Medically Integrating Your Practice: Answering the Big Questions
FEATURE
Mike Carberry
You are absolutely and unequivocally sold on chiropractic medicine.
So am I. I have been in chiropractic for more than 25 years and I have treated thousands of patients. I simply love helping people. Restoring people to good health is a calling in life.
Chiropractors Hold the Short End
However, commercial reality sometimes paints a bleaker picture of an industry composed of struggling chiropractors dealing with hesitant insurers, ambivalent patients, and a conventional medical establishment that tends to scoff at chiropractic treatment.
While physicians appeal' to enjoy die financial glamour of a healthcare industry that seems to hold them in high esteem, chiropractors generally must do twice the work for twice as long to achieve half the results.
But many chiropractors are beginning to catch hold of a concept that will not only significantly boost tiieir practices, but potentially usher in a healthcare revolution that will change the dynamics of how treatment is provided.
The key: providing patients with a more comprehensive assessment and healthcare protocol that encompasses all levels and forms of treatment. It’s medically integrating medical services into the chiropractic paradigm. Patients gain access to a wider
range of tailor-made services rather than the narrow stricture of conventional medical treatment.
What’s that look like? Physicians, nurse practitioners, chiropractors, and other professionals working together to provide patients with optimum and targeted treatment that uniquely fits their conditions. The one-size-fits-all model of conventional medicine is discarded for the more well-rounded approach that allows patients to participate in their treatment.
Chiropractors are increasingly tapping into the opportunities medically integrated practices provide with astounding results. If done incorrectly or under inexperienced tutelage, die way forward can be mired with financial mines and legal traps—all of which can be surmounted with competent, professional consultants with a deep history in medical integration as well as legal advice by competent legal professionals.
The transformation has proven to produce profound results for chiropractic practices that reap the big benefits of vastly expanded businesses.
How Long Does It Take?
Experts say transitions vary in length depending on the practice location. Different states have different rules and different hurdles. It depends on the practitioners and whether you want to be in-network or out-of-network coverage. Numerous factors must be examined before a timeline can be firmly established.
Some chiropractors take more ambitious approaches to medical integration and complete the process in two to three months. Typically, the transition takes four to eight months. The transition may be the largest and most significant change to your practice and the most radical shift in your career.
You’re basically taking a small shop and turning it into a big shop and the faster someone can step into that executive role, the quicker he or she will move. The faster you can educate yourself and your staff about what your practices needs and what you want, the faster the process will move.
The First Step
Although highly profitable, medical integration can present significant challenges, especially when done haphazardly or by consultants unskilled or untrained in the process. The greatest obstacles to effective integration are the modem-day charlatans offering big-money pipedreams for a “cut” of the profits.
Good intentions and even good planning sometimes don’t play well in the long haul. Hiring the right experts becomes paramount in helping chiropractors avoid the risks and in demonstrating from experience the airtight systems that do work. Implemented correctly, a properly implemented integrated medical practice puts the chiropractor on the lucrative wave into the future.
Chiropractors looking to step into this brave new world
‘^Integrated practices generated $641,900, multidisciplinary practices reported $403,400, and chiropractic-only practices produced $281,800.55
should brace themselves for the challenge of merging divergent healthcare modalities. Integrated practices, for example, delve deep into the nuances of federal healthcare mandates, insurance reimbursements and a rising demand for preventative care and holistic treatments. The healthcare landscape certainly is changing—and most industry opinion leaders are saying for the good.
Although complex, those aspects are drawing chiropractors to explore the idea of integrated medical practices. According to a recent survey, more than 65 percent of chiropractors provide only chiropractic services. Nearly 30 percent of practices had chiropractors and alternative medicine practitioners. Only 6 percent were medically integrated with chiropractors and staff medical doctors.
Integration is worth the investment, the survey purports. Medically integrated practices generated on average annual billings of $753,800. Practices that included alternative
medicine practitioners reported $532,000. Practices with only chiropractors made on average $471,000.
The numbers for reported collections also reflect those trends. Integrated practices generated $641,900, multidisciplinary practices reported $403,400, and chiropractic-only practices produced $281,800.
How Do You Hire a Physician?
As practices undergo integration, chiropractors must consider one of the biggest and most obvious questions: How do you hire a physician?
Chiropractors must tap into resources that will guide them through the integration process and direct them to where to find the most qualified physicians, how to advertise properly and effectively and whether to lin e a recruiter to do the leg work.
Hiring a Recruiter?
Hiring a recmiter may not be the wisest choice. Recmiters may charge a fee of 20 percent of die physician’s annual salary, which could cost you $20,000 at a time. Tapping into a network of vendors with recruiter prices as low as $5,000 is the wisest path to take.
Once you’ve selected the ideal candidate, the next step is the interview. This step may pose challenges to chiropractors unaccustomed to staff physician job requirements. Interviewing chiropractor candidates or staff may be easy. You’re
familiar with their job requirements.
Physicians, however, view the healthcare world through a different lens. Most (90 percent) students at chiropractic schools aspire to eventually own their own businesses. The numbers are flipped for physicians. Most (90 percent) would rather just practice medicine and prefer someone else run the business side.
Chiropractors, physicians, nurse practitioners, and other health professionals generally develop different goals in life, establish different priorities and adopt different health philosophies, so the interviewing process may progress differently. Interviewers should look for different signs and cues and be able to understand the technical language of the physician or nurse candidate.
Get the help of industry experts in the field of medical integration to leam the key questions to ask and how to find the best physician candidates.
Michael Carberry, DC is the President and founder of Advanced Medical Integration (AMI), a consulting group which assists practice owners to integrate medical services with chiropractic and rehab services. To learn more about AMI visit http://www.AK/ITdoctors. com. Dr Carberry first brought medical services into his original chiropractic practice in 1995. Since then, Dr Carberry has owned several medically integrated clinics in multiple states. Dr Carberry also lectures nationally on business systems and chiropractic philosophy. You can contact Advanced Medical Integration at 888-777-0815
