Empowering Women in Chiropractic - Top 10 Strategies for Today's Chiropractic Landscape

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Hello everyone and welcome to the show, empowering Women in Chiropractic. Thank you so much to ChiroSecure for putting these shows together. My name is Dr. Nathalie Beauchamp, and I will be your host for today. So today I figured we would talk about what. Reflecting upon have been my top 10 strategy for my practice.

I know that people watching or listening might be new to chiropractic five to 10 years. Some people might be 15, 20, some people even 30 and plus. And I was reflecting on what I have . Done in the practice that were really, what I like to call game changers and things that have really leveraged what I was doing already.

So this is what I would like to share. And I'm a big fan of innovation as well. I love technology. I love embracing technology. To make things more efficient and create more system. I have in the past done two shows on how to use chat G P T for your practice and content. And I'm not even scratching the surface of what these tools can do.

I'm also a big fan of crafting or organizing your care around the patient experience. I, the best compliment I can get from a patient is about their experience in the office, from my staff being so friendly and nice and the efficiency of booking and so forth. To me focusing on the

Patient experience is key. And also leveraging things to grow the business and reach more people in my community. In no particular order, per se, the 10, but those were really big ones for me in my practice, and I'd like to share them with you. Maybe you're already doing those. Great. If you're new.

You never even thought of this. Hopefully you'll gain some insight on that. So the first one is the use of technology to test and track progress. This is a screenshot shameless plug here to to c l A. This is a technology that I use in my practice. My practice is nervous system, subluxation based, and I wouldn't be able to have the kind of practice if it wasn't for this technology.

Why? Because as chiropractor, yes, we can help people with pain, but for most of us, it's not our happy place. It is when people are using chiropractic care on a regular basis and are understanding what chiropractic and the chiropractic lifestyle is all about. So these tools are allowing us to communicate so much better.

My insights went it died basically. 'cause I used this device so much throughout the years and I, it was almost panic in the office. We really need it. So we all we have now the The wireless one. It gives people great reports. It allows to have that conversation from the get go that we're not just about pain, we're about the function of the nervous system.

So I particularly use the three technology, the core score, which is the heart rate variability, which now more and more people are understanding it because it's on their ring, their watch, and you can really have a good conversation about the stressors in their life. Then the second one is the surface E M G and the thermal.

I'm using it for progress evaluation. I'm using it for exactly that to. Make sure that we're measuring how people are doing on their care. And to have those sit down with them and say, okay, what's going on? Your core score is really decreased. Is there something going on in your life? Do you need some guidance or, do we need to ramp up your care?

So to me, if I want to have the conversation about the nervous system and its impact on our. Body and overall health, I needed to have something that measures it. Now, I know not everybody practices the same way. If you're more corrective with corrective devices and things like that, just make sure that you're congruent with your communication and what you measure in term of.

Progress. You just have to reflect and say, okay, this is not the technique that I use or the way my practice function, but what we don't see, Is hard for us to understand. So having a score, their score for cholesterol, their scores for everything. Patients are used to see this and they're actually looking forward to to see their results.

So that would be one of the top thing that I would say for people. And you need to use it. You need to integrate it into your protocol. You know my stuff. There's process and system. It's done, and there's nothing that will really sidetrack us. From that. Another big thing, and that will be probably for the newer grad, is to employ either an exam doctor or a chiropractic assistant.

I remember when I'm sure you too. When we first start, we're doing just about everything almost cleaning the bathrooms, but point being, Once you hit a certain amount of patient's visit, I think it is one of the best thing that you can do is to hire an examination. See, again, depending on which jurisdiction

You are in term of what is allowed and not allowed, and I'm not talking about x-rays here or anything like that. Again, this is for another discussion, but you can definitely leverage someone to take the health history and just do, the grunt work of the time that you would spend with a patient to get the information and there's still

Really great ways to connect with that patient and still have that need to need conversation that, they know that you care. It is just that your staff really was able to screen to the important health information that you need. And I remember it was probably around a hundred and. 50 visit mark that I'm like, okay, I can't do this on my own anymore.

And I remember at that time thinking, oh geez, can I really afford doing that? And like I said, this was definitely one of the best thing, and I can only assume that a second exam doctor or a third or a fourth, Can be added if you have multiple doctors and if you have a practice that sees this kind of volume.

So I think to delegate that component and the paperwork that goes with it was pretty game changer for me. And another thing that I like to do and I've mentioned that in other shows I use my local university. I'm in Ottawa. So many of my back chiropractic assistant are from human kinetic program at the University of Ottawa.

