I sometimes think that non-therapeutic straight chiropractors do not like to see new people in the office. After all, new people disrupt the rhythm of an office, they take more time and effort. And no matter how good an education program an office has, a good percentage of new people will not choose lifetime care. So consciously or unconsciously, maybe we try to keep down the number of new people so we will have a high PVA and we can feel good about ourselves. We can say, “We’re doing a great job of educating people, we are great chiropractors.” Well everybody, it’s time to stop feeling so good. If you have a PVA of 50 or more you better be seeing a minimum of 700 visits a week. If not, you are not even scratching the surface of impacting your community and you are doing this great principle a disservice. That means you should be seeing at least 60 new people every month…some of us should be seeing a lot more.
I think we have been using a lot of excuses for not doing what we should. I know I have. “Well, there are more chiropractors now than ever before.” So what!? There’s a lot more people than ever before and statistics indicate we are not seeing a greater percentage of the public. So all we are doing is dividing the 9-10% or whatever we see among all of us. What about the millions who have never been to a chiropractor? Beside that, unless you are in a town with a dozen other objective straight chiropractors, how many chiropractors there are in town is not even an issue. There are more people in my area now than ever before, so there should be more chiropractors. Somehow we think if we have to go out and solicit new people, we have not reached a level of success. Well, guess what, I think if you are not seeing a thousand new people a year, you haven’t reached a level of success and maybe you don’t need to go out and solicit but you better be doing something to get them in your office. More importantly, you should be doing things to remove the barriers that are keeping them out!
Here’s an excuse I used: People have insurance now so its cheaper to have the insurance company pay the chiropractor than pay out of their pocket. (I have a strictly cash practice box in the wall). However, they tell us that 40% of the public does not have insurance and of those who do, many have high deductibles, high co-pays or no coverage for chiropractic. Still, I have many practice members who have insurance and come to me any way because no insurance companies cover lifetime maintenance care and that’s what we are all about.
Of course, there is competition for people, but what we have to offer people makes it about as competitive as a game between the NBA all-stars and a grade school team, unless we are failing to do some very basic things to build the practice. Unfortunately, I think we may be. I have a top ten list of things we do that turn people away from us, our offices and chiropractic. Some of these things are not pleasant to hear. Some of them include the lies that practice management consultants have been telling us. I am not going to expound upon them, just list them. The Foundation has a CD (and an accompanying booklet) titled “Building a Referral Practice” that explains all of them and more. Call FACE or check out our web site www:f-a-c-e.com to acquire it for a small donation. Here they are in no particular order. Evaluate your practice.
1. Poor telephone skills with potential new practice members.
2. Inadequate support staff.
3. Long waits to get in the office as a NPM.
4. Too few hours in the day that you are open.
5. Too few days a week being open.
6. Too long a wait to be seen during a visit.
7. High fees.
8. Unfriendly attitudes on the part of staff.
9. Unfriendly attitude on the chiropractor’s part (especially with returning inactive practice members).
10. Making practice members feel rushed. V21n3