[00:00:00] Speaker A: Every client that comes in has something they love. And so get out of your own ego and really get to know what they love and never forget what they love. And every visit you talk a little bit about what they love. I never stop talking about what they love. Man, I'm telling you, people are so impressed by that.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: All right, well, hello everyone, and welcome back to Chirocast, the podcast by Chiropractors for chiropractors. I'm Dr. Stephanie Brown.
[00:00:28] Speaker C: And I'm Danielle Habinaz. We're so glad you're tuning in today because we're tackling a challenge every chiropractor faces at some point. How to get patients to stick to their wellness care plans.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. So it's one thing to recommend long term care, but it's another to get that buy in and build a lasting follow through. So we're bringing in someone who has really mastered this at his own practice, Dr. Ron Sims of Back to Health Chiropractic.
[00:00:57] Speaker C: Dr. Sims has built a thriving, wellness focused practice where patients actually complete the care plans he creates and they come back for more. So today he's sharing his approach, his tools, and some real world examples that you can take back to your own clinic.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: Yeah. So let's dive in.
Ron, if you don't mind, if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself. Maybe start with why you became a chiropractor and what your practice was like when you first started.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: Yes, gosh.
Like most of us, I got injured playing sports in college, had never heard of the word chiropractic. And thankfully the gym I was working out at had a lady chiropractor come in and do a spinal screening and check my spine out and put me on an old fashioned machine called a sam. It was a spinal analyzer machine. It showed how crooked I was, showed how uneven my weight was. I was like £15 more on my left side.
I was a wreck. And then she did these cool things called adjustments on me.
I was so intrigued. And I went to work for her part time just to get in the middle of that because I was thinking that maybe was the direction I would go in. I was pre med, don't ask me why, but it was kind of through my own experience. So then I had a great associate ship down in Long Beach, California with Dr. Gregory Judd, amazing mentor, taught me so much about chiropractic, the philosophy, the art, the science. And really got to kind of learn early on in my career how to set up processes and systems so that I could be successful in helping people reach their health goals. And so that was kind of how it started.
Then I moved to Northern California, where I was originally from, started my own practice as the primary lead document. And that was in 1996. I'm dating myself here, so now I have two locations. I have four associates, I have an amazing team, and I work equal amounts of time on my practice as I do in it.
So I've learned to create balance so I could be the leader that my practice needs them to be and so that our practice can be vibrant. Because I realize I can only help so many people with chiropractic, I physically am limited as a human being to only handle so much in a given week.
And when I was doing that max load, I looked around and realized the impact on the community wasn't really what I'd hoped it would have been, because one man can't do it all. And so that's when I began to figure out and be able to build a team. And now our community, we're able to help two communities now to a much greater scale than I ever could have as an individual practitioner by myself. So that's kind of been my journey, and it definitely ties into today's conversation. So I'll let you take it from there.
[00:03:47] Speaker B: But, yeah, I think there's a lot that we can unpack there, so let's just dig in. This is going to be kind of broad, but could you answer in a, I don't know, succinct way, even though there's so much involved here, but how do you create a wellness plan that a patient follows?
[00:04:07] Speaker A: Yeah, that's great. Well, in our practice, there are two phases of care that someone has to go through first before they slide into this wellness care. It's an often, for us, overutilized term. What does that really mean? You know, is that preventative care? Is that maintaining care?
You know, what does that really mean? I guess is the first thing. And the second thing is, for us, most of our clients come in in crisis.
Not too many folks show up unless they move to my area. And they had a great chiropractor where they came from, come into my office and say, hey, I'm here for wellness. Usually they come in with something they don't want and they're hoping we can help them. And so it's really a challenge to take them from that over to this concept of wellness. And so what we're really good at, I think, is we have really good systems, really good communication strategies where we really kind of unpack that and reverse engineer that for people.
And like we say in our practice, when we take on a new patient, we have to make sure that their goals meet what our exam findings might require. If there's a big disconnect between what they're expecting and what their goals are and what you think you can deliver on based on your examination, then you need to not go into a relationship there. That's incongruent. You're asking for trouble. You'll never get them to wellness now. For us, we often take them through a journey in how we educate on day one and two. We don't adjust on day one. So on day one, it's all about discovery, curiosity. They're usually curious. There's even a lot of scarcity because we want to be authentic and transparent to tell them whether or not we can help them. You know, we have to be more transparent and more upfront with them as chiropractors to say, yes, I can help you, but here's the degree to which I think I can, you know, versus over promising and under delivering. And that's why we lose people as well. And so then you start them off on, at least for us, an intensive protocol.
But I always sell wellness care to them up front on day two and then I back off of that. And for me to accept them, they have to say yes to lifestyle chiropractic, like what you ultimately need. Once you're through this crisis, once you've resolved this and corrected it and you have a lifestyle built around it that helps it keep it under control, then you're going to move on to wellness care. And that's where you just continue to follow these principles and you maintain your wellness. That's how it works. So for us, it's four months of stabilization care, or we call it intensive care, getting them out of pain, getting them to where they can even do some exercises, then getting them to get great results at your RE exams. You got to do RE exams.
It can't just be subjective. Table side. You got to stop and measure, stop and measure, stop and measure.
That's the best way to keep people engaged to what their findings were. Because if it's subjective, they're going to be a flight risk when the pain goes away. They're not tied to their condition anymore, and so on and so forth. So for us, it's that four months to calm them down, get them, teach, start teaching them, start educating them. We do active care and corrective care, so we usually do another 12 months of corrective Care because I feel like we're really good. But we can't correct an adult in four months that has a chronic spine condition from a computer lifestyle and old car accidents. We just can't. So we have to be authentic and we have to be real with them and we have to tell them, look, this is a 16 month process to get to wellness care. Then it's a lifestyle and so that's how we sell it. And we have a really good conversion rate because we do these, you know, touch base points of objectivity. We use a subluxation station and then we re X ray periodically because we do corrective programs where we do modified pettibone and stuff like that. So we literally mean it when we say corrective care.
[00:07:54] Speaker B: Got it. So you did mention something really important I think there and that was your RE exams. And I know that was in the context of those first four months or the second phase of care as well. But once someone is beyond that and well, let's say they are in that wellness plan or that wellness care plan, do they, do you do RE exams on your actual wellness patients? And like what does that look like? Because I think you are alluding to this. But it's important to keep educating them as well, even after they're already in.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: Wellness and the picture paints a thousand words. So we do annual exams. We, we have lettering systems for them.
You know, R1 is kind of date or kind of report of findings is the kind of commitment. R2 is time commitment. R3 is financial commitment for us. R4 is the four month transition from the intensive phase they signed up for into that continued corrective phase. Key re exam for us there. We actually sit down for 30 minutes with them after that re exam and talk about where they were, where they are, talk about what are their next steps. We re clarify goals often because they're better than they thought they would be.
Then every 12 visits in our practice. And by the way, for us wellness is once a week. For us maintenance is twice a month.
Some of my clients can only get every two weeks. But they're kind of a wellness person. So you know, those are loose terms that fit together in our practice. But we have titles for the type of care. Now the other thing we do is we do these annual more intensive exams where we would then do X ray again. We do posture studies, we always do palpation, range of motion and then we do emg, thermal scans and pulseway profile. We have a person in our practice trained up.