And if I can have them in my practice for four years, it's fantastic. It's great mentorship for them. They have hands-on experience and how to deal with people and so forth. And I've had four or five of these students becoming chiropractors throughout the years. And it's just, it truly is a win-win situation to leverage student, you have to train them properly into the communication that you want, but they can be great assets to the practice.

Number three is leveraging Google reviews. Obviously this is a newer thing and I know many software, chiropractic software, depending on who you're using now, have implemented either with the software or are compatible. With a software that will help you get more Google reviews. But I would really encourage you to have things into your office to help ask.

So this is the one that we came up with and I, if you were to use your phone, you'll see it goes to our clinic, a Google Review page. It says, happy with your chiropractic and clinic experience. Leave us some love, hashtag share health, and we have that at the front with a little card holder that people can take a card.

So if they're, a little bit in a hurry, then they can do that and grab the card and do it later. And my staff also will step in sometime when a person is at the front desk and is raving about how better they feel about their chiropractic care. And they say, Hey, have you thought or Can we ask you to share?

And they're giving them a card. I have cards in my room as well. So that's making that conversation and the ease for people to leave a review even more so I myself set a goal of how many people I wanna . Ask that day, I'll often review the list of who's come in and I said, you know what? We've been grading such great results with so and I will ask them. And I always position it to say, Joan lot, not a lot of you have headaches and and migraines and you're doing so much better. You may not realize, but a lot of people don't know that chiropractic can help and having reviews just like a restaurant when people go and read the reviews.

We'll really help people say, you know what? This person is just like me, had headaches and migraine. I'm gonna give it a go. When you ask from, this place of caring people are very willing to write reviews. So make sure that you rely on your chiropractic software, but make sure that

You and your team are always on top of that. And I know for a fact that many especially in recent years, they say, wow, I went to see your reviews and this is what convinced me to come to see you as opposed to see somebody else in the community. Make yourself cute little, like cards like this and sign easy to do to print business card size.

So this is something that can be done quite easily. number four. Another big one too is here to have a, what I call a doctor's report for all our new patient. And I remember back in the days, I used to do it on Wednesday night at seven 30, sitting in my clinic. Main waiting room, and I did that for I don't know how many years that was before the internet and video and YouTube.

Now I'm leveraging video because it's much more convenient for people to watch on their own time. So I have a card that a pamphlet card that I will . Personally give to all our new patient and say we have a video for people that are new to chiropractic that I recorded that explains the scan, explains the nervous system, explain the x-ray, so please make sure that you watch it.

It is 20 minutes, and when I review your own results, it will make just so much more sense. We have many ways to make sure that it, they have watched it before they come because when people don't watch it, They just don't understand what's going on the same way that they do. And I narrowed it down to be, I believe, 22, 22 minutes, and I would say 99% of the time people will say, wow, that was really good.

Thank you for taking the time to, to do this and your examples. Were really good. Now that video is not for everyone to see. I have it hosted on a landing page of our clinic that not everyone can see, because to me, patients have to be in the office and part of our . To have met us before they see this video.

So how question for you is how can you leverage your education? It took me a long time to refine. I have a, a. Three techniques that I use. So I made it my own of all the questions that I know patients are going to ask. Does it hurt? Does it not hurt? What technique what should I expect? And all of that stuff.

And I try to do it. We record the doctor's report every year or so to keep it fresh and especially if I have integrated new things into my practice to make sure that we have the, the excitement and the hype about it. Number five it's to be clear with your choice of care, and I'll explain this sheet here, is something that we give to patients after their first adjustment because I've explained.

Things to them. And now I wanna make sure that we're on the same page of what they want. Now, my pro, my ideal practice would be people, everyone just coming on wellness care, nobody would be in pain. But that's not the reality. And oftentimes . For people. It is a financial situation. It is a time situation.

So I really wanna make sure that I know where they're coming from. But that said, this is where I also set the expectation. All right, John, you want to just get rid of pain? Perfect. We'll help you do that, but this means this, and that. So when I did that, I don't know, maybe eight, nine years ago, it just really.

Gave us the opportunity to have that honest discussion with the person and really meet them where they're at, but that they would understand what it meant. So I didn't bargain my care. I didn't say, oh, for you, make it go in for visit. This is not what I'm talking about. It's to have that.

That discussion that they have a reversal on their neck curvature and you're trying to restore that, but this is not what they're, where they're at, time-wise or financially. So it removed pressure off of me. And it also, I think removed people pressure off people because. At the end of the day, we need to give patients choices.

Now, if you only wanna do corrective care, that's fine too, but this is when you would have the discussion. And then expectations are clear on both side, and I think this is just, good good doctoring. At the end of the day, number six is offer online booking. I'm hoping that by 2023 everyone has online booking.

