Four Step to Skyrocket Patient Retention The Secret to Building a Successful Cash-Based Practice

B y the time I graduated from chiropractic college in 1993. I was married, had a daughter, and was more than $ 100.000 in debt. With a family to support, the pressure was on me to get my career going fast. On the day when my license to practice arrived in the mail. I opened the very first "wcllncss" practice in San Diego. California, with high expectations. I thought that if I taught people what I knew, they would become as excited as I was about chiroprac­tic and thus become my patient. In the early 1990s. HMOs were all the rage in California. While the rest of the nation was years away from declining insurance reimbursement. I was in the thick of it from the very start. Doing lots of insurance paperwork and begging just to get 10 visits approved was not what I wanted to be doing. After just one year in practice, I was done! There was no way I was going to continue playing those insurance games. I made a decision tliat I would do whatever I kid to do to succeed without depending on insurance. To succeed in that economic environment, it meant I was going to have to learn to do things very differently from what had worked in the past. I spent the next five years with trial and error research in my practice learning about what worked and what didn't. Eventually. I figured it out. By focusing on patient retention and care plan compliance. I was able to build a very profit­able practice that was free from the shackles of insurance dependence. Interestingly enough, it wasn't dependent on new patients either. What 1 discovered allowed me to create a practice where my patients not only started care, but nearly all of them completed the full course of care and stayed for years of wcllness care. As of this writing. I've helped thousands of chiropractors increase their patient retention and collections. I am 100% confident that if you apply the principles I'm about to share with you. you will experience happier patients who continue to use your sen ices, refer family and friends, and are happy to pay you themselves. What 1 discovered in practice was a lour-step process that led to incredible patient retention. For me. that was the measure of success. "Where the rubber met the road" was how many of my patients consistently used my services for many years. In a service business like chiropractic, it's all about building long-term relationships. By following this four-step process, you will increase your patient retention tremendously. In my own practice, my patient visit average was more than 200 visits over a five-year period. The average chiropractor in the US struggles to see a patient more than 12 visits on average. My retention was 1.600% higher than the national average. Clearly, my clients were very satisfied, too. or they wouldn't have stayed or referred so main people to me. What I learned became my secret formula for incredibly high patient retention. Once I discovered this formula. I quickly realized why some things I tried worked, while others did not. Like all great ideas, the secret is very simple. My Secret Formula for Incredibly High Patient Retention "Ifyou identify! and remove the situations that cause a patient to question whether they can start or continue with your care, they 're more likely to start and continue with your care" Miles Bod/in. DC Once I realized that ifs the "situations that cause the client to question." I spent the next few years identifying those situ­ations. For example, situations could include when they make a payment: when they have to decide to transition to another program of care: when you present your findings: or when their insurance was no longer pay ing. It became my mission to figure out how all of these situations affected the patients" decisions. I studied what I could do to neutralize them so the client was never triggered to think about whether he or she should start or continue care. To my amazement, it worked. When people were no longer being triggered by situations to question start­ing or continuing care, more started and more stayed longer. It was as simple as that. This four-step process is simply a system for removing the situations that cause your patients to question whether they should start or continue the relationship with you. I often refer to this as "expectation management." Step 1 of 4 - Track Your Patients' Results and Effectively Communicate Those Results Patients need to know where they stand with you. If progress is expected, they need to know they are making progress. As chiropractors, part of our job is to reevaluate our patients at regular intervals and let them know how they're progressing. If your patients arc not aw are of their status, or if they "re making progress, it will create a situation that causes them to question whether they should continue with your care or not. Think about it. Let"s say you liired a personal trainer and after one month, he or she showed you that you had reduced your weight by 15 lbs. reduced your blood pressure, and increased your grip strength by 10%. In contrast, if you only ever heard the trainer say. "You're doing a good job. Let's keep it up." would you likely continue working with the trainer? Without a doubt, patients will follow your care recommen­dations much longer if "how things arc progressing" is com­municated based on test results and not just your opinion. The real power, though, is in "how " you communicate those results. Remember when you were in school? How did vou know you were doing well in the class? You took tests, completed assignments, and received grades to let you know where you stood in the class—so simple! Give your patients a report card with a grade letting them know how they "re progressing and you will effectively and quickly see how much more your patients know where they stand. Step 2 of 4 - Offer Affordable Payment Options for Your Care Plans When you see a commercial on TV for a car. how do they advertise the price? Do they show the price of the car? No. they tell viewers the lowest, most affordable, monthly payment. Not to say that we're selling cars, because we're definitely not. but the guys selling cars on TV know exactly what they're doing. They know that if people can afford the monthly payment, no matter the total purchase price, then they can sell them the car. You have to use the same strategy. Offer your patients af­fordable payment options that include monthly payments as a choice. In fact, we even offer patients the opportunity to make a larger down payment so they can have smaller more affordable monthly payments. This is a game changer when it comes to starting new patients. By not doing this, it will definitely cre­ate situations that cause your patients to question if they can start your service. Step 3 of 4 - Stop Reminding People of the Money They're Spending This step will have a significant impact on your practice. It is based on the follow ing law I formulated. "The frequency of the conscious purchasing decision signifi­cantly influences your retention. The more often a patient thinks about money the less often they will utilize your services." Miles Bod/in. DC The best way to stop reminding them of money is to use auto-debit payments. In my practice, nearly 100% of the patients left a credit card or bank account on file with an authorization for us to auto-debit their payments. We never kid to send them bills or statements, never had to wait to be paid, and we could always count on consistent cash flow. We did this no matter how they paid for their services. Whether they were on a monthly auto-debit or paid at each visit. Think about it—do you ask for your patient's insurance card every time they come it? Of course not. Then why would vou ask for their credit card everv time. Among all of the different types of people I took care of. the only thing that the high-retention patients had in common was the fact that they paid for their care with monthly auto-debits. Even Disney World is now selling annual passes with monthly auto-debits. Step 4 of 4 -Automate Your Patient Education You must continually educate your patients about the ben­efits of chiropractic. Because the education needs to be done continually, it makes perfect sense to automate most of it. I trademarked the term "Drip-EducationK" years ago to describe the idea of repeat edly "dripping" your message on your patients via e-mail. It is simple and effective. You never want to have a situation where your patients didn"t know something you thought they did know. So there you have the secrets to creating lifetime patients. Track your clients" results and effectively communicate them. Offer them affordable payment options. Use auto-debits to process those payments. Continually educate your clients about the benefits of vour service. By applying my four-step process, you will skyrocket your patient retention, have better care-plan compliance, have hap­pier patients who get better results, and you will finally be free from the shackles of insurance dependence. Dr. Miles Bodzin, founder andCEO of Cash Practice® Systems, is a chimpractor who became blown as "the king of patient retention. " lie s appeared in the Wall Street Jour­nal and on The Brian Tracv Show, written a book with Steve Forbes, and spoken internationally on the topic of client retention. His company offers web-based software for chiropractors to implement his 4-Step Process™ resulting in increased patient retention. The Wellness Score® System. Cash Plan Calculator® System. A uto-Debit System®, andDrip-Educatioit® Email S larketing System all work together to help free a doctor from the shackles of insurance dependence. Learn more at www.CashPractice.com or call 877-343-8950. To book Dr. Bodzin for interviews and speaking engagements, call 877-343-8950. ext. 201