Some of you maybe can't afford an associate. But maybe what you should do is what we did, and that is train up a new patient concierge position that can handle these RE exams for you so that they don't pull you out of the adjustment area. And you have to go from this to that. It's hard to go from clinical exam mode to adjustment mode. And so a new patient concierge does not have to be a chiropractor. You can train them really, really, really well as we have. And my new patient concierge, people mistake her for being a chiropractor. She's like so smart and says all the right words. Anyway. This helps you as a practitioner stay organized so you can stay in flow. But then it's important to go over the results of the RE exams and then also add a questionnaire with the RE exam. It's a great little thing. It's unbelievable tool. And it could be what level of subluxation did your X ray show when you first came in? Or what are some things at home you need more help with or what can I explain better to you now that you're at this stage of care? And these questionnaires progress as they progress, so they get a little bit more forward thinking more. And then I always review it. So I'll do the RE exam on visit 12, then on visit 13 when you come in, I do a table side review at my computer where I pull up your scans and I go over the objective improvements. And I only in our practice, we only change care plan or weekly frequency based on objective improvement, not subjective improvement. We have to be objective. That's just the way our system's set up. So you only move to the next phase of care when your objective improvement is at a certain level.
Now, often objective is subjective, are pretty close to each other, but not always. And so we have to be careful there. And so then these annual exams we would go deeper. It'd be more of like when they first came in, it would be X rays and maybe another layer of objectivity. And then that report is more private in the office like day two would have been. Whereas the other, along the way, RE exams, we do a quick little cursory review table side. Hey, you're on track, you're doing great. Still an issue there. Still an issue there. I want you to tighten up your exercise there. I want you to start, you know, we talked about the food and the inflammation you got going on there. You know, let's really work together this month to get to that next RE exam. And I'm excited for, because you're way better than you were. And so that kind of stuff. And then we just keep them engaged. You know, I feel like chiropractors table talk is so laissez faire. And so these objective kind of benchmarks are so critical to keeping their left brain engaged.
Because, I mean, every chiropractor on this call has those relationships that you're like, what happened to Mary? I thought we were BFFs. She told me all about the details of her relationship, her vacation. And you try to become Mary's friend and you stop being her chiropractor. I'm not saying don't be friendly. And there's going to be certain patients that you click with more than others. I get it.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: But yeah, and you always want to build rapport with people, too.
Get to know it. You got to be careful.
[00:12:31] Speaker A: 100%.
[00:12:32] Speaker C: I think the. As I'm listening, I think the common denominator here and what's working for your practice is patient education and patient engagement. You never want them to stop learning. But I also think humans are. We're visual. We want to see those improvements over time so that constant reaffirmation from the chiropractor, you know how things are going and you know what you're. You know, you know what you're getting when you walk in.
And ideally, you want your patients to become evangelist patients. They believe in it.
[00:13:06] Speaker A: Yeah, you're right. And by doing it the way we do it, they go from seekers.
They're seeking chiropractic. Like, maybe this will help me. We get a lot of people in their mid-40s who've never been to a chiropractor. It's shocking. Young people are turning to it quicker, which I love, but, you know, in that relationship is really understanding their love language and how they are, how they think. And then to take them from a seeker to a believer is usually rooted in results. So if I get good results, Danielle, you're going to believe in me, right? Okay. And now all of a sudden, I think we miss a step. We expect her to be like an evangelist for me. And I haven't done enough to get you ready to be good at that. And so for us, it's table talk. We do a lot of workshops because we want to take them from believers to understanders so they can understand chiropractic now and they can understand the world it has in their life, and they can understand the role that their own stresses have on their subluxation patterns. So we start taking them to A new place of intellectual understanding about how the body works. It's really fun, but that doesn't happen overnight. You can't change something that quickly. Paradigm shifting takes a while, and you got to do it. You have to be thoughtful, and it ties into wellness plans. It really does. And so, you know, then you take them from, you know, from believer to understander. Then my favorite is. You can call it a couple things. Advocator, influencer. So now, not only are you somebody who believes in chiropractic, and I always try to downplay the person involved. Like, our team, we're super transparent. Like, no, it's chiropractic that's made the difference, and your body heals itself.
Yeah, I think we're pretty good facilitators. I think we're good caregivers. But, you know, we don't want to get out of order and get all puffy and get an ego chiropractic clinic going. So that's why I like multiple doctors, because, hey, go see that one. I don't take it personal.
And so anyway, then that. That advocator, they're fun because now they're better than I am out in public. Because doctors tend to get all sciency because in a way, we have some insecurities rooted in, well, I want this person to know that I'm super smart. So when I'm talking out in public, I'm like, no, you know, I'm Mr. Smart Guy, right? Whereas me, I just dumb it down. And my patients that are advocators, they speak in a language that people get, you know, I don't know. I had this bone misplaced, and it was affecting the nerve. It went to my throat and, you know, believe it or not, connected to my swallowing. It was really weird. Or that ringing in my ear. And he did a couple things and taught me some stuff, and it's just changed my life.
That's all they gotta say. And then they're gonna go, who's that guy? Again, it may not be till three months later when they're doing yard work and they're like, what was Bill's chiropractor he's raving about at dinner the other night? I think I need that guy, you know, and that's how it kind of happens. But I feel like we.
We get too friendly. We forget our mission. Our mission is to change our communities, not to make a bunch of buddies.
And, you know, again, we love our clients. You love your clients.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: But you mentioned to.
I don't know. I think you might have said workshop, but I was curious, like, do you guys just have one, do you have multiple different ones that people can come to? Is it required? To what extent do you really require it? Because I think that's one thing too. Chiropractors are afraid to do is, is like, is require things essentially. So I mean, you're requiring people right out of the gate to understand like, this is what we do here and if you, you know, if you want to work with us, we want to work with you and, and you lay it out so they have an understanding of what to expect.
Sorry, side note, but I think that's really important too. You know, some, like a Cairo might tell somebody, you know, you have this acute thing going on, you know, three times a week for three weeks, twice a week for two weeks, once a week for one week or something. But they're not laying any foundation or groundwork for what happen after that. And then the patient becomes totally surprised when it's like, okay, you know, here's the idea of maintenance or wellness. It's just comes out of left field. So I think pre framing that is important. But yeah, I wanted to get back to your, the workshops or whatever you guys call them and what that looks like in your office.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: That's a great thing to talk about because again, it all ties into wellness compliance. Right. You know, it's one thing to have I want a wellness practice, but I want people who are compliant, who are showing up, they're paying and they're referring. Why? Because you've been their serpa, you've been their guide. And that started on day one when you had that empathetic connection and you actually did something quite remarkable that they're not used to. And that is you listen to them and you, you interviewed them and you took the time and didn't do it on the fly and you onboarded them properly by educating them. We take their story in first, quickly, three, five minutes, don't take any notes, tell me your story. Why, why now? Why are you coming to the chiropractor today? Like why not a month ago? Or why didn't you put it off longer, you know, and, and then, then we get through that and then we get to their. Then I tell them briefly about who it is we are and what we're looking for in this day one process. And I feel like we don't pre frame things enough. So I'll pre frame how our visit's going to look to you and I get your story first because I want you to Know I, I'm, I care. And I've already toured you in my office. And we do a Socratic tour.
