What Amazon is Telling Us About the Future of Chiropractic
FEATURE
By
Jen Faber
DC
The passion for sharing the power of chiropractic is a common bond that connects us all. It is the driving force behind every practice. It�s what motivates every chiropractor to seek new ways to market and grow their practices.
We have an opportunity to both honor the history of our profession and the future of it if we do one simple yet powerful thing.
Observe
Chiropractic can move forward as a force in health care by paying attention to the trends outside of our industry.
• How are other businesses structured?
• What are other businesses doing to market? To save money?
• What�s the behavior of their consumers?
• What are they paying for?
• What type of experience do they want?
When we look at how business is done, there is no greater example of success than Amazon. This company is the giant of innovation, and it�s setting the model for other businesses to follow. If we look closely at Amazon, this company has shaped three trends that are the driving forces behind what will make businesses thrive and remain relevant in today�s marketplace.
By modeling these three trends in your own practice, you have an opportunity to build a practice that is relevant to what your community wants and what can make you stand out.
Trend #1: Simple
Amazon, like most success stories, had humble beginnings. It started in a garage by a man who had a big dream to create a virtual bookstore. Jeff Bezos was ready to change the way selling books was done. He saw the opportunity to take the experience of going to a bookstore and make that experience available anywhere, 24/7.
He became an e-commerce giant because he saw an opportunity to make shopping for books simple. He had a clear target in mind for whom he wanted to serve and how he wanted to serve them.
As chiropractors, we are heart-centered people. We love to take care of others and want to take care of as many people as possible. The desire, though, is often the culprit of a lot of common stresses in practice. Too often, we try broad-stroke marketing techniques to get to everyone in our communities. It makes growing a practice complicated because we try to reach the masses with a general message.
Scattered marketing leads to stress and inconsistent results. I see this with my clients all the time. I experienced it in the early years of my practice.
Amazon, in its early beginnings, shows us that the key to getting a dream off the ground is having a clear focus in mind. For a practice, the key is to focus on whom you want to serve. Focus on them. Communicate 100% to them. Then you can use that as a springboard to serve more people and broaden your reach.
Trend #2: Streamlined
When Jeff Bezos decided to build an e-commerce brand, he instantly took away the expense of running a brick-and-mortar bookstore.
�The wake-up call was finding this startling statistic that web usage in the spring of 1994 was growing at 2,300% a year. You know, things just don�t grow that fast. It�s highly unusual, and that started me thinking, �What kind of business plan might make sense in the context of that growth?��1
Scattered marketing leads to stress and inconsistent results.
He realized that by selling books virtually he could build a streamlined way of business with fewer expenses to keep the business running and more profits to keep at the end of the day.
Overhead is one of the biggest sources of stress in our profession. From keeping the lights on to paying staff to dealing with insurance, running a typical practice is expensive. You instantly have to spend money from the moment you decided to open the doors of a brick-and-mortar practice. That lends itself to pressure from day one to get patients in the door.
Now, chiropractic is not something that can be done virtually like Amazon, but what can be learned from their model is to keep your overhead as low as possible. If you have your hands and your table, you can build your practice without many bells and whistles.
This is why more chiropractors are looking into options outside of brick-and-mortar offices, and why the house-call practice model is on the rise. Because if you can eliminate the costs of running a practice, you can focus on growing your practice and caring for your patients without the stress, which leads to ...
Trend #3: Convenience
The number one thing that practically everyone wants more of is...
Not money.
Not time.
It�s actually getting their time back.
Amazon, Uber Eats, and GrubHub are just a few of the big players giving people more convenient ways of what they offer.
Convenience is a trend that is here to stay. People are busier. They�ll always be busier, and they�ll never feel like there�s never enough time in the day to get everything done.
So when they have the option to either rearrange their schedules, hop in their car, and deal with a commute to get something they want, or they can sit on the couch or at their desk while it comes to them, what do you think they�ll choose?
It�s a choice you and I make all the time. Like most people, we�ll happily pay more for convenience.2 What does that mean for chiropractic?
Patients are people. They�re consumers. They want the same thing everyone else does—more time and less stress.
Now, for people who want to get healthier, convenience becomes much more valuable.
