Chiropractic Practice: The Hidden Revenue Generator In Your Practice, Part 1

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Thrive in Five. I’m Dr. Dennis Perman, and I’ll be your chiropractic coach for today. This episode is called The Hidden Revenue Generator in Your Practice, Part One. You’re probably already familiar with the lifetime patient formula, which shows us that when you start a patient with a foundation of optimal chiropractic care and you add coaching on optimal lifestyle habits and an optimal program of health and wellness modalities and technology, it leads the patient toward making a lifetime commitment to ongoing care.

These three components are necessary for patients to receive the greatest benefit from your services. In this edition of Thrive in Five, we’ll begin our discussion of how to integrate your modalities and technology into your fee policies. So the additional services both improve the patient’s wellbeing and also generate more revenue for your clinic.

The extra capital will help you hire, train, or upgrade your staff, purchase the latest equipment, or just take some additional profit to the bottom line. So, let’s talk about how to fairly and properly monetize the variety of services we’ve been discussing in addition to your core service of offering the finest chiropractic care.

You may remember that I originally had some trepidation about modalities, feeling that they might dilute the sanctity of the adjustment and my reason for delivering it. I no longer feel this way, because I know that innate intelligence will cope with any energetic input it doesn’t need or want, since it already protects us from excessive heat or cold, impure air, food, and water, the deleterious effects of a constant relentless gravitational downward pull, and other universal insults we contend with daily.

Not to mention, ideally the modalities you apply are well thought out, relevant to the patient’s condition, and pointed toward achieving specific outcomes. They say that if all you have is a hammer, then all your problems start to look like nails. But in this situation, there’s a wide variety of options, depending on the shades of physiological difference you’re aiming for.

This gives you all the creative liberty you could ever need to paint your masterpiece, but with the focus, logic, and precision of a master craftsman. The better you understand your patient’s needs, the more decisive you’ll become with your recommendations, both for chiropractic care and the ancillary services you offer.

To develop specific fee policies, you need to balance the costs of buying, staffing, and using these modalities against the desired profit margin. But before we do that, we must consider the psychology of charging for these valuable services in the first place. I want to address the elephant in the room right away.

Handle it, and start growing past it as soon as possible. I can’t tell you how many of the doctors I work with sheepishly confess to me that they have technology like brain tap, or pulse electromagnetism, or frequency specific microcurrent at home, and they use it themselves, but they don’t bring it to the practice to use with patients.

This is flabbergasting to me, and that’s why I want to expose it. You will not be able to charge for 100 percent of the therapies you don’t do. And why do we use these advances ourselves and not share them with patients? Either we don’t want to confront introducing new healing concepts that could confuse patients, or more likely, we just dread the idea of confronting patients with an additional fee.

The answer to many of us is to just not use it, or to use it and not explain it, or charge for it. But there is a better way. I’ve done this with hundreds if not thousands of chiropractic practices over many years, and here’s what it boils down to. Once you try it and find out that you don’t die, you can feel good about going forward with it and using it on a regular basis with many, if not most, of your patients.

When you crash through that initial resistance, you’ll feel liberated and you’ll start using it in your practice. Be bold. Bring it into the office and take a shot. Do it once. You’ll be amazed that it doesn’t hurt at all. And you’ll kick yourself for all the good you could have been doing and the rewards you could have been reaping.

That’s how you do more than just help the patient feel better, but also to function better, and ultimately, to live better. I’ve spoken to many, many doctors about this, and they often feel like it’s already asking a lot of the patient to participate in the program of chiropractic care. They’re concerned that the cost of the modalities will compete with adjustment dollars and cause the patient to reduce their number of visits to save money.

While it’s obvious that patients may do this, it all depends on the way you pre frame the program of care, starting with the intake and the report of findings. When patients hear something far into their previous experience, like three times a week for example, their minds play a trick on them and they momentarily think it will be three times a week forever.

So some doctors start with what they believe the ultimate wellness schedule will be for that patient. For example, you could say, Mrs. Patient, our objective is to help you become so healthy you only need minimal care from us. That may be once or twice a month or even less, but that will depend on how well we work together now, while your body is in crisis.

How fast we get to your optimal health program depends on how much progress we make over these next few months. So, for now, you’ll need to come in every other day until I tell you, and I expect that after several weeks, we’ll be able to reduce your frequency of care based on the results of your reexamination.

Please stick to the schedule we decide upon, without deviation. That’s how we get to your optimal schedule of care as quickly as possible, with the least expense and inconvenience for you. Now they have a goal and a guide, so they know what to expect. And the philosophy of regular chiropractic care is supported by the contemporary advances that help our patients heal better and faster.

So clearly, if these advances add to the patient’s experience and well being, you are entitled to be compensated for your time, expertise, and resources. This is not about squeezing more money out of patients. In fact, it’s the opposite. If you can help a patient to respond faster, and use your technology to surpass their previous normal, going from sick to not sick, and then continuing on to become healthy and well, so they’re healthier than ever, they will ultimately need less care in the future, saving them money.

When you help them to engage, the benefits will tend to prove you right, and they will be satisfied and enthusiastic. And you actually earn more in a shorter time on the way to lifetime care when their expenses are spread out over time. So everyone comes out ahead. So you see the hidden revenue generator in your practice is not just a machine you use, though.

That’s a good thing to do when it matches the patient’s needs. PVA is the ultimate revenue generator because all your other profit centers revolve around the patient coming in for care. Next time we get together, we’ll talk more about how to effectively integrate specific modalities into your program of care and your fee policies.

But make no mistake, the best way to boost your income is to grow your patient compliance and retention. And with more visits as indicated, you have more opportunity to fine tune their spine and nerve system, and to apply whatever brain based modalities and technology are called for in their situation.

If you want to know more about this cutting edge material, go to the six essentials landing page by scanning the QR code you see on the screen. Or if you like, you can leave your questions below and I’ll respond. Thanks for watching. I’m Dr. Dennis Perman for The Masters Circle Global, where legends are made and legendary practices are built through chiropractic coaching.

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