We always say we want you to. You're on a journey of 100 yeses when you sign up for a new patient appointment. You said yes. You showed up. That was another yes. Then I toured you in every stop on the tour. My kids area, my active care area, my active seat area, my adjustment table area, my exam area, my report area, my wall of fame testimonial area. I hit every stop and explain to you what this is all about.
And then I stop and go. Do you hear me? Are you tracking?
Because I want those yeses. Yes. Wow, they're excited. I know you worked on Kids. That's crazy. Want to hear more about that later? You know, seed, plant, seed, plant, seed, plant. And then I get into the back, I go, this is, we're going to spend our time together today.
We're going to get to know your story.
And then it's at that point I'm going to say, why now? And then it's at that point I'm going to say, what type of chiropractic were you under? Was it only for crisis? Were you on wellness? So I really want to know, just because it was Cairo, does it mean it's the same as your office? No, maybe not if you don't ask that question. I mean that's, that's a low hanging fruit question.
And then I'll always edify referrals, man. People don't do that enough.
I got referred to a new biological endodontist. And when I walked into their office on this cool sign, it was really neat. It was kind of, it was in a beautiful area and it had my name like big, like welcome Ron. I never met him yet. I was like, wow, that was really a cool touch. It wasn't a HIPAA violation.
[00:19:41] Speaker B: People love seeing their name on the board, wherever it is.
[00:19:47] Speaker A: Oh, they love it. It's like so many cares.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: You're like, oh my God, that was me.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: So our day one, our day two, then day, day two's report. Then the mandatory thing is they do a better results faster workshop on visit 3 that we pre tape. It's a 15 minute video so they have to watch it like you, you can't come in. Sorry. Yeah.
[00:20:08] Speaker C: Built in. It's built into their care.
[00:20:09] Speaker B: Do they watch it in the office or do you send it to them.
[00:20:12] Speaker A: Or they watch it in the office on visit three.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: Okay, so that's part of their visit though. You're not asking them to, at least for this one to come in at 7 o' clock on their own live a month.
[00:20:22] Speaker A: And we like that as a, as it relates to educating a bigger crowd of people. We'll bring food in and we'll do a big one a month for each office because it, it serves a lot of purposes for us. Fun people want to get out and have a free meal. And I go invite your friends and family, people that are in your group that you think would benefit from hearing information about health and wellness and staying injury free and who doesn't want to know more about that? And then the other thing for me in that is it's just better. But the, the ones that are the type a person, we make them watch a video.
[00:20:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:52] Speaker A: And it's really good. It's quick. And then we ask questions at the end and we have a quiz. So they take a little quiz. Then they visit three, they set up all their appointments. We map people out and that's. If you're not mapping people out, you're not going to have a wellness practice. You got to map people out. Chirotouch makes it super easy to set up your mapping your care plans. There's multiple ways to do that within the software and we leverage that on the cloud quite effectively.
But back to that workshop, we also do advanced workshops. We've pre taped a lot of them because we do a lot of move well, eat well, think well, biohacking.
We're pretty straight principal chiropractors that believe in teaching people about lifestyle because we know that's why they're subluxating their spine. So we need to come alongside them and say, look, you're the problem, you know, not that little car crash you got. And you were a train wreck going into that, you know, and that's why it had such a big impact on you. And so it's important we teach them all these in these steps because once they start feeling better, they're going to lose sight of that. And by the way, when they first come in, we always say it's the elephant you're talking to, not the rider. But down the road you're talking to the rider. The elephant's emotional. I'm in pain, I'm hurting. It's not the time to give them a dissertation on their X rays. Do you go over them? Yeah, high level. Do you explain to them you can help them? Yeah, high level. Now if you got a left brain engineer and he wants all that, then you let him have a little bit more than the next guy.
But on the average client, don't overwhelm them. Just tell him you can help them and lay out that. Spend most of your conversation on what you're going to do for them.
And I explain every visit to you.
Here's what your normal visit is going to look like. It's three to five minutes is all we believe in the power that made the body can heal the body. I'm going to remove interference, your body's going to do the rest. And we're not going to over treat you. We're going to often the less we could do the better.
And so we explain that very clear to them. This is how you check in. Then we're going to do these re exams and this is what that looks like. Then we're going to have these reports. We sit down with you. Then as you get better, you're going to do more and you're going to come in less and we're going to do this together.
There's a certain for you part you can't do for yourself, but there's a certain part we can't do for you. And so this teamwork makes a dream work approach is what's going to get you through the first four months. At the end of that four months we're going to do a really, really detailed exam again we're going to compare you to day one. So I guess my question to you is if you chose to do nothing about this today and again this is day two and day 37, these key transition appointments, if you chose to discontinue care or if you chose not to start care. What. Based on our conversation and what you just learned today, what do you think is going to happen to your underlying spinal condition?
[00:23:31] Speaker B: There's only one answer to that.
[00:23:33] Speaker A: Yeah. What would you say? What do you hear? When you were practicing a lot, what were you hearing?
[00:23:39] Speaker B: Yeah, they just, they'll say it's not going to get better or it's going to get worse.
[00:23:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
How many Cairos ask that question and then the next question after that? If you say, well gosh it would get worse, then I'm going to go, well is that what you want?
And they're going to go no. And I go, okay, well I think we should start right away. I'm not a procrastinator. I think it's time to get going. It's been long enough. So I'm going to have Sandy come back. She's going to explain the ins and outs of our care plan, how the finance Works, how the schedule works. We need your. I need your commitment because I'm 100% in. I need your mindset. I need your schedule. And we don't work for free, so she'll talk about that. But we provide a great value, and it's. We could charge way more than we do. But, you know, I don't say that necessarily, but I'm just saying in general, that's my mindset.
[00:24:29] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, let's touch on that. I know as you were talking, you talked about mapping out the care plan, and it made me start thinking about, are there DCs that unintentionally create care plans that maybe are too complicated or they're unclear to the patient, you know, could cause roadblocks for that patient or the financial aspect.
So how do. What do you do? What do you avoid when you're presenting a care plan?
[00:24:57] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think, gosh, you know, how well you do. Day 37, care plan, when they're done with the first four in my practice, how well we do our annuals. Oh, man.
Day two. And those key appointments, how well you do those, how you do them Socratically, how you get buy in, how. And then those key appointment conversations of if I'm only with you for five minutes, you know, it might be a little bit about, man, the Raiders made a bad draft pick or whatever. You know, I agree.
Then I immediately go to talk and tell. I talk about their spine. I talk about different symptoms that might create. Hey, you're subluxated here at T6. Has your stomach been bothering you lately? That kind of stuff. So I work through explaining chiropractic every patient. I don't care if you've been with me for 30 years. Your C2 is off today. You've been having trouble with your sign. You know, every visit, every day, high volume. For years I've done that. And I always end it with coaching. Every visit, a leadership moment. Instead of like expecting your girls to have all the plates in the air up there? Because I'll look on Chirotouch. It's so easy on the cloud. Click on their name, boom, there's all their appointments. You click on futures and past. If I see less than 4 futures, I'm not happy as a boss.
