I recently received a complimentary CD from a practice management consultant who mentioned that we were currently seeing 8% of the American public in our offices but his management organization wanted to see that figure rise to 80% of the public. A number of things struck me. First, I had no idea things were that bad, only 8% of people were availing themselves of chiropractic care. Am I mistaken or is that number a drop in previous statistics? The second thing is if we begin seeing 80%, how in the world would we be able to handle that number. I would guess that there are very few chiropractors who could see ten times the number of people they are now seeing. Still, that’s a problem we would all like to be confronted by!
So it begs the question: What will it take to see 10 times more people in our offices? As the CD went on, the chiropractors being interviewed told about how they were making significantly much more money than they had previously. However, the idea of seeing 10 times as many people in the office is a far different issue than making more money. There is a relationship, sure, but most practice management consultants want you to be able to get more money out of however many people come in rather than the same proportion. In other words if you double your practice-member volume they want your income to triple or quadruple, not just double.
So how do we get 80% of the public to come to us? I’m not sure we ever will but I know one thing, no practice management consultant has the answer. We need to start by changing peoples’ perception of chiropractic and that can only come about by a continual education program.
Chiropractic is not about bad backs which take a few visits to correct, but about regular lifetime care. People need to understand that idea. The one-shot orientation or lay lecture will build your practice, but not in the numbers necessary to see 80% of our community or at least 80% of our potential market. There is too much drop off because in a world that is outside-in, symptomatically-oriented people forget the idea of regular lifetime chiropractic care. We need to keep the idea in front of them. More importantly, we must continually increase their understanding of the logical, reasonable philosophy of chiropractic that supports that need for chiropractic care. What are you doing to increase peoples’ understanding and what more could you be doing? Do you have a “chiropractic curriculum for your Practice Members?” If not, it might be a good idea to start to develop one, one that includes audio, video, articles and brochures developed as a curriculum.