3 Simple Shifts: From Chaos to Calm in Your Holistic Practice
Here at The Data Driven Practice, we're always talking to chiropractors and healthcare professionals about how to collect data and use it to make strategic business decisions. That’s because it generates more money, creates efficiency, and makes running a practice less stressful.
Unfortunately, I find that many docs overlook data. They might think it's too tough and time-consuming, and they just don't know how to improve the data performance. So today, I want to share with you some mind-blowing metrics that if you understand and implement, you’ll see that a data-driven doc is limitless.
Culture Index
This metric is probably something you're not measuring. Culture is the feeling within your team and your practice. If I were to walk in and meet with your team, would I feel amazing energy coming from them? Would I feel clarity and certainty coming from you?
The culture index allows us to rate our overall culture within the practice on a simple scale of one to ten. So, on a scale of one to ten, where would you rate the feeling, the clarity, the excitement, and the energy coming from you and your team?
There's a direct correlation between the leader of the organization and the culture index, and I'm going to confess to you that I sucked at this in the beginning. You see, I was raised with chiropractic in my life. I'm the son of a chiropractor. I grew up believing that chiropractic care was the way. In fact, I had no clue what a medical doctor even did. Early on in my life, I've never been to one. My father literally fixed everything within our family.
So, I had this massive belief about chiropractic, but I wasn't formally trained in leadership. I didn't have a lot of opportunities to own a business or know how to run it. So I came into my practice running it on this belief that everybody should be under chiropractic care. That served me to an extent, but quite honestly, it kept me small.
It kept me small because I would keep coming into the office and serving patients, and I would recruit and hire a team to do certain roles within the practice, but I didn't provide them with clear goals or metrics to measure their success. I certainly didn't know how to train them and improve the outcomes of their role.
So, at the end of the day, when I walked out of the practice, I felt like, man, we were busy today, and we served many patients. And I would just kind of wave goodbye to the team and say, hey, good job today!
In reality, what I felt inside was a little resentment. I felt that I was working harder than anybody else in the practice. For every single problem, fire, or catastrophe that happened during the day, the team members would come to me to solve it, and I would solve it. I would send them off to execute it, but it exhausted me. I mistook busy for productive, and I mistook purpose and passion for profitable.
I had to shift that. I had to learn a completely new way to lead. I had to find great mentors who could transform me, and I had to go on a journey of literally reading every great business book I could find on leadership. One of my recommendations for you is an incredible book that I've been reading called “Radical Candor” by Kim Scott. She teaches that leadership is clear communication.
So, from that example of how I was telling my team “good job,” they could sense my true feelings through nonverbal cues, which was actually just the opposite of “good job.” It was, my goodness, why aren't you doing more? Why aren't you working as hard as me? This mixed message is a horrible dichotomy of communication.
So I shifted and did what Kim Scott teaches in her book: to take a second before rushing out the door. I would sit down with each team member and specifically point out what they did amazingly that day, like:
Getting a patient testimonial
Making sure the patient was rescheduled for their next appointment
Helping another team member solve one of their problems
Anything else that would highlight how they went above and beyond to help a patient
The clearer we get about the things that we're happy about, the behavior that excels in leadership principles, the more we reinforce that behavior with them.
On top of praising their successes, I also started offering constructive feedback like, “Hey, I noticed this happened. Here's how we could handle it better next time.” The goal isn't to make them feel like their job is on the line. I've learned that the hard way. In fact, I've even had team members who were shocked when I let them go, saying they didn't understand why. And I'm thinking, 'Are you kidding me? This has been a catastrophe!"
It's because I didn't understand the simple principle of clear communication that pairs with clear expectations.
Clear Expectations
The second piece to these mind-blowing metrics is pairing clear communication with clear expectations. If we fail to outline the expectations, we are setting ourselves up for absolute catastrophe. You can guarantee that your expectations and your team members’ expectations aren't just going to line up naturally. We've got to put energy into those expectations and be clear about them.
And we have a proven system to do that. We use our BlueIQ dashboard to track and analyze key performance indicators (KPIs). These are specific metrics that allow your team to either analyze the data coming into your dashboards from a platform or manually punch the numbers into the metric.