Like our next training or it's a patient problem in the front desk because this guy's so hard to. He's so nice to you up there, but up here he's like, I'll call you, you know, so then now that I know that I provide an Extra level of leadership. How often do you do chiropractors, triangular conversations in front of your staff and the client at the same time. So key, no spilt crumbs. Because if I'm talking to Danielle about you, doc, about what you need in front of you. Hey, I wanted to come in three times a week. We're going to do a re exam on the 12th.
We'll do a table side on the 13th. Let's set those up for now.
Or that's going to be the first, you know, and then, then we'll go to twice a week. If you respond how I expect you to go, you know, and then at visit 30, we're going to do RE exam every 12 visits. And then on visit 36, we're going to shoot some new pics. So it's really important that you follow through on the active care because that's going to dramatically impact your.
Your corrective results on your X ray. And so anyway, you know, all these nuances in there, we get so laissez faire just on the given visits, like, cap it with leadership. Walk to the front. You can sense a flight risk.
[00:27:24] Speaker C: Yeah, right?
[00:27:25] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, Way better. Yeah. They're getting ready to go on vacation and sometimes they don't fly away on their own. This happens, right? And they feel better. You did a great job, you know, so you go to the front. Hey, we're transitioning into a critical and dangerous stage of. Of care, Danielle, because you're feeling so much better, and I'm worried about you overdoing it because I know how your personality is. So I want you to remember where you were a month ago.
Okay? So that's the first thing is critical and dangerous because you're going to overdo it. Don't overdo it. Remember where you were. Secondly is you're going to be more likely to miss an appointment here and there, and that's going to set you back. Just because you're feeling amazing doesn't mean you resolve the underlying condition. The iceberg is still there. We just helped you get it below water. So you're not really as disabled as you were two months ago. Are you with me on this? Always end with a. Are you with me?
[00:28:17] Speaker C: It's disarming.
[00:28:18] Speaker A: You're close to them already. Are we on the same page?
Do you have questions for me?
Are you getting ready to stop care? I said that to a guy the other day.
[00:28:27] Speaker B: That's funny.
[00:28:28] Speaker A: He's like, no, no, I'm not. I promise.
[00:28:30] Speaker C: I'm like, don't Man, I think that's, that's necessary.
[00:28:35] Speaker A: But the wellness plans are great. Ours, we, okay, let's just use an example once a week.
So we have three menu options because we also do health coaching in our practice. If you're a practice out there and you're like, gosh, I want to coach them up so much more per visit, but then I got to charge more and I might price myself out of the market or I can't spend more time with them. So we created these health coaching visits for those that need that extra level of guidance. So we do our top tier plan. We have a hyperbaric chamber too. And we have long access traction. So you get four adjustments a month, you get two long access kind of preventative traction sessions a month. You get one hour of health coaching with me a month on Zoom or on a HIPAA compliant one. Actually, doxy me does I wonder, do you guys have one built into the cloud? I meant to ask that, but we can talk about that later. But anyway, then the other thing we offer is, we also offer.
Well, that was it. Yeah. Oh, and just kind of the rules of engagement are they have to be on auto debit and they have to be mapped out for their exams the whole year. We map it out 12 months at a time, six months minimum, because we have a stat in our practice set will haunt you as a practitioner. And that is you should be 80% future scheduled visits one month out.
So if I look a month from Monday, our team checked out 200 on Monday.
So that's kind of our average. So in a month from Monday we better have 160 on the books already. And I looked this morning, we have 130 and we have a staff training tomorrow. So guess what's going to come up top of the list is, hey, mapping. Because it just gets. You get busy and you look and go, oh, I didn't map this person out. And that's how people slip through cracks. They're feeling better. You have to chase reminder by text.
[00:30:29] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:30:30] Speaker A: And a week goes by, two weeks go by.
[00:30:33] Speaker B: Yeah. And if they're on auto debit, it's not like they're doing the let me stop at the desk every time I leave kind of thing. So yeah, that's something like if you're going to have a practice like this, you have to have those systems in place to make sure that your staff or whoever's job it's going to be is watching to make sure that you're not. Like if someone's approaching the end of Their future scheduled appointments. Like at what point are you guys noticing that and then scheduling more or whatever the next step, auto debit continues whether you're watching.
[00:31:02] Speaker A: Well that's the other thing. We have a built in system that we've created to watch for those credit balances because next thing you know you, John moved away and you have a $400 credit that you got to write a check to. John.
[00:31:16] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:31:17] Speaker A: And too many chiropractors are taking prepayments and they're using that to pay their overhead and their life and they're not putting in an escrow account. What we do in our practice, we never accept more than one month of payment at once.
It just keeps the credit ledger list manageable for those that slip. You know some people just vanish, right?
[00:31:36] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:31:36] Speaker A: They're like where'd they go? They're doing great.
[00:31:38] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:31:39] Speaker A: And they just high flake factor and you did the best job you could and they said all the things you that they should have said and it just seemed like it was off to a great start. Then find out later they were just so amazed at the results and they just stopped.
And that's just how they roll, roll with their life, you know. And you just happen to collide with them and you did your best but now they're on dotto debit and they got a $400 credit and they want that. And your team's like well you could keep that as a credit, you know and start coming back in and. But it doesn't always work. And then sometimes the doctor's got a call and yeah, did I let you down? What's going on? Those awkward calls? But I have some Cairos, they get like 2,3000 at once and so are they taking 1800 of that and putting that in an escrow account and not touching it and only drawing upon that when the visits are rendered system you can set up.
That's how you do it because that's.
[00:32:25] Speaker B: Required in some states too. And a lot of people don't even think about what their state laws are or bother checking into it.
[00:32:30] Speaker A: So that's a really good point. Yeah. For us we try to keep that list low but we'll give people discounts if we, we disincentivize people from pain as they go.
So we always have some sort of package or plan for them.
But yeah, and by the way for them to get health coaching, hyperbaric treatment, all those modalities in my office as one offs they're saving dramatically but they're not saving on the Chiropractic side, we don't discount our chiropractic care, but we have two levels, two price levels, adult and senior citizen. And we throw a lot of people, families, like if you're coming in your husband, we just put them on the senior rate to make your family work better. But we don't. In California, we do some insurance billing and to be compliant with the insurance laws, every cash rate you have needs to have a billing code attached to it.
So for instance 98941, whatever you charge for that, that could be tied to your cash rate. You can't, you can only discount them a set amount and you have to do it for each of them if you do insurance billing. So don't be out of compliance with that for sure.
So two big pitfalls people get into is huge auto debit, balance of money coming in or taking too big of prepays up month up front and then missing out on helping people with just insurance details, things like that.
[00:33:59] Speaker C: Yeah, let's talk, let's talk about that. I, I don't, I think some people think they put wellness in a separate box from insurance patients. But there are lots of offices out there where your patients, they want to use their insurance and they want to become a wellness patient. How do you navigate that year over year when insurance resets?
[00:34:19] Speaker A: Well, technically most insurances are for crisis care, so they're going to give you limited visited offering.
