Chiropractic Practice: How to Create Lifetime Patients

Hello, I’m Dr. Bob Hoffman for The Masters Circle Global where legends are made and legendary practices are built. Today I want to talk about how to create lifetime chiropractic patients. This is a really, really important topic and I want to dig deep into it so I give you more clarity on how to consistently do that. Stephen Covey, who wrote The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, one of the most important books in the last 30 years or so. Habit number two is to begin with the end in mind. I think when you process every new patient, your end in mind, your ultimate objective, your intentionality has got to be based on turning that patient into a lifetime patient, not for you, but for them to truly serve them, to help them live their ideal life, to have optimal neurological expression for the rest of their life.

So it begins with that intention. Now, how do we get there? Well, we have to realize that we have to find a way to monitor and manage what’s going on for that patient, not only their current pain or their current problem, but what’s subclinical. So many of you do such a great job with a new patient who comes in with neck pain or shoulder pain or low back tightness or headaches or these musculoskeletal conditions, and you do an amazing job through chiropractic care that produces these miracles of getting these people to feel better. But the truth is, if we were to take 99% of your patients who now feel better and do a full body MRI or do lab work or heart rate variability or any other significant diagnostic test, we’re probably going to find five or six or eight or ten abnormalities, things below the surface, subclinical things that are not normal and not healthy, but are not yet producing symptoms or disease.

Now, the patient is unaware of that. You see these things are invisible, and your job is to monitor and manage this patient to make the invisible visible. That’s the key concept here. We have to find a way to show them what’s going on below the surface. In a metaphor, if being symptom free is neutral, most patients show up your office as a minus two or a minus three or a minus five, and again, you do great to succeed at getting them back to neutral. But, and I know that there’s a plus one, A plus two, a plus three, a plus four, and five. On the other side, optimal neurological expression, living your best life, great energy, great endurance, symptom free feeling and functioning amazing. The problem is most patients are unaware of that. They don’t know that that’s possible. Their whole goal is to get back to neutral, and you succeed at that.

But in the process of succeeding at that, you lose that patient because they leave happy. And as a result of that, you’re constantly chasing your own tail because you always need more and more and more and more new patients. It isn’t wrong to want to attract more new patients, but what if 20 or 30 or 50 or 70 or 80% of every new patient that came into your practice stayed for the rest of their life? Now, some of these lifetime patients may need an adjustment once or twice a year, and some may need an adjustment once or twice a month, and some may need an adjustment once or twice a week. That’s up to them, your customization and your clinical skills. But a diabetic, once they get their blood sugar back to normal, they’re needing to be monitored and managed for the rest of their life because all kinds of internal and external circumstances can make their blood sugar elevate or drop.

That’s why they wear glucose monitors. We don’t have a glucose monitor, but their nervous system, their brain function, their spinal structure is going to have this normal range, but patients fall out of that range based on internal and external stresses, and we need to keep monitoring and managing them for the rest of their life. We do that by making the invisible visible, by serving them at the highest level, by educating them and engaging them and making care necessary and real. And I got to tell you, there are thousands of your colleagues who are doing that, and they’re crushing it. They’re having their best year ever, year after year after year, even during the pandemic. And you could do the same, but we’ve got to shift our thought process. The goal is not to just get people symptom free, to just get ’em back to neutral.
The goal is to give them their best life ever, now, and in the future. 

Now, I’m going to ask you on the screen, there’s going to be a QR code that I want you to take out your camera and aim at. There it is. Right now, aim at that QR code. It’ll bring you to the six essentials of a legendary practice and a short form for you to fill out to have an awareness about where your strengths and weaker areas lie so that you can help yourself. And if you’re not sure how to help yourself, you could reach out to us and we’d be more than happy to help you. But aim at that QR code, fill in that form and have a consultation free of charge and free of obligation to learn where your practice is doing well and where it could do a lot better.

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