Chiropractic Coaching: Lifetime Personalized Functional Chiropractic Care

Hello, everybody. And welcome to Thrive in Five. I’m Dr. Dennis Perman, and I’ll be your chiropractic coach for today. This edition is called Lifetime Personalized Functional Chiropractic Care. One of our key concepts for coaching our members to greater impact and success is the Lifetime Patient Formula, a simple equation that states that when you combine the optimal program of chiropractic care with optimal lifestyle habits and optimal health and wellness modalities and technology, You have the best chance of enrolling the patient beyond relief care to make a greater commitment to ongoing wellness care.

Only when all three of these components are in place will the patient receive the greatest benefit from your services. For a patient to be a success story and perhaps become a raving fan, you have to deliver on your promise by providing great chiropractic care, solid advice on how the patient needs to correct or adapt his or her lifestyle habits, and a clear definition of the additional services and products you can use to offer the most complete experience possible for the patient.

So then, the purpose of this Thrive in Five is to outline the specifics of lifetime personalized functional chiropractic care so you can build more lifetime patient relationships in your practice. This not only makes your office day go smoother and better, but you’ll also notice that when you focus on this type of patient, your return on investment is greater in the form of improved patient compliance, better results, and increased profitability.

So, let’s examine this phrase, lifetime personalized functional chiropractic care, and see what it really means. The word lifetime means that a patient thoroughly understands the importance and value of chiropractic care. It does not necessarily mean that a patient comes in every week or every month for their lifetime.

Some patients may require that, others may not. The finesse of providing lifetime care is in matching up the needs of the patient with chiropractic philosophy. Nowhere in the literature does it say that people need once a week, once a month, or whatever. It has to be custom tailored to the demands of the individual.

And this leads us into the second word in the phrase we’re considering, personalized. The word personalized refers to the individual details and idiosyncrasies of each patient. Does the patient have good posture, or is one shoulder higher, one hip lower, or is the head tilted or rotated? How are the ranges of motion?

Does the patient have very tight, very supple, or very low tone musculature? Are the shoes worn evenly or more on one side? Does the pattern of pain match up with the pattern of distortion? The idea is to relate what you observe to what it means physiologically to you in analyzing that particular patient, which leads us to the third keyword in the phrase, functional.

The word functional describes the mechanisms, operations, and workings of the patient’s body. This is where a DC shines, in understanding the subtleties of the body and what they mean, which patterns are normal for this patient and which are not normal, so we can use our vast array of interventions to cause the person to move toward whatever is normal for them.

In the context of chiropractic care, function refers to proper spinal biomechanics, the location and degree of neurological disturbance, and the interrelationship between the brain and body. Good chiropractic care is designed to restore and enhance function, and one of the ways a doctor of chiropractic can tell if he or she is on the right track is to evaluate function and establish a game plan to cause the patient to feel better, function better, and ultimately live better.

Many chiropractors intend that all of their patients become lifetime patients, but they may fall short of personalizing the patient’s care, or choosing an approach that is functional, that diminishes the likelihood of a lifetime commitment. Unless the care is personalized and functional, it’s unusual for patients to be able to see the longer view, which is invisible to them.

They’re more typically wrapped up in relief of their pain, which is visible to them. This incentivizes the doctor to implement any communication and leadership that makes the invisible visible to generate connection and establish a sense of purpose. So let’s look at how you can institute lifetime personalized functional chiropractic care in your office.

The mindset I just mentioned is a critical jumping off point for creating lifetime patients. The doctor must see the significance of lifetime care as an organizing principle, as a foundational element to their program of care. As I said, the word lifetime is defined by the doctor’s approach and the patient’s needs, rather than being a predetermined frequency or duration.

Part of the lifetime patient system is becoming your patient’s most trusted health and wellness advisor. For example, when the patient has a health and wellness question or problem, are you the first doctor the patient consults? Training your patients to use your expertise in this way moves the person toward lifetime patient status.

It’s up to the field practitioner to develop the appropriate skill sets in adjusting, in planning programs of care, and in comprehending the patient’s psychology so that case management evolves as a natural outgrowth of the person’s healing process. Personalizing the patient’s program of care is a matter of noticing what is unique and special about the patient and what is common and familiar about the patient.

So the DC adapts the protocols to fit the needs of that particular individual. Here, the chiropractor needs to take a look in the technical toolbox he or she draws from and choose an adjusting sequence that is most suitable for that patient. Is this an upper cervical problem? Is it originating in the pelvis and lower spine?

Are there subluxations detected throughout the spine or are they localized to a specific area? What role are the feet playing? Notice that an HIO doctor will analyze the spine and nervous system differently from an SOT practitioner, and different still from a chiropractor who uses Godstead or Activator.

All are valid, it’s just a matter of the doctor picking the techniques that fit his or her objectives. Some outside the profession may see this as a drawback, but the wide variety of technical interventions is actually an asset, because if a chiropractor attempts one approach and it falls short in some way, there are still many alternative adjusting styles and techniques that may work better.

Making your chiropractic care functional means you have a good reason to do whatever you do. Rather than just haphazardly mobilizing the spine, modern chiropractic is more tuned to identifying the key offending vertebrae and selectively adjusting those to reduce brain and body stress by giving the body what it needs.

No more, no less. Hence, the consideration of majors and minors emerges from the history of chiropractic physiology, showing you the best entry points and maneuvers for your adjustive strategy. Remember that each patient who visits you is entitled to the very best care you can render. So welcome your patients with kindness and compassion, knowing they usually come to you at less than their best.

You probably have the expertise to help them, so shaping your engagement with them to be lifetime, personalized, and functional will pay dividends in relationship, in clinical results, and in prosperity. Applying the lifetime patient formula to the chiropractic portion of your program of care leads you to more specificity, less squandered effort and resources, and better overall outcomes for your patients.

If you want the best results possible, offer your constituents lifetime, personalized, functional chiropractic care and watch your practice develop and grow right before your eyes. 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.

Thanks for watching. I’m Dr. Dennis Perman from The Masters Circle Global, where legends are made and legendary practices are built through chiropractic coaching.

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