Obviously Medicare, you're not supposed to do maintenance care, but most Medicare people have chronic symptomatology, so it's not really an issue. But you know, but as far as just regular insurance, what we do in the report of findings on day two is we hopefully know all that by then. Sometimes you don't, unfortunately, and we don't. We're not a big biller. We're out of network with most, but we'll do like Veterans Administration Medicare again. Some PPOs out of state are great.
We do personal injury, MedPay, things like that. But even within all that on a cash patient, or maybe it's a hybrid of maybe you get 10 visits a year and you have a $30 copay. But I laid out a program for you that's, you know, maybe the first year, it's, you know, let's just call it 52 visits the first year.
So we just will explain it to you on paper like, hey, you know, you got 20 or 10 at a $30 copay and then you've got these 42 at our cash rate and you just lay that out for them up Front So they know, you know, sometimes you, the problem with insurance is sometimes you don't know the nuances until you get the explanation of benefits back. Right. You know, because every carrier is going to have an allowed amount.
And no, like PI is a good example. No 2 PI med payment schedules are the same. You know, every carrier seems to have their own reduction schedule, allowed amount. So.
So I think within that it's hard to sometimes get these care plans just right, but at least give them an idea up front like, hey, you need more than your insurance is going to cover.
[00:35:56] Speaker C: Oh yeah.
[00:35:57] Speaker A: Now if they came in in December and it kind of sets up nice for them to get 20 if it's a calendar year program, then all of a sudden they get 20 visits in the next two months.
So sometimes they get lucky and that covers the more intensive part of their relationship with you versus and then, you know, going forward for that individual, you could kind of have them on a wellness schedule or a maintenance schedule, which would be 26 visits a year. And let's say their insurance covered 20. So now they're going, yeah, year over year. Now that I paid my dues and I'm on this level of care, I'm only having to come out of pocket for six a year kind of thing. So I think it's good to kind of be able to. If you have a hybrid practice where you're not pure cash or pure pure insurance, that's kind of how we've done it and it works pretty well.
Sometimes you get math is off and EOBs are off and you get patient owes money or you owe money. Just got to explain that to them up front. You know, expectations and agreements, things like that.
[00:36:53] Speaker B: I think they appreciate the effort too when you show them on paper, like this is what we think we can tell from your insurance, this is what we think is going to happen. And I think that they all because nobody trusts their health insurance company anyways. They understand when it comes back on paper, if it was different, like you still did the best you could.
But Danielle, do address your question. If someone has health insurance and they're like, I want to use this, but I have no complaint, I'm coming in for wellness care or whatever. I mean I have done this in the past and I have them all like if I'm in network with that insurance company, I, I've printed out their actual like chiropractic policy and I will show it to the patient because it will say like, we only cover this. This is what that means.
We define maintenance As X. And we don't cover maintenance like in the insurance company company's own words. As soon as I show people that, like, that helps it click a little bit better, we'll have that conversation. Like you, you know, when they come in, they have a cute thing going on or whatever, that's what your insurance is going to help you for. But once they see that you've, you know, gotten better to their definition, then they, you know, they're out at that point and here's where they are explaining that to you. And so I have literally done that. I have them all saved. I used to have them printed out on paper when I practice full time. And I would. I mean, they. It would blow people's minds too. Especially the way the Medicare one is worded. It's wild because it's like, God, I wish I had it in front of me. But it just says something like, you know, we don't pay for care that seeks to improve health and stuff like that. And it's like the way they have it written, it's like exactly what the patient wants. And Medicare is like, nope, we don't do that. So I have found that that helps people understand over time. And you could just Google some of these things sometimes and it's publicly available, like on the website of different companies and whatnot. So you don't always have to be in network or, you know, be logged in or whatever. Sometimes you can google these things and you can just find them.
[00:38:47] Speaker C: Yeah, that. I mean, I think that's awesome because I know there's. There's gotta be, you know, hundreds of thousands of patients that are, you know, oh, my plan covers chiropractic. Well, what does that mean? They're not looking into it all in their mind? No, it covers chiropractic. No, it covers an acute issue.
And once that acute issue has resolved, they're out, insurance is out, and you're on your own. So I think, you know, explaining that up front, that's incredible.
But that also ties into my question of the financial aspect, because I imagine there are patients out there, they see the value, they understand the value, but there's budget constraints. How do you. How do we navigate that?
[00:39:31] Speaker B: Can I just share a story really quick?
[00:39:33] Speaker C: Always.
[00:39:34] Speaker B: I had a patient once came in to see me and I was in the office by myself, so there was no one else around. I had no backup and regular established patient. I was in network with her insurance, but she said to me, like, hey, Dr. Stephanie. I mean, she had like a $20 copay and she was like, can I catch up next time? And I was like, that's fine. I don't care. I knew she was coming in, but people will forget their wallets. And this is before I did any, like, auto debit and stuff. So it, you know, it's not a big deal, by and large. But, like, on her way out after her appointment, she. I was like, oh, what are you doing the rest of today? And she's like, oh, I'm going. Like, she was literally going to get her nails done with her. Like, this was an adult woman bringing, like, her elderly mom to, like, go get their nails done. And like, she like, okay, so you value paying to get your nails done, but you don't value me, the office, or the service that you're getting here. And like, in those moments, like, I was like, oh, that patient. Who does she think she is? Which is kind of true, but more so I was like, okay, what am I doing wrong?
But it's like, how are your nails more important than paying to get adjusted?
And so it aligns, you know, to what Ronna said. A lot of what they're doing. I think it forces people to look at their own values and their own value system. System and determine what's really important to them. And I have experienced this over time. Like, you know, if somebody really values or. Or wants to pay for something, like, they will find a way.
We had another family one time that you could tell. And there were other things going on where they were not of high financial means at all whatsoever.
And my employer at the time struck a legal good deal with them. So we were like, within the guard rails of what we're allowed to do in our state and whatnot.
But I mean, they used to bring in, like, fresh fruits and vegetables from their garden just to try to, like, they. It was like that exchange of energy and, like, assets, kind of like they felt like. I mean, and they were amazing tomatoes, but, like, they would. They would just bring stuff in for us like that.
And. And they so appreciated the care that they were getting. But then you have somebody who would rather pay to go get her nails done. Like, which patient. Which patient do you want, you know?
[00:41:48] Speaker C: Yeah, pouring your energy into. Yeah, that's right.
[00:41:51] Speaker A: Yeah, that's something people need to hear.
[00:41:53] Speaker B: I feel like it's way easier, like, plan to explain to somebody when you are only asking them to pay monthly. Like, you're not asking them to drop down two grand for the entire year all at once. And I feel like that makes it harder. I feel like smaller are. It's, it's just more digestible for a lot. For most people, probably, yeah.
[00:42:15] Speaker A: And you have to create, you have to create the value. You have to maintain the value.
You have to keep your mindset on the pulse of how that patient's presenting to you, their body language.
Everybody receives education differently. So the style at which you got to educate patient on table one is far different than the guy on table two. So being able to understand the nuances of human behavior, my team is trained now to give me a heads up on new patients. Like, hey, this lady more fits this personality profile. So when I come in guns ablazing on a type A person, I got to tone that back down and change, you know, try to match the patient's tone best you can. There's a nuance there. And the longer you do chiropractic, the more you kind of learn. The other thing too, I think for me is a lot of people forget to go back to the life effect of what the condition that brought them to you in the first place.