Every other industry is listening to what consumers want. Because health care as a whole is an industry laden with high rates of burnout among professionals and even higher rates of dissatisfaction among patients, convenience needs to factor into today�s practice model.
If we were to map out the typical experience for patients (without the convenience), it would look something like this:
The Steps a Typical Patient Has to Go Through For an Appointment
Step 1: Patient has a health issue.
Step 2: Patient calls a local practice or clinic to set up an appointment.
Step 3: Patient rearranges schedule on the day of the appointment.
Step 4: Patient deals with traffic.
Step 5: Patient sits in the waiting room.
Step 6: Patient gets five to seven minutes with their provider.
Step 7: Patient leaves the office, possibly with questions left unanswered.
Step 8: Patient deals with traffic to get back to their home or office.
Step 9: Patient gets back to their busy lives and forgets what recommendations they were given.
This typical experience shortchanges everyone. The chiropractor feels rushed trying to get patients in and out of the office. The patients feel underwhelmed by the care they receive and all the reshuffling they had to do to go to their appointment. Both parties feel rushed, overwhelmed, and unable to give or receive the experience they really want.
If you�re left with the typical practice model and not using convenience to your advantage, patients become disgruntled and don�t make their health a priority. Your practice will fall behind and get lost in the crowd while others step up to provide a more convenient option.
That�s what these trends imply. The good news is that you can create a convenient experience that brings your care right to your patients and give them their time back so they can focus on their health while living a busy life.
For perspective, here�s what the typical patient experience looks like with a house-call practice.
The Steps a Typical Patient Has to Go Through For a House Call Appointment
Step 1: Patient has a health issue.
Step 2: Patient calls to set up a house call appointment.
Step 3: House call provider offers available times.
These first three steps are standard for either practice experience, but step four is where it all changes.
Step 4: Patient stays in the comfort of his or her home or office.
With a house-call practice, this step is what sets you apart because you are offering a level of convenience no one else does. Offering convenience is what can scale your practice quickly because you are offering something other practices aren�t.
Step 5: No traffic or waiting room.
This makes you the hero because you are instantly taking away two of the biggest complaints patients have. You also build an efficient schedule where you spend more time with patients and less time dealing with practice stress.
Step 6: House call provider arrives and offers more face time.
With convenience comes the benefit of not having the expense of a typical practice, meaning you now have the luxury of focusing on quality care, not number of patients.
Step 7: Patient receives care in their own environment.
Imagine telling a patient that you do house calls and watching their eyes light up when they picture you arriving at their front door. Just like an Amazon Prime delivery, they can enjoy their cup of coffee until you arrive.
Step 8: House call provider gives recommendations.
Because you aren�t dealing with the high volume stress of a typical practice, you now have the opportunity to spend more time with your patients and listen to their questions. When you provide more of your expertise and support, they have better outcomes.
Step 9: Patient is more compliant, less stressed, and happier.
With the convenience and high-quality care you can provide with house calls, your patients become much more loyal, recover faster because they can apply what you�ve given them in their own en-
vironment right away, and, most importantly, tell their friends, which means more referrals for you.
How to Offer Convenience to Your Patients
If you truly want to offer convenience, there is no more convenient way than with house calls. You benefit from having a practice with less stress and overhead, so you focus more on providing quality care.
Amazon is changing the way business is being done, and other businesses are paying attention. Chiropractic has an opportunity to learn from these three trends and be a bigger influence in shaping the trends of health care and how we serve our patients.
Building a practice that is simple, streamlined, and convenient is what will make your practice relevant and sustainable. You can create a model that will allow you to have less risk
and more gain.
The best part is that you can build a practice with less stress and spend more time focusing on patients—doing the work that you love to do.
References
1. https:/ www. fundable, com learn startup-stories amazon
2. https://www.cnbc. com 2017/02/16/consumerspay-more-for-on-demandconvenience-personal-tonch. html
Dr. Jen Faber, DC is the founder of the House Call Practice Program and author of "House Calls are Back: How to Take Your Practice Anywhere." Over 8000 chiropractors have completed her online courses and various video training series. To learn more, visit http://www.housecallpractice.com.
