Today I want to share with you two principles that you can use to achieve three R’s: Respect, Results, and Revenue. As a nutritionist that has worked for professional teams, I was a part of a group on each team that consisted of Medical Doctors, Surgeons, Trainers, Therapists, and finally, a Chiropractor. I was able to bring in the first team Chiropractor to the NBA because we all know a medical team wouldn’t be complete without the understanding of Chiropractic. Working as a team of health professionals, it became apparent as to why there is so much mistrust amongst the public and the practices of two key health components, Chiropractic and Nutritional Supplementation. If you don’t believe that the public distrusts Chiropractors and supplementation recommendations, you need to get outside your loyal patients and see what the world is saying. When you do this, you can focus on the fixes.
Due to unfortunate public stereotypes, Chiropractors can sometimes be seen as just someone to adjust the spine, not as the medical student they had been and the medical professional they are! According to a Gallup Poll, Americans have a lower opinion of chiropractors’ honesty and ethics than they do of other health professionals. Similarly, patients also have an unfortunate skepticism on another extremely beneficial health resource: nutritional supplements. According to PubMed, there is less than 50% believability of nutritional supplements based on advertising. I was blown away. Nutritional supplements are meant to help people get proper dietary intake that they otherwise wouldn’t get. Many factors cause skepticism. Most often, people question authenticity and ingredient quality. Also, many just don’t know that they lack nutrients and what they need exactly.
Both Chiropractors and nutritional supplements have the potential to treat and heal the public much more than they currently do based on the above research. How can this be changed? These issues can easily be fixed with the two principles that I have to share with you today.
2 Principles to Respect, Results, and Revenue:
1. Implementing Objective Testing
There are many forms of tests to determine patients’ needs. It can sometimes be easy to determine the form of testing you should conduct on a patient if you think about what is accepted across all professions. Objective lab testing allows you to pinpoint the issue and treat your patient. Other times, it may not be so easy. For some patients, you’ve tried several forms of testing and seem to get nowhere with treatments. How can you help these patients?
Sometimes pains and aches are caused by deficiencies and/or excesses of nutrients. Fixing these can significantly improve your patients well being. One of the most reliable objective testing methods is blood lab work.
"According to PubMed, there is less than 50% believability of nutritional supplements based on advertising."
Your patient will trust you much more if you can share the testing you performed with any other health professional they talk to. That’s why blood lab work is the best method. You can see exactly what is happening on the inside of your patient and determine nutrients in which they lack that are causing a decrease in their quality of life. You can give your patient exactly what they need to improve and thrive without trial and error treatments. Blood work is precisely the testing I had to perform with the athletic teams with all the different medical professionals that had to be satisfied. It immediately built respect from the players, clients, and staff. The big difference was that I read the blood work based on a nutritional mindset looking for nutrient deficiencies and digestive concerns that could be remedied with supplements and food.
2. Obtaining Trackable Results
Pinpointing a patient’s issues is key to successful treatment. Knowing exactly what their body needs to improve and providing “highly absorbable whole food nutrients to the cells” will allow you to treat them properly and see results. I’ve had professional sports teams, successful individual athletes, and various celebrities come to me for treatment because they heard about the testing recommendations and results. Utilizing bloodwork to get my clients trackable results so that they can see their health progress is a game-changer. The best part about choosing lab work for objective testing is that after you get your patient the nutrition that they need, you can order another lab test a few months down the road so that you and your patient can see the changes and improvement. Blood doesn’t lie about whether the nutrients you use work or not. Over the years, we even created equipment that puts the exact nutrients the blood showed was needed in individual, easy to take packets instead of a bunch of bottles. That improved results through compliance dramatically.
I have first hand seen the results of the three R’s I promised at the beginning of the article by creating and using a program that utilizes bloodwork to determine my clients’ needs to prescribe the exact whole food nutrients in easy to take packets patients need and a tracking system of follow up labs to monitor progress. People will always gain trust in healthcare providers that positively impact their general health and wellbeing through universally accepted testing and protocols that prove the results.
As you take these two extremely valuable steps and apply them to your practice, I can guarantee that you, as a medical professional, will gain immeasurable respect amongst your patients, the public, and other health professionals, you will see positive and impactful results in your practice and patients, and you will see a bountiful increase in revenue.
Douglas D. has decades of experience working with patients in multidisciplinary settings. As the founder/formulator for Optimal Health Systems, he created the Nutrients Rx program that makes it simple for Doctors to order blood labs and automatically have a whole food custom pack made for the patient. Even through the pandemic, he travels extensively across America teaching seminars alongside many of the great Doctors of Chiropractic today. You can go to Nutrientsrx.com or call 1-800-890-4547 to learn more.