How is it affecting them? We always say four agreements. You have to have four agreements with the client. One is we have to agree on what your problem is. Like if you're minimizing your problem.
I have no interest in being your chiropractor. You're, I can't do anything for you.
[00:43:28] Speaker C: Right.
[00:43:29] Speaker A: Secondly, if you know, is that a maximizer, are they somebody who milks it or whatever? You just kind of know.
But are we in agreement of the problem is not the symptom. It's the list of things that you're not able to do in your life that are meaningful to you. And so that's where we spend a lot of our time as a team, is finding out their why. Everybody's got a list of whys, right?
Some rated higher than others. Like, God, I love to travel, but I can't do it. I can't sit in a plane, or I can't do this, my shoulder with a luggage, fill in the blank. And so figuring out their why. It's gardening, it's sports, it's passion projects of knitting and painting or whatever we all have. Every client that comes in has something they love.
And so get out of your own ego and really get to know what they love and never forget what they love. And every visit, you talk a little bit about what they love. I never stop talking about what they love. Whether it be an acute patient in month two that's doing way better. I'm like, oh, you might be Pitching and putting in two weeks. You know, that kind of stuff. It's real stuff. Or, hey, it's springtime. It's time. You know, I know you want to turn that garden, so be careful. Make sure you ice and you drink your, you know, sea salt water and make sure you get your electrolytes, and you're gonna be out in the sun, you know, Man, I'm telling you, people are so impressed by that.
You're not doing to impress them, but I'm impressed by that. When I'm in a healthcare office, I love that attention. And it's not phony. It's genuine. It's rooted in care and empathy.
You know, it's rooted in what brought them to you in the first place, their goals, their life effect. Most people's goals are, I want to play golf by June, or I want to. I want to be able to dance at my daughter's wedding. You know, it's simple stuff. Right. It's not like I'm going to do the Boston Marathon. You know, there's those people, too.
[00:45:16] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:45:16] Speaker A: But, you know, getting another why and never forgetting their why and their passions and helping them get to some of those passions again and celebrating with them when they get there. Throw a party, give them a book, give them a gift card, give them a phone call, man, it's amazing how amazing a phone call is or even a text nowadays. Of, hey, it was so good to see you today. I'm so proud of you from where you were a year ago. And I just want you to know, you know, that our office thinks really highly of you, and we're very proud of the journey you've been on, and you've been a real example to your children. Boom. How hard was that? I do that stuff every day.
I personally recall certain people that I'm like, where's Bev? We'll kind of find out. Bev slipped into hospice care. Darn it. But I'm glad I called because her son was like, thank you so much for calling. She was asking about you yesterday. I'm like, oh, poor bev. You know, 92, though, she had a great run, and chiropractic was a big part of her success story.
I have pictures of her on my wall, on my slideshows. And when I met her, she was in a walker, and she didn't bring it out until, like, a year ago. She was off that walker for 2012 years, man. We actually put it on our wall, and I've mounted it. My wall says, not needed anymore. You know, but you know, how deep are you getting in and how organized you got to be organized and you got to have meetings with your team and you gotta, you know, get all these plans in order and present your paperwork clean and nice and not haphazard and you know, like our stuff on that.
[00:46:44] Speaker B: No, what, what do you give the patients? Whether it's like care plan or patient education type stuff? Like do they physically get stuff that they leave the office with ever?
[00:46:55] Speaker A: Absolutely. We will.
We will give them a printout of their core score, which is on our subluxation station, the three tests. They get a summary page of our care plan recommendations.
They get a nice little robust package of do's and don'ts and just things we want them to consider about nutrition and sitting, just everything A through Z kind of back care that we produce this nice little flyer and then they get the care plan they just signed up for. Say their little folder has our logo on it and you know, it's got all their stuff in it. It's so cool. It's cute. And some of these people bring them back in, you know, on their RE exam because they're so organized and I always applaud them and they do. Oh, good, you brought your folder. I love it.
[00:47:36] Speaker C: You know, people love stuff.
I'm that patient. Like when I get to walk out with a folder full of tangible papers that I can write on, I can highlight, I can document, my heart is happy versus, you know, being fed all of this information verbally and then trying to retain that myself, it's difficult. But that's just me. I'm sure there are people out there that can retain information.
[00:48:05] Speaker A: You made me think of this, Danielle, because this is a nugget for you guys is I have the spouse present at all key visits no matter what. Like on day two.
We're not doing day two until we get it set up with the husband. Or it's a FaceTime call. Right?
Why? Because I want him to know what you're going through and I want her to know how to help you.
It's two different conversations, the wife versus the husband.
So it's really important that you have your wife there. I really want her to understand what's going on so she can be more of help at home with you and understand I don't want you to go home and try to translate all this to her.
And then sometimes the type A women will be like, I don't want him in my appointment, he's going to annoy me. And no, I got my own checkbook I don't need.
I don't need his help. So you just, you still try because you err on the side of. I want them to know what you're going through. I want them to see your findings. I don't want you to have to go home and try explain this.
And it's so important. You know how many times I've done a report of findings with a lady in particular, and men too, but more women.
Okay, well, I gotta go home and talk to John about it.
And now John's going, wait, he wants how much money? And what's a subluxation? A submarine. What are you talking about? And spinal disease and what?
You know, versus if. So there's two different husbands, right? The one at home has the checkbook, whatever that or the debit card. And then the one that comes to the appointment is the knight in shining armor.
He has an arm around her. Wow, babe, this is serious. You really need this. The guy at home's like, what?
And so my juniorist associate has struggled with this one and he's finally mastered it because he kept forgetting to walk up and say. And our staff's trained to do it too, but for some reason they forget this principle.
And we'll get these rofs when the spouse isn't there. Not. I'm using like, we're training on that tomorrow.
Wartime training.
But it's so important that you have people that they have support workshops. Bring support with you. Health is better. Our family policy is basically, we have found that families that are under wellness care together are way healthier individually going through this as a group than they would ever be if they did it isolated by themselves.
Hands down.
[00:50:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:50:28] Speaker A: So we start early on family policy. You gotta get the whole family checked. We got your kids checked. Your husband needs care. We gotta get you guys in the same rhythm.
And it works really well. And it's true, it's needed, so.
[00:50:42] Speaker C: Oh, question on that. Okay, so that just brought up. When you have family plans like that, I imagine it's. It's easier for the family to adhere to wellness plans. What? It includes everybody.
But what about the kids that are on a different phase of care? Like, I know maybe the adult's on three times a week versus, you know, a two time. Like, how do you navigate. Is everybody on the same care plan where they're.
[00:51:07] Speaker A: That's a great question.
But for us, you know, with kids, it's going to be a far less frequent. They respond so well to chiropractic. They resolve so much quicker than the Average person.
And so there's that with babies. We'll do weekly checks for the first two to three weeks, then every other for two to three, and then monthly for two to three. Usually with kids because they're so active and they're all developing humps in their back now. So we're in a whole new generation. So we got to watch this generation even closer than the last. I think as far as neurological development, especially if you pair that with all the other stuff their poor little bodies got to deal with, with the.