When you put that number in and compare it against a goal, it changes colors, showing the performance level of that specific KPI the team member drives. If you have a driven team member who understands the expectations of this specific product that they're responsible for driving, when they punch that number in, and it turns green, it's like, yes! I'm winning!
When it turns yellow, it’s like, I need to fix something. I need to put in more energy and effort. When it's red, they might be waving a hand here for help. So, let's help them, support them, and show them the processes that they need to train on to improve it. That way, they gain confidence.
When you help a team member fix something they're responsible for, their whole heart turns towards gratitude. They'll be grateful for your guidance and feel empowered to take ownership of their role rather than just feeling frustrated and scared of their job being on the line. Or worse yet, being oblivious to even knowing if they're doing a good job or not.
Your team needs a data dashboard to see the big picture. It shows them their goals, expectations, and performance all in one place. It helps them track their progress daily and ensures they work towards the practice's vision. A good dashboard is like a health check for your team, making sure everyone's firing on all cylinders.
Now, in our profession, the average practice only has around 1.9 employees per practice. I'm here to change that. I want to help you create so much demand in your practice that you've got to build an entire team. At the peak of my practice, when I was still in practice, we had almost 40 employees. So, understanding leadership and the process is essential.
The most important thing I learned in building that team was that I needed the exact same processes and skill sets all the way back when I had one team member. I could have solved so many headaches and problems if I would have had this framework.
Conversion Metrics
We want to track your conversion because this conversion is key in your marketing and case acceptance process. So we're looking at your marketing that's out in the digital world, and we're tracking engagements.
How many people regularly, daily, weekly, and monthly engage with your content and ads? How many of those engagements are turning into leads? A lead is somebody who has raised their hand but hasn't necessarily scheduled an appointment yet.
We then track that to the next metric, scheduled new patients. We want to look at the conversion rate between leads and scheduled new patients and between engagements and leads.
Watching the pipeline's conversion tells us a lot about how well we're building content that's solving and answering the problems that our patient base is suffering with. As we track that process from scheduled new patients, we want to track your show rate, which is the percentage of scheduled new patients who actually keep their appointments. And there's a lot you can do between these steps to improve the show rate.
Then, what kind of experience did they have on their first appointment? We're then tracking the return appointment, which is the percentage of them returning, meaning that you met and exceeded their expectations on the first appointment. And once they come back for day two, what percent of them accept your treatment recommendations?
Measuring the process is an absolute game changer. It tells you where your weaknesses are immediately and where you need to improve because if you can improve just one of those steps, you’ll have a multiplier effect.
It's not just about the numbers themselves; it's about watching them, making adjustments, and working with your team to brainstorm ways to boost the outcome. That's the mind-blowing process.
Back when I was seeing patients, I used to track these numbers, but I didn't really understand them. Once I learned how to use data to make decisions, I realized my process was too long. It took four days! Patients had to come back for three visits before even getting their first treatment.
It was frustrating for them and inefficient for the practice. So, we started analyzing the process and making changes. We tested different things and eventually cut the process in half. We then began treating patients by the end of their second visit.
The coolest thing was that our start rates began to skyrocket. Our practice grew because we had more patients coming into our care plans. Our collections grew, allowing me to hire more team members and reinvest back into marketing, which changed everything. And that’s why these metrics are mind-blowing. They have the power to grow your practice.
So remember, the power of leadership lies in understanding how to create an engagement system for your team. This system should give them clear feedback on their performance, helping them understand when they're on track and where to improve. You'll foster a motivated and successful team by providing this guidance and support.
To recap, the three metrics that are going to change everything for you are:
Clear communication
Clear expectations
Conversion metrics
If you want a little hand-holding on this process because I know it can be a little daunting, we created the FREE Practice Profits Challenge, which goes through step-by-step how to do this.
It's a 3-day, 60-minute a day challenge where you can join with other data-driven docs and go through how to do this process. So join this free challenge because it might be the one thing that changes everything for you.
