With insurance reimbursements getting less and less, chiropractors have to be ready to collect more cash from their patients to stay in business. At times, the idea is scary and overwhelming, and that's why you need to arm yourself with the tools and methods for success! Join Dr. Miles Bodzin, the king of cash, as he describes ways to avoid the common mistakes that are made when running or transferring to a cash-based practice (that you can still accept insurance in if you want to). You will come away from this experience more ready than ever to make the step forward!

Dr. Miles Bodzin is the founder and CEO of Cash Practice and is a practicing chiropractor.

It’s no surprise to anyone in chiropractic today—insurance reimbursements are getting worse, deductibles are skyrocketing, and patients' co-pays are increasing. No matter how you look at it, patients are financially responsible for more out of their own pockets than ever before. How is your practice handling this dramatic change in our profession? Do you have the effective tools and strategies in place to accept more cash from your patients?

Join Dr. Miles Bodzin, CEO of Cash Practice, Inc., as he unveils some of the challenges facing our profession and the most effective tools and strategies to make your business grow now! To survive in practice today, you must be ready to ask and collect more cash from your patients.

Get ready to grow in 2012!

Recorded 5/24/2011To view the webinar recording, please click on the link below - "Read the rest of this post".

Join Dr. Miles Bodzin, Founder & CEO of Cash Practice Inc. and learn the strategies that some of the biggest practices in the nation are using today from one of our industry’s experts on “going cash”.  And yes...you can still apply these principles if you accept insurance.

We will also demonstrate how well CashPractice.com and Chirotouch are integrated together so your day-to-day practice life is easier and more fun!

When you went to chiropractic school, how long was it before you REALLY understood chiropractic? For some of you, how long were you in practice before you REALLY understood chiropractic? When I ask docs this question, I typically hear some number of years as the answer. "It wasn't until I graduated and practiced a few years before I really understood chiropractic."
If it took you years to understand chiropractic, how in the world do you expect your patients to understand chiropractic in such a short time? Do you really think they get it by hearing you tell the chiropractic story or reading a brochure or coming to a new patient orientation?

Although all these methods are tried & true for generating new patients, they don't change a person’s long-term behavior. Ultimately, the reason you educate a patient is so they will change their behavior to a better one that involves using chiropractic instead of dangerous drugs and medical care.

Look at how every other big company teaches people about their product. McDonald's, Coca Cola, the Drug Companies, etc. What do they all do in common? They deliver a short, to the point message over and over and over.
People learn something new by hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, touching the SAME MESSAGE over and over. People don't change their behavior by seeing one big advertisement. People are creatures of habit and a message has to be delivered over and over and over and over before they get it.

The philosophy behind the patient education I teach can be summarized by a term I coined, Drip-Education®. How are plants best watered in the most efficient and cost-effective way? Drip-Irrigation. How are patients best educated in the most efficient and cost-effective way? Drip-Education®!

Designing your own Drip-Education® System is easy.
Step 1: Define the SIMPLE benefit message you want your patients to know. I say simple, because they don’t need to know chiropractic like you need to know. They just have to know it benefits them. For example, "You get adjusted to stay healthy." Or, "Getting adjusted keeps your immune system strong."

If you (as a patient) understood that if you get adjusted, you will have a stronger immune system; would you need any further information as to why you should get adjusted? In today's world of super bugs and infectious disease, do you need to know any more? People just know, strong immune system equals good health. What do people think when you say "Nerve system". Health? Or do they think pain, numbness, paralysis? I’m not saying to ignore the nerve system, I’m just saying it does not make the simple message I want to share. Stay healthier with adjustments. See what happens if you start sharing the "immunity" concept with your patients.

Do you drive a car? Do you really care how all the mechanics work? Will you not drive the car unless you know how all the components work? If you like the car, will you tell your friends about how it works or just that you like the car? People choose a particular car for reasons such as prestige, make, safety, etc; however they still use the car to get from point A to point B.
What’s my point? In your messages, don’t get too caught up in the "how". Give them a big "why" and lots of "benefits to taking action".

As a general rule, people do not care about how chiropractic works. People choose chiropractic because it makes them healthier (and feel better).

Now that you have a simple message to share, you got to get the message out.

Step 2: Have a predetermined plan for getting that message to your established patients as often as possible and in as many ways as possible.

Examples:

1. Give out a weekly handout. The handout could simply be a photocopy of an article attesting to the benefits of chiropractic. "Ear infections treated by chiropractic!"
2. Send your patients an email based newsletter at least once a month. This is a no-brainer and is FREE to do. Just be sure you have their permission.
3. Send your patients a snail-mail newsletter. Keep it simple and hire a company to print and mail them for you.
4. Explain to a patient who comes in with a cold or flu how they will "feel worse" after the adjustment. That the adjustment stimulates their immune system and that a lot of people feel worse as a result, but then get better faster.
5. Explain to the mother of a child you just adjusted how that child may spike a fever, or fill their diaper on the way home, or get really energetic or sleepy afterwards.

In other words, tell the patient what they should expect to occur in regards to a "healing experience". Healing can sometimes be very uncomfortable.

Do You Educate New Patients? Extensive patient education is not something to be invested in new patients. New patients only get the information they need in order to make a decision as to whether or not they will choose to be your patient (i.e. they have a problem that I can help them with is all they need to know). I will not invest more in a new patient's health than they are willing to invest in themselves. So they have to hire me first.

Patient education is a privilege they earn by choosing to be my patient. I (like you) spent nine years and over $100k to get my education. I don't take an investment like that lightly. If they want a piece of it, they need to choose to become a part of my practice and invest in their health first. In other words, do not invest a ton of energy trying to educate new patients. In fact, the less you say and do, the more they want you.

Simply have a Drip-Education® system in place that produces very predictable outcomes - people who stay under your care for the benefits you tell them.

In summary, choose a simple message that you want your patients to know. Then come up with as many different ways as you can to deliver that message repetitively.

Dr. Miles Bodzin is Founder & CEO of Cash Practice® Inc, a web-based service company providing the Cash Plan Calculator®, Auto-Debit System® & Drip-Education® Email Marketing System. To learn more about how the Cash Practice® Systems can help you grow your practice visit www.cashpractice.com. Dr. Bodzin can be reached at drbodzin@cashpractice.com; or 877-FIFTY-50.

In the practice, what ChiroTouch has done for us is it’s made it much easier for us to get the notes that we need to do, to get done at that time. From the standpoint of someone checking in, there’re checked in automatically, I’m able to do my notes in a very streamlined simple  fashion. It does save us quite a bit of time.”