We won't go into the other three reasons, but there's a lot, right? All the forever chemicals in our society that our kids are exposed to, but then the blue light and the technology and the EMFs, and where do, where do you stop? Right?
[00:52:01] Speaker C: Stress.
[00:52:02] Speaker A: But anyway, I think we need to check kids more. If you're not checking kids, man, you gotta, you gotta get deep in your philosophy and figure out why would you check a kid?
And if, if your why is big enough, than get after it and quit being intimidated by the conversation. I feel like chiropractors are intimidated by the pediatric conversation because they lack their own conviction and their own belief in chiropractic, which I think sometimes is forged over time.
Some people get it right away because their story is so profound. But it takes a while for chiropractors to get their philosophy dialed in. Takes coaching, it takes encounters with other chiropractors.
You know, I, I don't know. I just feel sorry for some of these chiropractors that post online how bad things are going. And I just want to hug them and, and teach them and mentor them.
[00:52:51] Speaker C: Well, I think more often than not these days you're going to have parents. Like the kids are going to be there with their parents anyway. They're tagging along to these appointments. Why not get them on the schedule? It can't hurt. It. It really can't. And I, I mean, I imagine there are offices out there that they do shy away from seeing the pediatric patients, but those are patients that they're right there. They're readily available and they need the care just as the adults do.
[00:53:18] Speaker A: We check our newborns as a courtesy for the first year of their life, if, if their mommy was under care during her pregnancy and prior even.
So we just kind of tell them during pregnancy, when little one's here, we're just going to check because we're going to keep checking you, but we definitely want to check baby on a regular. And we teach them little home exercises and, and it's super fun. We just posted a video on Social about that and it's just so fun. And people, we get a lot of questions about, wow, you work on kids. Why would a kid need. People have it in their head that chiropractors help back pain.
And so I think that's why they would ask the question, like, why kids? But back to your question about wellness care.
So a typical family for me would be, hey, husband's weekly. He's a home builder. Wife is twice a month. And then the kids, the two kids come in once a month and we have them on an auto debit accordingly. And we actually have, we have our normal adult price, we have our senior price. And then I have one third price that I have done historically. I have a huge family, so I do it for my family members that all my cousins and whatnot that want to come in. I can't treat everybody for free because you got a free practice, great. But you got no room for people that want to pay you because you're filling up your schedule free. All your family coming in. So I made their game. Yeah.
[00:54:36] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:54:37] Speaker A: So, you know, that's a good example of a family plan. So they're basically getting eight visits a month as a family. It's probably costing them, you know, less than $400 a month. Probably 300amonth. Ish.
And the dad's getting the care he needs to stay in the game as a builder. The mom's getting the care she needs to stay functional as a stay at home. Well, working part time, stay at home mom. And then the kids are developing so fast. And you know, kids fall 4,000 times before they turn seven. So we're checking for patterns, checking for their feet, their back, their spine, their sutures.
It's. There's some basic pediatric protocol programs out there. You don't have to go full Webster and full peds Diplomat program. You can go do some really good seminars on how to get comfortable with babies.
[00:55:23] Speaker B: So I was just going to bring that up too, like, because for me, that was one of my barriers. I didn't feel. Feel like I knew how to adjust kids. And I took our pediatric courses in school and they just don't, you know something, there's kids in there to adjust and stuff. And they just. I didn't feel like it was very thorough. So I did go do the courses with the icpa. I did get fully certified. That's because I wanted to.
But for anybody listening, like, if you want to start seeing kids, I would, first of all, I would beg you to learn how first. Because it's not. They're not just mini adults.
But I mean, even with the icpa, like, you can read through the website and you could find the courses that are specific to adjusting, for example, and I'm sure there's other organizations and courses, but so, like, there's opportunities to go learn so that you are comfortable with kids if that is one of your perceived barriers. If somebody wants to start doing that but is nervous because they, you know, especially. I find. And I think I felt this way too. I mean, I still don't have kids, but I was also intimidated by taking care of babies because, like, or not how to hold one or pick them up, you know, like, how do you even.
[00:56:30] Speaker A: How do you know? Right?
[00:56:32] Speaker B: Yeah. So going to get some extra training really helped me back in the day. That was like 10 or 12 years ago now.
But those are great opportunities to add, you know, tools to your toolbox and maybe open that door so that people are comfortable taking care of infants and other kids.
[00:56:49] Speaker A: That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:56:51] Speaker C: I think, I mean, it can only expand your wellness plan capabilities. The more folks that feel included and that they can be part of it. The adherence is built in. It's natural.
[00:57:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I love it.
[00:57:04] Speaker C: That's. You know what? I actually had one other question for you, Dr. Ron. You mentioned getting to know your patients. It's more intimate.
How do you stay on top of the nuances with your patient? Where you have an elderly patient and maybe you know her dog's name, how do you stay on top of that visit after visit with understanding each individual patient?
[00:57:27] Speaker A: Well, gosh, great lead. Way into utilizing your practice software. Right.
You know, for me, the note section, we have an open line practice, so we share clients, so it's critical for that. But like, what adjustment techniques have worked and what are some nuances about this kid? And we always list the.
You know, I used to call it the blame box, but it was. They always. Sometimes people try to blame the chiropractor. My back's still sore. Then you go to their blame box and you see that one of their hobbies is they, like yard work. Well, did you do yard work this weekend? He's like, well, yeah, I pick weeds for like six hours. Did you ice after? Did you stretch at all? How was your hydration? You know, so you get the blame off of you back to them. But you know, just having good notes in your system of what adjustments you've done in the past.
You know, we have an educational system called the Dirty dozen. Which are 12 life principles. We want every new patient to know within their first month of care, and then we hammer them in after that. So we kind of have this talk track anyway. But I think it's important that people spend more time in their day one interviewing the patient and getting to know their story and getting to know all the nuances of their story.
You know, for us, that's a big, long conversation. It takes 30 minutes to do it well, and then we transition in. And by the way, I have new patient concierge trained up to do that part. And it's so beautiful because I come back in right pre X ray and introduce myself, and I get five minutes maybe with you to do the X ray and to talk. But I let my new patient, concierge triangular, communicate to me what's going on. I could give me a Reader's Digest. Well, you know, she's got this headache and it's coming at night and it's affecting her ear and, you know, it seems to be related to her neck. And it started with, you know, a year ago, she had a car crash. And she didn't feel bad then, but she was thinking maybe that did it. And, you know, so you get that person talking about you in front of me, it's beautiful. That just saved me 45 minutes of my life.
That was like seven adjustments, eight adjustments for me, you know, and so a lot of these practices that don't have associates, maybe you can't afford one yet, but maybe the first step is to train up a new patient concierge, one of your team members who's got a good mind for it. And, you know, maybe on their personality assessment test, they showed a high aptitude for understanding science terminology, things like that, and more left brain and can, you know, be a good interviewer.
And so certain makeup, good listener, somebody who's empathetic but also smart about science.
It's hard to find those people, but they're out there. And we found a couple good ones that we trained up. We have three team members trained up for two offices. So now those one off re exams and all that stuff, they can do a lot of the heavy lifting for me, but it's done well. It's not hurried.
We have it all pre set up in chirotouch in our notes. It's a new patient intake setup. So my team can walk through it, I can easily look at it.