I know my software took . Their, our chiropractic software took a long time, so I fin angle my own online booking. Now my software has booking, but we have a great system. I don't wanna change it, but here you'll notice that we have two tabs, one for current patient that goes strictly to our adjustment schedule and the new patient

That goes to, we use Jot form to a new patient request and we use it for chiropractic care, for massage. We also have laser and so forth. So it drives an email to my front desk, and then my front desk picks up the phone so that resolve. The possibility of a new patient booking themself into a time slot that is reserved for adjustment.

Only again, I'm hoping that all softwares now have that, but it is. Really amazing for patient in term of flexibility. Now, the disadvantage of that can be that people forget to book when they leave and then, they flat out forget to to book their next appointment in two weeks. It makes it also a little bit challenging to know what's in your book.

For the next week or in the next two weeks. And you have to run a very efficient office. But if you have good system, the flexibility, people really appreciate it. But you're still in control of the schedule. It's not like you're gonna have, 10 people walking in the door all at once because you're paying attention to the schedule regardless.

Another thing that I've done too is to have some targeted educational health funnels. I also have a background With the Institute of Functional Medicine d i F M, and every time that I had a new patient that had gut issue or stress or inflammation, I just felt like I didn't have enough time to give them information for them to dig deeper.

Even though chiropractic is is my main thing. So I created these l. State helped educational email series that focus on that. I even give them a handout. I tell them to expect those email because say, Joan, I know you're coming back, coming from your, your low back and your pain, but during the exam you really mentioned digestive issues.

I have tools. For you. So pay attention to the email and then if you need any other help, just let me know. So this is all preset in into a form in, in, in Infusionsoft. So my staff just clicks on that link. Enter the person, first name, last name, and email. It's triggered directly, so it's all in-house.

So it's not like any patient. And I know now Infusionsoft used to be almost the thing that had campaign, but I know now MailChimp and all of those have campaigns. So whatever platform you're using, think about what else you can automate that will gili deliver even more value to your patient.

Number eight, impress them with your website and social again, it's, it's 2023. So you wanna make sure that your website looks modern, that you have a nice modern pictures that you know when people go on your way website, they get a, feels like wow, this is the place to be. And this is actually our tagline.

For the clinic where healthy people go, because to me, I wanted people that had health struggle to feel like that's the place to be and people that are already doing a lot of good things, I wanted them to also feel at home because this is where healthy people go. So spend some time, I would say every year to audit your website and see, the look and feel of it.

Number nine, offer adjunct services. So again, this is a practice choice. We do have massage therapy in the office. It's sometime it's amazing. But again, you have to write, have the right people. We do use laser red light and infra red light biomodulation. We do sell supplements. Throughout the years I've had different services, different people.

You just wanna make sure that they're in line with what you do and they support what you do. But one thing that people appreciate is to have access to this as opposed to going to different practitioners. And number 10 my favorite position yourself in your community by writing a book.

I am now on book number six that is coming out in October, which I co-wrote co-author with a a fellow chiropractor. But this is the book that I wrote for my patient. It's called Fired Up in Feeling Great. 10 key strategies to activate your body's healing power and be pain-free. Have everything in there from pillows to ergonomic position to exercise and everything.

And it also comes with an application where they can even, go further with a lot of the content that I put out there. So this. Is something that we give to new patient when they start under care. Either just the app, either the book, and I tell you it. It's the kind of thing that. You've been saying this for years and years, what could you put in a book to make your life easier and to make sure that it's all into one place for your patient to to you.

This in term of positioning yourself as the expert in your community, writing a book is definitely a big one, and it's not as hard as you may think. And also . Understanding the benefit and the integration in my own practice with the conversion and the retention and so forth. I decided to help chiropractors write the book and implement into their own practice.

So this is a service that I've been offering for. Less than a year now, but it's a done for you book program that you can go to the healthyentrepreneur.com to find out more about it. More than happy to chat. If you know that you have a book in you and you wanna go to a specific topic, I can help you.

If you wanna leverage my book and we tweak it to change to be your chiropractic story, your technique and all that, at the end of the day, the framework can be very similar. It is exciting to be helping other doctors do that and make them celebrities in their own, community really. So hopefully those 10 strategies are sparking ideas.

And sometime it is a reminder that's dang, I used to do this, and we stopped doing it for no good reason. So if any of these strategies resonated with you that you've never used or you want to revisit them, This is the kind of, maybe even presentation or show that you can get your team to listen to.

And I'm sure there's a lot of other ideas out there, but if you have any questions and you're interested in furthering the conversation with the done for you book, You can email me at [email protected]. More than happy to to chat. So thank you very much. I hope you enjoy the show.

And again, a big thank you to ChiroSecure for putting those shows together. It's always awesome to listen to other colleagues that have expertise in a different field, so thank you very much.

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