taking their supplements, this will dramatically impact the speed of healing.

So, on those visits, we will reassess if we’re behind or ahead and make adjustments to the treatment plan as needed. Then, based upon that, if we're not seeing progress, if the symptoms aren't changing at that first re-exam, we will have to reorder some diagnostic testing. We must do more advanced testing to identify the root cause and why that's not progressing.

This is best practice in working with patients anyway, so you should implement these procedures. Doing so will also help you gain confidence in presenting your care plans to patients, and that confidence will translate into patients feeling that confidence and increasing your start rates.

Step 3: Build Value In Your Care Plans

I want you to think about how patients will pay for speed, and I also want you to think about what it will take for the tissue to heal. As a chiropractor, we adjust the spine, we align the spine, and there are a lot of tissues around the spine that need addressing. That's why physiotherapy, physical therapy, and all these other modalities we bring into our profession help supplement that, help support that, and increase healing.

As we begin to build our care plans, we're talking with the patient about why we've added in things like a spinal decompression package, why we've added in laser therapy, why we've added in active rehab, you've got to connect the dots to the tissue and how long that tissue takes to heal based upon doing the therapies.

We recognize that if they don't do the right rehab or care plan, they may get some results, but the underlying root condition never fully stabilizes and heals. If there's still an underlying non-symptomatic condition, chances of reactivation are high.

So, in your care planning, I want you to build value in what you're prescribing. If you do, if you connect the dots of what you're prescribing to the tissue and healing time frames, you're not going to have patients saying, ah, let's take this out or let's take that out. No, we've got to build value on those care plans.

You're prescribing them for very intentional reasons. Remember, we're ethical. We are sure these services will accelerate healing and help regain this patient's life.

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