We talk about trauma history, family history, want to know everything about you.
And I put all that in my dashboard. So going forward, Danielle, if I don't know you from Adam, but you've been seeing Dr. Christa, and all of a sudden now you're on my table and I'm looking in going, man, I see you had a C5, C6 disc fusion surgery. You know, I'm glad I saw that.
And you know, Dr. Chris has been doing more drop technique and arthrostem and more just kind of micro stretching on the upper neck. And you've been responding really well to that style of adjustment, or, you know, you've been doing better reflection, distraction, and drop and not diversified on the pelvis. Okay, good to know.
You know, so we always have.
It just helps because we have an open line practice.
And so people are on my table every day that, that I've never met before. I like it. It's fun, but it there. And then we have our X rays all converted to PDF down on the dashboard. Anything I need about Danielle is right there. And I look at that, you know, I go through that case history.
I'll have looked at your X rays already, even in the digital version in the back, because the car touch ones are JPEGs, whereas in the back, I can do different angles and markings. So, you know, I don't know if that answered your question, but I think if you're more organized, one doctor. I mean, I was, you guys, I was doing 300 patient visits a week for five years by myself, and I was charging over $50 a visit. And this is in like 2007 cash.
And I'm not tooting my horn. I'm just saying if you have the right systems and the right process procedure, and you have the right, you build the right team, the right org chart, and you give all your team members job descriptions and scorecards so you could measure their performance and give them key performance indicators so that they know their job. And then when you meet with them on. On a review, you. This is what you're being looked at on, and you can build this remarkable practice. I hired a coach to do all this. I never went at this alone. I don't know why people do that. I think they're afraid to invest that money. But if you're. If you're paying a thousand a month for a coach, all you're expecting that coach to really do is to pay for that, is to give you one new patient a month. And I'm telling you, a coach will give you 20 new patients a month. If you had me coaching you, I could get you 20 more new patients a month. But not only that, you would have incredible net momentum because net momentum is a hidden metric in chiropractic. And it's this, you got your goal. I want to get to 300 a week or whatever that goal is, and you're having a hard time getting there. So you reverse engineer it. Like, how many new patients do I need a month? So it's new patients minus how many people become inactive a month, which is what we've talked about in this call is how to limit that number by mapping them out, getting them on plans, educating them. You're still going to have a slippage rate. People move away, people pass away.
You're going to have inactive. So new patients minus inactives, new patient conversions, I should say, minus inactives equals your net momentum. And so if you want a net MO of 10 or more, you're going to grow.
If you're going to grow 10 new clients per month, your total active patient list gets higher. So you can begin to look at what your goals are and be able to reverse engineer your goal and say, oh, to get to that $500,000 revenue mark, I need 30 new patients a month to account for the 10 inactives a month that are moving away, drop off, and then all of a sudden you got a beautiful practice. Growing.
[01:04:02] Speaker B: Yeah, you definitely have to write things down and have goals that can be measured.
[01:04:06] Speaker A: Coaching. Yeah, receive.
[01:04:08] Speaker C: I was gonna say you, I was gonna say you mentioned coaching. Are you opening the table for our listeners to find Dr. Ron and seek out your guidance?
[01:04:17] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah. I, I would do a complimentary discovery called anybody if it's through this chirotouch thing, just to sit and talk to. I love talking to chiropractors and it could be a 15 minute discovery call just to find out where they're at. Maybe it's a question about the software, maybe it's about what we talked about today, But I just feel like we're not getting this coaching in school and a lot of doctors get out and they don't feel they can afford it. And then I'm sitting there saying, you can't not afford it. How do I spend money I don't have? You know, and so it's scary. It's a slippery slope.
[01:04:50] Speaker C: Well, we'll include, we'll include a link after this episode. We'll include a link so that our listeners from this episode can connect with you.
[01:04:58] Speaker A: Absolutely. I would love that.
Yeah, I love helping chiropractors. I learned that long ago. If I can help chiropractors be more successful, I'll have a greater impact on humanity than I would by myself in my little office here.
[01:05:11] Speaker B: Yep. The more positive impact I think we can have on each other, the more people in this country are going to wake up every day saying, know I need to have a chiropractor as part of my, you know, part of my own team. Because I think that's really, as a profession where we're lacking. You know, people wake up every day and they know they have to go to the dentist twice a year or whatever it is, or they have to go see their medical doctor once a year or whatever. But people, not everybody wake up and say, I need to see my chiropractor. And that has to change.
[01:05:37] Speaker A: So, hey, in El Dorado Hills, that's not the case.
[01:05:40] Speaker B: Exactly. So you guys have done it.
[01:05:42] Speaker A: But, yeah, you're right. And we. We have an operating mantra. And I know you believe. Believe this, doc.
And Daniel, I know you do as well, and that is that people are. We always say that people that are under regular chiropractic care are healthier and safer than those that are not.
And so that's been our operating premise. That's our drives us. That's our vision is to reach more people, not to make more money. Money always trails true success and putting value in other people's life in a service industry.
If you know, and if you look at your Google reviews and you look at your impact locally, I mean, another thing is go speak. Chiropractors never get out of their four walls and go talk to people.
I still, on a monthly basis, have at least one lunch and learn in a corporation for years.
Some are the same ones over and over again, and I'll come and speak to them about health and wellness and, of course, chiropractic.
[01:06:35] Speaker C: All right, well, we hope today's conversation gave you practical ideas to rethink how you present and support your wellness plans.
How can people contact you, Dr. Ron?
[01:06:46] Speaker A: Okay, so I guess you could put my email in there somewhere, or they can reach my office and ask for me. My office number is 916-933-7022.
And mention that you met Dr. Ron on a podcast and would love to pick his brain. And my team will drop everything they're doing and come find me.
They will connect us. They are all about the mission. My team is very missional, like me.
[01:07:13] Speaker B: Love it. All right, well, a big, big, big thank you, Dr. Ron, for joining us today. I really love the insights that you have, some of the stories you shared. It's always really, really helpful for chiropractors. To hear what other chiropractors are doing and what their, their practice lives are like. So thank you so much for opening that door up and letting us peek in.
[01:07:34] Speaker A: I love it. You guys are great hosts. It was really fun.
[01:07:36] Speaker C: Thank you.
And for our listeners, if you've got a question, a challenge, or even a win that you want to share, send it our
[email protected] and we just might feature it in a future episode.
[01:07:50] Speaker B: And if you like what you heard today, don't forget to like, follow and subscribe on your favorite platform, the Chiro Cast Podcast. And that'll help other chiropractors find us that much more as well, which, as we've just stated, would mean a stronger community for all of us.
[01:08:05] Speaker C: Thanks again for listening to Chirocast. We'll see you next time.
[01:08:09] Speaker A: Thank you for joining us on this episode of Chirocast Insights for Modern Chiropractors, brought to you by ChiroTouch, hosted by Dr. Stephanie Brown and Danielle Hevinas. Produced by Debbie Brooks. Editing from Matthew Dodge. Our theme song, House 5 is from Scott W. Brooks. If you enjoyed today's show, don't forget to like, link and subscribe. We appreciate your support and we'll catch you next time.
